Knitting Like A Sailor

My New Blog

2006-06-02T05:48:00.000-04:00

Since I sucessfully managed to transfer all the archived items over to the new blog, there isn't much of a reason to keep this one active. I'll leave this up for a couple of weeks so stragglers can still find me, and then I'll delete the blog.
Once again here's the new blog http://www.noblefibers.wordpress.com . Do come over, I'm running a contest, so it might be profitable!
Enjay

LOOK LOOK LOOK!!

2006-06-01T03:06:00.000-04:00

Go Here. Seriously! It's so pretty and and and, well, just GO!

(ps) might want to bookmark it. Just Sayin'.

Getting to know you...

2006-05-24T01:04:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned prevously, I'm participating in The Amazing Lace. I'm surprised at myself, never having been a joiner before, this is my fourth sign up for the year, the others being Secret Pal 7, 200Sox, and Dye-O-Rama. I know why I chose this one though. I have some lace projects marinating that I'd relaly like to see completed. Please allow me to introduce them.

Rosy-Fingered Dawn.
RFD has been mentioned fairly recently. Still not liking the chart design, although I've moved on to a different charted motif that's more intuitive. Within the first row of the new chart I figured out the problems and have been able to compensate. This charts' particular issue is that the designer has long stretches of plain knitting, so she provides the stitch count for each stretch in the chart. She also only charted half the pattern, with a pivot stitch that is only counted once. I can do that, no problem. However, when the stretches of plain knitting encorporate the pivot (which happens every other row) she lists the total stitch count for the entire run. This isn't a problem, but she doesn't make it clear that the stitch count includes the pivot and all the return stitches, so rather than knit 14 total stitches, I knit 14, then pivoted the chart (in my mind) around this stitch, and knit 14 back for a total run of 29 knit stitches. I caught it right away, and it made sense once I knew what was going on, but no where in the pattern does she explain it.

I know many people had issues with mistakes in the charts, understanding the charts, running out of yarn, and the size of the finished shawl. I know a lot of people gave up in disgust, but I look at it as a challenge. Figuring out what is going on is a pain, but it's helping me understand what I'm doing a little better. Emphasize little. And, once I do figure out what is going on, the knitting is fun. I'm not too worried about the size, the unblocked finished shawls that I saw were around 35 inches across or so, and blocked out to the 50 ish inch region, mine is on chart 4 of a total of six body charts, and it's already at 36 inches. I would be worried about running out of yarn, but I bought my kit after the KAL had already contacted the company with yarn shortages, and so far I've had mucho excess for every chart, plus they sent two balls for the edging. If I run out, I run out, and I'll have to substitute something else. Irritating, but no big deal eh? Anyway, here she is in all her wadded up glory.

Two charts worth of knitting is folded under because the circular isn't large enough to stretch it out decently, and I wanted to show off the pretty star motif. If you look closely, you can see where the purplish tint in the yarn overs (that would be the holes, Rob) stops and you can see the gold of the sheet coming through, mostly in the lines of yarn overs (again, that means holes, Rob) that look like spokes in the arms of the star. That's how much of the shawl is folded over, about 7-8 inches all the way around. Posed like this, it reminds me of a giant pink lace beret :) (no links included to any place where you can get the kit or the pattern, I'm not encouraging people to buy something so poorly done, but if you really and truly want the aggrivation this shawl is, Google it.)

Next on my plate, we have Kiri from Polly over at All Tangled Up. It's a lovely shawl, knit with a yarn that is appealing both visually and sensually. Here's the color I'm using, and it's accurate on my monitor. I linked it so you can see how poorly my camera captured the rich magenta. I tried toning the screaming fuschia down, but it just developed pixellated purple spots. Kind of interesting, kind of diseased looking. Also, the picture is in focus, the Kid Silk Haze is just that fluffy. I thought long and hard about making this shawl in the required yarn. It's far and away the most expensive and decadent yarn I've ever used. Yes, I've bought skeins that cost more, but the price per yard is what I'm looking at. Ouch. I ordered the yarn, and let it sit on the shelf, intimidated. Finally, in a fit of I bought the damn stuff, It's going to waste sitting there pique, I started the shawl. I'm glad that I did finally start it, it's light, shiny, fluffy, and so deliciously girly that I'm surprised I like it. However, it's a fairly simple, repetative knit that requires attention be paid to avoid missing a stitch in the mohairy goodness. It's not too bad to knit while watching tv or listening to audiobooks, but tv time has been relegated to sock knitting and audiobook time has been devoted to RFD because I want to get that sucker DONE. You're next, Kiri, m'dear, I promise.

