Home of the Obsessive-Compulsive Knitter

2009-03-08T20:36:00.001-07:00

Where did the month of February go? I have no idea, I must have pulled a Rip Van Winkle and slept right through it.

I know for certain that there has been lots of house cleaning and a little bit of knitting going on. I made a quick pair of socks for the DD in her favorite colors. Much to my satisfaction they are a perfect match. This is

Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Multiringel color 5121. It used well under a ball to make this pair, her feet are a size 1 childrens.

This is the second ball of most precious yarn I have used from my stash. It is the Claudia Handpainted Yarns Silk Lace (20/2 ) in Ocean Depth. It turned out very nicely. The color with the pattern looks just beautiful. It is very light weight, shiny and silky. I LOVE the Laminaria pattern from Knitty. This is a terrific pattern, well written and easy to follow and it turns out wonderfully. I give it two thumbs up.

Now, after nearly a year of silence, I can finally show you a pair of socks I made in April 2008. I did a sample knit for Cookie A.'s fantastic book, Sock Innovation. The sock is titled Eunice. The book will be avialable on April 1st. This sock is Cabled with a lacy pattern in the center of the cross. This pair was made from KPM. It was modeled here by Melissa as her feet were the closest size to the socks. Sample knitting is fun, you just can't tell anyone about i!

Now on the needles, a pair of snaily felted baby booties. Super cute but you'll have to wait to see them!

2009-01-31T00:51:00.000-08:00

Um, yeah. I can blog.
I have been kind of busy. So, we had my DD's birthday, Thanksgiving, ms DS's birthday, my DH's birthday ( a big party for his 40th), my Mom and Dad's anniversary, Christmas, then New years, then back to school. My DS got a severe ankle sprain playing at school and spent 3 weeks on Crutches, went to get his foot looked at again and got Strep throat. Now his foot seems to be bothering him still, so back to the Doctor! I have been busy teaching Art Vistas and running kids around! This year is already flying by and I am still trying to adapt to writing 2009 on things. Damn!

I have been busy and lazy to boot. I have so many finished things to show you! Well, okay, no so many, but a few! Here is my mom on Christmas Day, the joyful recipient of the small pair of top down Froot Loops that just happened to end up being her size. One might think she trimmed to balls to make them her size...

Whatever happened to that Heartland shawl? Well here it is!It came out wonderfully. Made of lovely Handmaiden Seasilk in the Glacier color way. I blocked it out at 4:30am December 23 ( I knew I would need to be wrapping on December 24 so I stayed up all knit to finish it, weave in ends and block it.) Here it is pictured pinned to the floor at 5 am... Where, you may ask, are the pictures taken of the happy recipient, my MIL? Well, I will tell you, there are none! Why, you may ask. because it is the last goddamned knitted thing SHE is getting from me. She opened the bag, took it out, partially unfolded it, said "oh, thanks Ang, it is pretty." then folded it back up and stuffed in in the bag. Didn't throw it on, or spread it out. NOTHING! SO off the list!

On the more selfish side of knitting, I made a pair of Winter Twilight Mitts (interweave free pattern). The black yarn is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock and the colored yarn is a skein of

Lana Grossa Meilenweit Mega Boots Stretch in colorway 504. All of that perfect color is just from one skein without cutting to change the transitions (well the first one anyway). It was just perfect. There was a LOT of drama involved in making them, which I will spare you here, (you can read about it on Ravelry if you are that desperate to know) and just show off. The second mitten had to be cut and matched because the transition to that last dark color was not fast enough to match the first mitt. It still is not exact but fairly close, as I had to rip back about 15 rows, cut the yarn and splice it to ease the transition in because a world with out nearly perfectly matching mitts is not a world I am prepared to live in. Notice there are no 2 handed shots as I am unable to hold the camera and photograph my own two hands. I really love these!

What is on the needles now? A pair of vanilla toeup socks for DD made from this: I seem to have love affair with the Lana Grossa. Progress at this point is to the bottom of the arch of her foot. I was thinking of making them tall socks, I will have to see how long I can make them before I run out of yarn. Of course, I have to account for matching those stripes!

Also currently on the needles is a Laminaria knitted with this Claudia Silk 10/2 in the colorway Ocean Depth. This skein is a very dark and intense version of it. Janet commented that it wakes you up! I really LOVE this pattern, it is written nicely and knits up quickly, with the random happenstance that sometimes I can't seem to count to nine. I have tried for about a year to find another skein in a similar depth and shade of color but all of the other Ocean Depths that I have found have been a far lighter tint that looks very faded. Out of despair for never locating another ball, I just decided to bite the bullet and use it. Teenuh is so proud that I have used TWO different balls of my MOST PRECIOUS stash to make things. And in return I am just glad Teenuh is alive!

Oh, also I have been busy because.....
I got a new puppy! Her name is Marley, she is now 4 months old, but in this pic is about 3 and a half months old. She is, quite hysterically, half Chihuahua (mom) and half Golden Retriever (dad). Picture the physics on that. She looks much like a Lab pup, but she has a longish looking body and the stumpiest legs you have ever seen! They are so short and fat. She is naughty and cute and fun. I am working at training her, it is hard work as there are 3 other people in the house who work hard at untraining her. She is nearly housebroken and has already learned sit and down and NO! What fun!

2008-11-25T23:23:00.000-08:00

I have finished my Flaming Froot Loops Socks and lo and behold, they fit!! There is definitely something to be said for toe-up socks. Kristi's pattern is super, I highly recommend it. Just don't be a dork like me and choose shorter balls of yarn because all of those passed over stitches and mini-cables eat up that yarn... What worked for lace socks, clearly does not work for texture. Always a lesson to be learned.

Progress on my Heartland Shawl is slow and infrequent. It is now about 10 inches long. I finally got a copy of Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush and there are quite a few projects in there I would like to get started on... I am trying to tell myself not to start anything new until the old is finished.

Speaking of old, can I say that I LOVE Sugarmomma? She saved my ass swapping me a desperately needed ball of Cascade Sierra Quatro and it has arrived! So soon the monkey will have ears and a tail. Perhaps I will find the time over Thanksgiving to finish her up.

So many other projects I am desperate to start. Where do I begin? I am having trouble focusing this week... I, like Teenuh, am suffering from Twilightitis. With hot young vampires on the brain I have very little time to think about anything else....

2008-11-11T22:17:00.001-08:00

I am having a serious commitment issue.

I can usually start a project and stick with it until I have finished. But lately I have serious starteritis! Sock monkey #3 DD's monkey is as finished as she can be. She has no ears and no tail but that will have to sit until the wonderful woman who is trading yarn with me sends me her skein of that darn Cascade Sierra Quatro that I need!

So in the mean time I have knit 2 rows on my Heartland shawl and have started a new set of Froot Loop Socks (which will heretofor be known as Flaming Froot Loops). Now I am eyeballing starting yet another shawl. I was also walking around with a blanket pattern in my hand, not 5 minutes ago.

So I need to nip this little problem in the bud by first admitting I have a problem.

Or by knitting faster....

2008-11-07T23:31:00.000-08:00

Today I hate everyone. I am fed up with working with other people and I am tired. I also didn't get in my quota of knitting time, so I have withdrawls as well. I am so done with this whole book fair thing! This will be my last call on it, I think.

So Froot Loops are finished and both are stupid small. I hate top down. Toe-up or bust from now on! They look great, they are just about 1.5 inches too short. I love the color and pattern and yarn and everything but the damn size!! I finished with about 1yard of yarn left. Stupid yarn!

Here they are. They just need some feet to wear them.... Gratuitous close-up of stitch pattern with weird color change from flash! The bright orange-red-green is the true color of the yarn. I think I might make another pair, in a more solid color for better stitch definition becasue the pattern is so cute. They WILL be toe-up of course!

2008-10-31T16:28:00.000-07:00

Zoinks!

I have totally bailed on blogging lately. I have been busy with soccer and school stuff. Walkathons and book fairs and junk like that. Today is Halloween, the most wonderful time of the year!! DS, DD and DN had a jolly good parade at school wearing their cute costumes. Pumpkins were carved. We went to a party tonight and I baked a delicious cake! As well as made a couple of nifty brains for dinner. Duh, I forgot to take a picture of them after cooking covered with bloody ketchup. Damn. It was quite the party, Judy found it to be eye popping... We had a fantastic time and got home about 12:30 am, which sucked for getting to the soccer field at 9:30 on Saturday.

On the knitting front: I struggled for a while with a pattern called Gail. Which is not very well written so after 6 failed attempts at it, I have decided not to make it and am instead using my precious Handmaiden Sea Silk for Evelyn Clark' s Heartland Lace Shawl. It is going much better. The numbers actually add up, which is always a good thing. Sorry tarded out again and didn't take a picture.

Finally, after months of putting it off, I have begun my pair of Froot Loop socks, with 1 done and the second about 1/3 done, but a word to Kristie. My sock is TOO SMALL because I ran out of yarn at the toe, this is why I knit toe ups and not top downs! ARGH! Someone with size 8 feet will be the lucky recipient of this pair of socks. Damn socks.

The knitting of the pink monkey, drones on forever. I haven't worked on it in a couple of weeks. I get a very dirty look from DD everytime she sees me knitting anything other than her monkey. I will go hide my guilty face and work on my sock.

2008-09-24T23:54:00.000-07:00

Every once in a blue moon someone does something more amazingly special than even I have done (Yes, it is rare but true)... To commemorate such a momentous occasion a special name must be given.. perhaps we should call it the "Lost Keys Incident" or "Damn yYou Are Lucky" or "Why You Shouldn't Talk on a Cell Phone" or maybe just "The Duh Incident." Regardless, Lisa forget the "Gigi", you have earned yourself a new name....
I dub thee Spehshul Leesuh.......

2008-09-16T00:30:00.000-07:00

Woo Hoo!! I finished the Mystery Shawl. It is not longer a mystery. The secret it out. It is some sort of insane punishment. Yeah. That's it.

Well, here it is all ugly and scrunchy like a new born...

Then here it is as blocked as I can get it in my living room. It is 86 inches across and doesn't fit. I have it partially pinned under my couch, but clearly you can see that it is not round at all. It has one flat side., this newborn is suffering from Plagiocephaly. The patterns are 1c, 2c, 3a, 4a, 4c, 3c, then the edging. Now the question, as always, is what to do with it?

Now what to do with myself? It is back to the Monkey...
Here is DS's sock monkey in progress. I am just going to punish myself and relentlessly crank this one out. I do have some plans for a sock and some fingerless mitts, but I will be good and make the damn sock monkey... Mr. Ben, gosh! He's like a monkey on my back...

2008-09-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

I am becoming an yarn ordering addict. When my husband gets the credit card bill he is going to bad MAD at me! I went online and found this store in Oregon (sales tax free baby!) call Woodland Woolworks. I ordered 1 cone of Zephyr in Bottle Green and 1 in steel (which to my credit I am sharing half with Teenuh the vacation queen). I also ordered 2 skeins of black and 2 skeins of white of Panda Silk. It was on sale, how could I resist?? So I ordered on Tuesday and it amazingly arrives on Thursday of the same week. Sent priority mail for a most reasonable cost, like, you know, the cost of actual postage, were no one to "handle" it. So along with my box of crack yarn they send me 2 catalogs. 1 for knitting yarns and 1 for weaving yarns. I peruse the knitting one, nothing too special I haven't seen before. Then, I come to weaving one. Damn. There are these really nice little cones of Soy silk and others of bamboo and gee those prices sure seem reasonable. So then I make a SERIOUS mistake and I go online and LO AND BEHOLD the damn yarn is on sale. Well how the hell can I not buy it now!? " How," I ask you, "HOW!? Well, truth be told, I can't. So now I am sitting here with buyers remorse as I bet my order is already on its way.... I just have to intercept the package before the husband ever gets a chance to see it... and stuff it into a box and pretend it isn't there until I am ready to use it...

Really though, don't I deserve a reward ? I am almost done with the Goddess Anniversary Shawl. I now have 50 repeats left, that is only 300 rows to go now and, damn that thing is HUGE! Just wait until you see it...

2008-09-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

I feel like an energizer bunny, but running on one battery with just 10% of its power left... I keep going and going and going and going but so slowly. I have just passed the half way point on the edging. I am at repeat 110 out of 192, so I am nearing the home stretch. But, school is back in session and I am the school's bitch, so I have been hither and dither all week long with no time to knit! Today I ran 1,300 double sided copies and in the mean time I managed to knit about 10 rows today. I am looking forward to Wednesday, a good day to knit!

2008-09-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo!!!

I have completed the task of unending rounds of knitting I created for myself. I finished my 5th installation of the Goddess Knits Anniversary shawl, which was Clue 4-c. I entered the final phase with much trepidation as I only had a meager 28g of yarn remaining. I have since cast off with 5 repeats of my edging and am now down to 26 g. Oh, crap. Do the math folks. 6/sts decreased per repeat. Times 1152 sts. That is 192 repeats. I now have enough yarn left for 65 more repeats, give or take a few rows. So what, you may ask am I doing for the other 130 repeats/ 52 g? Well, panicking would be my usual answer and I would be near shear panic if I didn't have my helpful enabler blogless Melissa to keep me going... If you recall, she and I split a cone of Zephyr (that would be a 1lb cone, for a total of 1/2 lbs each or 227g). Well, unfortunately for her, she seemed to run out of gas and enthusiasm on her shawl part way through, uncertain if she would finish or just bind off. The question of the day is, what will she do? Can she spare a square. I don't know, we'll have to see! She has generously offered before to share more of the cone should I need it, but probably didn't realize I would need a whole quarter of the remaining cone. So now the question I ask myself is, should I just suck it and order a whole other cone or be a leach and bum a quarter? Sorry, pictures coming soon...

2008-08-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

Still alive. Just barely. This shawl is killing a little piece of my soul with every stitch.... I seriously feel like I will never, ever , ever get through it... I am at row 13 of 48 on clue 3C for my post clue 4 size increase... it takes me almost an hour to get through 1 patterned row with 1152 sts per round. The even (all K) rounds take me about 25 minutes. Sometimes I want to just call it done and start adding on the edging. CALGON, TAKE ME AWAY!!!!

2008-08-15T21:54:00.000-07:00

Damn. That sucks.

