Sonnet Stitches

Standard disclaimers apply

2010-03-21T17:59:00.003-05:00

When I take a blog holiday, I take a blog holiday.
No excuses... knitting has been happening, it's just that life has been happening as well. I have a sweater I am dying to post as soon as there is enough natural, non-soggy light in which to post it.

This, unfortunately, is what I get if I try to take pictures of knitting in my living room:

but I haven't had much choice.

If you're not local, we have had a yucky, yucky, winter. I wish I could be more eloquent, but alas, there aren't words. Life is going to slow down a little bit after KITH is over, and then my next project is to knit some variation on every single sock in this book. I'm halfway through the first sock right now. This is my plan to start making a dent in all my sock yarn.

Speaking of books, I'm library auditioning this one right now. Being a fan of brioche stitch, I'm intrigued by some of the stitch patterns.

Also on my list of things to covet is this book. I've been playing a bit with colorwork between projects:
and I am hopeful that when this long, repetitive, practice scarf is done, my gauge will be less wonky and I can move on to some sweaters over which I've been swoony.

(By the way, that scarf is made out of zauberball, which has come home with me from Misknits several times over the last few months. Oh, Misknits, how I love thee, let me count the ways... or rather, let me not, because I might get weepy and short out my keyboard.

Not much else is new, other than that I've been sick all weekend... I don't tend to get cripplingly sick very often, so it's kind of news. I went to bed with a horrible headache as soon as I got home from work Friday night and woke up at 2:30 a.m. with some kind of horrible stomach bug. The spouse made coffee the next morning and I had a weird dream that the coffee smell was a knife going down my nostrils and into my lungs. I think out of 48 hours, I slept 30. I just kept waking up to take stomach medicine and ibuprofen so that the top of my head wouldn't implode. I brought work home but couldn't stay awake to work on it, couldn't stay awake to knit, couldn't eat, etc. I'm much better now, but as you can see I'm seriously out of blogging practice because I just gave a detailed description of being sick for two days. Thrilling stuff, I'm sure.

And, as always, there is the standard blurry cell phone haircut picture. I haven't updated since August, which means I'm missing my blurry cell phone December haircut picture. Because I was on my way out of town for Christmas, the only pictures of that one were taken by a 2-year-old and therefore may not be particularly clear:

Here's the one from March:

I would post updates about running, but because of aforementioned yucky weather, that's been pretty boring, too: treadmill + gym track all winter = OMG I am out of shape for hills. I am looking forward to spring where I intend to arm myself with claritin and conquer my fear of hills once and for all. Who knows? Maybe that will mean I need LESS YARN for that fancy fair isle sweater next winter.

Long long time, no blog

2009-08-01T12:33:00.003-05:00

There are times in a person's life where she feels creative - prolific, even - and wants to tell the world every juicy detail of the ideas bursting forth from her brilliant mind. Every day is full of action, adventure, and cinematic close calls that it has to be shared. She waxes nostalgic about her glory days.

Or, she is just full of herself and has delusions that people care what she does on the weekends.

And then there are other times, ladies and gentlemen, where she is just. working. too. much, barely has time to knit or go to the gym, is having a knock-down-drag-out with the Homeowner's Association about the height of a garden shed, is trying to keep her basil from dying and is helping her equally overworked husband take care of a cat who has temporarily lost the will to live while he's wearing the Cone of Shame.

During those times, there are some who will rise to the occasion and turn their mundane struggles into brilliant prose.

And then there is me, and I said "Aw, to heck with it. Something's got to give. Blogging it is."

"... and housecleaning."

So, here is a brief and lazy recap of my summer since the guild retreat, or at least the parts that don't involve work:

Six 5k races and two fund-raiser walks:

My parents came up to visit this summer and built a shed in the back corner of my patio:
(5/31/09)
Twice:
(7/11/09)
(I still haven't finished painting the trim on version 2.0)

Took a couple of days off, went home and hung out with my family, and showed off my Dork Dancing Cred:

Went to see A.'s new apartment; had some adventures involving chutney, the roof, unpleasant-tasting sake, and getting lost (not necessarily all at the same time). We also made a mess:

I got a couple of haircuts and took off-center pictures with my dinky little phone:

(May) (July)

Oh, and this movie came out, and my friends and I debated for awhile about whether we should bother seeing it, because it wasn't something we were particularly interested in, but in the end we decided we had nothing better to do:

It was just a fluke, really, that we left two hours before the movie started at midnight and that we were wearing wool in the middle of July, and such looks of glee on our faces:

That last bit brings me to about the only knitting I've completed during this great expanse of time, and thus the reason there hasn't been much blogging. I'd promise to finish more and thus return to blogging, but it's still a little bit down the priority list. My hindquarters have been spending too much time in my office chair, and the last 5k was a month ago - plus there's all that painting, housecleaning, cat-sympathizing, and husband-supporting that I've been neglecting.

Here's hoping that fall will involve lots of long walks and time spent snuggling on comfy couches with a cup of hot tea, a couple of contented felines, a non-stressed husband, and a basket of yarn.

Cute attack

2009-04-23T00:00:00.001-05:00

HPIM1800
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

Ronnie, say hi to the camera!

(More to follow. Just wanted you to see who I hung out with at SSK at Harveyville last weekend.)

Giant Entrelac Afghan

2009-03-09T22:20:00.002-05:00

The Giant Entrelac Afghan is done, wrapped, and ready to go in the mail!

I have pictures blocked and unblocked. I ended up having enough yarn to make it a little bigger, but it is pretty heavy and I think it's a nice size for curling up in the recliner with a book or curling up on the couch with someone, which I'm told newlyweds like to do (not at my house - the spouse thinks the couch is uncomfortable. The cats tend to agree with him, so they all crowd onto the recliner and blink at me).

Anyway, for those who haven't been watching me for the last couple of weeks as I carry this thing around in a plastic bag for fear of White Yarn contamination... this was a wedding gift for someone Back Home, the daughter of a very good friend of ours who is, apparently, obsessed with the color red. I had originally picked out what I thought were "safe" colors (grey, cream, black, and one skein of purple), but after I realized the extent of The Red Thing, I knew I needed to change course. My brain is so attuned to only seeing certain colors on the shelf (Green! Rust! Teal! Orange!) that either of those combinations was a brain adjustment.

This was the first time I've done an entrelac project that wasn't on the bias. It went quickly, and my backwards-knitting skills are now approaching ninja level. If I'd had to turn every 20 stitches on a project made out of bulky wool that fits across my bed, I would still be knitting (and probably swearing, which is not the sort of energy one wants to exude into a wedding gift).

So, now it's done, and just in time: It's going in the mail tomorrow, and the wedding is Saturday. I wrapped it up in a red and white box and tied ribbons on it before sending it full of good wishes for a lovely wedding surrounded by friends and a long and happy marriage.

That out of the way, do you think it's time I did something about my entrelac addiction?

Na. . .

Entrelackluster

2009-03-07T14:31:00.003-06:00

First, you make a shape. Then you pick up stitches along the side of the shape, and you make another shape. . .

It's addictive. Kind of like Tetris.

Gym-nastics

2009-02-20T22:48:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow, I'm joining a new gym. The timing is good. The three-year, sell-your-soul contract at our old gym expired last month, just in time for me to make some new exercise buddies on www.sparkpeople.com who happen to go to a gym that couldn't be closer to my house unless it were actually paying dues in my HOA.

I'm a little bit sad. There were a lot of things I disliked about my old gym, and it was rapidly going downhill. The chain is in bankruptcy, the class schedule was being whittled away to nothing, and the locker rooms were gross even for locker rooms. But it was familiar. After 3 years of hanging out with people while you're sweaty, you feel comfortable around them, and it was kind of a bummer to just let my membership expire without even realizing it (I got a nasty automated e-mail that said "Our records show you used your card on this date. Your card is expired. Nice try, sucker - it's now been deactivated.") Also, the 2 or 3 remaining classes that I liked, I REALLY liked. One of my weird and useless superpowers is that I'm pretty good at step aerobics, and I enjoyed being in an advanced class where the music is fast and the combinations are complicated without being nonsensical (except for the rare occasions where we had that dumb sub with the notecards). I haven't yet been to one of the step classes at my new gym, but I'm already afraid it's going to be boring. Granted, one of the draws is that there are a bazillion other classes I can take, but still: I like step class. And I really liked MY step class. So, regardless of whether this one's OK or not, I'm kind of bummed.

I'm not one of those people who hate change, but I'm also not one of those people who get bored and want change for change's sake. I wish I could find a gym that had the best of all possible worlds (meaning that the pool schedule at this new gym wouldn't suck so bad, and that when my old gym finally goes under that the instructor I like would get a job at the new one). That's not going to happen, and so I'm moving on. This place is clean, reasonably priced, ridiculously close, has a packed class schedule with lots of spinning, and I already have friends who work out there. Plus, in addition to being practically on my back doorstep, there's a second location that is close enough to my office that I can actually get there and get changed in time to make a 5:30 p.m. class on a weekday. So, it'll be good. It was definitely time. But I'm still a little wistful about the things I can't have.

In other news, I am terribly behind on knitting pictures.

Have finished, but not photographed or put on ravelry:

1) Brown heathered Cascade hat with a lining and matching gloves for the spouse
2) Lime green Kathmandu aran hat with weird yellow Lavish alpaca lining for me (love it)
3) Hat identical to the above except with black flecked Kathmandu and black Lavish. That one was duplicate stitched on the inside and mailed off to a friend... without being photographed or ravelry posted, because I am L
4) Long green lace-paneled arm warmers out of camel yarn that I'm not sure I like
5) Violent purple cabled handwarmers that I knit while I was talking and therefore paid not nearly enough attention to construction and design
6) Green sweater for my husband that I'm thinking about surgically altering because I hate the way the neckline fits and wish I'd planned ahead. Problem: I knit it top-down.
7) A miniscule messenger bag for a toy. Also mailed without photography, again because I'm lazy.
8) One of my toe-up Trekking entrelac knee socks, after I did major surgery (i.e. complete amputation of the toe)

I have so many things in progress right now... a couple of pairs of socks, a shawl, two sweaters, a blanket. There are more things in my head and in my stash. I actually did take pictures of some laceweight for purposes of ravelry destashment, but again, not posted. I'll get to it all eventually.

... sort of like blogging about things that aren't dull. sigh.

Oz gets fleeced

2009-01-12T23:05:00.002-06:00

DSC02762
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

The Jo are in yr yarn shop, buyin all yr Peace Fleece

A little wanderTrekking lust. . .

2009-01-02T14:31:00.003-06:00

Discontinued ombre colors of Trekking XXL for which I would pay you in cash and eternal devotion for helping me find, in order:

Color 96 (green/grey)
Color 149 (green/tan)
Color 90 (green/olive)
Color 101 (browns)
Color 102 (greys/naturals)
Color 69 (browns)
Color 61 (green/teal)

Surely with some of the hey-look-I-found-Wollmeise magic we have in our circle, someone can just accidentally happen to find me some green sock yarn. . .

Too much knitting, not enough photography

2009-01-02T11:34:00.002-06:00

Happy 2009 from your favorite procrastinator, who intended to spend her day off today cleaning house. So far, she's gone grocery shopping, forgot to buy hand soap refills (which is why she went grocery shopping in the first place), done some dishes, cleaned cat boxes, and called the post office about a package that's gone missing.

Knitting-wise, last month was busy, but I didn't manage to photograph most of the results. Again, blame the procrastinator: Most of the items were Christmas gifts that were finished at the last minute and gifted immediately. I made a cowl for Cheeky that I cast on in the morning on the way to visit friends and bound off that same day 10 minutes before she pulled into the driveway at my parents' house. The same with the fingerless gloves I made for a friend deploying overseas: I got the message duplicate stitched on one cuff a few hours before giving them away.

I finished another sweater for the spouse, which has not been photographed because a) I'm lazy and b)it needs blocked. I'll get to that right after I finish cleaning house. . .

I have been on a glove kick. I need to take a picture of all the mateless gloves lying around my stash room. One is a fingerless mitt with a jolly roger on the outside (for a friend or her teenage son; haven't decided which). Another is a fingerless mitt with blue and grey lattice stranding that I knit on the last guild yarn crawl and out of scraps left over from something or other (those were for a friend but after finishing the first one I decided they'd be way too big, so they're now mine). Yesterday I spent most of the first day of 2009 finishing a dark brown glove for the spouse. He's still wearing the hideous dark green acrylic ones that were my first attempt at glove knitting 4 years ago. Judging by the first one, these are much better.

You would think that, after December 08, I would be sick of gloves - after all, a chunk of the month was taken up by 000 addi turbos and 00 hiya hiyas, making these:

But no. Those just made me appreciate my trusty six-inch US 5 bamboo DPNs and how miraculously fast I can knit gloves on them.

This year I'm vowing yet again that if I'm going to knit Christmas gifts I'm going to start earlier, but so far my track record is none too great. I actually had to buy one of those camping lights you clip to your hat so I could finish those black gloves while we were driving across the state in the dark. I texted Cheeky that I was knitting on the highway with "a spelunking lamp" and I think I almost killed her. I'd been meaning to make those gloves since October (it's a long and nerdy story that starts out with LOLcats and, in my world, ends up with size 000 addi circs. . .) but of course I didn't actually cast on until two weeks before I was going to be seeing the intended recipient.

Cheeky gave me this book and three (!!!) skeins of Malabrigo laceweight in greens and browns. Can. Not. Wait. to get over my glove obsession and knit a humongous, intricate, delicate shawl. Note to self: Order a magnetic chart keeper. . .

I don't know about you, but I am happy to put 2008 behind me. It was a difficult year, on a personal as well as a global scale, and there are some dates that will stick in my mind forever.

Obviously it wasn't all bad - there were a lot of rewarding moments, and some opportunities I had that I would have regretted had I not taken them when I had the chance. I spent the last week of the year going home to see family and friends, most of whom I see far too rarely. I thought about how you never know when such a visit could be your last with someone. I don't mean that in a morbid way, it's just... something to think about. I want to do better about making such things count. Time goes by so quickly while I'm not paying attention. My friends have babies and then suddenly they are friending me on facebook and blogging about silent movies and early 20th-century fashion trends. . .

Anyway, as usual I get self-conscious when I get mushy, especially regarding people who have no interest in my yarn obsession and therefore don't read my ramblings. Thank you all who made 2008 fun with KITH, yarn crawls, UFO night, and other fiber-filled adventures. I wish you all many blessings in 2009.

Next up: Team Jo collaborates on a narcissistic 2008 minute trivia quiz. . .

Sweater curse

2008-11-30T23:01:00.002-06:00

dorky old man sweater 011
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

It's done it's done it's done!!

Hooray, hooray, I finished my spouse's sweater.

This is exciting not only because it fits and he likes it, but because I can now move on to finishing gift and stealth knitting.

I borrowed some of the math for the yoke from the "Tang" pattern out of "Custom Knits," which of course looks nothing like the sweater I made for the boy. I took out the body shaping, altered the neckline, and took out about half of the sleeve decreases because of the cables I added.

The fit is pretty good but not perfect. The body is a little baggy and the sleeves a little snug, but all in all not bad for my first attempt knitting a sweater for someone other than myself. I also did one-row buttonholes, which I always think is a good idea until I do them, and then I realize that I hate the way they look. I tried my hand at what is supposed to be an "invisible" bind-off for 2x2 rib for the bottom hem, and it also came out OK. I cheated on the button band and neck and did 1X1 ribbing since I like the bind-off so much better.

I'm already on to other things but the photos will have to wait. Stay tuned. . .

Warm hands, warm heart

2008-11-03T18:49:00.004-06:00

Not much to report, other than that the local crowd excels in the throwing of parties and the engineering of costumes. Plazajen's costume? Hilarious. And her acting was perfect.

I did some minor landscaping work on the new patio... however, thanks to daylight savings time, it's pitch dark by 6 p.m. and you get no photo (at least, not today).

Several people in my life have birthdays right about now, and they're all getting the same thing. One of them was yesterday, in fact, and hers isn't done, but at this rate I'll get it started and finished while I'm waiting in line to vote.

I like how they turned out, and I hope the intended recipients do, too. The red ones are likely to get me disowned by my family, because they are the Wrong School's colors, but whatever. Some people are worth getting disowned over.