So as I am sitting in Starbucks on Wednesday with Teenuh knitting on my Goddess Mystery Shawl when I pause part way through chart A to guess (with a tape measure and pulling on it) at how large I think the shawl is (feeling almost done as I think I am on my last chart before the edging in spite of being only 60% done according to this) and I realize the shawl is only going to be some where around 54-56 inches. DAMN!!! DAMN! You know what that means right? It means that I have to add on at least 50 more rows to get my shawl over 60 inches. Damn. SO now I am staring at the various charts trying to decide which one will look nice following chart a. I don't think any of them are going to be what I would like. Damn. And that I have to knit freakin' 50 more rows!! ARGH! *banging head on wall repeatedly*

I guess I have added at least another week onto this project (because, yes, I do have to double the stitches again before I add on another chart!) Damn. This is the shawl that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends, for some reason I started knitting it not knowing what it was, but I'll continue knitting it forever just because, this is the shawl that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends.....

2008-08-07T01:08:00.001-07:00

Run lemming, run! Jump lemming, jump!

So yeah, if all of my friends jumped off of a cliff apparently I would too. I joined Sundara's Season's Club. Choosing Fall. I was a little tempted by summer but then was wooed by this picture into the Fall category.... This thread on Ravelry offered a clear view of temptation... I just hope DH doesn't figure it out... All I can say is um, Thanks TEENUH!! And you too Lisa.

Now actual knitting content....
For my little Nephew's birthday: a sock monkey! It is a ~50% reduced, quite modified version of the Two Old Bag's Mr. Ben pattern. Made from Paton's Grace on size 2 needles. Made in about 3 days. Someone has let the monkey out of the bag and he loves it! He said,'Thanks Auntie it is a baby monkey to Diddy Kong!" The kids are very into baby this and mom and dad that.... My grandma likes it and says it is better than the big one that I made for DS. I think she really wants me to make her one too and thinks the smaller size more reasonable to mail away to Hawaii. With my huge over estimation of how much yarn I needed I totally could. It took less than 1 skein of the main color and way less than half of the cream and only a tad of red before I made the hat. He is lounging by the pool in San Diego here... His cap perhaps should have been larger? I finished him the night before around 1:50 am, struggled to take a picture of him because he wouldn't sit up straight and realized that he had no tail!! Ha ha! So 30 minutes later (at like 2:30 am) he was finally, completely finished... He would've been a sock ape instead...

2008-08-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

The ship is still rocking!! I want back on the ship!!

2008-07-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

He loves the monkey in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that the monkey is nearly as large as he is. Because of the red baseball cap, he has named his monkey Diddy Kong. I may put a letter D on the hat at a later time. He has been carrying it around with him all day!
On the Mystery Shawl front. Here is my zephyr. Half of a cone wound on the awesome gianormous ball winder I got for my birthday. It is a giant cake. I have not been on the ball about taking photos. So here is a crappy photo of clues 1 and 2 both are chart C's. Not much to look at at this point, I was going to shift to a larger needle for better photographic opportunities, when to my chagrin I found that I do not own any other size 3 circular needles!! I have size 2's in 4 lengths.! I have of course Knitpick's options in every size from 4 - 15. But no more size 3 's (or 1's for that matter. hmm time for another order??)

Now I have realized that I ordered some in a co-order with Teenuh in 40" and 47" and the order has arrived at her house. So I just need to be patient and wait to meet up with her to get the order! So for another day or 2 the shawl will have to remain crumpled up.... In the mean time, here is a glimpse of clue 3 chart A. And thanks to the brilliance of Janet I will begin work on Clue 4 for which I plan to work chart A followed by chart C creating the same length as using B or D alone.

2008-07-10T00:18:00.001-07:00

King Monkey is finished! 2 down, 1 to go!! DS was quite the task master. Catching me working on the mystery shawl or something else, he would say, "So I guess my sock monkey must be about done, huh?" Or" Mom, why don't you finish my sock monkey instead?" Woo, tough boss! His hat is a top down increase with an added brim. The brim was made with short rows and folded over with a piece of plastic garbage cut to size and and sewn in the middle. He weighs a ton. Being made with about 525 grams of Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton. He was filled with 1.5 bags of Cluster Stuff. So he is pretty weighty. He is about 5" taller than the previous monkey but quite a bit fatter. Here is his bald pate photo. So along with half of the internet knitting world I am also working on the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl. I was not smart and did not take progress shots. I have numerous photos to download from my camera and the fear is causing me to not take pictures. I know, how lame is that. I am knitting wtih Zephyr wool silk in the Blueberry color way from a cone split with Blogless Melissa. For clues 1 and 2 I have used chart c. For clue 3 I am using a and have decided to use b for clue 4. I have already fallen behind as I spent much time trying to finish off King Monkey. DS loves him quite a lot, especially since we didn't use the scary eyes! Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to that! And i f you are wondering, yes they are metallic and do reflect, they sure would like monster eyes to a sleepy imagination...

I haven't spent so much time knitting as I would like to, instead I have been doing that evil thing called housework and really trying to get ahead on all of the laundry, wash up all of the winter coats and get them stored away as well as enjoying 4th of July festivities. I could spam the page with photos of fireworks. There were so many to see. I just can't feel free on the 4th without smoke filling the air, gigantic booms filling the air and the vague smell of burning sulphur and the opportunity to be in a huge crowd that fills me with terror and a sense of forboding!
Here the kids and I are downtown enjoying the Fireworks. I have decided that since I am never in any pics I am going to start taking pictures Gina style. Me and Teenuh, we loves the fireworkz!

2008-07-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

A little late in joining the game but...

As a 1930s wife, I am
Average

Take the test!

+ = yes, - = no: Apparently, my greatest failure is ...

-Asks husband's opinions regarding important decisions and purchases.
+Corrects husband's speech or actions before others. (With my husband, who wouldn't!? One can only take so much innuendo...)
-Laughs at husband's jokes and his clowning. (It only encourages him...)
+Doesn't want to get up to prepare breakfast. (Is this really so bad?)
+Frequently exceeds her allowance or family budget. (um, yarn anyone?)
-Likes to vacation with husband. (and you wouldn't either...)
-Often comments on husband's strength and masculinity. (who does this?)
+Puts her cold feet on husband at night to warm them. (That's what he's there for right?)
+Slow in coming to bed--delays til husband is almost asleep.(the foot thing works better that way!)
+Tells risque or vulgar stories. (Where's the fun in life!?)
+Uses slang or profanity. ('the fuck is wrong with that?)
+Wears red nail polish. (Save me I am a whore!)

Good thing that it didn't go much farther than that. I can't imagine how I'd score if it asked about other things....

2008-06-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Earth to blogger, come in blogger!

I have been so horribly busy and to make matter worse I was a little shell shocked after everything was finished. I was about ready to have a nervous breakdown from all of the busy school activities. So Art Vistas is done, classes, Art show, extra classes, all done! 3rd Grade play is done done done! I ended up in charge of costumes. Tried to delegate them out but people flaked on me (and you all know how I feel about that). So I ended up making 60 of the 120 costumes my self. It was a lot of work. It went went. It is over! Woot!

So needless to say I did not get a lot of knitting done. I got plenty of shopping done, which I won't drone on about here (think Knitting Arts going out of business and a trip to Green Planet) . I will post pics of my 2 whole FO's I accomplished during the busy time.

Here is Mr. Ben Sock Monkey Extraordinaire!
Seen here in a child's booster seat for perspective. And posing here with his new best friend the ever-so-slightly-smaller Mr. Ben Cain. (who has an awesome hat!)

I also finished my Aster from the Beyer Band 361 Kunst Stricken , Kleine und Grosse Decken. From Herbert Niebling and Irmgard Sorenson. It is about 23 inches across. (56cm) just shy of the original dimensions given for the original design. This instruction for the pattern was written in German. Knit in size 40 cotton from Daiso. Knit with size 000 needles. I did this as a knit along with a blogless friend who made her much larger with lovely seasilk on size 2 needles(?) Now summer is here I will be a better blogger....

2008-05-30T22:42:00.000-07:00

No time to blog right now. To busy. Everything is coming down the chute at once. 2 weeks from now I'll be sitting at swimming lessons or at home wondering what I should be doing because I feel like I have way too much free time and I must be forgetting something. Until then. No time to photograph yarn or project progress... I am still knitting (King Monkey and Aster) You'll just have to wait to see it.

2008-05-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

Super Awesome Monkey Dude.

I finished my sock monkey. He is super awesome and super cute. I am so happy to see him sitting on my couch - amid the unfolded piles of clean laundry. I can almost pretend I don't see that laundry. You should have one. You should make one. No reason not too (except it is the dulldrums of stockinette knitting insanity!!! 90 + rows x 6). I must make some more......

2008-05-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

Give me a minute....

So on Thursday I sat watching television and felt inspired to do this:
Kind of ugly. Kind of dorky looking. Kind of splotchy, like a dog with mange.

On the sock monkey progress:

I finished the second arm today and triumphantly held it up! Victory!! But alas! No! The first arm was about 1-1.5 inches longer than the second!! I had just counted the rows on the second so I knew the problem was with the first. I counted rows. No, not 90 like it should be, or course not! It was 100!! Ugh! I unraveled the bottom from the cast on edge (hence the needles in the pic) and have since bound it off. Just ears and muzzle to go and Mr. Ben will done!! The kids are excited, they can't wait to see him! Me too!

2008-05-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

I'm totally feeling this.

How about you?

2008-04-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

Funky Monkey!

So the monkey totally jumped the queue. I was ogling Snuffykins' fantastically HUGE monkey and well I just HAD to make my own. She took all of these crazy pics of it. She was having so much fun with her monkey that I became inflamed with jealousy and set upon my own monkey (it only made me feel slightly better that she was giving her gianormous monkey away to live somewhere else).

So here is the fetal stage of my monkey dude. He is looking a little odd with only the one leg. The progress of this object is occasionally pornographically phallic in appearance and while knitting it in the Dr.'s office waiting room a man could not resist commenting "That is either for a REALLY big foot. or SOMETHING else!" He then turned red and sat snickering to himself for the duration of our wait in the chairs. On the other hand I have had several people practically falling over to come and touch my neonatal sock monkey, joyfully grasping him and cheering "Oh a sock monkey, a sock monkey!!" I have opted for the "striped" sock. I think I will make him the striped cap as well. Now back to work!

2008-04-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

SO done and with time to spare!

I finished Icarus on Wednesday night. The last bead was slipped on and the last stitch cast off! It is now drying on my living room floor. This shawl was another tight fit on my tiny living room floor. There was hardly enough room for me to crawl aroundit and pin it down. So it is looking very red and flat and beady lying there. It will be wrapped and packed and ready for giving away on next Tuesday. The beads (about 100g) added quite a bit of weight on to it. It gives it a lot more drape. I added a bead to every single cast off stitch as I was casting them off. The bottom edge probably used about 40 g of the beads. I hope my mom will like it!

2008-04-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Get on the bus!

I am a Ravelraiser, don't you want to be one too?

2008-04-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

Progress so far. So I ripped back to the beginning of chart 2 and reknit, applying beads as I went. This is the current result. If I did this again I would add beads all the way up the rows but the outcome on that happening looks unlikely. This is not a particularly interesting knit. It will be wonderfully Red and bright and sparkly when it is done! Yipee for shiny!

2008-03-31T22:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm not really sure this was a good idea but....

As I was working the Icarus shawl I am making for my mom, it suddenly occurs to me that beads would be really nice. Ahem.

Yes, beads would be really nice. Particularly on those feathery parts. So I think it might be a great plan to pick back those purl/knit rows that run up the middle of those feathery parts and add some beads. Yeah, doesn't that sound like a great plan?

Oh and by the way, I am on row 12 of chart 4. Out of 4 charts. So yeah, isn't this a great idea? It sure is, only I should've thought of that sooner, like maybe around, chart 1???

2008-03-26T22:03:00.000-07:00

I had to share this:

What Angela Means

You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection.

You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive.

You have the classic "Type A" personality.

You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people.

You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts.

You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals.

You are deeply philosophical and thoughtful. You tend to analyze every aspect of your life.

You are intuitive, brilliant, and quite introverted. You value your time alone.

Often times, you are grumpy with other people. You don't appreciate them trying to interfere in your affairs.

You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone.

You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together.

At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.

You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow.

You are light hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily.

Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

I don't know about you, but some of those descriptions are a little conflicted, aren't they? Sort of schizophrenic. I know I am sometimes a little crazy, but am I that crazy? I guess you just see in it what you want to see in yourself? Or do you all think this sounds like me and I am the last to know!?

I really found this to be more appropriate....

You Are a Dash

Your life is fast paced and varied. You are realistic, down to earth, and very honest.

You're often busy doing something interesting, and what you do changes quickly.

You have many facets to your personality, and you connect them together well.

You have a ton of interests. While some of them are a bit offbeat, they all tie together well.

You friends rely on you to bring novelty and excitement to their lives.

(And while you're the most interesting person they know, they can't help feeling like they don't know you well.)

You excel in: Anything to do with money

You get along best with: the Exclamation Point

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Teenuh, how much you want to bet you are an exclamation point?

2008-03-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

Yowza. Bad blogger, no cookie for you!!

Whoops, so 18 or say days have gone by since my last blog entry. I have been busy, busy, busy. Between Art Vista, See's candy fund raisers, and *dun, dun dunnnnnnnnn* the return of soccer I hardly have any time to do anything (laundry, cooking, cleaning and dishes all fall into this category of anything). I did however have a SUPER nifty weekend away with some girl friends where we were supposed to be scrap booking. Which I was not. I panicked and couldn't decide what to bring and brought nothing to do with scrap booking. Instead I brought 14 skeins of yarn that I wound into balls several of which were 1000yds/ball, ugh! The good news is I won't have to ball my yarn for a while, I can just pick up a new project and go!

Also made instead of scrap booking - several sets of stitch markers. Including a replacement set for Teenuh, which I made for Christmas then magically lost. Now that I have made a duplicate set, I know I will find the bag of markers, where they have been secretly hiding for the last 4 months. I forgot to take pictures of the ones I made for her, so hopefully she will post some pictures soon *ahem, nudge, nudge*. I made 2 other sets as well. The findings, were amazingly cheep $0.96 in the craft dept at Walmart with 5 and 6 pieces on the card. I used Swarovski beads which were also found at Walmart.

Teenuh and I made our Loopy Ewe needle felt kids together. Mine came out with CrAzY eYeS. While Tina's had a saner, more intelligent look. Her stripes were better on her socks too (alas, I shouldn't have striped at 2 am, I should have had the sense to wait until morning like she did). Regardless my daughter loves her and I will make another one with the left overs from the kit.

Several rows of the Icarus shawl (oh, yeah, did I mention I was making one?) were completed however when I got home I realized there was a big mistake made quite a bit down and had to rip back, ugh!! So progress is once again going forward on it. It has to be finished by April 15th for Mom's birthday.

Cranked out in rapid succession, after several practice circles and attempts, were some 70's style lace caps. They were a commissioned item for a friend's daughters to be worn on "Decades Day" at school. They have Tye Dyed some T-shirts and will probably Tye Dye the hats to match. So I made them out of Lily and Cream cotton, so they would be dye able. Hmm. Aside from the fact that I didn't seem to take any pics of my triplet hats I don' t think I have anything else to report..... Hopefully it won't be 20 days until I post again.....

2008-03-02T13:27:00.000-08:00

2 down, 1 to go. Finished #2 last night at Princesses on Ice. Today we are going to Cirque Du Soleil so i am not sure if I can finish #3 today. Got to knit like a fiend so I can finish them...

2008-02-29T07:47:00.000-08:00

Next up......
3 super preemie hats. My DD's teacher had her babies at 29 weeks 2 days. They were 3lbs. 3lb 2oz and 3lbs 4oz. Apparently the singlet (they were 1 pair Ident. Twins and 1 single) was 4 days older than the twins. But I wonder if they are just smaller because they started out with half the cells that the single did. So I will be making some preemie caps and booties. Strickwear will have to wait....

2008-02-28T07:47:00.001-08:00

Revontuli is finished!

I finished it last night, well technically early this morning. When I left the South San Jose Ravelry Knitting group at Starbucks I had only 6 more row to go. So I went home and cranked them out while catching up on DVR'd shows with my hubby. 2 hour long tv shows and a Jay Leno later I was done! I have to block it now. This was a 150g skein of yarn and the pattern writer used a 160g skein. I had just a little bit of yarn left, probably about 10 - 15 yards left. I was sweating a little there at the end. Here is it, unblocked. Blocked pictures coming soon to a blog near you. First I have to go total up all of the Sees fundraising money at the kid's elementary school. Fun!! What should I do next!? I am thinking about making Mister Ben or the Strickwear mobius. I can't decide.

2008-02-23T14:31:00.000-08:00

Yippee Skippy! (php)

Stitches was fun! I love to shop and shopping in a massive market of pretty much only the things I am interested in with a large budget specified for shopping with is just stupendous. I did a MUCH better job this year of budgeting my money as I went through. Last year I spent my entire budget by the time I was only halfway through and had to ATM the rest of the way through. This year I came with almost the same budget and came home with money left over! Although I have to admit that I have called my friend Teenuh who is working there today at the fabulous Fiber Fiend booth to ask her to buy a book for me that I am having non-buyer's remorse over. Hopefully she can get it for me. Stupid me and the out of print books! And as Teenuh said, it was quite a bit more fun this year seeing other knitters she and I knew
and shopping with a larger gang in tow.

Thursday night at Stitches was loads of fun, starting with the Ravelry meetup. There were many Ravelers there and I have to confess that I was surprised with the number of "older" knitters that were there (people older than my parents qualify as older - so over 60) as I sort of lamely assumed that they were not strongly represented on the internet. My mistake, I stand corrected! Baby Boomers are representing! Perhaps it is only my own mother and the mother's of my friends who struggle with the internet, all the rest seem to be doing well. After the meet up and some on-stage humiliation with my Pretty as a Peacock shawl, we were "snuck" into the Market Place preview for free. We got our super awesome Ravelry Passport books, which were SO snazzy and cute and well done! I picked up the Knitter's Block from Article Pract (something I had non-buyer's remorse over not buying at TKGA in Oakland last fall).
At Commuknity's booth I purchased 2 skeins of Malabrigo lace weight (exactly) similar to the KnitandRun's tasty yarn that I was coveting. I also bought all of the heavy things that I didn't want to carry all day long the next day or was afraid were going to be gone. This is the Fibersphere which will work nicely when ball winding or using a ball of yarn that tries to escape (like Kauni for example). It is nifty because when you open the container, the feed hole opens too, so you don't need to pull all of your yarn back through the hole if you frog or cut the yarn if you want to swap out your take-a-long project mid-project.I also got these 2 German lace books Kunst-stricken I and II, purchased at Village Spinning and Weaving. An expensive place to buy books but a place that always has a hard to find book or imported books if you are looking for one. Then we found the free sample row. FREE 10 g balls of Malabrigo laceweight! Cripes, that is like 1/5 of a skein, almost 100 yds! I got a spiffy red one. Also to be got- a 10g sample of Cherry Tree Hill sock!

So you KNOW that was the first place we went on Friday morning. I got another red Malabrigo and my super smart mom grabbed the same color and gave me hers! We worked on getting the rest of our passport stamped and shopped quite a bit and got another freebie at Bella Knitting, a small bottle of Wool Wash!

Here is the rest of my stash enhancement. I guess this year I was kind of into buying kits:

Strickwear Kit in Purple Passion: (Purchased to learn the varied strand technique to be used again in the future with my nifty silk from Redfish )

Mister Ben Kit from Black Water Abbey Farms: Featuring the Mister Ben pattern by Two Old Bags.

The Maple Leaf Shawl Kit from Just Our Yarn (who were so accommodating and let me switch the kids around):

Then some loose balls of yarn:
Noro sock from The Yarn Place (Capitola):

Pagewood Farm Hand Dyed Sock Chugiak in Harvest from Great Yarns:

I also did some fiber enhancement:

A sampler of colors from Carolina Homespun 4oz of Silk hankies from I think maybe the Oak Grove Studio Booth, but I am not sure. Two 40z hanks of 100% bamboo fiber in Sunset colorway from Fiber Fiend.Then I did a little tool enhancement, just a needle sizer and some needle caps.

I returned to the Ravelry booth and delivered my filled in passport directly to Mr. Ravelry himself Casey (who was wearing a humorous "Bobfather" shirt), then dragged my tired butt home.

So, to anyone curious on the "Bag of lies" rectification front, just before we left the show Deanna of Deanna's Vintage Designs was there and I talked to her about my 120 yds of yarn (instead of 185). She said it was an Interlacements Yarn problem and talked to them. The Interlacements Yarn people were gracious enough to give me an entire skein of 345 yds of the very same yarn! They were so very kind. Whoo. Finally reached the end! I swear the next post won't be so long...

2008-02-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

Fun felted thing project from Stitches

This morning at Stitches we were lucky enough to catch the first seating of the Art felt needle felting demonstration. We got to make an entire project (about 6" x 15") while the rep talked about the process and the materials (and don't forget where they were available...). My mom, Melissa and I all three made project. I don't know about the other 2, but I couldn't wait to get home and finish it! This was it before felting.

This was a fun learning project. I think I have learned much from it. It was relatively hard dissolving the Artfelt paper from the back of the felting. The colors bled some too, Annoying!! After pouring a large tea kettle's worth of boiling water on the thing I rinsed it in cool and put in the spin cycle in the washer. When I pulled it out, it had sticky, snotty, little chunks stuck to the edge from the undissolved Artfelt paper. So I had to boil another pot of water and re-rinse the edges. Spin cycle again. Still there was left on the edge and I gave up and scissored it off! It suffered more shrinkage I think due to the repeated rinsing. Here it is, post felting. Tomorrow, a summary of the show and photos of my loot.

2008-02-21T15:26:00.000-08:00

It's done! I dumped the dyes into some nifty anti-spill kids paint buckets and stuck my brushes out of the top. I started with the swatch and did several different color combinations. I then did a quick heat set on it (which obviously was too quick, it came out very light ) but I got the gist of what I wanted to do. I consulted my peacock photos and decided which was the best set of color combinations.

So I put a big sheet of painter’s plastic drop cloth over my table. Pulled out a gazillion feet of saran wrap and tossed the shawl on to it, sprayed it with water and just started painting. Here it is part way through. As I finished a section I saturated it with a vinegar/water solution from a spray bottle and then rolled it up in the saran wrap. Then I laid out some more saran wrap, moved the shawl over and painted some more. It took a long time. I worked on it, for about 45 minutes in the afternoon then had to set it aside. I came back and worked on it from 10:30 pm – 1 am. Then I rolled it up in its saran warp skin and stuffed it in a colander to steam over a pot of water all covered in foil. I left it over the steam to set for an hour then, I rinsed it and sent it through the spin cycle. Blocked it and left it to dry. There you have one hand painted Pretty as a Peacock shawl. It was dyed using 6 colors of Jacquard liquid silk/wool dye: Virdian Green, Marine Green, Royal Blue, Kelly Green, Cyan, and Apricot.

And I still had time to do 12 more rows of my Revontuli. By the way the Kauni yarn kind of sucks. There is tons of debris in the yarn, bits of straw and hay, strings, garbage, and weeds actually spun into the wool and dyed! I have never seen such a mess before. It is like the wool right off the sheep without being well combed or carded. Bummer, because it looks awesome.

2008-02-21T01:39:00.001-08:00

The shawl has been painted and is sitting in a pot as I type steaming away. It is late. I am tired and my fingers are stained various shades of blue and green. Keep your fingers crossed. I hope it was worth it. Because it is going to suck if I have to dye it a dark solid blue....

2008-02-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

The Pretty as a Peacock shawl is finished being knit. I love this pattern, it worked up so quickly and was pretty easy. I think I could make this again and again. Here it is in its invisible splendor.

The bright pink twin sheet I use to block on was too small so I had to switch to a queen and only had a white sheet to use. So it is very hard to see. I will snap some more pictures that will be easier to see when it is dry. I need to run out to University Art Supply and pick up a bottle of gold colored dye before I start dyeing. I have been studying photos of peacocks and have formulated a plan of attack. This is my little swatch to dye. I worked several different parts of the chart into a square so i could test dye on each style of feather.

Here it was before blocking. A little easier to see. Lastly, here is my newest project. Revontuli - huivi. It is a Finnish pattern for gradually varigaited yarns like the Kauni that I am making it out of. This is the EQ (rainbow) colorway. This pattern is pretty easy and seems to be working up very quickly also.

2008-02-10T21:16:00.000-08:00

Apparently I was jumping the gun on my worries about the amount of yarn I am using. How foolish I was, forgetting that the majority of yarn use occurs in the last rows. I seem to have used a much more reasonable percentage of the yarn than I thought I was going to. I am now working on chart I. I have caught back up to where I noticed the mistake at and passed it by a couple of rows.

My mom and sister went to the Friends of the Library book sale on Saturday and picked up knitting book for me that they argued over buying. My mom said I wouldn't make any of the sweaters and it was a waste of money. My sister argued that there was cool stuff in there and it didn't cost much so just buy the darn thing. They stuffed it into the bag and bought it (as much as you could fit in the bag for $5) and ended up paying about $0.25 for the thing. Turns out it's this book: Tudor Roses by Alice Starmore A very precious out of print knitting book! Can you believe it!? Just the 2 days ago I was looking at another Ravler's Elizabeth I and thinking it was a pretty pattern as well as looking at the other patterns from the book. Funny how the world works. My mom and sister were quite surprised to find out how much it was worth!

2008-02-02T23:02:00.001-08:00

Coming Clean.

I was reading Teenuh's post and thinking about her crazy agreement to control her sock yarn buying tendencies. I was snickering to myself while looking at her stash and thinking, "wow she has got some serious stash!" Then I went into my garage to look for some blue yarn to make my square for Thom's afghan. I looked all through my stash and didn't seem to have any blue or gray yarn in the appropriate weight. I did however seem to have quite a bit of yarn.

So I am now trying to catalog more of my stash onto ravelry. I added just a few things, although I did just buy the 3 skeins of Paton's classic wool today (who can resist they were on clearance for just $2.00! and someday I will felt with it...) but I realized I have tons of yarn in there I haven't even looked at or touched for at least a year... So sadly over the next couple of weeks I am going to try and post most of my stash onto Ravelry and not just my good stash or my recently acquired stash, because I have been collecting for years now and most of what is listed up there has been purchased in the last 2 years... I am just wondering, is it really worth it to list the cheesy acrylic caron simply soft and red heart pounds of love onto Ravelry. Most were bought with the intention of using just a little bit, but needing the color... Honestly do I have to be THAT honest??

Now for my Thom's afghan square:

This was knitted in the round from the center out. it was nice and easy. I knitted it in sock yarn first to see how the pattern would work over many more repeats than I would need and it worked great. Here it is knitted on size 2 needles in Trekking XXL left overs I had lying about.

This one is made with the Lion Brand Yarn Baby Soft solids in (obviously) blue. The squares are both 4" x 4". The rules were it needed to be knitted with a gauge of 20 - 24 sts / 4" and have 3 rows of garter on the border. So I thought instead of picking up stitches, just knit it in the round and finish with 3 rows of garter border. I quite like the way it looked in Trekking. After 17 rounds my square was 4" by 4". So here is the super simple pattern.

Round square:

Cast on 8 stitches. Distribute around a set of dpns (I put 2 sts on needles 1 & 2 and 4 sts on needle 3 so I don't have to mark the beginning of the round, if you use 4 needles, mark beginning of the round.)

Row1: K 1 into the front and back of every stitch. (16 sts)

Row 2: *K1 into the Front and Back of the stitch (kfb), k2, kfb * Repeat from * to * 4 times.

Row 3 (and all odd rows until garter stitch) K around.

Row 4: *kfb, k4, kfb*, repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 6: *kfb, k6, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 8: *kfb, k8, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 10: *kfb, k10, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 12: *kfb, k12, kfb*, repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 14: *kfb, k14, kfb*, repeat from * to* 4 times.

Measure your square, if it is 3.5" then work the rows as follows, if not continue in the pattern until your work large enough then work rows 15 and 17 as your odd rows.

Row 15: Purl around

Row 16: *kfb, k16, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 17: Purl around and bind off.

Use the center cast on tail to sew the center hole shut and weave in the ends.

Rinse and block it to 4" x 4".

This pattern is based on the principle of a flat circle and will continue to grow outward. So as long as you continue the pattern Row X: *kfb, kx, kfb* repeat *to* 4 times... and the increases are aligned as corners, you can make this square as large (or as small) as you want.

2008-01-24T08:22:00.000-08:00

Pretty as an Albino Peacock

I have cast on for the Pretty as A Peacock Shawl. I have four skeins of the Knitpicks Merino/silk Bare yarn (yeah, OMG 1760 yds! It REQUIRES 1500 yds of fingering/sport wt!) After a few bumps in the start it is going along smoothly. I did not check for errata on this pattern and it turns out there is one very significant error right out of the blocks. The cast on instruction number is wrong! Ha ha, I cast on 3 times, counted the stitches on the chart and realized that the bottom line of the chart and the c.o. instruction were wrong! So I went and looked online and lo and behold it was wrong! I am reading the chart and not the written so there are less errors that I would have encountered, but I think I have learned by lesson, when buying a newer pattern that hasn't been knitted 10,000 times by other knitters always check for errors. Um, duh. Pretty basic isn't it? It also suggested a knitted on cast on and I did that and didn't like it so I did a long tail cast on instead. As of last night I have achieved row 49.