Fiber = Fun

2008-10-27T21:33:00.003-05:00

I really, really wasn't going to spend any money on the Sunflower Knitters Guild fall yarn crawl. In fact, I wasn't even going to go, because temptation and I, we get along. And I don't mean we get along like Jo and I get along, I mean we actually don't fight at all.

All this to say, it's Jo's fault that I went. And spent money. And had fun.

The entire roster included:

Big shoutout to ~~Dick Cheney~~ TJStein for cramming seven stores spanning the entire Missouri side of the metro area into nine hours. Not everybody went to every shop - some started crawling later and some ended early - so it will be a few days before everybody's photos are compiled.

The picture at right is Team Jo petting something shiny. For more yarn porn, colorandtexture uploaded a set of the part of our day that she shared.

Seriously, you should go look at her pictures. I mean, they include this:

I also did some cranking to finish my contribution to Red Scarf Project. To be honest, now that I look at the directions more closely, I didn't follow the rules very well - I used Brown Sheep, and the Web site specifically says not to use anything with mohair in it. I feel bad about this, because I know it's irritating when you're trying to make something charitable run smoothly and people just ignore the rules because hey, they're donating stuff for free. I didn't mean to ignore the rules, I just wasn't thinking past the fact that my scarf was worsted weight and had red in it. If you look at OFA's gallery of past donations, however, you can see that some people didn't even do the red part. . . so I hope that means my scarf will find a good home. Here he is:

And here he is with a few of his friends, donated by other people in the guild:

Let's see... in other words, Cheeky came to visit me last week. She was so excited about visiting that she forgot her knitting bag at home, so we went to visit Amber on Saturday. She said "I want to learn how to do fair isle" so Amber, as always, helped her pick out just the right yarn and pattern for her first fair isle project. Cheeky sat around and petted her yarn for awhile rather than casting on. She waited until Sunday late afternoon for that:

And then, by the time the guild meeting got started on Monday night, she had finished and blocked this for show and tell:

I don't know about you, but I think it's rock star. All in day's work, even.

Right now I'm working on some fingerless typing gloves for K, because she hinted she's wearing out the last pair from overuse. I made one with some stranding in colors I associate with her, but it turned out a little too roomy, so I'm keeping it for myself. The second pair is going to fit, and I should probably even write up the pattern. It's basic, customizable, classy, has all the OCD finishing details that I love (no raw edges) and it knits up quick. The colors are nice, but brighter than I ordinarily see her wear, so I hope she likes them. I've been having fun using up bits from old projects on these; I may make her another pair just for fun. I picked up some interesting odds and ends (charms, buttons, etc.) recently and a few ideas for some subtle inside joke voodoo typing gloves are percolating in my head. Also, I am just geeky enough to get excited about how many different shapes and gusset constructions I can come up with or borrow to make something as simple as a pair of fingerless mitts or gloves.

This is what happens when I only post once a month. On that note, I'm going to go curl up on the futon and admire my stash yarn. . . or at least, I was, but someone beat me to it:

Mesh and ruffles

2008-10-15T22:32:00.004-05:00

Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

There hasn't been much knitting, but there has been knitting. I've put myself on a new project diet, meaning that in between the starting of new projects must be the finishing of old ones, even the ones that are deadly dull and involve tens of thousands of stitches worth of ruffles around the edges.

The scarf is an example of what Two Windows Knitty Bits does if you don't use it for a sock: i.e., it's still pretty fantastic. The ruffle around the edge is also local, via Crafty in a Good Way, my absolute favorite local dyer. And no, I'm not bitter that her stuff is getting harder to find because she reportedly has a life, but I am sad. I'm also known to drop cash for it if I see it, which I do on occasion. Case in point, the Retro Redux Shrug, which is also dyed by Crafty Andrea. The fact that I happened to be wearing a green T-shirt to the shop the day that I took a picture didn't do it any favors. However, despite arguments from The Other Jo to the contrary, my rear end is not so huge that it cannot be cropped out of a photo taken of me from the back.

I love this shrug. I want about six of them. Our office has temperature issues, and an extra pair of sleeves for Random Air Conditioning Ambushes is a good thing to have.

I am this ||<-- close to finishing a vest/shrug thing and slightly further away from being finished with my October charity project for guild, which I need to knit like a maniac in order to have finished by Monday. Circumstances in my life lately have not been conducive to knitting or to concentrating, so I've managed to take days and days to bind off 170 stitches. I've got Gift Knitting to do, for Christmas and for a birthday or two (rare are the non-knitting people in my life who warrant hand-knits, but high on that list are people who have previously received handknits and are starting to fret loudly about what will happen if said handknits wear out from overuse and love).

In other news, we went to see The Yarn Harlot this week, which was fun, and my girl Cheekyknits is coming to visit me this weekend, which is even more fun.

Things I Need on a T-shirt. . .

2008-09-12T20:30:00.004-05:00

nataliedee.com

http://www.nataliedee.com/090208/you-are-free-to-learn-how-to-do-stuff-at-any-time.jpg

HRH's Thermal Undershirt socks

2008-09-06T13:21:00.002-05:00

Purple socks 001
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

I designed and knit these in a week. Check my ravelry notes if you want the architecture details (they're very clever, if I do say so myself).

They're very soft, and they remind me of autumn, my favorite season. Does that sound cliche? Everybody's favorite season is autumn (except for The Other Jo, apparently. . .). It makes me happy that I went on vacation in summer to a place with cool weather, and when I came home, it was autumn! Hooray.

Forgive me for not getting the socks finished sooner, but when I wasn't knitting, I was doing this:

James, get the hacksaw . . .

2008-08-19T23:18:00.007-05:00

I guess I've been in an orangey kind of mood:

The socks are flying by: I'm using huge needles (well, relatively - they're a US 1) and easy 4-row-repeat lace. I've been into toe-up heel flaps and incorporating designs into gussets lately. If I ever took pictures of WIP, you'd know that.

The hat was done in about a day, too. It's the leftovers from my Retro Redux shrug and it's my standard too-lazy-to-swatch hat: top down with raglan increases. I used a brick pattern that merged into the ribbing, and then I just kept knitting until I ran out of yarn. That made the cuff reach almost to my chin, so I doubled it under and tacked it down. Hooray for warm ears. This also is the first and, I expect, the last, pom pom you will probably see on my blog. Again: the goal was to run out of yarn.

The UFO pile is getting ridiculous again. Once I finish the orange socks I've got a mohair shawl and a shrug I'm making myself finish before I cast on for the next sweater. This will power business is not what it's cracked up to be, my friends.

I was knitting the orange socks last week while walking one of our myriad suburban wooded trails. Nobody on the trail said anything to me or even looked at me cross-eyed. They just biked, jogged, and walked their dogs right past me, which I thought was interesting (I mean, come on, if you didn't knit and you saw someone walking, chewing gum, AND knitting with 5 dpns at the same time, wouldn't YOU stare?). When I was off the trail and back on the sidewalk heading toward my car, however, I got a lot of stares from older women at stoplights. Several of them rubbernecked with impunity as their spouses sped obliviously past.

Let's see... in other news, men with jackhammers have been tearing apart my patio for two days. I have moderately high hopes that, by the weekend, there will be a new patio in its place. My furniture is still in "storage," however, so any outdoor patio knitting chez sonnetstitches will be in kum ba ya sitting on the ground in a circle fashion for now. (The "storage" is in quotes because my parents exercised their right to use any furniture their children "store" in their garage, and a squirrel decided the chair stuffing would make excellent nest material.)

Also, speaking of furniture, there is actually a place to SIT in my ~~stash room~~ basement, and the cats are digging it.

Only one of them, however, seems to really have the concept down.

We're working on Ella.

Easy as pi

2008-08-11T20:42:00.001-05:00

DSC02233
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

I haven't photographed my finished ginormous Pi Shawl yet. However, The Other Jo did, which is convenient.

Eventually I may take an actual pic where you can see the whole thing, but for now, this will do.

Time machine

2008-08-06T21:59:00.001-05:00

WEDDING 027
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

The spouse and I are getting ready to celebrate our 5th anniversary, which freaks me out and makes me feel old. It feels like we just got married five minutes ago, which begs the question: how the heck did we end up in KC??

Anyway, I'll save the inevitable mushy blog post for our actual anniversary. In the meantime, because I'm procrastinating on photographing my pile of FOs (4 and counting since the last guild meeting), here I am with my dear friend CheekyKnits.

A funny thing, time -- when this picture was taken, neither of us knit.

The only word I can think of for that thought is...

"Inconceivable!"

Magical Mystery Shawl

2008-07-19T01:58:00.001-05:00

IMG_1377
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

This is two colorways of Noro Silk Garden Lite. The dilemma: My opinion is that the best thing to do with any Noro yarn is usually entrelac. My opinion is also that long swathes of entrelac can be tedious to knit. To solve my problem, I decided to pretend I was a little kid with a huge box of crayons and a giant piece of graph paper. When I became hopelessly bored with garter-stitch entrelac, I'd throw in a cable, a lace square, some bobbles for embroidering later, stockinette or reverse stockinette, etc.

This was an adequate solution -- for awhile. As you can see, I made another thrilling discovery: what else looks really cool in two colorways of Noro but is even MORE tedious to knit than garter stitch entrelac? If you guessed applied twisted I-cord edging, you win the prize. This shawl took me more than a year to complete because it spent most of its edging cycle in the bottom of a dark drawer in the basement where my stash lives while I occasionally tapped my wand and hoped the edging would knit itself like a stack of House Elf hats.

No such luck. In fact, even the less-than-astute observer will note obvious signs of impatience in the last stretch of applied I-cord edging. To be fair, however, part of that had to do with yarn shortage. There are about twice as many free I-cord fringe loops on one end than there are on the other, too. I had barely enough left with which to do the planned embroidery.

I was envisioning more buttons. However, my button stash appears to have made itself helpful by taking a vacation into storage to avoid getting spilled on the floor by a cat. This is all well and good, save that it forgot to leave me its forwarding address.

The idea is that when you toss the wrap around your shoulders, it's easy to use a loop of the attached twisted I-cord as a buttonhole for one of the larger buttons, thus alleviating the need to scrounge up a shawl pin to keep from freezing your canasta off while dashing out the door because you're late (ask me how I came up with that scenario).

There are more detailed pics on my flickr account, including some ~~topless~~headless shots of me modeling it in relatively poor light in my living room.

In other news, I'm detox dieting. This is doing admirable things for my relationship with the scale at the gym, but less-than-admirable things for my mood. As such, my biggest cheat has been diet Coke and coffee - after four days the headache wasn't abating, and I'm a weenie. So, to help a sister out, if you see me put anything near my mouth that looks like it came out of a package, contains hydrogenated oil or high-fructose corn syrup, remind me that I might as well take a syringe full of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and inject it directly into my caboose.

In other OTHER news, the spouse turns 40 on Sunday. Wish him a happy birthday if you see him, or facebook harass him if you don't. :)

The moths have swarmed and the fiber is no more. . .

2008-06-28T10:46:00.001-05:00

08 Yarn Crawl 06
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

Yes, the guild went on yarn crawl last week.

No, there is no more yarn or fiber left anywhere in Kansas.

Yes, The Other Jo really did buy all the yarn in that basket.

No, I haven't photographed my stash yet.

Memorial Day

2008-05-27T18:52:00.002-05:00

Sitting on a rock
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

I'm back from my five-day stint south of the (state) border. The lacy ruffled wrap was delivered to much excitement from the graduate, who also sang like an angel and delivered a valedictorian speech that rhymed.

Cheeky executed her two-at-once sock intro like a pro and was almost to the gussets by the time we came home. We saw Narnia with my cousins and I did the 3-mile track in record time yesterday with Marissa, and in not-so-record but still fun time with my mom, aunt, and uncle. I also did a respectable hill in the mud on Friday morning, considering I was extremely tempted to stay in bed. I also, however, helped my husband demolish a vegetarian superspecial (the topping combinations are at the discretion of the cook and different on every slice) at my favorite pizza place back home, so it's doubtful that the exercise did much good.

The highlight of my weekend was visiting our former city of residence and spending the day with friends. We saw a new baby (gorgeous), heard glowing tales of happiness with a new career (exciting), and laughed ourselves dizzy (if you don't believe me, look at my crossed eyes in all the pictures) with some people I would see more than once a year if life were fair.

In keeping with my rule: No pictures of people who don't read this blog will appear in this blog. So, you'll just have to take my word for it unless you see me in person, but I have some good shots of Hippie Bikerville where we were running around acting like little kids. I'll post the people-free ones this week. The one above is a teaser. We are making those faces because, just out of frame, one of our friends is brandishing a big stick at us.

That's all I'm going to say - I feel just as self-conscious going on and on about how much I adore people who are outside of the community for which this blog is written as I do trying to explain how much I like YOU people to my friends who don't knit.

Anyway... back. Well-rested and in good humor. Expect (gasp, shock) that I may turn up at UFO night tomorrow after the gym for once.

Radio Nowhere

2008-05-19T00:23:00.004-05:00

Lace wrap detail
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

Some laciness in Artyarns sock yarn, with a ruffle added on in a brown and burgundy from our own local dying goddess Andrea at Crafty in a Good Way (heart, heart, heart).

I knit this while watching DVDs with my husband, so there are, I am afraid, a lot of mistakes of the I-just-did-that-row-of-the-repeat-twice variety. However, all of the vertical lines and centered double decreases are unbroken, so I'm hoping it doesn't look like complete hash.

The ruffle reminds me of a coral reef or sea anemone. I have half a ball of the Andrea yarn left, and it just happens to coordinate perfectly with a ball of Two Windows Dye Company (also local) that I bought at Misknits recently, so I'm halfway through making myself a tilting blocks scarf that will probably also have a big ruffle outline. Because I need another half-finished project.

Amber's Foam Head modeling my wrap
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

This is for a relative who is graduating this weekend. Therefore, I have extra excuse to go home for Memorial Day and give it to her in person. I am also...

a) going to visit my grandma (hooray!)
b) teaching Cheekyknits how to knit a sock
c) probably playing tennis with my dad and
d) driving down south to have lunch and run around with some friends and former coworkers I nevah get to see, with the exception of one who's ditching us. (Long story.)

But... before that, I am going to see The Cure. Because I have the best husband in the universe.

And for that, dear friends, you must forgive me for being a crummy president and missing my first meeting tomorrow.

I'll make it up to you after I'm done rocking out.

Where I've been

2008-05-18T18:44:00.002-05:00

Jo Minor licking a greasy piece of dead pig, just to gross me out
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

I actually have finished knitting projects. Or, I could entertain myself and take some pictures of my gallery of UFOs (horrifying). But instead, I'll settle for yet another picture of my evil twin sticking something disgusting in her mouth.

More later - Jo actually took what I hope are pretty good shots of a lace wrap I just finished blocking as a gift for a cousin who's graduating next weekend.

And in other news, I have a new cell phone number. E-mail me if you think you're someone who needs to have it.

KITH me, I'm awake

2008-04-11T21:43:00.005-05:00

Knitting in the Heartland wrapped up Sunday night, and I'm just now returning to the land of the living. I've got a lot of housework catching up to do (not to mention knitting catching up to do), but at least my living room no longer looks like this:

Stefanie teaching "Fitted Knits Techniques"
in her ravelry T-shirt
Originally uploaded by tjstein

It was a ton of fun hanging out with Stefanie, and I heard good things from the people taking her classes. She is more beautiful than her photos, she is smart, she is hilarious, and she is a class act all around. I wish she could have stayed longer and taken the Grand Kansas City Yarn Shop Tour, but, alas, it was not to be. Fortunately, Amber stays open late on Friday nights, AND she's down the street from Blue Koi, so we got to drop in on our way to Crispy Tofu with Awesome Sauce.

Everybody who's in the guild is going to get tired of me chanting these names, but I don't care. They deserve to be remembered in song: Sandra, Holly, Christine, Jo. While Teri and I were stumbling around sleep-deprived and walking into walls, these ladies were taking care of business. If you're going to head up a committee, the supposed ideal situation is to have people who, when you say "jump," they say, "how high?" On the contrary, these ladies, when we said "jump," they said "Yeah, lamebrain, I just set a pole vault record while you had your thumb in your eye." They were unbelievable - including Christine, who is getting married in two weeks. Who gets involved in planning a knitting conference two weeks before her wedding? A rock star, that's who.

Also... Teri? The woman is a machine. We met at 8 a.m. Friday and did not stop until late Sunday night. Picking up stuff (and people), running errands, making phone calls, going to the airport during rush hour -- and she still found time to do Mom Stuff like attend parent-teacher conferences while I was home muttering to my very slow printer and rocking back and forth over my sixth cup of coffee.

Needless to say... my job? Other than stashing stuff in my living room, driving people crazy by pelting them with checklists, and going to Kinko's at 2 a.m.? Easy peasy. Everybody else was amazing.

The conference itself was fantastic. It's so exciting to me to see other people geeked out about knitting, so of course KITH was a blast. The market was full of beautiful stuff, people were whipping out projects left right and center, and I heard all kinds of conversational buzz about learning new techniques. Stefanie's publisher generously sent us 50 copies of "Fitted Knits" to give away for classes and the book signing, which was just awesome. Nobody else scrimped on the freebies, either - we had to have extra door prize drawings because our donors were so generous -- and if you've heard a rumor that you won a prize that you weren't around to claim, don't worry. We have a list, we have your contact information, and we will track you down and give you your goodies (much as I might like to keep them).

Also, I got to team-teach a class with The Other Jo, which was an adrenalin rush and a learning experience. I'd definitely do that again!! (It was also encouraging that when Teri and I dropped by the morning guild meeting to stash some stuff back in the cabinet, two people waved their finished class projects at me! Yay!)

We also got to meet The Most Well-Dressed Baby in the Universe, AND we know now why Stefanie is so sweet and so much fun - it's genetic. Stefanie's mom and in-laws took turns Mazie-wrangling and they were all lovely people.

We really have a fantastic knitting geek scene in Kansas City and I feel so fortunate to be part of it. I was just as excited to introduce Stefanie to all the local knitters and yarn ~~pushers~~vendors we have here as I was to introduce Stefanie to them. I honestly kept forgetting that she was just here for the weekend, and, as you can see, we drove her back bearing all the marks of someone who has moved into our treehouse for keeps:

(Yes, that's a MisKnits T-shirt, Happy Feet from MisKnits, a circ from The Studio, and the first sock she says she's knit in 5 years. On her lap is one of Carmen's sock bags, which have become a ubiquitous sock knitting accessory in KC. The moral of the story? Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated. Even if you're a Best of Interweave Readers' Choice Nominee.

KITH market haul

2008-04-07T22:43:00.003-05:00

KITH market haul
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

My memory is a little hazy, but I appear to have gone yarn shopping this weekend. Clearly, sleep deprivation didn't cloud all areas of my judgment, because I picked up some good stuff.

More later. Despite several days of living on coffee and Advil, I had a great time this weekend. Teri and I are doing photo consolidation and I want to wait until I can type in complete sentences before doing my real post-KITH post. All the gushing I need to do about the fabulousness of the vendors, teachers, event organizers, army of volunteers, and, of course, Stefanie, will be better if it's coherent.

T minus. . .

2008-04-03T23:16:00.003-05:00

... 4 days and counting:

KITH planning blog, stardate 040308, excerpt from the commander's log:

"Event is shaping up nicely. Sent 36 e-mails today. 32 of them were to Teri. Had an entire conversation with Stefanie that seems to have taken place in about the length of time it took the ship's crew to inhale a pineapple and tomato pizza. Have only a hazy idea what happened with the conversation OR the pizza. Must use my forensic skills to decipher the following notes from my subconscious: 'Baby car seat' 'Free books' 'Sexy purple minivan' 'Yarn shopping' and 'Yay!!!!'

"Later, became lost among the boxes between the ship's deck and the mess hall. Called for help, then was rescued by the insistent chirpings of a fat grey cat that had stowed away in a large basket covered in sunflowers.

"Went to bed by 1 a.m. - a huge improvement. However, lay awake worried about things I may be forgetting until at least 3 a.m. Woke up 2 hours later to find my kitchen table covered in bullet-listed sticky notes."

3 days and counting:

"Rewrote class handouts at oh dark thirty. Couldn't read them the next day. Sent them to Jo Minor anyway.

"Later, intercepted telepathic message from captain to first mate as follows: 'Dear Christine, Jo Major is driving me crazy. If she sends me another e-mail all bets are off. I'll tie her up with my shiny new green tape measure if you'll slit her throat with your DPNs. Love, Teri' Sketched outline for court martial over threatened mutiny but decided it would have to wait until next week."

2 days and counting:

"Made plans to spend the evening calling the volunteer army, but could not find Sacred Mystical White Binder Containing the Combined KITH Wisdom of the Ancients, wherein was written the names of all the volunteers along with their phone numbers and addresses. Tore up house. Wailed. Gnashed teeth. Sent e-mails to aforementioned mutinous crew members accusing them of sacrilegious acts such as Accidentally Walking Off With the KITH Binder After the Ritual of Mass Nametag Assemblage. Finally resorted to hacking the captain's Googledocs account to get phone numbers.

"Spent four hours on the phone rallying the troops. Heard unholy amounts of ravelry gossip but also answered at least once the question 'What the heck is ravelry?' Asked spouse if he had seen Sacred Mystical White Binder Containing the Combined KITH Wisdom of the Ancients, which has been in the house for the traditionally appointed time of a year and a day. Spouse said 'What binder? Why are all these boxes full of crap all over the place?'

"Barricaded self in the ship's brig. Updated hacked spreadsheet. Struggled to remember the spelling of the word 'koi.' Heard muffled yelling from on deck that sounded like '....this binder?[mumble]...kitchen?' Yelled back 'Where did you find it?' and received the answer 'On the[mumble] ... refrigerator.' Opened mouth to ask for clarification (On? Near? Or, God forbid, In?) but decided it was best not to know, and said 'Thank you' instead.

"Had the most amazing dream I've ever had. Strangely, it ended up being about... sleeping."

1 day and counting...
"Descent into madness has been swift and complete. Found e-mail in my sent file as follows: 'Dear Christine, did you send those e-mails I've already asked you six times if you've sent? My brain is mustard.'

Have no idea when I sent this e-mail but have been giggling every time I think of the word 'mustard.'

Hearts of Space

2008-03-30T23:53:00.002-05:00

So, these are my husband's Valentine socks, finished (mumble, mumble) today:

Patterns in self-striping yarn aren't worth the trouble because they disappear, but I didn't want to slog through another pair of plain ribbed socks on my trusty 00s. I saw some funky short-rowed socks on Magknits and I borrowed the idea. My short-row stripes are pretty much random, but when I decided I was bored with stockinette and wanted to start a short row I usually did it at a color change. When I was short-rowing back the other way to make the length of the sock even up, however, the colors would do their own thing. I think it looks like one of those colored-sand-in-a-jar things we did as little kids in Vacation Bible School.

As you can see, I continued the short rows up into the ribbing, and so the ribs jog a little bit. I like the effect more than I thought I would. These socks actually look really lumpy when they're not being worn, because of the short rows pointing in all different directions, but I made sure all the numbers even up.

Of course, since the entire sock was short-rowed, I decided I didn't feel like doing a short-row heel, so I did a toe-up heel flap. I'd never attempted this before and although I had a reasonable idea of how it worked architecturally, my printer went on the fritz so I had to wing it without directions. I like how it turned out and I think for my next sock class I'll have to add another pair of "object lesson" socks where I do one toe-up and one top-down and try to get my students to tell them apart.

I've also finished a sweater, but I'm not feeling the photogenic love about my torso lately, so you'll have to use your imagination. The sweater is pretty cute - it's the chevron coat from "Fitted Knits" and it's in the increasingly-notorious-and-now-defunct Mystical Creations Yarn. It's just the gut that is under the sweater that isn't dying to be posted on the Internet.

In other, non-knitting (or knitting, first cousin once removed) news, this is what my living room looks like after today's KITH session:

Less than a week to go!

Psyche-DALEK Extermi-KNITS

2008-03-13T23:18:00.002-05:00

Psyche-DALEK Extermi-KNITS
Originally uploaded by ^-^ *lottie*

This post is really for Amber's benefit.

This kid is a friend and former knitting buddy of mine. I miss her bunches. She's 14, beautiful, clever, funny, and has been knitting for at least a year or two longer than I have.

Stress, thy name is...

2008-03-11T19:29:00.004-05:00

...KITH.

If you haven't registered yet, I'd do it quick - a couple of the classes are nearing full. Plenty of them still have plenty of space, though, and even if you're not planning to take classes the market is shaping up to be pretty freaking nifty.

I'm not stressed. Really, I'm not. I've just had this nagging fear that I'm forgetting something since, oh... a year ago(???) when we said "Sure! That committee sounds like fun!"

It is fun. And I'm really excited.

In the meantime, some random snapshots from the last two months of my knitting life:

Also, because Jo thinks she can get all the glory because it's spelled like her name, I get to gloat because it sounds like my name. And Johnny Depp is singing it, oh yes:

Parachute scarf

2008-02-26T21:48:00.001-06:00

February, Ashlee, etc. 009
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

This is also a very late "what I've been up to" entry. This was the first weekend I didn't go to Cottage Fiber. I popped in three weeks ago because I was in the area, and I left with a skein of 100% mohair, hand-dyed in some mystical way so that the core of the yarn is white but the halo is gray.

After I left there I headed to the urban salvage sale and then to Amber's, where one of the usual Wednesday night rock stars helped me wind my new find into a skein. Two days later, it became this.

Of course

2008-02-25T08:19:00.001-06:00

Sick.

Boo. :(

A-list visitor

2008-02-09T11:43:00.004-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, in between the weather being reminiscent of an Edgar Allen Poe piece, it warmed up, and my friend A. called and said she was coming to town. A. works for a company that sends medical professionals to hospitals with staff shortages, so at any given time A. is living out of a hotel, a temporary furnished apartment, a friend or relative's house, or (between contracts) her car. Since A. left her extended stint in Kansas City, she's been to Boston and South Dakota. She was on her way to Iowa, but last night I entertained her on the phone during the grueling drive to her new destination, Pennsylvania.

I've known A. since forever and ever and ever, and it's crazy that we ended up with so many things in common besides being from the same tiny town - especially when none of those things were part of our experiences in said small town and our families wonder where we came from.

Needless to say, I like it when A. visits. While A. was here, we did our usual things, plus some extra:

We went to visit Amber:

We went shoe-shopping at the Legends, and got fished out by the statue:

We went to Tea Drops and got high sniffing all the tea:

We went to Korma Sutra and celebrated A.'s escape from temporary exile in South Dakota, otherwise known as Land of No Good Indian Food.

We went to Izumi and ate obscene amounts of sushi. There are no pictures - at least on my camera. A. took pictures not only of the obscene amounts of sushi but of the empty plates.

Someone started her second scarf, which involved learning how to increase and decrease AND slip stitches, as well as a ball of soft and squooshy alpaca yarn:

There was also an incident in which A. left me knitting on my recliner with an ice pack on my foot and said she was going out to eat lunch with a former coworker and would be back in an hour.

In that hour, which I planned to spend exactly where she left me, the entire world was swallowed up into the vortex of the weird.

Hurricane Jo descended on my house with tales of sexist mechanics (come on, raise your hand if you've never had that happen to you), and the next thing I knew...

My husband had made a pot of tea

We were sitting at Panera eating tomato soup

We ended up in my car

There was a stop at a roadside Girl Scout cookie stand to appease Jo Minor's boyfriend, who was ticked off because Jo isn't telepathic

We ended up at Jo's house to get T-pins, and because she was having a bad day, she brought along yarn she had no intention of knitting, just so she could pet it. There are rumors of this yarn later having adventures that involved it contracting VD, but those are unsubstantiated. It insists it just sat forgotten in the floor of my car for a couple of days.

In the meantime, A. had gone to Pei Wei, which apparently does not get along with her stomach as well as sushi and Indian Food, and there is a (mumble, mumble) story about my poor friend banging on the door of my deserted house and begging to get in to use the bathroom, which ended with her calling a friend in Pennsylvania to Mapquest her up a gas station.

All's well that ends well, but somewhere in the shuffle, there appears to have been surreptitious stash enhancement in the form of Noro sock yarn:

I have no idea where that came from, but I'm so blaming Jo Minor.

I've been birthdayed

2008-01-29T22:36:00.001-06:00

A collection of birthday goodies
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

Sorry this is so late. I started to write this long, pompous post about the 10th anniversary of my adulthood, but then I ran out of steam.

It's not very exciting. I turned 28. I've managed to make some improvements on my life since I was 18, but I've also managed to do a lot of swimming in circles.

I've also managed to amass some friends who go nuts in the lavishing gifts upon the birthday girl department. If you click on the pic, there are tags explaining where everything came from.

The swift came from Teri and Jo Minor. The card in the front right was also handmade by Teri. The shiny green and silver yarn was a Christmas present from my birthday twin, Gwen, with whom I sadly didn't get to celebrate this year because she had to up and move to D.C. The red and orange yarn up front is from Stacey, climber of big rocks and knitting student extraordinaire. The green Dream in Color SMOOSHY is from Teri. The rust-colored Karabella is from Jo Minor, and oh my goodness, it is soft.

Speaking of soft, the bright green yarn in the middle is Wollemeise, color Farn, from Molly Weasley. When the shipment came into Knit Wit I agonized over whether to get that one or the orange and green one I went home with (and yes, Jo, I'm keeping it). Christine was with me and apparently got all sneaky and bought me the other skein when I wasn't paying attention.

The brown yarn cake is from Carmen, and it's dyed by the inimitable Andrea, whose personality I enjoy just as much as her color sense. The "Knitting Vintage Socks" book is from Jo Minor. The Trekking is from me to me, because Trekking is a small consolation prize for having to get one year closer to 30. The rest is either assorted birthday card love from my family or elaborated below.

The view from above of all the yarn goodies. You'll notice, I am sure, a color theme. Do you think these people know me, or what?

I have a thing about mirrors with interesting frames. My bedroom wall is covered with them. It makes my room look magically bigger, it reflects light, and, best of all, I can paint my walls any color I want, and the mirrors will still match. I also love Victorian Trading Company. The spouse braved it (it's quite estrogen-heavy) in order to find me this mirror. Excuse the blurry picture. The mirror is now hanging on my wall where I can admire the colors anytime I want.

Carmen made me the green project bag, AND the needle and notion cases. I love them and I am really digging the green fabric.

And, last but not least, Amber made me this:

It's the VERY FIRST MisKnits stitch marker! Shown here on my lap, with size 00 needles knitting the toe of a sock in Regia Kaffe Fassett striping yarn.

I was so excited I did a dance in my chair.

P made the above in her printmaking class. It's the elusive, rarely photographed "Paisley of the Sea." The nice lady at Hobby Lobby who took my framing order didn't get it, alas. But then again, I'm the kind of person who can ask "Can you spit-splice llama?" without thinking she's saying anything odd.

Clue: It was Stacey at Christine's house with a digital camera

2008-01-22T18:43:00.001-06:00

Jo Minor's head
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

Jo Minor's bug eyes
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

... That's where my green hat went.

Starting the year off... typically

2008-01-11T20:19:00.000-06:00

I obviously can't say I am starting the year off being a stellar knitting blogger or ravelry citizen (say those of you who send me snarky "where is your stash?" e-mails, and yes, there are several of you). On the list of things I've finished in recent months and have neither photographed or posted:

1 pair of turquoise knee-high wool socks out out of Bonkers hand-dyed that I have been wearing the stuffing out off because it's so COLD

1 pair of lace socks I designed out of You-should-be-shocked-Jo-Minor-is-still-speaking-to-me-because-she-wanted-it-and-I-got-the-last-two-skeins Regia bamboo that I have worn, but would really like to elasticize before wearing again because they stretch out and don't bounce back

1 pair of Claudia colorway "sharks" wherein I discovered that on a size 00 needle, one skein of Claudia is EXACTLY enough for a medium-high sock and not half an inch of fiber more

1 pair of tweedy dark green-and-oatmeal ribbed socks for the spouse, wherein I discovered that 1 skein of Wildfoote and a pair of size 00 needles makes a sock plenty high enough for the spouse's taste and still leaves me more than enough to make some baby socks for a few of the impending boy babies at my office

1 black ribbed hat that I knocked out in a couple of hours, wherein I aimed to be as stark and no-frills as possible for the cousin I got assigned in the Christmas drawing, because he thinks he is a badass

1 blue and green mitered hat out of silk garden that I borrowed and modified from a mitered knitting book, wherein I learned that I am actually quite good at grafting live stitches to a cast-on edge (this one, unfortunately, WAS photographed by someone at UFO Wednesday, but I don't remember whom, and no one has 'fessed up or found it on her camera)

I'll get around to photographing and ravelry-ing all but the last two quite soon. Right now I'm trying to finish up some UFOs, and I started a new project that's intended to be a quick stash-buster and may instead end up an ugly sweater because the colors don't go together as well as I envisioned. Still, I've done some interesting construction-type things with it that I think I'll use again. I put some techniques together that I haven't seen used together before (and, perhaps, there's a reason for that). So, if they work, maybe I'll write the pattern. Or maybe if they work, I'll do a second with better colors and write the pattern for that.