To answer the question of several boggled people: I, who am obsessed with lovely peacock colored yarns, am not making a natural colored shawl. I have a couple of jars of lovely peacock blue and green dyes (picked up at University Art Supply) for wool and silk, which I plan to paint onto the shawl when I am finished, ala this woman's beautiful Peacock Feather's Shawl. I am not sure if I will just graduate it down ward like she did or if I will try to paint in a more detailed feather coloring. The PaaP pattern I am using has longer single feather details than the PFS and might lend more nicely to that, with the colors radiating outward from the eye of the feather. I'll probably have to knit up a sample to test paint and see how the dye takes/bleeds or perhaps turn it over to the hands of my very artistic and paint oriented sister.

2008-01-21T00:35:00.000-08:00

So I cast on for the Snow Queen. As soon as I started knitting my asthma started to bother me. So I went and used my medicine. Then I come back later and the same thing happens. I'm beginning to think that maybe my lungs and Kid Silk don't agree with each other. So I'll put it aside for now and try again in a couple of days.

Instead I am going to cast on for my Pretty As a Peacock Shawl. I am using Knitpicks Bare, silk/merino blend. It has a very nice shine to it and is soft and smooth as well. I am looking forward to working with it.

2008-01-20T18:25:00.001-08:00

I made it, with room to spare!

I finished the Madeira Stole this morning. With 20 grams of yarn left over! Woo hoo. I could've modified it and put on a longer edging or something. I am just relieved to have not run out of yarn though! I really think the motifs look like little school houses or row houses. The ends are woven in and that sucker if blocked and drying. It is posing on a BRIGHT pink sheet on the living room floor. I really stretched it in length and sacrificed a bit in width for that. I pinned it out lengthwise first, that is the first time I have done that, it was interesting. Usually I pin the 1 side first, then the other side and finish with the ends. Finished size is 22 x 80 (instead of the recommended 26 x 64). I added in all 3 extra motif repeats on both sides below the diamond and over the double row of houses.I was blocking it with string then had a string-tastrophe (known to you as my DD's foot!) and changed over quickly to pins mid block! I am having a hard time taking pictures of the whole thing without the wierd fading off into space/ Star Wars opening look, so once it is all dried out I will take some more pictures when I can move it and post them on my Ravelry page. On to the next project!

2008-01-14T20:42:00.000-08:00

Madeira Fun.

Yeah, super fun. So as I said before, I was knitting away on the Madeira Stole and I get to this diamond in the pattern and realize that it was half way. So I look at it and notice that it is, um, kinda short, like 30 inches. So I weighed and I worried. I have added 3 extra repeats of the single motif section of the pattern, adding about 12 inches.

I am/was so paranoid about running out of yarn I weighed that thing like 20 times! I weighed the knitted section and the 2 balls after finishing each repeat. By the time I reached the second repeat I was feeling awfully worried and I took the second ball of yarn and knitted the knitted on edging to the one completed edge.

Well. I weighed it after the third motif and I still had more yarn on the unfinished side than on the finished side, so I am crossing my fingers that I will come out with enough yarn. If the whole weight theory works, I should come out with about 10 grams of yarn left over... It will be a good experiment in the whole weight of yarn theory and consistency in knitting. Until then I will be knitting and sweating bullets in fear of running out of yarn and ripping back to the second extra motif repeat on the first half and re-knitting the other 50 inches again. Keep your needles crossed for me!

2008-01-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

I finished the never ending pair of Embossed Leaves socks: The upper photo is the true color of the yarn, the lower pictures are a little bluer than what it really looks like. . The last end was woven in on Monday night. They fit nicely, the elastic gives it a nice snugness. I am curious to see how this corn blend fiber will wash up.

Now I can get back to work on the Madeira Shawl. I have apparently finished half of the shawl. It was not long enough so I went back and reread the instructions several times to see if I had missed a repeat but it didn't seem that I had. So I added another repeat of the "house" pattern on each half. It adds about 4 1/2 inches. It still seems like it might be short, but I am worried about running out of yarn. What I need to do is to knit on the edging to the side I have finished and then weigh the yarn and weigh what I have finished and see where the half is.

Ah, should I start a countdown to Stitches on the side of my blog? I can't wait to buy more yarn to stick in my stash and not use! Woo hoo!

2007-12-29T01:39:00.001-08:00

Merry Winter Solstice Celebration and a happy annual rotation to you!

For Christmas this year, I got some super nifty stuff. My sister bought me Mr. Funky's Super Crochet Wonderful, Elizabeth Zimmerman Knitter's Almanac and Amigurumi!: Super Happy Crochet Cute. Lots of cute stuff in there to make. And yeah, I must have been the LAST Knitter on Earth without the Knitter's Almanac in my library.

Teenuh got me a super cute Loopy Ewe Needle felting sheep kit that I can't wait to do. It looks so cute! It is wearing socks! She and I will hopefully do ours together.

My mother purchased 2 books for me, at the TKGA in Oakland a couple of months ago which I finally got for Christmas. Barbara Walker's Third book of charted knitting desings and a tiny spiral bound book on how to make any sweater into a top down seamless sweater.

I also picked out this super yummy lace weight silk, approximately half a pound making 800 or so yards and Mom bought that for me too. This was from the Solvang based The Village Spinning and Weaving Store, which was where I picked up that giant cone of red silk at Stitches. I buy all this fantastic silk and sea silk, etc and then I won't commit to using it. I am like Golem. I would hide in a cave rolling about in all of my "Precious" in the dark, never using it and never allowing anyone else to use it. I have to get over that and start knitting stuff out of it. I have 2 skeins of Claudia, 3 skeins of Handmaiden Seasilk, at least 3 more skeins of pure silk. Plus all of those amazing little skeins from Redfish. I think there is something wrong with me. Perhpas I should make it my New Year's resolution to use up more of my Precious regardless of how special it is, I know I can always buy more right!?

Also along lines of addiction. I made 2 more tiny, tiny sweaters. I sent one along with my mom to Hawaii to my grandparents. My grandma has probably already sealed it up in plastic and set it out in one of her many plastic "display" cases. Also I have finally turned the heel on the second sock of my Embossed leaves sock. So I am basically in the home stretch. As long as tragedy stays away it will be done soon and I can get back to cranking out that Madeira Stole. Mmm, that makes me want to go to Cheesecake Factory.

Ah, duh, also added to my stash about 2 weeks ago were somethings that I couldn't post about because it was a dead giveaway to what Teenuh was getting for Winter Solstice day. I orderd some yarn from the Netherlands. It took 3 weeks to arrive. The skein prices were so very reasonable, until you add on the international shipping rates.... The glory is the marvelous excuse I used to justify an order was that some was to be given as a gift. Thanks Teenuh, haha! I have 2 skeins of Kauni in the Rainbow EQ colorway. Hideously bright orange on the outside, beautifully rainbowliscious on the inside. I also have 2 colors of Kauni's sister yarn, beautiful color graduating, Evilla Art yarn. This is made in the same factory and has the same style of slow color graduations. One large skein of A-31 a warm fall colored rainbow of magenta, olive green, orange and dark purple and two smaller skeins of this blue-brown one, A-8. Reminiscent of that sock pixie color way I said look like Mud spilling into beautiful ocean water that I thought was so ugly. Funny how a little desire can change an opinion.I am ITCHING to knit some of this up. Discipline. Self-control. We'll see.

2007-12-21T14:51:00.000-08:00

I've got the fevah!

I cranked out another Minutia (#6) yesterday. I used Knitpicks bare merino laceweight and size 00 needles. It was SO super tiny and cute. It was about an inch and a half tall and about 2 and half inches wide. I took this picture from an odd angle trying to minimize the flashback from the shiny plastic measuring board and minimize the washout. I worked the cables reversed on the back side so the cables point in the same direction, not up one side and down the other side as written. It was very hard to pick up stitches for the neck and I only crocheted one row around instead of the 3 the pattern called for. The sleeves were about 1-1/4 inches wide before folding them over. I made them wider to allow for the seams and ease of turning.

At this very moment I am convincing myself not to start another one. It was a quick 2 hours of work. I seamed it up and sent it to school today. I am now wanting to make another one (or 10) to keep for myself, because the blue one I made went to school on the front of my son's teacher's gift and this one was gifted to a friend of mine as well. I enslaved my husband to make me a couple of hangers (he has a good attention for fine details) and he made me 2 perfect little hangers in 2 sizes. He may yet become my hanger making slave....

2007-12-19T23:36:00.000-08:00

A warm sense of accomplishment with hands still attatched!

As a result of constant and rapid knitting, the super scarf for DS's teacher has been completed. It is blocked and drying on the living room floor! Woo hoo! Finsihed it at Starbucks knit night. It looks fantastic and was easily blocked without much stretching to the exact size I wanted it. 7 inches wide by 58 inches long (okay it turned out 2 inches longer than I planned. Sheesh).
I am fairly certain I will NEVER make anything in Frog Tree Dark Grey Charcoal ever again. It was SO hard to see the stitches it was like going blind the whole time, and I don't even have problems seeing in a dimly lit room or semi darkness.
I can only imagine the torture that other more visually challenged persons must face with this. Here is a close up, you can vaguely see the chevron design. It is perfectly subtle for a conservative and professional man such is DS's teacher. I hope that he will enjoy it.

And to celebrate its completion I also made a little Minutia, #12. From left overs of my Regia Kaffe Fassett socks. With a little pulling and cutting of the leftovers of the 2 balls of yarn I had, I have perfectly matching fronts and backs, as well as sleeves. Most satisfying. It was hilarious that I made a tiny 2.5" tall sweater and had 12 ends to weave in. I don't have any wire to make the amazingly cute hangers so I will have to run to the store tomorrow. Darn another reason to shop... Just as a side bar, I have to say I can't compete with Melissa's rapid production of Minutia. She is a tiny sweater machine! Each one, a tiny marvel of knitting perfection!

2007-12-16T20:34:00.000-08:00

Did you ever knit until you thought your hands would fall off and you would go blind? I changed my mind on the Teacher's scarf design for the 4th time ripped back the 9 inches of scarf I already had knit and cast on again. This was Friday night. I then realized I had 6 days to complete, block and wrap said scarf for delivery at school Friday morning. Um. Minor panic ensued. I now have 24 inches of scarf, I figure I am probably 2/3 of the way there. I am not sure. How long do they make men's scarves?

2007-12-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

I am back on track again. I think.

My mysteriously lost Knitpicks order was reordered and finally shipped to me and I can FINALLY resume work on my embossed leaves sock. Somehow the gauge or yarn is different on the second sock and it was pooling so, so badly and you all know how obsessed I am with my socks matching. So Melissa, suggested I reduce by a couple of stitches and I decreased by 2 stitches. Miraculously the pooling disappeared, with just 2 stitches. Amazing. I am just hoping it doesn't return when I have to add the 2 stitches back in up at the ankle.

I took advantage of Commuknity's 20% of sale and purchased 4 skeins of Frog Tree Sport weight Alpaca in dark grey. This is already on the needles, becoming a scarf for DS's teacher. I am having a difficult time generating a pattern that shows up. The yarn has lots of lighter gray hairs waving out of it and it really obscures the stitch definition. I had a nice, reversible, manly pattern worked out in just knit and purl. But when I applied it to the yarn, the design was completely indiscernible, even after I had worked up 8 inches! Ugh! So I ripped it back and have been experimenting. I think I am going to stick with a 2 cable pattern with the cables running up the sides and garter stitch border. The lack of definition frustrates me though and makes me feel like I am going slightly blind. I tried a reversible cable scarf I found on the internet but it pulls in so much I would have to make the scarf like 80 stitches wide to have a reasonable width (about 8 inches wide) and imagine how much yarn that would use!

Also purchased at Commuknity was another skein of Claudia Handpainted Silk Lace in this fantabulous peacock color way. It is SO bright and beautiful and was purchased spontaneously, who could pass it was so lovely and 20% off. In the hopes that I will someday compelte the Ice Queen wimple, I purchased a ball of Kid Silk Night in Starlight. It is already has a little sparkle it it and it will look nice with some clear beads with metallic centers that I bought last week. Since I am now working on 3 projects I will have to finish up at least 2 (particularly the gift scarf!) before I cast on for that. Also spontaneously purchased was this ball of Melody that was up by the register. Damn tricky last minute buys. But look how pretty it is!!

Aha Guilty! I did not confess all of my recent purchases. I also bought, last Saturday at Purlesence 2 colors of Panda Cotton and 2 skeins of the humorously named Panda Silk (a whole 5% silk in there!) which I think I will probably make into another swallowtail shawl with beads like the Harlot did.

2007-12-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

Blog, what's that!?

Whoops. I suppose I have been careless in my attempts to blog. No posts for 2 weeks. Good Grief. Well, the new camera is out of the box and snapping pictures. It took the best picture of my black dog that I have EVER been able to take (and it should!) I have started and finished a pink hat and sweater for Angelika's baby. Who is scheduled to be born Dec 26 (scheduled c-section). The hat is just a circular generic hat with a 2 stitch cable alternated with 2 purl stitches. The sweater is the collar only version of Diane Soucy's Easy Baby Cardigan. I made all of the edges with the same cable pattern from the booties and cap, including the collar. I worked up very fast, it is seamless so it was a total breeze. You work from the top down, starting at the collar top (or hood if you are making the hooded version) and work down increasing raglan style until you reach the arm pits at which point you pull off the sleeve stitches onto a holder then continue working to the bottom. Then pick up the stitches from the holder, lift a few stitches from the pits and work in the round until you reach the bottom of the sleeve. Weave in ends and tada! You have a sweater. Now off to work on those triplet sweaters....

2007-11-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays and more duh!

Thanksgiving was swell. For the first time in years it didn't rain in Oregon while we were there. It was however, down right cold, hovering in the teens and night and maxing out in the low 40s in the daytime. I will take cold over rain any day!

I thought for sure, I would come home and find my Knitpicks order sitting on my doorstep. I didn't. I was, um, surprised? I logged in to see when it was shipped and instead of being shipped, it was not being!! As in, someone magically between placing the order and processing the order, it magically disappeared. Now I am going to have to check my credit card statement and see if it got charged twice. After a nice conversation with the woman on the phone my new order will be shipping (who knows when, but it will be shipping for sure) and I will continue waiting for my order to arrive....