Also, a fingerless glove, that has turned into a gauntlet, for the purpose of practicing my colorwork. The good news is that my stranding coordination has vastly improved. The bad news is, my gauge tightened as a result, and if I actually stuff my hand in the thing, my knuckles compress, so I'm giving it to dainty little Molly Weasley.

My new year in other ways hasn't been all bad. Observe the following roundup of my gym schedule for the week:

Sunday morning: Powerflex weightlifting class - 1 hour
Advanced step aerobics class - 1 hour
Monday: Had an appointment, didn't work out
Tuesday morning: Got up at 5 a.m. to go to a 5:45 a.m. spinning class - 1 hour
Wednesday morning: Slept through 5:45 a.m. Powerflex, but had fabulous intentions
Wednesday evening: Actually bailed on the 6 p.m. Spinning class at which my attendance is usually semi-religious. Went to bed EARLY.
Thursday morning: Slept through 5:45 a.m. spinning.
Thursday evening: Step aerobics - 1 hour (wherein I was good-naturedly chewed out for being absent at Wednesday night spinning)
Friday morning: You guessed it, slept through spinning. But one out of four ain't bad (right?)
Friday evening: Urban rebounding (insane aerobics class on mini-trampolines) - 1 hour.
So, even being a slacker and sleeping all week, I managed five hours. And the week isn't over yet. Imagine what I'd accomplish if I got my canasta out of bed and actually applied myself.

Off to knit my (potentially) ugly sweater and eat some delicious eggplant and tomatoes.

Teensy

2007-12-10T23:00:00.001-06:00

Winter 07 035
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

These are so fast, and so adorable, and so warm. Fastest baby gift in the west! I really like them in the space-dyed pastels, because you never know what color they will turn out. I have a fabulous picture of the mom-to-be "modeling" her socks on her pregnant belly, but I can't post it because I have a thing about posting the faces of my friends on my blog when they don't actually know I have a blog. (Note this means if you're reading this and you squirt mayonnaise in your mouth or
borrow your dog's Halloween costume, you are fair game).

I am almost finished with some grownup socks, and I am wishing I could knit faster. My dexterity goes way, way down when my hands are cold. My typing speed goes down by about half, so I can only imagine my knitting mojo is just as bad.

I have many, many things to be thankful for and I'm mad at myself for not doing a Thanksgiving entry (especially since Carmen's was excellent, and included a montage of friends, family, and the all-important, discontinued, and elusive orange Trekking XXL). There are a lot of things I should be doing differently in my life, and so I'm trying to get a jump on my New Year's resolutions early. For example, I had a giant salad for lunch and I went to spinning class and worked out hard core even though there was imminent threat of crippling ice storms. I have high hopes of looking like myself again by next Christmas. I mean, enough is enough.

Sock progress

2007-11-17T00:34:00.004-06:00

Half-finished entrelac socks
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

This is what an entrelac sock looks like after it's been ripped out five times to get the fit exactly right. None of this "a couple of more rows until it hits my ankle" business when you're working in tiers.

Because she will gripe and complain otherwise, let's give credit where credit is due: It was Jo Minor's idea to knit the Eunny Jang entrelac socks using two colors of Trekking XXL (in my case, my stash had a pink-purple and a blue-purple) instead of Koigu.

I happen to love entrelac, and this is one of three in-progress entrelac projects I have going at the moment. Yes, I have startitis.

- - - - - - - -
Oh, and here's something you don't hear every day:

Strange man in coffee shop: "Hi, do I know you? You look really familiar, and you're looking at me like you know me, too."

Me (who, for the record, was just smiling because he was smiling at me, which is generally my reaction to people who stare at me while I knit in public): "I don't know; people say I look familiar all the time. Where are you from?"

SMICS: "North Central Kansas."

Jo Minor: "I've only heard one other person call it that - my boyfriend!"

(discussion ensues about all the podunk Kansas landmarks that he grew up with and she recognizes, all the while my eyes cross)

Me: "... I'm from Oklahoma."

SMICS: "Oh, well, that whole state is podunk. Ha! Anyway, nice to meet you, my name is Chris..." (offers handshake)

Me (shaking hand): "Hi, Chris, I'm Joanna."

Jo Minor: (also shaking hand): "Hi, I'm Johanna."

Chris (making The Face That People Make When they Get Introduced to Us): "Wow. You're Joanna, and you're Johanna, and you're knitting. Make sure you don't wear floral dresses before you're 40."

He walks away. I cannot help but laugh, thinking that's the most amusing unsolicited insult I've heard in awhile.

- - - - - - -

Confidential to someone who I am 90% sure will never read this blog:

I am sorry. And I have foot-in-mouth disease. And I am really, really sorry.

Turn of phrase

2007-11-10T18:33:00.001-06:00

Spouse, mid-road trip
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

As I said earlier, I've been uploading old pictures like a fiend. Spouse was not fond of this one.

Spouse: "Wow, I look like I was riding the slow train on this one."

Me: ".....??"

Me, a second later: "... do you mean, the short bus?"

Spouse: "Yeah, I meant that."

Just keep swimming. . .

2007-11-09T23:04:00.001-06:00

The spouse and I left the house at 8 a.m. Spouse came home at 9 p.m. and I came home at 10:30 p.m. The master bathroom: Full of standing water. The living room wall: sporting a not-so-attractive waterfall.

I have no idea -- where the water is coming from or what caused it. Right now the water is shut off, and our residential contract people are Calling Around to find us a plumber.

Home ownership. Yay.

On another note, I've been occupying myself moving years worth of pictures from photobucket and my hard drive to flickr and loosely organizing them into sets and collections. It's by location (mostly) and date (sort of), with some relatively uninspired captions. It's mostly friends-only access, because there are freaks out there (behold recent post about "sock picture" flickr groups...). So, if you're a friend, think you might be in some of my pictures, or are just bored and nosy, give me a heads up and I will add you after a thorough background check (or at least a quiz about knitting or proper use of semicolons).

The easiest way to tell the Jos apart. . .

2007-11-06T22:23:00.001-06:00

tasty mayo
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

... is that I would never, ever, even in jest do anything that might accidentally result in mayonnaise (gack) going anywhere near my tastebuds.

*shudder* I've seen pictures of infected bedsores that filled me with less loathing.

Ew.

(But, Amber, at least the ketchup bottle is still on the table and not in her other hand and also pointed straight at her mouth in a pose suggesting the Unholy Union of Incompatible Condiments.)

Open sock, insert foot

2007-11-03T12:39:00.001-05:00

Swirly-ribbed trekking socks
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

Aren't these socks even more fabulous when being modeled?? I'm so glad they fit. It is scary making socks for someone who is not me, especially these socks because they were already ripped out once, and it is a relief to see the socks on the woman and have them look roughly the same shape.

Plus, her feet are all adorable and proportionate and stuff, whereas I have the long bony monkey toes that make me a dubious sock model at best. :)

Famous last words

2007-10-19T19:34:00.000-05:00

Sunday night. The phone rings. It's Jo.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," she said.

"What did?" I asked, somewhat warily.

"Well, when I bought them, I thought I was going to use them together so I..."

"Uh-oh."

"Can I borrow you and your ball-winder?"

"Sure."

Jo had some white lace-weight alpaca. Jo also had some pink lace-weight alpaca. She decided they should mate. (This is where, were I planning ahead, I would have inserted a picture). However, the white yarn had filed for divorce from the pink yarn, and she needed an extra ball winder and an extra arm to help them divide their assets.

"Are you sure this is going to work," said I.

"Of course! I've done it before. No big deal."

So, she took the white end, I took the pink end, and we started to crank:

All went well for about, oh... 30 seconds. But then the pink yarn decided it wasn't going to allow the divorce after all. As the yarn came out of the ball, it twisted in on itself, curling up like a little marled pig's tail, and would not be separated.

We tried winding it towards ourselves. We tried winding away from ourselves. We tried winding opposite each other. Still: Overtwistedness.

Jo struggled to pull it apart.

Did I mention alpaca is fuzzy. Sort of like velcro.
Eventually, there was nothing for it but the scissors, and the offending bits were sacrificed to adorn the menacing red eyes of the Cat Goddess:

We started over:

"There is some fundamental law of physics that we must be violating," I decided. The yarn comes out of the cake separate, then twists on the way to the ball winders, no matter which direction we crank.

Jos, as you know, are not good at numbers, except in the vague abstract - picas. Pixels. Numbers of columns, pages in a section. Jos don't do physics.

"Somebody with a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics would walk in here and say 'You two are dumbasses,'" Jo agreed.

"We are dumbasses."

Alejandro, as we were fighting the fuzz, got tired of all this math talk, and decided that we needed to be rescued from the giant sweet-smelling cotton candy cobweb that was tightening like a noose around His People:

At this point, Jo completely flipped her biscuit and began to shriek "GO AWAY!!!!!!!!" at the top of her lungs, but she could not spare a hand with which to beat off the cougar attack for fear of re-mating the yarn.

The spouse, of course, rather than come to our aid, sat on the couch and laughed at us and took pictures.

Jo had an epiphany. "Does this have to do with Z twists and S twists?"

"Yes," I agreed, feeling smug and smart that I had thought we knew that all along.

"Oh," she said. "Maybe we don't need a math genius, we just need Teri."

At that point, our attempt at manfully fighting through the tension hit a small snag. As in, the cone from Jo's ballwinder popped off the crank and launched itself straight at my face.

It stopped being amusing after the fifth time.

The Cat Goddess received another burnt offering.

The yarn kicked and screamed until the bitter end, but eventually we prevailed.

After the salvageable pieces of each ball were knotted and/or spit-spliced together, Jo casually mentioned that she had brought another ball of mated yarn in her knitting bag, and by the way, it happened to be mohair.

We decided to let it remain in its purple halo of wedded bliss.

Even the Cat Goddess deferred to this wise judgment.

The sunny side of life

2007-10-11T23:52:00.000-05:00

There is an absolutely stunning shawl on page 93 of the latest issue of Vogue Knitting.

The rest of the magazine will make an attractive lining for the litterbox.

Um, FYI. . .

2007-10-11T18:30:00.000-05:00

...if some random person leaves a note in your flickr account on a picture of socks you recently completed, and if said person says they would like to include your picture in a group for sock pictures...

... check to make SURE it is not a sock fetish site before you click the OK button.

(I say this because 90% of the recently added pics were feet posing in handknit socks, and I'll bet most of the heads attached to those feet have no idea what strange appetites their G-rated koigu creations are inspiring.)

You've got a pink kink in your think

2007-10-11T01:02:00.001-05:00

Jo's Fair Isle Hat
Originally uploaded by tjstein

It all started with a skein of aubergine Brown Sheep at Amber's shop. And then it collected some friends before it went home.

I did it top down, starting with an invisible cast-on, so while it is, sadly, pointy on the top, it's also extremely smooth. I tried not to jack up the speckles at the increase points, but in retrospect I could have planned better. The fair isle band is from an Alice Starmore book I borrowed from the guild library. I picked it because it fit the stitch count I had when the crown was done. Usually, when I do colorwork, the floats are too tight and I have something that looks like it survived a hailstorm, so I tried to compensate. Well... I overcompensated, and ended up with a really big hat. I frogged the ribbing but didn't want to frog the fair isle, so I borrowed some advice from The Late Great Elizabeth Zimmermann (we need to come up with a gesture to make or a chime sound every time her name is invoked). She says if your sweater turns out too big, you re-knit the ribbing at the bottom, sleeves, and ribbing at a tighter gauge, and then you will be much happier. So I decreased, hiding the decreases in the ribbing, and then I went down to a size 3 (yes, on worsted-weight yarn), switched colors, did another inch of ribbing, hid some more decreases in the ribbing, and did a sewn bind-off. Now the hat is still big but it stays securely on my head.

The Other Jo thinks it needs a pom pom to hide the point. Amber likes the point. I got a couple of other votes at UFO Wednesday for tassles. I have an uptight coworker who would go absolutely ballistic if the tassle included a jingle bell. What's everybody else's opinion?

Art imitates life imitates

2007-10-07T21:00:00.000-05:00

I have a vacation story I forgot to tell.

Our tale begins (picture it) on a Thursday afternoon during our week in New York City last month. We were on our way back from an almost perfect day here. I was sitting on the train with my water bottle next to me, and I was alternately looking out the window and knitting a really cool black and grey brioche scarf I forgot to take a picture of before giving away. My spouse was sitting across from me, with his backpack full of seashells on the seat beside him, reading a comic book. Er, excuse me, graphic novel. (I have to say that, you know, because comic books are kid stuff and graphic novels are art, which means, from what I gather, that they're allowed to have more sex and violence than regular comic books). When he got to the last page, he began to snicker. This happens quite often while he's reading comic b-- erm, graphic novels, but then it lengthened into an incredulous chuckle, which continued for about a minute, punctuated with expectant glances in my direction.

Finally, I dutifully looked up from the top of the scarf I was knitting, and said what I was obviously being cued to say: "OK, honey, What are you laughing at?"

He flipped the book around to show me, and, I swear to Maryland, it was this:

I immediately stuffed my knitting back in my bag and started checking the train car for cameras. And stray monkeys. Because you never know.

I did warn you it was bright

2007-10-06T19:50:00.000-05:00

Amber took this picture a couple of weeks ago at MisKnits' UFO Wednesday. I knit these one each on separate circs, toe up, one from each end of the ball because I was too lazy to split it, and kept going until I got to the middle of the skein, a la Lady and the Tramp.

I love the magic cast-on. It makes me happy. I'm not sure I love these socks, because they pooled in strange ways and, in all honesty, you've seen my wardrobe - with what will I ever wear these? Still, they are seriously comfortable. They're also rather tall, but I wanted to make sure that no part of my white leg was exposed to the camera, so I artfully arranged the cuffs of my pants. I did a modified twisted rib (knits were twisted, purls weren't) so it stretched wide between the knit columns, and also, as The Other Jo pointed out, I get ridiculously huge gauge on US 1s. The sock is a 54-stitch circumference.

Also: No idea who owns the tie-dyed Crocs. The cheap pink flip-flops are actually my shoes. Usually, on Wednesdays after work, I go to spinning class at the gym, shower, and then put on some amalgamation of what I wore to work that day before heading over to Amber's shop. That day I was too lazy to put my blazer and grown-up shoes back on, so there you have the flip-flops and slacks. We tend to invade Amber's shop (or, at least, Jo and I do) with all of our junk like it's our dorm room. (Sorry, Amber!)

I have two other pairs of socks I haven't photographed yet, but they may have to wait. I'm kind of addicted to a fair-isle hat I'm doing out of Lamb's Pride, and it's all I can do to get up from my Alice Starmore charts to take a ravelry break.

Om shanti shanti . . .

2007-09-30T20:33:00.002-05:00

By way of update: I spent most of Saturday in Westport, perusing and then sitting on my behind at Misknits while my husband did his record store and bookstore thing. Amber, I love you, I love your shop, I love all the pretty and useful and practical yarn, but I also love how I always feel comfortable when I'm in there.

Everybody go and give Amber some luv. And money. Because nothing says love like making someone's friendly, comfortable, welcome, and happy business prosper.

Oh, and before That Other Jo rips a new hole in me, my ravelry limit for the month expires tomorrow, and I've finished four pair of socks, so there should be a for-real update in a couple of days.

P.S. The "one skein of koigu" one up, one down ankle socks weren't, after all, doable in one skein, but if I'd had smaller feet they would have been. They are finished with non-matching yarn, and the colors are quite ugly, but the construction, if I do say so myself, is genius.

P.P.S. I've already cast on for another pair of socks, using some hot hot hot electric blue yarn I got from Traci Bunkers in Lawrence, never mind all the half-finished projects lying around the house (and the house itself, the cleaning of which is quite a glaring unfinished project).

P.P.P.S. Butternut squash ravioli is DELICIOUS.

Yet another teaser

2007-09-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

Since I've reached my Flickr upload limit for the month (thank you, ravelry), I don't have all my New York pics up. So I have to wait 7 days to show you the full album in all its glory.

Actually, it's kind of lopsided - so many tourists were ticking me off by stopping in the street and taking pictures of things that I didn't want to be associated with them. Therefore, there are not a lot of pictures of things with crowds in them. I also did not manage, somehow, to take pics of the cute apartment, or even the neighborhood, where we stayed. I also didn't take any pictures at habu textiles, but I will, at some point, take pics of the yarn that I bought.

There are, however, lots and lots of beach pics:

Oh, and Gina? This one is for you:

Also, here. I really wish I could understand Russian, but I followed along rather well.

Vacation, all I ever wanted (la la la la...)

2007-09-07T21:51:00.000-05:00

I'll be in New York City for a week starting tomorrow. Have fun everyone! :)

A Lent project update

2007-08-20T23:27:00.000-05:00

Some news came this week about the well-being of the recipients of this project.

These were stitched together with prayers and good thoughts for their soon-to-be owners (not to mention the unbelievable selflessness of a certain knitting friend who wove in 50 bajillion ends on the blue one because I was pressed for time)... but there's no such thing as too many prayers and good thoughts, so if you have any of the above to spare, please do.

+

Twinkletoes

2007-08-20T23:15:00.001-05:00

*sniff sniff*

Au revoir, Gwen.

There will be a hole in our Tuesday night circle where your hot pink feet used to be.

Go forth and take Washington D.C. by storm, my friend...

(...but save some sock yarn for us)

Another haiku

2007-08-10T07:36:00.000-05:00

Guess who finally
Got a ravelry invite?
I'm sonnetstitches.

Stats

2007-08-08T23:12:00.000-05:00

Current Ravelry number: 197

This means that by the time my Ravelry plug actually makes it into my non-knitting-and-highly-amused-by-all-this-nonsense friend's Internet column on Monday, probably in a slightly sarcastic fashion, I may already have my invite!

Note to self... start photographing stash three weeks ago.

*sigh*

P.S.

I'm so neurotic
I'm writing inbox haiku
Alas, it's empty

Gloves for K

2007-08-07T22:27:00.000-05:00

A long time ago - maybe three years ago - a former coworker mentioned that she was freezing to death, her hands were turning blue, she could barely type, and this is not helpful to one's productivity when one makes one's living as a writer.

So we discussed the value of a good pair of fingerless gloves when one has to type large volumes in an office whose thermostat has two settings: Antarctica & Gehenna.

It figures I would finally get around to making her a pair when it is 100 degrees outside:

These were extremely basic... provisional cast-on, garter-stitch cuff sideways until it fit around my wrist, grafted together seamlessly, stitches picked up at one end of the tube an applied I-cord hiding the raw edge at the other end:

This of course was leftover yarn from this project. I love all the subtle orange and yellow streaks in what is actually a very bright green yarn, and the purple flecks in the "blood orange" colorway. I was excited to get an excuse to knit with the pretty yarn again, but it was also a shame, because the first draft had a very interesting mosaic pattern on Glove #1. Unfortunately, that did not leave enough yarn for Glove #2, so I actually ripped back and was knitting green on Glove #2 as I was unravelling Glove #1. I should have taken a picture, but this was Saturday and I was kid-sitting (kind of hard to call it babysitting when they're 12) for Teri and not in proximity to my camera. That's also why the fingers are so short. I am not exaggerating that I have about three or four scraps of yarn about an inch long, and maybe one scrap about 3 inches long, and that's IT. I was proud of myself that I actually got a pair of somewhat matching fingerless gloves out of it. At any rate, sorry, K - your gloves were originally intended to be a lot more visually interesting...

The thing I'm least pleased about is how yucky a job I did picking up stitches from the cuff. I did half of a pair of fingerless gloves (in a much smaller gauge) for Joumana that I'm now redrawing because I figured out how to make them better after I completely finished one, and the garter stitch cuff on those was absolutely killer. These, not so much. But I'm including a note that if they are unsatisfactory, too big (K is a tall girl, but I modeled the gloves on my Hagrid-sized hands, so I fear they may be overkill), or she doesn't like the color, she is to pass them one desk forward to the sweet and probably also-freezing guy that sits in front of her and send me specs for a new pair.

I must say, after the marathon baby blanket, it's quite satisfying to have my next project done in less than a week, and have stash-busted leftover yarn to boot.

So... cheers, K - keep warm and I'm sorry it took me three years to knit a project that took less than six hours. :)

Then you jump to the left...

2007-08-03T00:12:00.000-05:00

First off, for The Other Jo, the reasons I don't blog much anymore:

A)I have very little to say that's interesting - currently, I even bore myself. Working on fixing this.

B) I find it hard to stick to one subject.

C) My level of social anxiety is bouncing off the chart. If I write about anything other than, say, knitting, (for instance, religion, politics, etc.), then I am bound to get some flak - after all, I dish out the flak on other people's blogs. But I don't want any flak. I'm pink and squishy and vulnerable and fluffy.

D) What gets posted on the Internet, stays on the Internet. And, unlike in Vegas, that's not a good thing.

E) I'm out of practice. This, I realize, is a circular argument. Maybe I'll work on that, too.

F) OK, it's true - I'm still, after all this time, feeling a bit discombobulated. And I'm not like some people who can turn their misery into marketing hilarity. Maybe I should work on that, too. In the meantime, trust me, I'm sparing you.

G) I really hate the layout of my blog, and I haven't had the time or motivation to dissect it and put it back together. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

That said, it's been an interesting summer, but not much different from last year. The days since we moved here are sort of blurring together. It's hot, but not Oklahoma hot, so it seems like summer never really happened. In previous summers, "hot" meant standing in a puddle of my own sweat at the bus stop and wondering why I even bothered to put on makeup. Now "hot" means I just make the "it's hot" face until somebody turns on a fan.

Except for Stitch n' Pitch. THAT was hot. But not in a good way. Except for that one picture of Christine, and I'm holding that for ransom.

Harry Potter came out, was finished in about 6 hours, then finished again in another 12 around some naps, and discussed at length on The Leaky Cauldron's message board. When I say "at length," I mean I was gung-ho about the inevitable post-book literary dissection until the topic thread that most interested me dissolved into ruins despite my best efforts to plug my ears and go "Lalalalala, I can't hear you...". It went from a question about whether anyone else had noticed all the Christian themes in Book 7 to some shrill denial that there was any such taint of Christianity on their precious escapist fiction and an accusation that anybody who said so was "reading into things" (why yes, that is sort of the point of literary speculation) and then degenerated into completely off-topic and even more shrill pope-bashing and I had to wander off in dismay. Then, this week, I actually went not just home to visit but back to my former city of residence and employment and meeting of my spouse - to be honest, a place I thought I would never have sufficient excuse to visit again. The first thing out of the mouth of my photographer friend (or actually the second thing, after a harrowing update of his recent adventures in the hospital), was "I couldn't believe all the religious stuff in this recent Harry Potter book! What did you think?"

What did I think? I thought I wanted to kiss him, and I wished I had about four more hours to talk to him about the book. Three other people stopped me and wanted to chat about all things HP. Good times. I even flashed my dorky release party pics (and, yes, guys, I know I still need to post them - it's "on my list.")

I've had a couple of random contacts from back-in-the-day via MySpace and Facebook, which I'm really not into (no more than I'm into this blog) but keep up sort of like bait on a hook for a pole I've got propped up on a stick. I've gotten queries from people I haven't talked to in more than a decade (Egad, yes, I am that old now) that go "Hey, are you really Daniéle from French class?" or "Aren't we supposed to be having a 10-year reunion?" to "This is (insert names of sweet but not-my-type gentlemen who once upon a time asked me out and were politely declined); how are you doing?" I hit pay dirt when I found out my former next-door neighbor from junior high was living here for a few months via her high-travel career. Yes, I got her addicted to the tea shop and managed to teach her to knit before she moved to Boston.

Also, not via Facebook, one of my favorite people came to visit us last month, and my credit card is still recovering. P and I went shopping and I played City Ambassador and did my best to try to get her to move here.

The Truth: I play City Ambassador because I somehow think that if I can get the people I miss to visit me, then the City will truly be as great as I make it out to be. But really? I'm ambivalent. I had an incredibly strong love-hate relationship with our previous digs (loved apartment, hated neighbors. Loved mountains, hated artillery fire at all hours of the night. Loved walking and taking the bus, hated narrowly missing having my head blown off in a drive-by shooting in broad daylight in a neighborhood full of old people. Loved certain aspects of my job, felt woefully incompetent at others. Loved many of my coworkers more than most of my family, probably could have gone to jail for messily disposing of some of the others. etc.) but I can't muster any strong feeling one way or the other about this town, even going on two years. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice place - it just feels, still, like I'm visiting.

Now, part of is it that Something Happened (tm) about three months after I moved to the town I left that really snapped me awake, and I made a decision that if I could survive that I could survive anything, and I would do well to make the most of however many years I had to live in that town.

Here? Meh. Insert a picture of my fat grey cat sprawled out on the footrest of my recliner, yawning lavishly and showing off his bloated tonsils. Maybe I need for Something to Happen. Now, that's a scary thought. (And actually, a rather lesser, but still awful Something did happen last summer, and I thought surely if I survive this I can use it as a catalyst for a self-inflicted motivational butt-kicking, but no such luck. I guess it's back to the lab for me).

Also, I've been Making Stuff. Below is a blanket for a boy baby who was born to a coworker/knitter friend the day after I finished. Whew.

Yes, it's a mitered square done from the outside in, like the blanket I made a couple of posts ago, only to change it up I left strategically placed holes, in which I later picked up stitches to make more mitered squares.

I also made this:

If you can't see it, which you probably can't, it's a lacy baby blanket made out of some $3 cotton and acrylic blend I got from Misknits. It knit up beautifully, but I had to do it in such a hurry and in such long stretches that I have reactivated a repetitive stress injury and my left hand tingles constantly. So, no knitting (or at least, lesser knitting) for awhile.
The blanket is for J, who is six months old and finishing up her inaugural tour of the U.S. to go back to Brazil. I think she liked the blankie, but it was hard to tell because she was just waking up from a nap:

The side panels are supposed to symbolize a wheat field. J's dad and I and our respective siblings grew up in what used to be part of our grandparents' wheat field. The top panel is supposed to be the house I grew up in and the bottom panel is a castle because, yes, J's dad and aunts grew up in a castle in the middle of a wheatfield. The hearts are to symbolize her stateside family. I hope that when she's older she will see it as a connection to us - I know very little about the way my dad and his siblings grew up in Wyoming, since I grew up around my mother's family in Oklahoma, and I always felt like I missed out by not knowing very much about what made my dad who he is.

My husband, on the other hand, got a first-hand experience of my childhood. While I was at a baby shower for Helen's impending baby sister, my dad bribed the spouse with a round of frisbee golf, and then made him mow the lawn:

Did I mention the lawn in question is 3 acres and includes a water garden, trees, and lots of other interesting obstacles? (Although, thankfully, it is missing the clothesline that nearly decapitated me on several occasions when I was but a wee lawn gnome puttering around on the big tractor wearing my dorky yellow visor)

Also, as mentioned above, we got to see a lot of people we hadn't seen for a long time, and also spend a lot more quality time with people who usually just get drive-by coffee visits. This was, all in all, a positive thing, but I find myself solidly bummed out upon returning. A lot of my identity was tied up in my work before and it just isn't anymore, partly because it's so hard to explain to people what I do for a living that I don't get a neat little label, and partly because...
... well, this has already been a Russian novel of an update, hasn't it.

Suffice it to say, I saw a lot of people that I knew I missed but had forgotten how acutely (Aubrey, if you're reading this, I'm talking about YOU), and I am none too good at goodbyes, or at hellos that are going to lead rather shortly into goodbyes. My reaction to meeting people I have been dying to see for ages is apparently to get lightheaded and nervous, jabber like I have Tourette's syndrome until it's time to go home, and then realize all the important things I wanted to ask just never came out of my mouth.

Um... I guess I need to work on that, too.

After that stirring bit of navel-gazing, and since I don't have any puppies with which to distract, I'll leave you with this: She's awfully cute, even when not swathed in my labor-intensive work of art:

'Til next time (and yes, Jo,, that will be before you retire).

Spoiler-free zone

2007-07-21T11:31:00.001-05:00

I need to establish a timeline on my blog for when I can talk about it. I finished about the same time the Other Jo did, and I'm still kind of sleep-deprived. I'll post my thoughts on what the The Other, OTHER Jo did with her latest opus after everybody in my immediate circle has had time to finish their Big Orange Books.
Also, I need to post my pics from the release party. It was pretty wild.

Rumors of my death, etc. etc.

2007-07-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

I cleaned out my camera today, so expect a full-on photo essay complete with stealth pictures of the backs of heads of somebody else's munchkins, and ~~an unflattering picture of Christine, which I cropped, you're welcome~~ shots of my friends knitting.

In the meantime, here is a shot of one corner of the thing I'm working on today:

I swear to Maryland

2007-05-15T21:58:00.000-05:00

...that I am never buying yarn again.
Help me find time to knit, people. Cheese whiz.

Fitted Knits KAL

2007-04-30T20:15:00.000-05:00

I've never joined a KAL before, because I never stick to patterns. BUT. Stefanie Japel's book is so fabulous (and I've had a heyday modifying her already fabulous patterns in the past) that I couldn't resist.

So, look for me here (unless you're one of my local gang, and you've probably already joined it).

I have two projects to finish before I can justify breaking out my FK-specific yarn to start my first project. Expect a sweater and a pair of socks to pop up in this space with a big "done!" checkmark before the end of the week.

When it's fall, baby, I'm going to be dressed to the 9s.

Had a great weekend -- hung out at The Weasley House and knit all day, after I went on an emergency koigu-matching mission with Jo. We'd had our day scheduled around the fact that we were supposed to go to Carmen's house, since she does live in closer proximity to the Land of the Koigu. But, alas, she first uninvited us from her house, and then, even after getting the triple smackdown from Gwen, Jo, and myself, she told us she'd come over and then totally ditched us for a boy. Hmmph.

But, because there was koigu involved, we drove out of our way and went shopping anyway. Jo survived my driving and everybody was happy. Shots of the koigu-matching expedition can be found here, and do not adjust your screen, the koigu I bought was actually that color of pink.

In other news, Jennifer Weiner is coming! Yay. :) Not only that, I know this because my husband found out from somebody in his book club who pointed him here.

How fun is that! Anybody want to come with?

Also - note to self, must collaborate with local crowd tomorrow night about who is driving to Stich N Pitch at the Royals game, and how many parking permits we'll need, because the deadline for tickets is May 7. Huzzah! Knitting in public. My fave.

Also ran

2007-04-23T22:21:00.000-05:00

Since I forgot to post it, this is Amber, who hates purling, wearing the outlandishly long Tonalita scarf I designed and knit just for her. (Isn't she gorgeous? Even in a dark coffee shop with red-eye, she looks like she belongs on a magazine cover)

I wish I'd gotten scarf pics in better light before I gave it to her, but alas, I forgot.