Madeira Stole is now at the 4th chart and about 8 inches long. But you cannot see pictures! Why you may ask! Because I somehow managed to BREAK! my camera. At DD's birthday party at the mall (Blush, lunch and Enchanted - What a cute movie!) I snapped a picture then put the camera away. Got it out after the movie and the camera was broken. The lens won't focus. It vibrates and makes a weird noise and takes a blurry picture. This is tragic and fantastic at the same time. Now my Christmas present is a lovely Nikon D40x. Lucky me. Needless to say it will be the ONLY present I am getting this year (and maybe well into next year and past my birthday as well...).

2007-11-15T20:29:00.001-08:00

Man am I dumb!

I lost 2 of my size 2.5 dpns. Now I can't finish my sock. I placed an order and now I am waiting for it..... As an overreaction I bought 2 sets... Silly. So for the time being I am working on my Lynn Curry Madeira Stole. This is the picture from her website. Terrilynn Needle Arts.
This pattern makes me think of little old school houses for some reason... I have cast on and I am about 3 inches in. It is in sport weigh Alpace in black, just like the photo. I bought it as a kit from her at the Bay Area Knitting Co-Op booth at Stitches West. Next week I'll have WAY more time to work on it.

BTW, terrifying news on the triplet front, 3 boys!!! Plus she already has 1 son.... man oh, man oh, man oh man!

2007-11-11T00:59:00.000-08:00

I thought this was going to be fun.....

I'm fully involved in co-chairing the book fair. Not having a good time working with my co-chair. We are not getting along. I have lots of time consuming things to do... here is my progress on the embossed leaves socks: 1 sock finished. This sock is awesome, for some magical trick it plays on the eye causes my HUGE foot to look smaller! I think I may make all of my socks with alternately colored toes and heels...I at this point in time have not cast on for the next sock yet. Hopefully, I will get that sock started tomorrow. Looks like I'll be sitting out in the rain for at least an hour watching DS's 3rd Jamboree game, so no knitting then. But alas, we have Monday off and what sounds better than to sleep in and then hide out in the house knitting all day!? So I guess I didn't realize this post posted dated Sunday, which is the day of the Jamboree game not Monday... Ha ha. That evil, midnight turns into another day scam....

2007-11-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

Rubber baby buggy bumpers.

I was totally thinking, no one I know is ever going to have anymore kids. It seemed sure that all of my friends are past that now (except one and we are just patiently waiting and hoping for some special day) and it'll just be waiting until our kids have kids... What a foolish person I am... So all of a sudden I know 3 people expecting a total of 5 babies (and I'll give you a clue 2 of them are only expecting 1). So how could I miss the opportunity to knit tiny garments!! You KNOW I can't. Here is experimental cap #1 in self striping Bernat Baby Coordinates

Then super tiny experimental cap #2, cabled with matching booties. It is really preemie sized when I was shooting for newborn size, whoops! 2 of the babies are girls. The other 3 are as yet a mystery. So I was trying to make the pink hat in newborn size. I'll just save it and see if any of the triplets is going to be a girl (they will most surely be preemies) and if not it will go to a tiny head over at Good Sam's NICU. I have also make a more masculine version in blue with alternating rows of cable and knit stitches.
Still working on those embossed leaves socks...

2007-10-27T16:17:00.001-07:00

Stash enhancement, sewing and some knitting content....

Seems like I disappeared from the face of the blogging world. I was quite busy working on this:

Yes, I totally made her wear her knee pads, I tried to figure out how to put her helmet on with her hat as well. DD, picked this out for herself from the sewing pattern books about 3 months ago, the stuff they have in the stores is never anything that she wants to be. I had a very difficult time finding the black and white check. All the fabrics were purchased and cut out about 3 weeks ago. So what do I do? I procrastinate until the day before it needs to be done and stay up all night to finish it. It had lots of pieces and took longer to assemble than I thought it was going to. Whoops. Here she is with Ninja DS, he likes store bought costumes, luckily. They are on their way to a Halloween party. She is taller than he is with her skates on.

So I couldn't resist and I ordered from the Loopy Ewe. What I was really after was the Pretty as a Peacock Shawl by Jae Koscierzynski, I have been stalking this pattern on Ravelry since the first time I saw it. The gal finally made a pattern and is selling it. Quite nice. The Loopy Ewe was one of a few places selling it online and well, since I already had $10 worth in the cart, I needed to get just $65 more and I'd be in the free shipping... spend and save, right!? So just a few dollars later and this is what I had....

Resembling Koigu, quite a bit is Shibui Knits Sock. It is 100% Superwash Merino. Soft and springy!Seaoast Handpainted Yarn in Jewels. This yarn is a super soft 60% Merino wool, 30% bamboo and 10% Nylon. Soft.
The most expensive of my spend and save plan was this Schaefer Heather. The colorway is called Storm at Sea. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Mmmmm. It is wonderfully soft 55% Merino 30% silk and 15% Nylon. It has a nice sheen to it. It is safe to say this is ANOTHER ball of Schaefer Sock yarn that will NEVER become a pair of socks. This color is almost exactly the same as this... and this ... the only difference is there is less gray. I guess I must like that color scheme...

I dorked out and in ALL my picture taking I forgot to photograph my Embossed Leaves Maizy socks. Sock #1 has already turned the heel and is working up the ankle, slowly. I've got a lot of other time consuming stuff going on that keeps me from having a lot of time to knit, unfortunately. I think the book fair can plan itself, right!? Knitting, is WAY more important.

2007-10-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy!!!!

Yikes, I have been a busy bee. Little time for knitting, I am experiencing some knitting DT's. But all the sewing I have been doing is kind of making up for it. Alas, Halloween draws nearer and as it does I become an insane, costume-sewing machine. Somehow I got into this thing of sewing my DD's costume every year. Each year she picks some bizarre costume and I am forced to make it. It started when she was almost 2, DS went as Mike Wazowski (Monster's Inc) so she went as Boo, that costume wasn't too bad, a big fleece shirt and some fleece leggings (to be warm of course) 2 pony tails and it was good to go. The next year, was Snow white (not too hard, just kind of a lot of pieces), followed by the Little Mermaid (got some awesome scaly looking, shiny, green material for the tail) then last year's Princess Leia (with hand sewn fake buns). This year? A roller skating 50's style car hop, of course! It only has about a thousand pieces to sew together, yet manages to be a fairly skimpy (not inappropriate age wise, but rather, weather wise) outfit. Short sleeves, short skirt... Well, she'll have hat on, so at least her head will be warm! Then of course, I am making my Halloween costume, which needs to be completed by Wednesday night, for our Halloween Costume Bunco. No stress, no stress.

Well, in the midst of all this sewing goodness, we had a little soccer tournament in which my team ROCKED!!! Yes they did! Won 2 games (1-0, 2-0), tied 1 (1-1)and went into the championship game against a team that spanked us last time we played them (like 4 to 0, ouch!). We unfortunately lost, but the girls played so well, the other team only scored 1 point and it was a total fluke point, because the girl kicked it out of my goalie's hands (boo, bad call on the ref's part). Which put us in second place for the final standings!! It was excellent, but tiring. Not that I had to play any of the 4 games, but I pace up and down the side lines and yell at the top of my lungs. I pretty much felt like I lived at those soccer fields this weekend. I am lucky to have such a great team of girls!

2007-10-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

Bag of lies is finished!

It is beautiful, but sadly, it is RIDICULOUSLY short. I have tried contacting Deanna, of Deanna's vintage styles. But she doesn't respond. So if you happen to come across an attractive package of beaded scarves at a knit show and think you'd like to have it, and the package says "Deanna's Vintage styels, email VintageStyles@AOL.com fax 1.313.640.8683" on the label. Turn away! Don't buy it! It will be ridiculously short with significantly less yardage than the package says and you will never get a response from the seller when you contact her! Turn away, RUN away, and make sure you take your friend, entranced as she is with the beads, along with you and tell everyone you know! Heck you can even start now! She is an older woman, short and heavy set, blondish brown hair and glasses. She has a rough voice. Now you will know her when you see her!

Here it is, in all its tiny, finished glory: I have included the girls in the lower photo so you can see just how short this is! It barely goes past the boobs!

2007-10-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to post some things! I got my swap stitch markers in the mail on Thursday! They are SO cute! I love the giant eyelashes on the star. I did not mean to ignore my fantastic partner, Brenda Flowers. Thank you Brenda!

Also in the mail, I got my latest installment of the the Shawl club kits. This is the Diamonds and Flowers Shawl, by Earth Heart Designs. The yarn is Heather wool, columbine blue, which is quite purpley I never listed my 2 prior kids in the stash on Ravelry, because I was not sure what brand the yarn is. I have asked and it is Jagger Spun, Heather.

Also I FINALLY got the new correct, Sock Pixie yarn. Here is it on the left next to its ugly stepsister Badlydyedlot on the right. The color is Poppy. The new skein is super gorgeous and it feels fantastic, I am looking forward to knitting with it. Thank you Sock Pixie!

2007-10-05T16:28:00.000-07:00

Kaffe Fasset Chevron socks are finished. I finished them up last night after I got home at 10:30pm. I was a little wired up from drinking a caffeinated Diet Coke (and my husband was snoring like a 3 foot chain saw) so I watched a couple of my recorded CSI (and CSI NY) episodes and finished the sock up. They are a perfect match and I am as pleased as punch about that.

The "bag of lies" scarf as I have referred to it, is now 1/2 way finished, I reached the half way point on Wednesday night. Sorry no pics, it didn't occur to me for some reason to take a picture of it as I was working on it. It is quite short and (blogless) Melissa has suggest it become an ascot *smirk*! Teenuh finally received the new sock Pixie yarn and she took pictures of it! It looks SO yummy great! I can hardly wait to get my paws on it!!! Forget this weekend Tennuh, I'm coming over now!

2007-10-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

A Bag of LIES!

I have been sold a bag of lies. I have never met something so "easy" that was so damn hard to do! Working on the beaded scarf kit, I decide to use my yardage meter to neatly divide the skein of ribbon yarn in two. First I wound the entire skein onto a bobbin while measuring it. What the hell!? The card says 200 yds. My meter says more like 145 yds!? I'm thinking, the meter must be goofy, so I carefully measure out about 20 yds with a tape and then run it through, and surprise, surprise the meter is working properly. So I wind the yarn back across onto a second cardboard bobbin I cut out. OMG! The fucking skein is still 55 yds short of what the label says!?? How can that be?? What a rip off!! It is a good thing I am not making something big that I bought skeins based on the amount of yardage I need. Jesus. I am still pissed though.

Now that I am all mad about that. I go on to "easily stringing the pre-strung beads onto the yarn." Ugh!!! It was a fucking nightmare. Just to do 1/2 of the skein of yarn with the 6 strands of beads, I swear that the frigging string untied no less than 12 times and broke no less than 20 times!!! It was a nightmare. The string (or even the yarn!) would break and beads would to FLYING off of the string and onto the couch, the floor, the secret place where all lost things go.... Btw, if you have to remove every bead that won't slide easily over the bump, I think you would not have any beads left. But the really bad ones could not easily be removed by "untying and removing the bad bad." No, no, no, no, no! You have to nearly dump the entire lot of beads on the ground, so instead I got out my pliers and began CRUSHING the beads off the string. Crunch, pop! *bead shrapnel flew through the air....* Then I got up, picked up all the loose beads and corraled them inside of a plastic box. . So I have all the beads in the box and DUH! I tip the friggin' thing over and spend the next 35 minutes or so picking up the beads!! This project has been SO frustrating. And I am realizing that I get to do that ALL over again when I made the other half!!!

Here is my progress at present. Sliding the beads along the length of the skein is a pretty big pain in the butt. I think it might be a better plan to slide 2 strings of beads onto the terminal end of the yarn so that you didn't have to slide all the ends beads along 70 yds of yarn. At least it looks good, right?

2007-09-30T16:58:00.001-07:00

Oakland TKCGA show.

Yeah, so it isn't Stitches, but you can go up and do it in half a day and get some stuff and have a good time. I went up with my best pal Teenuh, her MIL (in town visiting) and my mom. We parked for free out on the street. Strolled into the lobby about half an hour before opening, busted out our coupons and bought our tickets, only to be pleasantly surprised with GOODY bags!! Woo Hoo! They were apparently the goody bags for the people who preregistered for classes, which they had left over and were giving them out to all the early arrivals. We got a big bag from Red Heart that had an assortment of balls inside, (there was only 1 of these inside, but my mom gave me hers, citing that she would never use it.)There (and she traded me another ball not pictured for her matching ball of this washable wool) as well as a fabulous large black tote from Lion Brand Yarn that had 3 balls of hot pink Wool Ease and a pair of lion size 6 plastic needles inside, as well as a coordinating scarf pattern. Sweet! Everyone loves free, even if it isn't your favorite yarn on Earth, damnit! It's free!

So then we waited a bit, met some friendly ladies out in the lobby. Finally we got to go inside. The Village Knitting and Spinning Store was there from Solvang, CA they have the BEST selection of knitting books (never cheap!) with hard to find American selections as well as some really awesome German books. Of course I am such an idiot, I always buy books early on then have to carry them around until my shoulder feels as it will fall off. Well, actually my Mom came along and she bought them for me for Christmas so I had to carry them all day, but can't use them until after Christmas. We meandered around and I picked up some fabulous yarns.... Zephyr wool silk from Terylynn Needle arts
A beaded scarf kit, with Interlacements yarn and beads.
Then my very last purchase was this Silk Crack, as I have been referring to it. It is a soft, shiny beautiful, ultrafine silk yarn. It cost me an arm and a leg and some of my dignity, but I got it anyway. It is too marvelous for words, in my favorite peacock colors!! I could just sleep with this in my hands... Now this is something like 5,400+ yds. But I plan on holding 3 strands together at a time to accomplish what it is I want to accomplish, effectively cutting my yardage to 1/3 of that to 1,800 yards. Yippee. The booth people had made a beautiful sock out of this, with a size 000 needle, not in my future plans at all!!!