Better than a prayer shawl, bigger than a breadbox

2007-04-23T00:29:00.000-05:00

This is not news to any of the local crowd, but for anybody else (if there IS anybody else who hasn't given up on my non-blogging funk), this is what I spent much of Lent working on:

Started with this one:

Which was not sewn together at any point, but knit one piece at a time, with each block picked up and worked from the ones before:

It has a lot of different colors and textures:

... and one gauge mistake that really bugs the heck out of me:

(Never again will I let someone who isn't in our Tuesday Night circle tell me "it looks fine, leave it." The Tuesday Night girls are the kind of friends who will tell you yes, your butt looks HUGE in those pants, and because we love you we will not let you wear them out in public)

But despite the mistake, the blankie was knit with love:

And it has a sister blanket, which is also made out of the lovely, pettable, washable, Mission Falls 1824 cotton:

My husband said it looked like one of those "God's Eye" things you make in Vacation Bible School where you weave (probably Red Heart) yarn with popsicle sticks. Maybe he has a point:

And, if so, it's apropos, because I did a lot of praying for the person who is getting this blanket. At any rate, when I had them finished, I tried to take pictures, but Ella objected to my using her chair for a background:

By that point, I was late for getting the blankets where they needed to go, and was now going to have to rely on the extreme kindness of friends (and friends of friends) to pass them on for me. And there was someone else of whom I was thinking and I didn't want to leave her out, plus, I had all those lovely scraps of Mission Falls left over. So I bought a pillow form, and I picked up my needles, and this is what happened:

The side with the ruffles and the side with the entrelac are actually grafted together, because I couldn't decide what I wanted to do. Then I did some more praying, partly because I hoped I had enough yarn for the back. I did. Barely:

All I had left were short, short, scraps. I had EXACTLY enough yarn left over for this pillow, minus the scraps of the blue that I didn't use (I didn't think it would look as harmonious as just the purples and pinks and greens). A very nice, unsuspecting lady who was shopping at JoAnn's when I was pacing the button aisle helped me find the perfect buttons (I totally whipped the pillow out of my Jordana Paige bag in the middle of the store so I could color compare. Speaking of the bag, yay for my husband for being a good birthday shopper, and yay for The Studio for having a trunk show).

Anyway, after obsessively knitting much and sleeping little, this was the end result:

(And, yes, that is the back end of Alejandro at the left of the frame. They seem to think it's their furniture.)

That's the first time in awhile I'd knit THAT much THAT fast (I haven't done the Handmade Holiday thing for a couple of years now), and I'd forgotten how much you invest emotionally when you make something for someone in a short time frame. I carried those projects around with me, knit in Scott's car (even though it makes me queasy), knit in Pizza Hut, knit on my couch until all hours of the night, knit in every coffee shop in town and at my friends' houses.

Speaking of friends, Teri is the best knitting friend in the universe, because not only did she untangle Gwen's cobweb laceweight, she also WOVE IN ALL OF THE ENDS on the pink and blue blanket above.

Seriously. You do not make better knitting friends than that (although Shanidy is an exception, having spent all day helping me untangle the Devil Spaghetti Yarn from Hell a few years back! I will never forget that!).

Anyway... the blankets and pillow were a joy to knit; I pictured the recipients with them, hopefully getting some pleasure out of the soft cotton and the bright colors, and since I was working on them 24/7 it was sort of like carrying them around with me, too. People who knit will understand this; other people will probably think I'm a little loopy. But Auntie Gwen was making a gorgeous blanket for her family's soon-to-be newest addition, also out of Mission Falls, so we bonded a bit during the process. It was very weird when they were all completed and I went to put them in the mail - my hands got a little shaky when I was putting them in the box. I felt a little bit empty even though I was relieved that they were now finished and going where they were supposed to go. I'm embarrassed to say that, even after having once been a member of Nervousness, I still freak out a little when something I've worked really hard on goes through the mail, and I'm even more embarrassed to say that I sent a couple of pestery e-mails to the kind soul who had already agreed to be inconvenienced by my lateness and pass the goods on to their new owners for me, only to find out that said kind soul was out of town and had already passed them on, so I was being neurotic about the post office and "my" stuff (which really wasn't my stuff anymore) for nothing. But, now it's where it needs to be. So, that makes me happy, even though the point was really the working and the praying and the good thoughts for the recipients - having a finished object into which I channeled all those things is really secondary. But let's face it, when you make something for someone, especially for a child, you want it to be used and loved and snuggled and probably laughed and cried on and dragged around a bit. That's what you imagine while you're making it. I have a queen-size quilt my grandmother made me with blocks about 1 inch square (I am not kidding - it's like computer pixels). It's white. I'm often a little afraid to use it. But she told me she did not go crazy lining up all those itsy bitsy squares for me to keep that quilt in a closet. She did all that work because she loves me and wanted me to keep it on my bed. So, when it's summer and time to take the heavy blankets and flannel sheets off the bed, that's what I do. Now that I'm a knitter, I understand. Painters and sculptors make museum pieces (and some fiber artists do, too). I create things that are supposed to be part of people's lives. If they get worn out, so much the better - it means they were useful. Nothing is permanent anyway ... (except, apparently, the giant ink spot that will not come out of the full-size pink and blue quilt my mother and father embroidered for me when I was a baby. I'm 27 and I did that when I was 8 and I'm STILL in deep doodoo for it, but the quilt is most definitely still being used and still very special. Quilts don't get ink spots from being stuffed in cedar chests. They get ink spots for being on the beds of little girls who study all of their intricate designs while they're lying on their stomachs with their ankles crossed, doing their homework or writing their first short stories.)

With that over, I'm making some things for myself, and actually trying to use up my stash... although I did a little stash enhancement over the weekend (see Gwen's blog for rather tasteful descriptions of our weekend and rather unnecessary shots of some of us from an unflattering angle). Fun time was had by all!

Who are you calling a liar, punk?

2007-04-23T00:14:00.000-05:00

This is for you, Jo.

I took this picture on my television a couple of Wednesday nights ago during "Lost." Fortunately, we taped it, so I could rewind it until I got a good shot of the screen. Note that it flashed by in about .5 seconds, and I still noticed, so that makes me a Warp Speed copy editing goddess.

What, me worry?

2007-03-21T23:25:00.000-05:00

We owe the IRS.

We owe the IRS a lot.

And not only are we going to have to pay the IRS, we are also going to have to shrink our paychecks for the rest of the year to make sure we don't owe next year.

So, in other words, expect me not to leave the house for the next 14 months unless it's in a body bag.

Good things can come out of this - namely in the area of my Buddha belly shrinking and any spending impulses curbed - but right now I'm still hanging out in the area of Overwhelmed, Stunned, and Feeling Mildly Idiotic.

Other stuff going on, but, as usual, it's too gossipy or too personal for this blog, which mostly involves things like... knitting. I'm doing a lot of that. There may be pictures. That would be good.

Idle hands

2007-02-17T10:54:00.000-06:00

I made a pair of girly gloves to fit my giant man hands, because such a thing does not otherwise exist:

Basic glove calculations based on my giant hand size and a 4-year-old issue from Interweave Knits, with embellishments courtesy of Nicky Epstein and some Edgy Thing or other (like I can keep track). They have cute names like "ribbon candy" and "bubble wrap," and they make people poke my cuffs and squeal. Wool alpaca blend dk, the green has flecks of rust and the rust has flecks of violet, and is aptly named "blood orange." I wish I'd finished them (or started them) a month ago, but as this winter is NEVER going to end, I'll get plenty of wear out of them for this year.
I uploaded some pictures of our house and will post those in the next day or two. They're from Christmas. I'm a slacker. You know how it goes. :)

Something to read

2007-02-02T19:48:00.000-06:00

There will be real entries soon enough, but in the meantime, I definitely think the above is a far better use of your time than any of my current life trivia.

I have...

2007-01-16T21:53:00.000-06:00

... the coolest friends EVER.

I'm full of birthday cake and loaded down with presents and my ribs hurt from laughing at completely inappropriate things, so I'm going to go to bed.

Huzzah!

2007-01-10T21:50:00.000-06:00

Grandma got to go home from the scummy skilled nursing facility yesterday! She graduated rehab with flying colors and her fractures are healed and she can walk. I haven't talked to her yet (the phone company hasn't yet switched her phone back to her house) but I'm sure she is turning cartwheels in spirit to be HOME.

I swear...

2007-01-05T21:09:00.000-06:00

... that I'm still alive, that I am knitting, that there are Things going on in my life other than work.

I've just been feeling a little antisocial and jealously guarding my alone time and enjoying my new mp3 player.

I got a new cousin Christmas Eve, and this next year I'm going to get one more by marriage and another by birth, so it's good to watch the clan get bigger. Just a little sad to think that we're already on two continents and we may not ever have everybody together again.

Actually did Dad's family Christmas this year, which was highly uncomfortable in a lot of ways but not bad in others. Definitely a different tone, but I saw people I hadn't seen in ages.

I miss everyone in my little virtual world; I think of you often (especially YOU, Gina!) and maybe someday I'll feel more like interacting in the blogosphere and in RL. In the meantime, though, as of this week I'm no longer working every night, so I've been taking long, long, long walks every time it's not cold. It's not the same, but it's a start, and somewhere deep inside my cold bones an echo reverberates: "I remember this."

I hope 2007 is a year of being true to myself moreso than 2006, which has, I'm not going to lie, taken a toll on me. It took a year or so to feel human again the last time I made a drastic move to a new city, however, and I'm getting older and crankier and more set in my routine, so I'm optimistic that this is normal and this too shall pass.

For you locals, I'll let you know as soon as I know my schedule for teaching knitting classes.

Keep us in your thoughts, everyone . . .

Driving by

2006-11-16T20:57:00.000-06:00

1)Grandma is out of ICU and into rehab where she seems to be doing better. When one has a sense of humor, one can handle anything.

2)Moving sucks.

3)I am completely and utterly overwhelmed at work. I need everybody to leave the office for a week so I can finish everything with no distractions. Instead, I keep taking all this time off to move.

4)Moving sucks.

5)I talked to a friend from back home today that I miss terribly but always feel awkward calling because my level of work overwhelm is minute in comparison to that of the person on the other end of the line, and I feel like an interruption. Also, I feel guilty, because the situation is kind of my fault. Had to cut the phone call short because people in my current life were beaning me with projectiles trying to get me to get off the phone. Felt like I wanted to share the conversation or the essence or the implications with someone, just to articulate the impact the familiar voice had on my week, but nobody would understand (they never do; you would have had to been one of us to get it, and the longer I'm here and not there the less I am "one of us" and it's kind of wistful, surreal, and sad).

6)My husband totaled his car.

7)He's fine. But our bank account not so much. We'd bought new furniture on credit and closed on a house with a huge (for us) down payment the week before. Now we're trying to buy him a beater with the $2700 the insurance company gave us and I'm wishing I hadn't spent all that money on those Christmas presents.

8)Moving sucks. I have to leave right now because we are still (still!) after two weeks trying to get everything out of the apartment and clean so the crooked bastard landlords don't try to screw us over and charge us money for the brokedown palace with the mold and the leaky roofs and the broken doors and the scary neighbors. And in the meantime my new house is full of boxes and I can't unpack them until we are completely out of the apartment, keys turned over, utilities OFF, hopefully next week.

9)I'm still feeling a little like a fish out of water. I have a lot of interesting friends here and overall feel less isolated (the fact that I don't have to knit alone in public 90% of the time with people treating me like a circus freak or ask me if I'm 90 years old at heart is HUGE), but I still feel a degree of pressure to be suburban and "normal" in a way that is unnerving and foreign to me, and I know that there are a few rare, once-in-a-lifetime connections that I've left behind geographically, and others that were always geographically challenging that I'm letting slide because I have no time to sit down and write an e-mail. Honestly if people knew how much I think about them during the day when it takes me weeks to make a two-minute phone call or months to write a letter they would be shocked.

10)I don't know when I'm ever going to knit again. This perhaps sucks worst of all.

... Off to work on the Neverending Cleaning Project,
Moi

Trauma

2006-10-25T19:50:00.000-05:00

My poor kitty cat hurt himself really, really bad.
:(

I don't want to gross anybody out, but I didn't know whether to throw up or cry.

Alejandro is not The Cat That Flips Out. That would be Ella. I dread taking her to the vet because she goes berserker, tries to maul people, and will not let me put her down. Allie just goes "meep" and then everybody laughs at how cute it is that he's so huge and he's such a whiny baby and they pet him.

This time, Allie freaked out. Way worse than I've ever seen a cat freak out. I don't even recognize him.

Everybody in the house has been crying, including Ella, who was very disturbed that we left with Alejandro, came back alone and smelling like The Vet.

He came home covered in poo, bandaged, and wearing a collar that is, as far as I can tell, the reason for the freakout.

Oh, and he's missing two inches of tail. :(

The collar is to keep him from trying to eat his bandage off, so he will heal, and I didn't understand why the vet kept going on and on about how so many owners will take the thing off and then the cat licks the wound and then two weeks of healing turns into a month or more.

I get it now.

This has been the worst day. First he hurts himself, then I see the injury (ackackACK!), then we go to the emergency vet and they shave his tail so we can see the injury more (ackackackackfreakin@#$%@#$@#$@#$!) and send us home with giant horse pills. I don't sleep, then he goes to the vet in the morning and we have to leave him, then we try to work all day, then we come back to the Exorcist.

Oh, and before that? The vet shows me gory amputation pics without warning me.

He's going to be OK. It's just I can't get the poo off of him because he goes berserker, and I can't let him on my furniture because he's got poo on him, and I can't feed him with the collar on and I can't take the collar off, and he keeps bumping into things and getting mad.

By tomorrow or the next day I will either a)have my cat back or b)he will have regressed to infancy and will be sitting in a puddle of his own saliva in a corner staring at the wall. But at least he will heal (I have a pill popper and am apparently still a pro at giving him antibiotics even if he wants to kill anyone who comes near him) and we won't have to worry about him getting any horrid infections in his spinal cord.

And, they gave him good pain meds.

But I think Ella needs her kitty Xanax refilled. And maybe we need some people-strength.

Keep the big guy in your thoughts, will you?

Meg & Me

2006-10-19T18:11:00.000-05:00

So Meg Swansen's column in VK this issue is all about brioche stitch in the round and how she had to come up with a way to do it because her mother was told it was impossible.

So she knit a brioche hat in the round for the magazine.

And it's not NEARLY as cool as the brioche hat I knit in the round a month or two ago to play with the reversible brioche decreases I came up with to flat-knit a brioche scarf for a class I was going to teach.

Yes, you heard me, for probably the first and last time in my life as a knitter, my unvention is better than Meg's

Picture forthcoming, if it shows up. If anyone has noticed, spammers have attacked my blog and you can't see it if you enter the URL for the main page directly. Blogger swears they don't notice. Hmm.

Posterity, shame, commas, etc.

2006-09-30T20:19:00.000-05:00

Portrait of the author after a typical 13-hour workday. Note pajamas, sympathetic feline companions, and extremely unflattering camera angle that proves subject's spouse is a sadistic so-and-so:

Portrait of the author's husband who, while being a sadistic so-and-so, manages to be the most adorable member of the male species ever created:

Portrait of the author five minutes ago, after a typical eight-hour work Saturday, sporting some extra weight and a new haircut, and without the common decency to put on clothes that match:

My first knitting class is tomorrow (toe-up socks). Last I checked I had four signups. Send me some good vibes that they like me (and that if they don't, that they will be easily bribed by chocolate).

Stunned

2006-08-31T23:42:00.000-05:00

Boy got full-time job.
Girl got promotion. This has been
A very weird day.

The other white meat

2006-08-29T08:31:00.000-05:00

The other bad thing about getting a second job (other than the fact that yesterday I had to turn down my dream part-time job since I'm working extra hours for money, not for fun) is the lack of gym time. I haven't been in two weeks. Today I stuffed myself into my skinny jeans with such force that my sternum nearly caved in with the effort of securing the button. But I knew it was time for a skinny jeans intervention, pleasant or not, because next time I might have crumbled my guts into powder and still not got the button closed. But now I'm actually wearing them, sitting down, and vowing to get my behind out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to go to spinning class. Goal: to weigh what I did when I moved here 9 months ago, landlord and money stress and lack of time be hanged.

Illustrations

2006-08-27T08:43:00.000-05:00

My leaky ceiling in my spare room in July:

My leaky ceiling in my spare room today, a month later, after they swear they've fixed the roof:

The collection of bowls on my spare bed (observe how freaking full they are) after two days of rain:

(Note that my parents are supposed to be here this weekend and theoretically sleep in this bed. . .)

My leaky ceiling in my bathroom today, after the landlord has, again, sworn the roof was fixed:

And as an afterthought, a fair isle bag I made my mother for her birthday. I took a pre-felting picture with a sheet of paper for perspective, then felted it at 2 a.m. sometime last month and gave it to her without taking an after picture. Note this is the same bed as the leak; maybe if I'd gone to sleep during a rainstorm it would have been felted by the time I woke up.