2007-09-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

Still Alive.
Still knitting. I finished sock 1 of my Regia Designer Line Kaffe Fasset socks. They look quite nice. If I had made them a tad bit smaller they wouldn't have fit my feet. Whew! Close call on that. Sorry I haven't had time to take a picture yet. I just turned the heel on the second sock. So now I am in the home stretch. The good news is, they are a PERFECT match! Yahoo! This weekend it sounds like we will be rounding up quite the posse to go to the Oakland TKGA market place on Sunday. It is no where NEAR the size of Stitches, but it is always fun to shop a bunch of corralled yarn stores and feel like you can spend money... because I would NEVER walk into my LYS (any one of the 10 located around here) and dish out the dollars like I do at a yarn show... I know, sad case. I always feel like the thing I am looking at that I am liking, I will most certainly NEVER see it again so I had better buy it RIGHT now or regret it for the rest of my knitting life. Yeah, so the drama.

I am almost done with those socks, so I need to pick my next project. I am beginning to feel slightly panicked at not knowing what to knit next. Maybe some socks with that Panda Cotton picked up a couple of weeks ago. I am feeling slightly commitmentphobic about starting anything big that will take too long to finish because I just don't have a lot of time between soccer, Tae Kwon Do, and all the things I keep suckering myself into doing at the school. Anyone want to peel any box tops for me? We had a Bunco-tastic time on Tuesday with a theme bunco. It was hysterical fun. Looks like we are going to need to pick up at least 2 more players next year when we renew our year, anyone want to join?

2007-09-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it took long enough, but DD's Tender Heart Shawl is finally finished. Helen's Halfpint Farms Sock (superwash and tencel) 540 yds. purchased at Stitches West. I had about 6 feet of yarn left over when I was finished. It is worked from the top center out. With columns of hearts running outward and garter stitch columns in between. The finished size is much larger than I thought it was going to be (my guess was 35"x15"), 52" wide by 23" long and I didn't even do a hard block, I did a pretty soft block. I am always thrown off by how much lacy things grow when they are blocked. It is going to be pretty big for her, but at least she can wear it for a while without out growing it, she can wear it until she gets tired of it, or refuses to wear hearts or bright colors anymore. Which probably will be sooner than I would hope. *sob, sob*The bright pictures show the actual color, the darker, salmon colored pictures are just my camera not cooperating and my photoshop isn't working so I couldn't correct the color! This is definitely some of the brightest yarn I have ever seen. Once I finally got my pattern worked out this was very easy to make. In theory I think this shawl could be cranked out in like a week if you worked at it industriously and didn't goof off at the beginning hoping the pattern was right and then dawdle at the end trying to figure out what kind of edging you were putting on the bottom. I spent a week approaching the end and trying to decide if I should put a chevron type edge, or a lacy edge, or a rounded edge, or fringe, and finally when I thought I had decided I notice that I hardly had any yarn left and the only edge I could do was the one that matched the rest of the edging with the yo's and the garter stitch rows. If I had paid any attention sooner, I wouldn't have wasted the time thinking about it! BTW, DD is already in bed and she didn't see it when it was blocking, so she doesn't even know it is done yet. I suppose I'll let you know what she thinks of it later on.... Cross your fingers!

2007-09-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Too busy to knit!??!!

I didn't knit a stitch all weekend! Friday after school was Rehersal for BIL's wedding. It was long and ran over and the 7:30 rehersal dinner at Uncle Chongs (EVIL!!) Chinese Restaurant didn't start serving food until freakin' 8:45 at which point a bowl of warmish dishwater soup was served to the crew of 100 people waiting. 20 minutes later the next dish came out. We had early soccer games on Saturday (9am game time + arriving early to warm up + field set up = 8:15 am field arrival time = leaving the house at 8 am = getting up at 6:45 and getting the kids up by 7:20 am) so needlesss to say by the time the 3rd dish came out (9:15pm) I had convinced the kids to eat their fill of what was there and was packing up to leave. We drove back home from Union City, brushed the kids teeth and tucked them in a meer 2.5 hours after bedtime.

Get up early. Game on. Both teams played exciting action filled games. I had the grandparents RUSH DD home and get her in the shower while I reminded the team about photo day and packed up the game gear. I get home, shower fast, get dressed fast (well okay I took 10 minutes to put on my panty hose, but it isn't easy with the socks over my hands and I only had 2 pairs and couldn't afford to rip them and have to put on another pair). 20 minutes after arriving at home, I have showered, dressed and styled my hair, I pack up DD and take her to Blush at the mall for a makeover, where they try to tell me I got bumped out of my appointment for not prepaying the day before when I called in for the fucking appointment!? Why the hell do they have appointments if they don't honor them and they don't tell you when you call the day before for an appointment that you have to prepay that day or lose your spot? So when I almost explode, standing there in my panty hose and dress and heels with my make-up compact in my hand and my jewelry in a bag in my hand that I am trying to put on, because they are telling me I no longer have and appointment for DD, they cower away a little bit staring up at the very angry now 6 foot tall (remember those heels) big gal glaring at her with laser beams coming out her eyes and then they take her to a vanity and fix her up . They fix up DD in about 20 minutes (updo, make-up, nails, the works, they are quick). And we are merrily on our way to meet DS and DH (Who upon picking up his Tux on Thurs tries it on, only to have me spot a tiny 4 inch tear in the back of the jacket and has had to go there on Sat to pick up new tux because obviously we didn't have enough to worry about). As a last minute thought, that turned out to be a good plan because we didn't eat again until 6 pm, a quick drive through McD's drive through, back home, eat, finish getting the kids dressed, jump in the car and GO!

We drive up to the church in Union City, arrive 10 minutes prior to when we were supposed to be there (can you believe that I got the NOTORIOUS DH to an event on time!?) and then wait. It felt a lot better to be waiting there, on time, than at home! Amazingly the wedding starts on time. DD proudly acts as flower girl and DS does an excellent and very serious job of being Ring Bearer. We finish with a thousand pics. DD, BIL, MIL, SIL, DH, DS, and me etc. ( I am of course the Amazon in the picture....) Then off to reception. It was very nice. It just took the wedding planners SO long to finally let people dance on the dance floor (reception let in at 7 pm, they didn't start the open dancing until about 9:30) that they had just started and I insisted that the kids and I catch a ride home with my Mom and Dad who were also in attendance. DH didn't like that. He was all mad, like a petulant child that I made the kids leave. DS had actually asked to go home. He was tired. He had gotten up early and played all 4 quarters in an hour long soccer game. As well as performing his very serious duty of Ring Bearer (the priest told him to guard the rings and coins (this was a Filippino wedding) with his life, so he was all worried and took it VERY seriously). So I was obliging to take him home and his sister as well, because as luck would have it, we also had to take out team pictures for Soccer on Sunday morning. We had an early time slot to boot! So we left at 9:50 and DH stayed until 11:15 when they turned on the lights and told everyone to go home... So

Sunday we got up early and got our team pics taken (9:30 am) and stayed at the opening day activities for too long. Grandma and Grandpa picked up the kids at lunch and took them out to play at a park. We spent the day at Sports Authority and Tuesday Morning after dropping off the Tuxes at Men's Warehouse. I think DH wanted to do more, but my Asthma was very bad and it was quite restricting in my ability to get around. So I spent more of my Sunday sitting on a bench in Sports Authority than one should have to. I have a husband who quite enjoys shopping... We took the kids to Armadillo Willy's for Dinner and got back after bed time, it was a relief to get home on Sunday night (9:15 pm), and get the kids in bed, until I realized I should have made some flyers for the Home and School Club and set to work on that until about 1:30 am. Now they are printed and distributed and I no longer have to worry about them. So I should finally have at least a little bit of time to get some knitting done.

2007-09-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

I am down to the last repeat of the Tenderheart Shawl. So only about 20 rows to go. Just as I am nearing the home stretch, it occurs to me that I should probably put some nice lace edge on it, instead of the 3 row wide garter stitch I was going to finish it in (like the rest of the shawl). Now I can't decide. Boogers. That is all I have to say, and every time my precious daughter catches me knitting my KF sock, she glares and at and says, "Well, where is MY shawl, huh? When are you going to finish or are you just going to keep making socks for YOURSELF!?" Man, being guilt tripped by a child. Yeah, so what if I started this months ago and it is taking me ages to finish something pretty small and everything else I do is done is 2 months or less. What's the problem? Sheesh, slave driver.

2007-08-31T07:47:00.001-07:00

MS3 Finished and blocked.

I finished MS3 yesterday afternoon and had just enough time to block it before soccer practice. I probably could have taken more care in blocking the wing end but I was running out of time. It looks wonderful. It is airy and soft and light. I love the design. Here are some photos before it was blocked. Sad and crinkly the feather section looks like lumps and the beads only show on the wrong side. The edged curl under and you can't see the beads at all. Blocked, you can see every fabulous detail. The edge is uncurled and the feathers are open, every bead is visible. Two thumbs up for Melanie of Pink Lemon Twist. This was really fun and I am looking forward already to next years project.

Guess who cut in line in the queue, ah, if you guessed that luscious Kaffe Fassett Yarn, you are right. I have already cast on for a Chevron sock, with a 10 st repeat. Right now it looks kind of big over 60 sts on a 3.00 mm needle. Still dragging along on the Tenderheart shawl. With DD angrily yelling at me any time she sees me working on anything else. What a slave driver. All missing photos have been added in to the previous posts as well.

2007-08-29T16:51:00.001-07:00

2007-08-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

Photoshop disc located...

Phew after a daunting search through this messed up computer room of squalor I share with my pack rat husband I have FINALLY found my Photoshop CS disc. I am adding pics to previous posts that were missing their pictures. This whole new computer thing has been a lot of trouble. I don't know how some people can upgrade every 6 months or less. It took me nearly a month just to get everything running. Now maybe I can actually get some knitting done and have some genuine knitting content on my page....

By the way, the Sock Pixie lady is super awesome. Because we were so disappointed in the way the yarn looked, Teenuh (who placed the order) complained about the total lack of red in the red colorways. So the Sock Pixie gal is replacing them for us. That is great. I am excited to get my new RED poppies skein.

2007-08-25T22:54:00.001-07:00

Still no pictures.

Heart break city, I can't find my damn Photoshop cd. Now I have fancy pants yarn to post pics of too. Today Teenuh and I went with Cynthia to a Cat Bordhi book signing at Purlessence. She was out promoting her new book about unconventional socks, New Pathways For Sock Knitters. About all I can say, she was unlike any other author I have met. She was quiet and didn't really have much to say.

That said, Purlessence did have some sock yarn on sale to celebrate this book signing. So I purchased some Crystal Palace Maizy, 2 skeins in Nightshade and 1 skein in Bittersweet, this is destined to become socks, with the solid Bittersweet on heels and toes. Not on sale, but undeniably NEEDED was Regia's Designer Line, Kaffe Fasset Landscape in Caribbean colorway, which is MUCH more blue than it looks in that picture.

Also joining my stash are 2 skeins of Sock Pixie. The first skein, Poppy, is a red - brown skein that really disappointed me. The color of yarn on the ordering page is a BRIGHT firey red easing into maroons and brown. In actuality there is no bright red, not any kind of actual red at all, only maroons blending into browns. Teenuh, also ordered a red, Ladybug, which had no brightness to the red either. Hers was a very muddied maroon mixing into just a tiny bit of distinct purple the rest was a muddy blend between the purple and maroon. The second skein I bought, did not disappoint. It was Stormy Seas and was every bit as stormy and sea-y as in the order page picture. It is exactly this kind of thing that reinforces my behavior to only buy things that come in shades of blue - green and occasional purples.... Ah, the yarn is spongy and soft and is dye stench free. Each skein comes wrapped in an individual cello bag, which I found a little bizarre, ever heard of this thing called environment? I would order this yarn again, but defintely nothing in red.... probably some Lake, or Peacock or Emerald sea....

Still plugging away on MS3, I have 20 rows to go until the end. I am going to try and finish it by this weekend, so I can get it blocked. My least favorite part. From what I have seen of other peoples shawls (well except the one woman who hung it on her dummy upside down!?), the wing thrown across the shoulder looks FABULOUS. I am excited to see mine finished.

2007-08-19T21:23:00.001-07:00

Umm. Anyone seen my Photoshop CS disc?

2007-08-16T16:32:00.001-07:00

Big blog backup....
All caused by a new computer. I got a new computer on Sunday. So I couldn't download my pics until it was set up, but first I had to take hours saving stuff from my old computer. 15 cds worth of mp3's. 10 cd's of photos... Documents etc... All removed from the old computer. Then the new computer was installed, new flat panel lcd monitor set up. Computer turned on. Set up took ages. It wasn't done until Monday evening. Loading drivers for all my usb gadgets, printers, camera's mp3 players, etc. So, Monday night the computer hibernates. Tuesday morning, it is in a coma. Won't turn back on. We punch every button, push every key. FINALLY, about 30 minutes later it wakes up. Tuesday I check my email. install most of my versions of Sims 2 and feel good to go. check my email , turn off the computer, and go to bed. Wednesday morning. NEW COMPUTER DOESN'T WORK!! Dead as a doorknob and utterly useless. A giant paper weight. We spend 2 hours trying to get it booted up so I can at least remove all of my data from it. But NO, it won't cooperate. So we end up returning it to the store with all my passwords and logins and bookmarks and document files saved on the damned hard drive that we can't get into. New computer came home on Wednesday afternoon and has for the last 24 hours performed perfectly.

I have all my programs installed now except one. Photoshop. As soon as I find my disc, I can download and upload photos. The blog should be back on track. Today's thrilling action? Washimg more of the wool and working on Mystery Stole 3 clue 6. Busy weekends and the beginning of soccer season has already cut into my knitting time!!

2007-08-12T02:06:00.000-07:00

Wash, Fluff, spin.
(pictures to come to this post as soon as I find my Photoshop...)
Well, I am mostly doing Washing and fluffing and pretty much the only spinning yet is in the spin cycle on the wash.... Processing a whole fleece from a Cormo -X I got from Merry Meadow's farm. This somewhat tedious process has made me sure as sure can be that I don't want to buy another fleece without holding it in my hands first. Because, Boy Howdy, this fleece was friggin' filthy. This naughty sheep must have rolled in the mud, just days before shearing time. Or maybe the moral of the story is, buy washed fleeces instead...
The drum carding is going well. My lovely assistant DD was helping me to crank the handle, but she got mad when I asked her to crank a little slower a few too many times. She wants to crank it like she is reeling in line on a sail boat in the America's cup or something. So, needless to say, the first batch was full of noils from the overly vigorous carding it received, following batts were significantly smoother. So far 3 batts. I don't have a scale to weigh them on. But I am guessing at this rate, I'll get probably 20+ batts of this size from the fleece.

2007-08-09T00:58:00.000-07:00

On wings and other things.