Any suggestions? I'm thinking lawsuit at this point, but I really don't have the energy.

Pop quiz

2006-08-20T11:37:00.000-05:00

Rumors of my death have been slightly exaggerated.

Perspective

2006-07-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

Not much to post -- I have knitting ADD and at last count I have the following in progress:

2 pair of socks
1 tank top
1 skirt
1 belt
1 sweater for my husband

Not to mention the half a sweater and two mateless socks hanging out in the bottom of my knitting box somewhere.

It's been a crummy week -- my house was bombarded with calls and e-mails from knitting buddies last night because I stayed in the house and it made me feel loved.

My knitting circles are starting to overlap; two ladies from the Tuesday night group showed up at the coffee shop where the guild meets and didn't even know there was a meeting there. I met up with someone from the knitty board at a local yarn shop last week and she showed up at Tuesday night looking for me; while she was calling to chew me out for being AWOL, someone new came and sat at her table so she hung up.

Half an hour later I got another phone call from a friend from the guild; it turns out she had showed up at Tuesday night to make amends for the Thursday night group bugging out early (before I showed up on my bike in 102-degree heat to say hi to a bunch of empty chairs). So while she was chewing me out for being AWOL, I found out she was the "someone new" who had sat at the table of my friend from the knitty board! (Are you confused? Because I am!) Anyway, they had a grand old time knitting and abusing me, I'm sure.

I still didn't go out -- we got some bad news this week, on top of the huge roof leak and the two gas leaks in our apartment in a row, and I'm just a little tired and more than a little busy. Whoever said depression was good for art has obviously never been depressed. I'm doing a lot of staring at yarn, making feeble attempts at design, frogging, putting things down, starting other things. Spinning my wheels and not in the best sense of the word.

To keep in perspective and because I'm worried about her (and because I want to know what's really going on), when I've been online I've been pretty much glued to Joumana's blog. If you're reading this, go there. If you're not paying attention to the news, well, now would be a good time to tune in.

Chimpanzee does the dancy-dance

2006-06-27T23:39:00.000-05:00

Oh, look, Jo made another Barbara Walker stitch sampler baby blanket that's impossible to photograph from any angle that does the little textured house and windmill bits justice:

ri

And, because The Spouse insisted, a picture of me trying to look sexy while simultaneously attempting to hide my gut:

I'm not actually holding up the blanket because, as a knitting pal pointed out this evening when I finished weaving in ends, those bobbles over the door and window are strategically placed on one's chest when one holds up house-shaped block in front of one's torso. My friend did not actually say anything, mind. She just waited until the admirer had walked away from the table, took the blanket from me, held it in front of her own torso, and snickered. Point taken. Er... Um... anyway. I'm posing next to the blanket in the above photo, not behind it, and you're welcome.

Dunno if it comes out, but the house is a pretty neat trick. I'm saving the castle from the same book for a soon-to-be-spawned second cousin, whom if I'm lucky will be born on my birthday.

In other news, I might (maybe?) get to teach a socks class in the fall. So now I'm daydreaming up the most gorgeous pair of socks I can imagine simply for show-off purposes. I'll keep the pattern to myself a)because I want to inspire theoretical and potential students to Think and b)y'all know I'm too lazy to actually write any of my patterns down.

In other OTHER news, Baby A for which the turtle blanket was knit has entered the world with black hair and blonde eyebrows. I can't wait to actually meet the little bugger. I think I've managed to beat Baby B (gingerbread house blanket) into the world by a couple of weeks.

P.S. - the title of this entry is from a dream I had last night about two of my friends showing me an imaginary YouTube video and singing along with it.

Snuggie bankie

2006-06-16T19:48:00.000-05:00

My coworker is this ||<---- close to giving birth.

And I want her to hurry up and do it already so I can see her bambino wrapped up in this:

If you can (and I know it's hard), ignore the obvious construction flaws and check out some of the individual stitch patterns.

Barbara Walker may not be someone with whom I would ever like to have a conversation about anything, but she has some damn fine knitting books. My new knitting book policy of trial-by-library has concluded with my having to buy at least two of her stitch collections because I have maxed out my renewal privileges. Dead useful. And I'm getting a lot of stranger admiration, too.

I mean, look at this cable:

And this cute little guy:

I sewed a fabric backing on the blanket; I found children's pajama material (aka nonflammable) in the discount bin at JoAnn's and it had the exact same color stripes. This allowed me to stuff the turtle shell so it wouldn't pucker when you pet him.

Most of the problems with the blanket stem from the fact that a)I had no plan b)cables pull in and no amount of blocking can help you and c)I had no plan. I knit four mitered corners, picked up stitches, flipped through the book until I found something that looked beach-y and could be adapted to match my stitch count, and away I went.

I was exactly a week late for her baby shower, and so I showed up with my gift on Monday and she wasn't at work. Drat thought I, she spawned.

No -- she got in a car wreck. Somebody rear-ended her on the way to work and totaled her car. He didn't even get out to see if she was OK.

Now, I know insurance companies have rules about whether you should apologize, ask the other person if he or she is OK, etc. I know insurance companies have even stricter rules when the person in question is driving a company car.

But.

If I rear-ended a vehicle, and the result was a 9+-month pregnant woman struggling out of a smoking car, I WOULD GET OUT AND ASK IF SHE WERE OK.

We postulated that he didn't get out of the car because he had another sort of accident when he saw her stand up.

She's OK (and bruised) and the Bean is OK. Her brand new car, however, is toast.

But she loved her blanket. It apparently matches her nursery perfectly. Her husband took video of it. I felt special.

Here are some shots of my lovely assistant admiring the work (I'm also posting these in an effort to shame myself into laying off the junk food; look at what's happened to my face since I last posted photos.):

So now I'm working on one for another coworker -- her nursery is Mother Goose themed, so thanks to Barbara Walker I have gingerbread houses and Jack and the Beanstalk cooking on my needles. Again, I'm getting lots of Knitting (and nonknitting) Stranger Love.

The rest of the household?

Not so much.

Team Entrelac

2006-03-31T19:43:00.000-06:00

... but first, a bit of gratuitous cat torture.

There's a story. My husband has a very special backpack. You see, it's not just any cheap-oh blue backpack. It's a backpack and kitty bed all in one. The second it hits the floor and all the books are gone, Ella is more than happy to demonstrate how perfectly it conforms to her curled-up kitty figure. She purrs contentedly for hours while infusing the backpack with her essence, guaranteed to give the boy hairy-backed T-shirts for a week.

So she did it again a couple weeks ago, and I was bored. So I found out just how special is this backpack. In three easy steps -- pounce, zip, lift -- it's also a handy cat carrier.

Note that she forgave me. Also note (see below) that getting chubby after moving to new digs is going on among all the ladies of the household, not just me:

Her gut's almost as big as mine!

And speaking of big, we got a new entertainment center. And despite what a certain cousin-in-law who lives down the street tried to claim, I put it together all by myself, thankyouverymuch. It's farking huge, but it consolidates everything, including our medium-sized TV that's dwarfed by my spouse's huge and ancient speakers.

To the cats, it's all measured in terms of climbability:

But anyway. What you're all here for, I know it, is to see my sweater. Entrelac is addictive, and it's also eye-catching. I got more comments while working on this thing than on all my previous projects combined. A big knitting group happens to meet once a week at MY Borders books cafe (ahem) where me and my sweaty self go after the gym to knit and caffeinate every other day or so, and they actually STOOD UP and CLAPPED for my sweater on Tuesday, and it didn't even have the bands on it yet.

First of all, it was a Sarah James pattern that I had to work hard to find and ended up getting on eBay. Second of all, RUN do not WALK to your nearest bookstore or knit shop and get "The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques." I will never have a problem sewing seams again. Third of all, I don't like drop-shoulder sweaters and never make them, but this one was so cool it was worth its boxiness. Fourth of all... a whole sweater's worth of Noro. Hello! After I lost my ever-loving mind and bought it I knew I had to find a primo pattern to even halfway justify my splurge.

I think this did the trick:

(This is my sweater being shy.)

(This is my sweater waving hello.)

(This is the pattern my sweater was based on. Click on the photo go to the store where I finally found it after looking FOREVER. Note the gut-sucking huge band of ribbing around the bottom that I decided had to go.)

(This is my sweater practicing yoga and defying gravity all at the same time, all in the name of a camera angle that doesn't show I have too many shoes on the floor of my bedroom).

(Speaking of Zen, this is my sweater on my Buddha belly.)

(And this is my sweater and I dancing around in front of the window trying to show off our sleeves.)

I am a little scatter-brained and forgot to take a picture of the back. It looks the same except it has a back neckline instead of a front neckline. Actually, I did such a good job of seaming, I probably could have justified taking a picture of my armpits.

Anyway, if anybody wants to know where to find the pattern, I'll help, because it's very well written and easy to follow. Ridiculously easy, in fact. I left the pattern at home most of the time because I didn't need it once I got started. I even learned to knit backwards so there was no turning every 7 stitches, and the entrelac panels went QUICK.

Now I get to go back to being an anonymous knitter instead of a superstar -- the weather changed from freezing to warm the day after I got it finished. Boo.

Ode to Ana

2006-03-31T00:16:00.000-06:00

I have just finished the most kick-ass sweater I have ever made.
Two words: Entrelac. Noro.
OK, three words: Yummy, yummy, yummy..
I refuse to take a picture of myself in such a gorgeous work of art over my pajamas with shower hair, however, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

News

2006-03-10T18:01:00.000-06:00

1)Spouse got a full-time job, and is now finished with the three-job-overlap hell.
2)I've been knitting some neat stuff and hope to have pics up soon.
3)I got a new car.
4)I've been going to the gym every freaking day, but still getting fatter and fatter.
5)Some jackass broke into my new car while I was at spinning class at the gym, stole my bag off the floor, and thus got pretty much my whole life. Even an original knitting pattern (four hours it took to write the thing!), yarn, addis, a knitting book. Prescription glasses. My cel phone. My mp3 player. A bracelet I'd spent two hours painstakingly creating for a reporter friend back home and hadn't gotten around to mailing yet. $5. And my wallet -- credit cards, store cards, check cards, driver's license, SS card (yes, shut up, I know I know I shouldn't have had it, I also know I shouldn't have had my bag on the floor of my car at the gym.) Busted my window all to heck. Went and bought gas for everybody they know at three gas stations, went to eat fast food, and probably bought beer and cigarettes before I finished the police report and shut the bastards down.

If only they had tripped, the stupid jerks, and poked themselves with the Addis. Then the bloodspots would have solved the crime. Sigh.

Adventures in brioche

2006-01-08T01:22:00.000-06:00

So I've finished mountains of things, all of them gifts, all of them at the last minute, and none of them photographed...

...except this one:

I decided I wanted to learn to do two-color brioche stitch, so I dug into a back issue of Interweave Knits (Winter 2005). My goal was to make a reversible scarf, as the alternative is constant fiddling to make sure the scarf's (ahem) back side isn't hanging out for all the world to see. Unfortunately, I discovered that the instructions, while very spiffy and easy to follow, were based on instructions for a two-color sweater and thus, not reversible. Observe:

Smooth decrease on the right side:

Nasty decrease on the wrong side:

Well. We weren't going to have any of that.

So, I did some finagling, involving alternately 1)a safety pin in a CC stitch hanging out in mid-air on row one of the three-row decrease to be picked up on the next row or 2)when I was lazy, undoing a decrease stitch on row two of the three-row decrease, releasing the trapped CC stitch from its shackles, and putting the MC and yarnover back together.

Aha! Success!

Right side:

Wrong side:

Tada! Reversible two-color brioche.

I am certain someone has already invented it with 1)a better method and 2)more detailed instructions, so now I am on a quest to find it so I can better explain the process to the other people at the yarn shop who were mildly fascinated.

In the meantime, though, I have a modest feeling of accomplishment after engineering a better stitch than the one I was given. I also have a shiny red and black reversible scarf in Lamb's Pride Bulky (ignore the tuft of Jo-hair hanging in front of the lens next to the mo-hair, ha ha):

... AND I have an extremely cute scarf model who was nice enough to humor me when I decided to chase him with the camera at 1 a.m.:

I think that means I win.

Approaching from the north

2006-01-01T13:08:00.000-06:00

Signposts and signspotting. Small miracles and unexplained events. Mysticism and scoffing. Wondering and skepticism. It's a new year today and I am in a new place. Did I used to consider myself a writer? When?

Moving, even if you move on purpose, includes a grief, a letting go, a mourning. I thought this time would be all excitement and discovery and adventure. Every morning I wake up full of stress about the job, even though the job itself isn't that stressful and my coworkers seem very positive. I have never been secure enough in my self-esteem to handle being new, being ignorant, without hearing a buzzing internal monologue: Dumb. Stupid. Failure. Idiot. Go back where you came from, stick your head under a rock and wait for birds to light on your bum. And then there are issues about being in the work force for what seems like forever, and then feeling like I am still at the bottom of the totem pole. I know it's only humiliating if I consider it humiliating, because this is an opportunity, a ladder with rungs, unlike the bottomless dead end I left. Still, on bad days, anxious days, I consider it humiliating because I'm used to looking at myself that way. Also, being new, work still feels like work. The coworkers all seem like very nice people, but it takes time to forge alliances. There's no ace reporter with 30 stuffed animals and aliens in kilts covering her desk, no photographers yelling at me to march over here RIGHT NOW, no matter what it is I'm doing, to look at this ridiculous video clip they found on the Web. I have a stuffed prairie dog and a devil with a cape in a box, and I'm afraid that somehow displaying them will not give off the proper professional vibe. Instead I have a goodbye card, covered in well-wishes I have a hard time articulating appreciation for, tacked on the wall of my new cubicle. Onward and upward.

The spouse also has no place to lay his head, no place to unpack and stow the box of oddities, pictures and personal things labeled "office," and that is taking its toll on him as well... the fact that he is working constantly, seven days a week, with no place to hang his shingle and mark this patch of cubicle "MINE." We moved here in part because a new job offered me better hours, offered us a better chance of spending time together, having evenings to take long walks and conjure up stories about some unseen future like newlyweds are supposed to have and we never did. But Temp Assignment No. 1's schedule is noon to 9 p.m. for three months. It's a role reversal; these days it's me climbing, fully dressed, over the cat and onto the edge of the bed as the sun makes a valiant effort to hike up the hill across the street and look in our window. It's me kissing forehead, nose, cheeks, whispering, "Good morning and goodbye." Me falling asleep on the couch in my pajama pants and faded T-shirt with a book, waiting up for him to tromp up the stairs with his mileage log and his empty lunch bag at the end of the night. And that does not count the days when we get up at the same time because the part-time job, the Safety Net In Case of Temp Job Gaps, has required him to grace it with his presence for four or five hours before trading name tags and security passes.

I knit. I found a yarn shop, seconds from his part-time job. There are yarn shops everywhere; I haven't been to half of them. This one makes me very happy, even though they stopped hiring part-timers about a week before I moved here. Bad timing. It's nice there; I'm having a purple adventure at the moment in honor of my boss's birthday, which is Thursday. For Christmas she bought herself a purple suede jacket, a sparkly pink top. This will match. I made two scarves, a hat, almost finished a pair of socks, gave them all away and forgot to take pictures. They were nice. My sister-in-law's: ice-blue bulky baby alpaca, soft as kitten fur, in cables that subtly announce affection: xoxoxo. With a seed stitch border. And a hat that matches, because I had finished one skein of yarn, was talking to Fae at the coffee shop back home all day that day, felt like making a hat with a cabled border, and did, trying it on every so often to make sure it would fit an actual head.

We joined a gym. I go to spinning class, ride an exercise bike until my calves burn, lift weights and imagine that something is happening to make my chest and thighs defy gravity. Gyms are expensive, but we got a special, I bought us the memberships for a Christmas present. Thought that the boy would be less stressed if he swam. He is, when he has time. He complains that his schedule is out of whack when he works late. It makes him stay up, makes him sleep late, all he does is sleep and work, how is it that the shift is still eight hours but eats up his day? I am impervious to such nonsense, remind him that I worked 1-10 or worse for all the years he knew me, that I adjusted, I woke up, put on sneakers, went to the gym, came home, took a shower, made lunch, went to work, went to bed. He can get up at 8 a.m. when I leave for work, find his swim trunks, his track shoes, the gym is blocks away. He will. The transition took me a long time, which is why my Old Self was so fat. One reason. Then, once he adjusts, the temp job will be over, maybe there will be another one with a new schedule. Maybe (oh, dare we hope) there will be a fixed peg of a job in its place, something on which to hang his hand-knit hats and empty the contents of the box labeled "work." Maybe.

The apartment has tiny closets, ridiculously tiny, made even worse by the fact that the last house had closets one could live in. I am still unpacking, I will always be unpacking and there is nowhere to put anything. The place had a closet where one could discreetly fold closed the doors and hide the washer and dryer behind, but even that was too small. The doors are unscrewed, taken apart, folded up underneath the bed. Our washer and dryer hang slightly out into the hallway like a beer belly over faded blue jeans. I'd like to put shelves above it, but there are rules against Big Holes in the wall.

I have no friends yet. I have Several Nice Acquaintances. The spouse has a cousin who is worth about twice his weight in gold. He helped us move the heavy things up the stairs to the apartment, cursed us for having so much junk, was three hours late to work putting my car back together two days before Christmas after it broke down and I was stranded. He likes ethnic food and museums, we go down the street to have lunch in India, Morocco, Greece, Italy. We went to a Slavic church once, without the cousin, and would go back except it's far away and the boy works Sunday mornings. We go to a suburb church instead; it's close by, it's enormous, it feels just as foreign. I e-mail my former priest, I e-mail my former coworkers, I e-mail my former knitting pals, hoping what I am doing is not e-mailing former friends. I feel uprooted. I feel transient. Talk of my former residence as "back home," although that isn't true, either. Remind myself that we are stubborn square pegs who make our way by hammering, day after day, at the round holes like human battering rams until they give way at the corners and we manage a crude sort of fit.

Culinary adventures

2005-12-18T09:47:00.000-06:00

So to make up for the fact that I've been a royal terror to live with during all this moving stress, I picked the spouse up from his part-time gig, took him out to dinner, gave him a Christmas present and told him some potential good news I don't want to jinx by spilling it here.
He likes Indian food; I hate all the calories but his present was a gym membership so I decided to be flexible. The food was fantastic. We ordered a vegetarian meal for two, and they kept throwing food at us -- mango lassi, samosas, huge plates of naan, lentil soup, three kinds of dessert, hot chai, jasmine rice, two entrees, etc. etc. The wait staff were cheerful, polite and on the ball -- my water glass never went empty (and considering how thirsty I get when eating spicy food, that's saying something.) And the ticket was something like $28, tax included (I tipped well; not that I can afford it, but I reasoned that tipping well at a restaurant to which you feel inclined to return someday is a good investment in the quality of your future service).
At about 4 a.m., I woke up violently ill. I thought I had food poisoning. My ribs hurt. My back hurt. I suspected I might vomit up my own spine. I moaned, I wept, I lay on the bathroom floor while the d@mn feline opportunist I let live in my house circled around me like a furry, four-legged shark chirping, "Since you're awake, it's time to feed the kitties!!!" The husband went to the phone book to find the nearest emergency room.
However, after I took four Tums chewables and five minutes later could breathe again, I suspect not food poisoning, but weakness in my own constitution. Deep-fried appetizers, entrees covered in cream sauce and spicy chutneys apparently burn holes in one's esophagus when one is used to eating salad, potatoes and coffee with skim milk. Who knew?
"It was that waiter," the man of the house muttered darkly, crawling into bed next to me and stroking my hair after making me a cup of strong chamomile tea. "He kept walking by and throwing spoonfuls of chutney in your soup like some kind of gastric terrorist."

I was right. It was impossible.

2005-12-01T02:02:00.000-06:00

OK, so when I said there was no way I was going to be able to say a couple of these goodbyes, I was overestimating myself.

It was beyond impossible. This was the kind of day that makes me want to vow never to get attached to anyone ever again.

My brain realizes that's a stupid thing to say, but my stomach thinks it's going to be sick in a bucket right now.

I didn't cry (in front of anyone; and you can't prove that I sobbed in my car all the way home). I'd planned a deliberately lighthearted exit stunt in advance to help ensure that I didn't make a big embarrassing scene, but I didn't remotely expect certain people to act like they were trying not to cry in front of me. That's just not fair. (And I'm not crying right now, dammit.)

I didn't make Fae cry, but I did make her sneeze - since our weekly knit/crochet coffee dates are a thing of the past, I bequeathed her a ton of chenille that I bought long ago and will never use. She said she liked it, but it's unfortunately tainted with cat. She opened the bag and exclaimed over the cool colors, but couldn't finish her sentence because she was overcome with a fit of ah-choo. After she washes it, though, it'll make something nice. Ironic that I got the cat from her in the first place.

Springing a leak

2005-11-28T08:52:00.000-06:00

Because the point of a blog is sort of to get personal, and I'm sort of paranoid about actually getting personal, I haven't been posting much.

For years, almost since I moved here, I've had "I-have-to-get-out-of-this-town" disease.

And now I'm getting out of this town. And, whaddya know? I'm SAD.

Gee, go figure, you spend five years someplace and you (gasp) make friends and (gasp) grow attached to the mountains outside your window and (gasp) decide you really, really love your church.

My first major, embarrassing meltdown was actually last night. I was sort of proud of myself for waiting until then, because all of yesterday was just one long reason to bawl my friggin' eyes out.

First, our priest gave me a present, which not only meant more to me than I'll say in a blog about, you know, knitting, but it knocked me over because I didn't know he remembered this was our last Sunday. I managed to avoid crying all over that one with superhuman effort, but I'm sure when I write the thank-you note I'll be blubbering all over the place. Then we went to lunch with some friends, three generations of a family of kindred spirits. They also gave us presents, and one of them said "I just realized -- everybody's moved away and you are my last friends here and now I'm all alone!"

I didn't cry at that one simply because I drank a lot of lemonade while we were eating lunch and I really, really needed to go to the loo. Again, I am positive there will be retrospective lack of decorum.

What made me finally cry in public was this family with seven kids that came in late to evening vespers, their almost-2-year-old had obviously just woken up from her nap, and her black eyebrows were furrowed under her pink hood, and every time I tried to wave at her she'd scowl at me sleepily and bury her head in her dad's shoulder.

Now, some backstory: this kid has had a piece of my heart since I spied her toddling after her mother at church several months ago. She reached waaaaaaay up to get her hand in the holy water font, and then smacked herself very reverently in the forehead.

She was 18 months old.

More recently, she sat in front of us at Mass, and during the passing of the peace she turned around, grabbed my left hand with her right hand, jerked it, and said "Pee-choo."

So here she is with her frizzy black curls poking out of her pink furry hood, playing peek-a-boo with me around her dad's back, and I'm realizing, I'm not going to see her grow up.

So after prayers I go to say goodbye to them, meet their littlest -- three weeks old, her first name the same as my confirmation name, by coincidence or divine sense of humor -- and I lose it.

These are, of course, the world's nicest people and they have no problem understanding why I start bawling in mid-sentence when I say this is the last time I'll be at this church. Their oldest daughter starts patting my shoulder and the mother hands me the baby, who proceeds to give my husband the one-eyebrow stare like "What the heck are you?!" But still. I've managed to keep my composure around people I've been close to for five years, and I barely know these people and I am sobbing like my hormones are on fire or something.

And then I give the baby back, and the almost-2-year-old warns me calmly that the baby just spit up on her brother's face.

Goodbyes are hard.

I haven't even gotten to the worst part yet. I have a couple more goodbyes to say, and at least one I just don't think I can handle. I'm chickening out. I've planned (and knit) a whimsical stunt in lieu of actually saying the words, and that's going to have to be enough, because there is just no way. I don't even mean there's no way I can do it without bawling like a 5-year-old on the last day of kindergarten, I mean there's no way.

Cry wolf

2005-11-15T22:47:00.000-06:00

I'm really moving, and this time I'm serious. I got a new job, I'm getting a new zip code, and I'm a little bit spazzed out.

My new apartment, (sans the model furniture, and my view is definitely not that good), looks like this:

My current apartment, while I'm packing, looks like this:

My husband and I, after several whirlwind seven-hour trips, getting lots of details nailed down (with many more to go), and giving our two-weeks notice today, look like this:

(... only not as cute, of course.)

. . .
In the meantime, the knitablog showed up, and this is what it looked like when it visited:

I could use a girl like you ... in my basement

2005-11-01T09:58:00.000-06:00

So I haven't been posting a lot, because I've been busy. I got a fabulous job in the perfect city; some little old lady decided she wanted to move into an assisted living facility but didn't want to sell her gorgeous house so she's letting us rent it for dirt cheap because it's paid for as long as we take care of it. I moved and managed to sell two short stories all in the same two weeks and my husband is starting grad school in January. Oh, and I managed to lose most of that 40 pounds I've been fighting!

...

...

... OK. So actually, I still have my same job, same apartment, haven't sold any stories and the husband thinks he's sick of school after finishing his undergrad.

But I have been busy. Hacking up a lung, babying my carpal tunnel because it's two months before Christmas and I've still got a lot of knitting to do, working crazy amounts of overtime, and becoming addicted to "Lost."

*hangs head in shame* I know. All my preaching about the evils of wasting time sitting on one's arse in front of the boob tube, and I had to get addicted to a TV show that involved renting 22 episodes on DVD, + commentary, and watching them all in a matter of two weeks. I guess I don't need to tell you that the weight loss comment was bogus, too, huh.

However, my mother has challenged everybody in the family to a holiday pedometer contest, starting today. Everybody is playing except my skinny sister-in-law, who opted out, and I am bound and determined to win. Since I'm on temporary knitting hiatus and my lung capacity is starting to come back, I have nothing else to do besides walk... and study. Walking is more fun.

More later, perhaps including pics of a sort of ugly blue and green sweater that I finished but haven't yet posted.

Throw me to the velvet dogs of pop star history...

2005-10-10T03:17:00.000-05:00

And behold, proof that I've actually finished something(s), even though all the "proof" is shot sans makeup and with "trying stuff on" hair:

Alejandro says, "Wow, that is one snazzy suit you've got there, mom..."

"... but what is that even snazzier top I see peeking out from under that jacket?"

"That's not just any ol' tank top, that's a ribbon X-back! (and a mighty scary view of my back - I should get a mannekin for next time. . .)"

And this is a Spring Fling, meticulously arranged (i.e. bunched up under the armpits and pulled to the back) so you can't see that it's actually 2-3 sizes too big because somebody didn't swatch...)

And Ella's all-time favorite, the recycled silk cardigan, designed on my body, while I was knitting it, with the fabulous Stefanie Japel's "Ubernatural" used as a template.

There you have it. Still no pictures of the teeny tiny socks. (But look! I'm growing a waist! Er... shrinking a waist. Anyway, there's some sort of indentation in the waistal region.)

Sockin' it to 'em

2005-09-23T10:56:00.000-05:00

So I made my spouse these socks. I make my spouse lots of socks, and he wears them constantly, even the ugly first attempts, because he is a good husband who adores me. (And, you know, because he wants the benefits of being on my good side, such as not having to sleep on the sidewalk when he does something spacey like lock himself out of the house wearing a T-shirt in near-zero weather. Not that I would put any conditions on the wearing of my handknits. Certainly not. No way. Ahem.)

However, these socks are different. Why? They're not exciting. They don't sound fun to make -- toe-up socks in self-striping Regia in greens and tans on size double-0 addis. Straight stockinette, short-row heel, ribbed cuff. I think it was the teensy stitches that sold him.

"These are the best socks EVER," he exclaimed, and proceed to wear them with... everything. Whether it matched or not. Maroon shirts. Black corduroys. Jeans. I drew the line at the electric-blue gym shorts. (OK, so he didn't actually try it, but he was eying them.)

Other people chose to express their admiration in slightly more... lefthanded... ways.

My grandmother: "Those are... perfect. But... WHY?!"
My friend Fae: "Those look... storebought. Um, no offense, that's a compliment, I mean..."
My mother: "No wonder you're going blind."

So, now, in the middle of all my other projects, I'm knitting another pair of socks on teeny tiny wire needles. And I think I want smaller ones. I'm sort of sick, aren't I.

P.S. Lack of posting is due to laziness about the digital camera, mostly. I really do want to have some new pictures up.

Saving Grace

2005-09-15T09:26:00.001-05:00

So. I'm back. Where did I go, you may ask?

I had a RL altercation with a crazy, but said crazy is officially Not My Problem Anymore, so I can be forgiving, even charitable. C'est la vie.

In the meantime, Some spambot stole my blog address. So I'm using this one.

The main reason I came back was that I was starting to feel invisible. I haven't been sans Web presence since I started college at the tender age of 16 and made a couple of pen pals I have since met in real life. Lately, I've become almost hermit-like in my online interactions. I buy stuff. I read stuff. Etc. It's a little bit creepy, mostly because my real life has sort of been the same. My work schedule is a bit... inconsistent ... at the moment. (For about five minutes, I thought it was going to get better, but then it got worse.) I've been out of town a lot. People don't e-mail or call and ask where/how the hell I am, and then when they do, I expect them to telepathically realize I read their e-mails and appreciate their concern. Next I'll be going to work with no socks on and talking to my cats.

... Ohwait.

I really have been doing a lot of knitting while I've been gone -- mostly in coffee shops, where I get some pseudo-human interaction. Observe:

Stranger: "Ooh! Pretty. What kind of yarn is that?"
Me: "Recycled silk."
Stranger: "Wow, I've never seen anything like it, where would you get something like that?"
Me: "From a cooperative out of Nepal, its for women who..."
Stranger: "...because I've certainly never seen that at Hobby Lobby!"
Me: "Um..."
Stranger: "Look, Betty! This lady's crocheting!"
Me: "Knitting, actually, um..."
Stranger's friend: "How quaint."
Me: "Thank you."
Stranger (usually an unemployed/retired society lady with a rich husband): "Yes, I sure wish I had that much time on my hands, just to sit around and crochet all day..."
Me: "Well, actually, it's knitting, and I don't have a lot of time, I work nights, and it's morning right now, see."
Stranger: "That's nice, dear. Well, good luck with your crocheting! That's really pretty yarn."
Me: "Thank you."

Then I pull out my headphones to discourage the next one.

Oddly enough, normally, at this time (Thursday morning) I would be in said coffee shop with a friend who does crochet, makes mostly blankets, uses acrylic yarn from Hobby Lobby and has even less tolerance for dumbasses than I do. (See, I do socialize occasionally!) However, said friend also has other things to do besides sit around and crochet all day, namely graduate school, and she's up to her elbows in books today. I told her I wouldn't tease her if she failed her special ed test (she's going to be a teacher), but we both know I can't keep that promise, so please wish her luck.

I guess I just went through yet another weird funk where online interaction wasn't worth the effort, and being alone in actual reality vs. with companions in virtual reality was preferable. I don't think I'm out of that funk yet. Maybe it's just the idea that, if life is going to pass me by, at least I'd rather be doing something other than sitting in front of a computer while it does.

I sound like Eeyore, don't I.

But I've finished two sweaters and several pairs of socks. One sweater, Spring Fling, is going to have to have major surgery, unless I spontaneously grow considerably more busty in the middle of the night. I'll take the hook closures off the front and make it a kimono.

The recycled silk cardigan, I'm happy to report, fits perfectly. That's because it's a top-down raglan sans swatching.

I'm so lazy.

So, in lieu of sweater pictures (they're coming), allow me to present a grainy, sub-par picture of my brother's wedding reception. No, my new sis-in-law is not really possessed, although her eyes and my cat's seem to react to the camera in the exact same way:

Oh, and also since I've been gone, Helen turned 2:

Look! We have a pixie in the family.

Yes, I'm dying to knit something for her (who wouldn't?! Wouldn't it be precious?!) but her parents would never, ever put a handmade object of clothing anywhere near her, not even to take a picture to humor the maker, so it would be a misguided effort. I will have to settle for adoring her in her Old Navy gear and knitting things for Other People's Kids.

My toes are bright shiny teal green today. Thanks for asking.

Oh, and this via Ana:

Watch this space

2005-09-13T11:10:00.000-05:00

... it will soon have a picture of a very unfortunate sweater in it.

(You missed me, didn't you?)