Well, I have stared at the wing for 2 days now. Waiting for clue 6. I don't like the transition from clue 4 to clue 5. An error was announced on the beading schema where there are 2 more rows than there should have been between beads. I noticed this, but thought it must have been part of the transition plan. Turns out it wasn't. I am trying to get over it. Looking at what I have now... I am guessing I may complete the wing then will probably decide that I hate it and will rip back and duplicate the left side. I am really liking the feather pattern for the wing though. I think I might flip it and do 2 sides and join it together or Do a magic toe type center and knit out from a center line. Although I believe that Melanie is attempting to design a 2 winged shawl at this point.

I finished DS's socks. I was nearly done by the time I left Boba knits on Sunday. Somehow the ankle on sock 2 didn't come out perfectly matched (it was in fact, horribly unmatched, being 2 WHOLE color stripes off from sock 1) . Later that evening when I reached the top and was about to cast off I decided I couldn't stand the imperfection and I ripped back to the beginning of the heel. To my surprise I discovered that I had actually goofed on the heel and had pulled in 4 stitches from needle 1 resulting in 4 more rows than necessary. Upon reknitting I found that I was now 1 gray row off from a perfect match to sock 1. Sock 2 has 2 rows of light gray (left sock) and sock 1 has 1 row(right sock). So I ripped back again and reknit. It still came up with 2 rows. I tried one more time (you see where this obsessive compulsive thing becomes a problem...) came up again with 2 light gray rows and finally threw in the towel. It will just have to be 2 stripes of light gray. I reknit the sock up to the top counting rows, and gee what a surprise, I am 1 row shorter at the top on the dark gray stripe. I tried adding another row, but somehow, 1 row to my twisted mind made the sock appear longer... I know, how could 1 tiny row on size 2 needles make any difference. I decided since it was already mismatched, just go for broke and have the top off by 1 row too right? Well, here they are in all of their imperfect glory....

2007-08-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

Clue5 finished!

Today we had a mini reunion (6 families) with my Las Madres playgroup. We haven't seen most of the kids in 1.5 - 2 years. It was really amazing how much the children had grown and changed and how little all the moms and dads had changed (although we all seemed to have done a fine job of growing at least a little fatter, myself, of course included.) It was really great to be reunited with old friends again, it makes you realize how much you miss them! Time was spent at the park, chatting and taking pictures, so not much knitting was done. Though I did manage to finish clue 5 today...

I am not sure about this whole "wing" thing. The last time people were so excited about wings was when they added them to maxi pads, now 6,000+ knitters can't stop talking about them. My view on the wings : I thought the point of this Mystery Stole exercise was to trust the designer. To blindly and faithfully follow a pattern that would result in something satisfactorily beautiful. So I have proceeded to make this wing. Looking at it as it is, it seems, suspiciously odd. More like the one winged Swan Prince of Hans Christian Anderson's The Wild Swans story than the Swans of Swan lake. I will however work the entire thing and upon completion of clue number 7, decide whether said wing stays or goes. Perhaps this wing will be SO magnificent and SO spectacular, I will want to rip off the front end of the shawl and attach a wing to the other side! Or maybe I will knit clues 5, 6 and 7, have some sort of epiphany and tear the damn wing off and repeat clues 1-4 to kitchener stitch it together, fortunately I am right handed so I am able to do this! We'll see what the future brings. or maybe I'll just hate it and give it away to someone else. That always works good. (Teachers at christmas? Mothers in Law? Friends who don't knit? Small people I know with really bad taste?) Well, I apologize that I haven't taken a picture of it yet. I'll try to do that in the next day or so. It is worth mentioning that both Teenuh and I have chosen the side of EVIL!!! in choosing the color of Odile instead of Odette. Although the fact of the matter is many of the knitters (older or not) knitting this project picked on the side of white, simply because they could see the stitches better (without having to bring in high powered lights and a 100x's magnification lens) than they could with black and I have nothing white in my entire stash.

2007-07-31T23:38:00.000-07:00

Look! Pictures.
I have been knitting, I swear! It has been ages since I've posted pictures. As usual we have been a very busy family. Here is the past weekend.

Saturday: Aptos, CA Seacliff State Beach, The Kids TKD beach party.

Sunday: Felton, CA Roaring Camp Railroad, A Day out with Thomas

That is a genuine full scale Thomas, like a dope I cut off Thomas' face in the picture, I hope my sister took a better picture. It was a beautiful day and the only spoiler was my nervous Nephew throwing up as soon as he was on the train! Fun!

Monday & Tuesday Swimming Fun with Friends at a Friend's House

All the while I was making The Everlasting Bagstopper from LionBrand Yarn Incredible. It took 4 balls of yarn. The first picture is the bottom of the bag while still on the needles. The second obviously is finished, ends woven in. The finished size is 15" tall (not counting the handles) 4" wide on the bottom. Instead of using sewn on handles as Amy Singer prescribed, I knitted on a pair of handles using a band 10 sts wide, picked up from the edge, directly above the bottom corner, then made them 15" long then grafted the end above the other corner. I used the size 7 needles so it was pretty tight gauge, hoping it would stretch out less and maintain its wide shape. I have loaded it up with about 10 lbs of stuff to see how much it stretches. It stretches some, but not an unreasonable amount. Loaded up it is probably about 25" long.
Last but not least the Felici Firefighter sock for DS! I made them a little big because he outgrows them so fast and more importantly he won't be wearing them until Fall, as it will be Flip Flops until school starts. Last but not least, I have arrived!! I am finally on Ravelry. I won't be such an idiot next time and I will jump on the bandwagon the 1st time it passes by and not the 100th... At least I am not number 21,500th in the queue... talk about waiting to get on the bandwagon.... Oh yeah only 2 days to MS3 clue 5! Sweet!

2007-07-29T00:02:00.000-07:00

I am not a notorious project starter. I am a finisher. I start something, finish it off, then move on to the next project. Lately though I just keep on starting, project after project. Because 3 inches of toe on a sock, a 1/3 finished "Tenderheart Shawl" and Mystery Stole are not enough, I started an Everlasting Bagstopper today. I keep intending to make a bag, but I've never found the right pattern and, though I knew it was very easy to design one, put a bottom on it, make an even number of stitches and then do faggot stitch around until you hands fall off, I was never inspired. However the prospect of wiling away my day at the beach for DS and DD's Tae Kwon Do school's beach party, and the 2 wool projects and 1 alpaca project I had on the needles seemed a little hot and destined to absorb sand faster than the crotch pocket on a swimming suit, I thought I needed to bring along something else to work on. I thought, Everlasting Bagstopper, knit up with something entirely different might be cool. A week and a half ago I happened to pick up quite a bit of Lion Yarn Incredible (which is very pretty but was always over priced and knit up has a texture that eerily reminds me of a crabs lungs/gills when you are cleaning out a crab for consumption) at the local Dolllar Tree for the amazing price of $1 per ball (well duh, it is the Dollar Tree right?)! I switched up the needle size a bit using 7 and 11 instead of 5 and 10.5, using dpns for the beginning instead of circulars then switched to circular once the stitches were picked up. It is coming out, super cool! I LOVE it. It is pretty and sparkly and I am currently using Autumn Leaves, a wonderful brown/copper color that looks great! The online photo of the yarn doesn't do it justice, it just doesn't shine the way it does in person. This bag is going to be the eye catcher of all Everlasting's made and I have a feeling I will be working on it tomorrow (well, later today that is) as I ride on Thomas the Tank Engine under the shade of the Roaring Camp Redwoods!

2007-07-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

It's Friday and I grant myself permission to finish clue 4 chart F! Wahoo!

2007-07-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

I finished the first sock of DS Felici Firefighter socks while watching Planet Earth when I should have been going to bed. It is really quite nice, it is SO soft. It really is some of the nicest superwash Merino I have ever felt, we'll have to see how it washes up, if it gets all pilly or shrinks some or if it comes out completely unscathed like the SUPERWool I am suspecting it of being. I am surely going to have to order at lease what, 8 balls, nah, I'd need at least 11 (but no odd balls so at least 12 right?) to make the $45 minimum to get the free shipping... Oh what a sacrifice!

DS's foot is relatively (child's size 13/1) small and skinny so I have a fair amount left over in one skein, I'll have to make something small out of it, like wrist warmers or something. Now to begin the next sock. I'll have to go pull out a bunch of yarn until I get to the right spot. Teenuh knows how obsessed I am with getting perfectly matching socks (unmatched socks, like the ones I made from Trekking drive me BoNkErS!!). There is an 8 stripe variation (amazingly enough with only 4 colors) before the next matching repeat so there'll be 2 chunks of leftover yarn, unless Goddess of knitting willing I got nearly perfectly matched balls with similar starting points.....

As for MS3. I am taking my time on Chart f. I have forbidden myself to work steadily on it, until at least Friday, then it will almost feel like a normal clue release....

2007-07-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

Running out of things to do.

I made what now sort of seems like a mistake by finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Sunday because I found that nobody else that I know has finished reading it yet!! So I have to sit patiently and keep my mouth shut about what happened so as not to ruin it for anyone else.

After finishing the book I blasted through chart E of MS3. I have started chart F but am trying to pace myself realizing that there are still 10 more days until the next chart is released. Work a line here, work a line there.... I am still working on the Tenderheart shawl and still working on DS's socks. It just doesn't have the same sense of excitement though, does it?

2007-07-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

Hooray for clue 4...

Printed and marked all 4 pages of pattern for Mystery Stole 3. I have begun working away. I love it. It is so fun to not really have an idea of what you are doing and just go on good faith that the designer will not lead you astray.

Not that I really needed more to do. I started a pair of ST stitch socks in Felici Firefighter colorway for DS. I almost hijacked the yarn to make a pair of socks for myself. I was working away in a lovely chevron when my mom looked over at my socks and asked if they were for DS or DH because I had finally succeeded in finding a wonderfully manly color. Feeling outed and guilty for being caught in making myself another pair of socks out of something clearly intended for another person, I promptly ripped back the 4 inches of progress and reduced it to the size of DS's foot. This yarn is so very soft and smooth. It is yummy. I am going to have to order some more Felici for myself in one of the 8 fabulous colorways, or maybe all 8!

The Tenderheart shawl, (as I think of it fondly in my head, when my daughter was small(er) she had a speech impediment and was often heard saying "tenda haaaart" in a way that was so very cute) is progressing nicely although I am thinking it is more like Love-A-Lot in the color scheme and volume of hearts. My pattern is working out nicely, although my one concern is that it increases in width more than length and I will have to stop when it is shorter than intended simply so that it doesn't become too wide to be useful. I tried to rework the shawl to have only 1 increase per (rs) row but couldn't quite get the repeats to follow nicely and what not.

2007-07-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

Never Ever gonna get in.

ravelry > antsy

patiently awaiting your invite?

If you've added your name to the invite request list on our front page then you can use this form
to check your place in line.

Found you!

You signed up on June 5, 2007
You are #7052 on the list.
1076 people are ahead of you in line.
11343 people are behind you in line.
32% of the list has been invited so far

Damn. Why did I wait SO Long to sign up. Maybe I was sort of thinking, "Who would want to catalog their entire stash and all of their FO's outside of their blogs? Surely this madness will blow over. It won't be that popular" (delusional self-talk). Then, "It can't stay in Beta forever, soon everyone will be able to sign up and no one will care much any more." (more delusional self-talk). Then, "Well, if I'm getting on the bandwagon I'd better get moving or I'll be left far behind." Cripes, what was I thinking waiting? #7,052 on the list. Over a thousand people ahead of me. Waiting. I can tell you what I'm thinking now..."Damn! I'm glad I'm not the person who is 11,343 people behind me!" Do the math. I am 7052. 1076 people are head. 5976 people are already in. How much more room could there be!? Isn't the pool getting crowded? There are still 12420 people on the waiting list. Will 18396 people fit!? With all of their stashes and fo's and wips. What could possibly contain this?

2007-07-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

I am very impatiently waiting for clue #4. In the meantime, I have been driving myself nuts trying to design a shawl with hearts on it for my DD. I am the world's biggest heart hater, and some how I ended up with a daughter who is so totally into hearts and pink stuff and stuff that is just so girly! I bought this bright pink and purple yarn at Sitches from Helen's Half Pint Farm. I poured through my pattern books. Graphed extensively (started this part 3 separate times over the last 4 months before I sat down and got serious about it.) Began knitting. Ripped back. Re charted (repeat these 3 steps about 20 times, yeah seriously, until I kid you not, 6 AM!) At some point I switched to some waste yarn, so as not to wear out this wonderful yarn. I went to bed when I realized the sun was coming up. Began working on it again the next morning. Repeating those 3 infamous steps. FINALLY I liked what I saw, cast on 8 stitches and started to knit. I am still not entirely fond of the way it is working out, I think it should be more lacy, but I don't want it to be too lacy, since I think she is planning on using it for practical warming purposes and she said she likes it the way it is, though I suspect this is because she doesn't want me to try and redesign it, she just wants it finished. I found things worked out easier if I used a TON of stitch markers, you may have not ever seen so many markers on one project. I am waiting to see how nice or ugly it turns out before I post pictures... You'll just have to wait and see.

2007-07-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! MS3 clue #3 finished. This is a shot of only the newest portion. This one went quick. It was fairly repetitious and just cranked off the needles, it was very similar to clue 2 and the pattern was fairly obvious in that you could see if you'd made a mistake as soon as you reached those diagonal lines traversing the stole. Here it is in its entirety still not blocked at all. My edges LOVE to curl under, I'll probably have to starch the edges a little bit when I block it. The only bummer now is that I am done for a WHOLE week. I should have taken my time... savored it a little. The next week will be a challenge, do I knit first or read my Harry Potter book. They'll both probably take about the same amount of time (well okay, the book will probably take me about an hour more than the knitting) How do I decide!? I guess if my Amazon shipment doesn't arrive before the clue is posted, that will decide for me, won't it!?

2007-07-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly I got right into the Adobe file for the MS3 Clue 3 with no problems and got my pages downloaded and printed out. No huge lag, no mad rush of 6,000 people, what a relief.

So what a dork am I!? I just realized that I never posted pics of my custom needles and markers that I ordered from Scary Merry. The arrived the day before I left for Hawaii so I never had time, but duh, I should have done it as soon as I got home right? I stumbled onto her super nifty cool designs on Myspace (check out her pics it has all her work) of all places and promptly friended her and asked her to make me a of Corpse Bride needles. They are SOOO wonderful. I just need to make something that fits on straights and uses a size 6 needles so I can show them off. Ugh I am SO in love with them! She makes SO many cool things. I just want to sit around and fondle them.... You can see they are tiny (that's a dime for size reference) but SUPER detailed. Such excellent work! I was thinking of ordering some custom needles for someone special for maybe Christmas or her birthday(which just passed), but I couldn't decide what she might like best... Everything she does is so good how could you pick?!

2007-07-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Okee Dokee, here it is the picture of my MS3 with clue 2 finished.

It is not blocked at all, sorry for the beach towel underneath making different colors. If you click on it, you can see the beads, they certainly don't show up at all in that tiny picture, they look totally black in the photograph, they are actually a myriad of lovely rainbow colors...

Thank goodness the next clue comes out tomorrow because durn this EVIL yarn of Luna Moth Shawl. It has again, escaped only to have a GIANT hole looming 15 rows below (and like 20 stitches WIDE) where I am working. I am sure now I will wind it into a ball and give the cursed thing to some other knitter who I would like to jinx instead. UGH! For the first time ever knitting lace, I am ready to rip this thing out and never start it again!!!

2007-07-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

MS3 Clue #2 finished!

I have to wait while my camera batteries charge . I have so many pics from vacation to download my batteries will need to last at least 20 minutes and right now they will last about 2 minutes. Then I'll post the pics.

2007-07-08T22:56:00.001-07:00

MS3 Clue #1 complete!

I finished clue 1 and am about to embark on clue 2. It looks quite nice already. This is going to be fun, fun, fun!

2007-07-07T01:33:00.000-07:00

Where on earth did I go again!?

I missed you all dear blogging friends! 2 weeks on Maui sure went fast! I can't believe how the time flew and I barely had any time to knit. With the exception of the airplane ride, I think I only found like 4 chances to pick up my knitting so not much progress was made on the Luna Shawl, maybe about 30 rows and I didn't manage to coerce any of my family members into taking pics of me knitting at the beach (they thought I was a super dork) or sitting at the mall waiting for my mom, or sitting in my Grandparent's house...

I was happy when I got home though, because the Mystery Stole 3, KAL had begun and I had some catching up to do! I am using the Alpaca Clouds from Knitpicks in the midnight colorway on size 4 needles. I am using iridescent black glass beads in size 6. It was started earlier this evening and I stopped for the evening on row 70, so I am nearly done with clue 1 (to row 100). Clue 2 goes to row 150 and the next clue comes next Friday so I am nearly back on track with the releases!

Someday I will post pictures of those Panda Cotton socks and the progress on the Luna shawl. Once I get caught up with MS3 I can work both at the same time.

2007-06-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

Panda Cotton socks are finished.

I finished weaving in the ends early Tuesday afternoon. It has been my only relaxation on a sea of stress. Who wants to take my vacation for me!? Well here they are in all their glory. This yarn is SUPER fantastic! It is so soft and nice to knit with and very stretchy too. The only not fun thing is the ends when you are weaving in the yarn unwinds into the plies and grabs onto itself and tries to make knots left and right and then doesn't want to follow the needle through. Other than that, I would MOST definitely use this yarn over and over and over to make socks.

2007-06-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

I won, I won, Ha ha ha!

For years I have grumbled and complained how much we need an air conditioner. I had a friend who did HVAC give us an AWESOME estimate.... no the DH said... we don't need it. Was he ever home then? Nope. He had a lovely air conditioned office to hide in at the hottest part of the day. Now, he works from home. And lo and behold, he's Too hot. Yesterday, he FINALLY decided we did need an air conditioner and we got a portable air conditioner! It was like heaven. I was sleeping on a cool breezy cloud last night (I always have a hard time sleeping when it is any temp over say... 72 degrees. I am so in love with the air conditioner. I sat in my room and knit even! I finished one panda cotton sock and cast on the next one. Should be cranking that puppy right out. Then it will be back to torturing myself working on the jinxed Luna shawl.

2007-06-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

High at 3 pm 102 degrees Fahrenheit with an astounding low of 92 degrees at 8 pm....

Too hot to knit... can't go on. Will try again later....

2007-06-13T07:48:00.001-07:00

I just couldn't wait, so I started a pair of socks with the Panda cotton I picked up at Purlessence on Sunday. Teenuh and I went out for her birthday and we swung by the LYS killing time. I visited the knitters at Boba knit, had a DELICIOUS Peach Ice with infamous Boba in it. Though mine had SO many in it, I was nearly choking to death as I drank the last 4 inches of the liquid in the cup. I may order a half ration of Boba next time, though mine seemed to have more than anyone else's to begin with....

I was very frustrated with the Luna Shawl, after dropping 2 stitches that rapidly grew into a mass of 27 dropped stitches on Saturday. I didn't notice the hole until about 8 rows later and by then it was on a rampage toward the bottom. 3 hours later I ended up ripping back a total of 18 rows. Packed it up and didn't work on it until Sunday, only to not pay attention (talking and knitting after a big mistake, not so good!) and mess up right at the beginning of the row and having to rip back to the start of the row. It was like 8 stitches forward and 10 stitches back, I couldn't make any progress! I was at that point of debating ripping out the whole thing and giving the cursed ball of yarn to some other knitter I didn't like, but couldn't think of anyone in particular. So I set it aside and cranked out a sock. It is very thick, but soft and stretchy and will be ideal during cooler months. The heel is turned there, but you just can't see it. It is a lacy sort of Faux Cable. Unfortunately the way our weather is going we may not see cooler months for 6 + more months, the weather has been so bizarre. It sure was a slow start to summer. Maybe my feet will just sweat in them in the summer... yummy.

2007-06-07T20:50:00.001-07:00

Just a taste and an assurance that I am alive and knitting...

Doesn't it just gall you that the Harlot is here in our state, in our wonderful Bay Area nonetheless but so darn far up north that there is no way you could leave early, cross that evil red bridge and see her and get home at anything resembling a reasonable hour (or even an hour in this day) to get up in the morning and go on with life tomorrow!? Bummer. What about us Southies down here!? Don't we count for anything!? Commuknitty or someone (and we all know it isn't going to be the Knitting Room!) needs to get it in gear and book the woman!

Here is the Luna Moth shawl in JoJo land, good stuff.

I am really hating that beige stripe. Odds are though I will probably give this away (I hardly keep anything for myself) so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

A quick glance at the March Shawl of the Quarter kit. The yarn is 50/50 silk merino and super soft.
I really want to do this project next, but have other things in the queue that need to be done, sooner rather than later. I was lagging in knitting these last couple of days, on Sunday (and those of you who know me know this is entirely possible and sadly most likely to occur with me and any mildly sharp object) I cut my middle finger on the metal edge of a tape dispenser. I got it pretty darn good, it cut deeper than one would think was possible. Then the end of my finger was aching and puffy and had gotten a little bit infected (not enough to warrant a trip to the dr.) So I was mildly incapacitated in my ability to knit. It s...l...o...w...e...d.... me down. Yeah, I know, what a spaz, but if I wasn't a spaz, I wouldn't be me, now would I?

2007-06-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

It blogs!!!

I have returned after being held hostage by school volunteering. The teacher appreciation tea came and went, with decorating, cooking, and setting up eating up one day. My children competed in a Tae Kwon Do Tournament at Stanford and had to go to practice 5 times a week. Then dedicated an entire day to being at the tournament. I also co-chaired the book fair and it ate up all of my time: sleeping time, television viewing time, but worst of all knitting time! For an entire week, the book fair sought to drain my life from me, but alas, it lasted only a week and I survived. You will laugh, but not be surprised, when I say that I suckered myself into being next years secretary for the Home and School Club (or PTA for you old skool folk) which I had to take up right away because the outgoing secretary moved to Washington before school let out. Learning the ins and outs of that has been relatively easy but somewhat time consuming.

In between I have found the time to knit a little. My WIP is the Luna Moth Shawl from Elann's free pattern section. Made with Jojoland Harmony (or is it Melody?) lace weight variegated. Pictures soon, I just didn't have time today.

I got my shawl of the quarter kit from Joslyn's Fiber Farm, it is wonderful and green and lovely 50/50 silk merino yarn. I can't wait to knit it. Pictures of this soon too...

So now I will leave you with something amazingly precious and cute.

Cowboy Spirit Day at school.

2007-05-30T22:17:00.001-07:00

When I saw my buddy Teenuh was a Ring Finger I had to see what finger I was.....

You Are a Pinky

You are fiercely independent, and possibly downright weird.
A great communicator, you can get along with almost anyone.
You are kind and sympathetic. You support all your friends - and love them for who they are.

You get along well with: The Ring Finger

Stay away from: The Thumb

What Finger Are You?

Best matched to a Ring finger... no wonder we get along so well...

2007-05-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Spinning again.

Yeah, so now that I can do a fairly decent job at it, I find myself addicted to spinning while watching tv and my knitting progress has suffered terribly for it. All I've done lately is spin and spin.

Ah, yes, I have also been busy with my drum carder carding some unwashed suri alpaca that has been fun to process. I am thinking I will never buy unwashed again, because washing it in batches in a bucket in my bathroom has really been, um, interesting? I had a massive alpaca hair clog when one lock escaped and immediately spiraled down the drain. The drum carder is SO fun. Although I have learned a valuable lesson when I got bitten by the slicker. Damn that thing is sharp!! I accidentally poked my finger on one of the spikes and man was it more effective than any lancet ever made. My finger bled and bled. *Note to self - don't poke finger on slicker.* When I got it I was totally hoping I could get the kids to crank the handle and push in the fiber, but now I don't even want them to stand near the thing, not to mention putting their precious little fingers anywhere near it. All I can see is the slicker munching their hand and shredding up their skin. It terrifies me. I am sure it will be a subject for nightmares to come.

So far I have made 2 suri alapaca batts. They are silky and luxurious. The carder couldn't be easier to use. My learning curve has been steep. Lesson 1, don't hold the fiber tightly as it feeds under the licker because then it wraps around the licker instead of rolling onto the drum and then you have to pick it off and that is dangerous. Lesson 2, when they instructions say "small amounts" they mean small amounts and not smallish large amounts or it gets tangled up and the fiber doesn't roll onto the drum smoothly and more fiber gets wrapped around previously mentioned evil licker. Lesson 3, They give you a flicker card for a reason, using the flicker card or a comb makes a more even bat that doesn't have the ends of the locks still bunched up. Lesson 4, keep your damn fingers away from evil licker drum.

Well, off to sit and spin.

2007-05-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

Spinning on the dream machine.

Gosh do I LOVE this little spinning wheel. Two pedals are twice as good as one. I can spin a lot longer without my back hurting from having to sit with my legs weird to try and alternate feet. It is a LOT easier to get consistent speeds too. Here is my handspun Merino Silk blend from Angora Cottage. I think I should have plied it the opposite way for a softer yarn. I can do it on the next one, since I have like 12 more ounces of it left. This came out as a 2 ply lace weight. It is the finest, most consistently spun skein I have made to date (you may notice I have never posted a pic of my spinning before because it was simply TOO hideous to be seen). I'm sad looking back at my skills when I ~~ruined~~, ~~wasted~~ ugly spun some nice flame colored red, yellow, and black superwash. I still have some left, I just don't know if it will be enough to actually make socks or anything with. It makes me excited to start spinning the merino tencel I bought at Stitches.

2007-05-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Felted Bowling Ball Style bag is done!

The Patons wool felts really nicely. The Cascade 220 sucks! It hardly felted at all. The long band I knitted to make the sewn on stripe accents with was barely felted after 2 runs through the washing machine (the patons felted completely by the first run through). It was knitted on size 11 needles with 2 strands held together. What crap. The hardest part of the bag is getting it shaped after you have felted it. I am not sure that I did so good.
Here it is before felting.
Here it is after felting.
It is pretty ugly. I have given it to my DD and she is as thrilled as can be. I also cranked out this little one skein purse. It was supposed to be bigger according the the directions but came out about 2 inches smaller. It was made using Patons SWS. It is nice and soft and felted quite nicely.
Before Felting

After felting. Last but not least my Bauerliches socks in Lisa Souza "South Pacific" colorway. Yeah, sorry for the bizarre picture I laid on my back on the couch and stuck my feet up on the back of the couch and snapped. Before you go, a closeup of the stitch pattern.

2007-05-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hooooooooray for Saturday.

Teenuh and I went on a merry yarn tour yesterday, visiting 6 wonderful yarn stores of the Bay Area Peninsula. We ran out of time and did not make it a perfect 10 by missing 4 of South Bay stores. The day started with me driving around in circles, having forgotten my cell phone at home. I picked up Teenuh and she gave me this lovely potholde r set she knitted and felted. Then off to San Mateo to check out the Ashford Traveller, which turned out to be simply fantastic. I purchased that little jewel and the gal selling it offered up her entire fiber collection to sell piece-meal, which was simply too much for me! She dappled in spinning (meaning she jumped in with both feet and about 15 + lbs of various fiber) only to decide that spinning wasn't for her! My goodness did that luck out for me. Here is my new spinning beauty, I tested it out last night at 3 am after Teenuh and her DH went home. It spins like a dream. Double treadle is AWESOME. Here it is pictured next to my Ashford traditional. You can see the size difference is quite significant.

The first stop on our yarn tour was Nine Rubies in San Mateo. It is a new store, very nice, friendly people, the setup and locale reminded me a lot of Commuknitty. Teenuh made a purchase there, but not me, though when she got her bag, I had total bag envy over the heavy duty black polka dotted back she received. Our next stop was Purlessence where I really controlled my self and bought only 2 oz of silk hankies from Rainbow works. In yummy browns and golds. In spite of the Sheep To Shoe kit that had AMAZING purples and greens in it that SCREAMED my name. We proceeded on to Yarn Place to partake of their best 20% off everything sale. Some shiny black mohair roving. A cheap drop spindle and a nifty felting needle set, that can use 1-6 needles (scary, scary I can just see stabbing myself in the hand or leg or something with that) completed my Yarn Place purchases. We then drove back up to The Knitters Studio in Menlo Park to see the Annie Blatt trunk show, but bought nothing because of the high price of everything in the store. Then schlepped over to Full Thread Ahead in Los Altos where I sold myself on a some more Seasilk in this yummy aqua blue to beige-ish silver blend. So yummy. As well as some white Cascade 220 to make the edges on the Seven Ten Split bowling bag from Anticraft that I've started in black. Why is it so hard to find WHITE 100% feltable wool?? Doesn't anyone believe in white wool? Apparently only Cascade seems to. Our last stop was a dash to Uncommon Threads, just a few streets away from FTA. We arrived just before closing and had only 10 minutes to peruse. They have a nice selection of Lana Grossa that I want to go back to and sift through some more.