Last, but most intimidating, is the Spring Shawl, designed by Sharon Miller. So far, it's been pretty straight forward. Unlike RFD, the charts are bang on, everything is Clearly Explained, and the designer is readily available and appreciates questions. Really, she does, she's such a sweet person.
I'm knitting it in Silk Organzine from Habu Textiles with a Crystal Palace Bamboo circular, size 0. Silk Organzine is made from reeled, twisted raw silk fibers that are then plied together. My yarn underwent the additional step of boiling to rid it of the seracin, which was well worth the price difference for me. I've smelled wet silk, and it's not the scent of choice.
For an awesome site about silk (even non-fiber people will probably enjoy this site <* looking at Rob*>) go to WormSpit.
The Spring Shawl starts at the point of the border for the center triangle, then you pick up for the real borders and knit those down, then knit on the edging. Obviously I'm not very far, but that's okay. I anticipate this taking a long time, especially since I prefer not to knit on it continuously. I'm considering it practise for Unst, which will be practise for the Ring Shawl, which is practise for my own handspun, self designed ring shawl. We're talking years down the line, but that's one of my goals.

Well, those are the introductions. Have a good week and Lace On!

A post in which I blatently steal someone elses' format.

2006-05-15T01:31:00.000-04:00

I haven't been blogging lately. What have I been doing? A whole lot of nothing, and I've been busy as a one legged person in an ass-kicking contest doing it.

The good:
I'm finally getting around to posting the Dye-O-Meme-O-Rama for my dyeing partner.

Your favorite colors? Jewel tones, muted colors, bright is good, screaming is not.

Preferred yarn weight (Fingering, Sport, DK, maybe even Worsted)? I'm open to any and all :)

Do you prefer solid, variegated, self-striping, self-patterning yarn or multicolored yarn? Yes. Seriously, whatever you want to make, or, conversely, whatever you wind up with regardless of your intentions at the start, is great.

Would you be interested in a wool blend sock yarn (nylon, tencel, silk, acrylic, alpaca, etc.)? Yes, I do have to ask for a yarn with mostly natural content. I live in the hot, humid south, for most of the year 100% man-made fibers are smothering in a garment more solid than a lace shawl.

Imagine the perfect colorway. What would you name it? Dark Jewels, dried flowers, tie dye, something like that.

What was the biggest appeal to you for joining this dye-along? Making something for someone else (I love giving gifts) and, I have to admit, receiving something made just for me.

Have you dyed yarn/fiber before? Yup.

If so, what’s your favorite dye and method? I like the washfast and lanaset/sabracet dyes from ProChem.

Do you spin? Yup.

Have you knit socks before? Yup.

Do you use sock yarn for just socks or in other patterns too? I make shawls from it, and I plan a stranded colorwork sweater from my own dyed fingering weight yarns, eventually.

What are some of your favorite yarns? I like Gems Merino, Knitpicks, The Elann shop brand, and I really like the STR yarn, if I can find the source that's what I'd like to dye for my sweater (see above)

What yarn do you totally covet? Gems Merino and the STR yarn. (it will be mine if I have to resort to buying cones from Blue Moon lol)

Favorite patterns? I'm easy. Sometimes I like plain old vanilla, sometimes I like complex. I'm working one of my own right now that involves a provisional cast on at the ankle, knit the heel foot and toe, then go back and pick up the provisional cast on and knit up the leg. I have some of the older STR skeins and I don't want to run out or have excessive leftovers. I am enjoying it, because it allows me to use aspects of both top down and toe up patterns without having to rework them.

Any pattern you would love to make if money and time were no object? A shetland ring shawl. I have the pattern, I'm saving up for the yarn at Heirloom-Knitting.

Favorite kind of needles (brand, materials, straights or circs, etc)? I knit socks on dpn's, I like susannes ebony, crystal palace, and susan bates quicksilver (they're the grey coated ones, not the colored ones) I have an ebony pair, and I have crystal palace dpns, but I cannot find the quicksilvers anywhere locally. They are perfect for yarns that are too grabby for the bamboo needles, yet not so slick that I hurt my hands trying to prevent them from slipping out of the knitting, like I do with most metal needles. For other knitting, I use circulars usually, bamboo, inox and bryspun. Love me some bryspun circulars.

If you were a specific kind of yarn, which brand and kind of yarn would you be? Opal Petticoat in their silk yarn (they don't make it in silk but I want them to)

Nothing to do with knitting/yarn/fiber in any way but seemed kinda fun:

Do you have a favorite candy or mail-able snack? I like chocolate, I love samplers (tea, coffee, chai) I covet stuff like that but never buy it for myself.

What’s your favorite animal? Generally, dogs, specifically, my dog, Shaela.

Do you have pets? What are their species/names/ages? We have my cat Bielset (grey domestic long hair, male, 3, pronounced bee-ull-set, it's gaelic for a marking pattern in shetland sheep, a light band around the neck) my son's cat Geal (black DSH, male, 1, gee-y'all, prounounced with a soft g as in guppy, it's gaelic for cherished) and Shaela (giant yellow lab/hound/mastiff? mix, 4 years old, her name is gaelic for a color of shetland sheep, it's a frosted black) Yeah, um, have I mentioned that I spin? And that I admire greatly the shetland shawl knitters, who spun fine ring shawls from locks of shetland sheep neck wool?

If you were a color what color would you be? Teal, aquamarine, blue green, green blue, anything in that range.

Describe your favorite shirt (yours or someone else’s).. My rainbow colored tie dye t-shirt that was tied and folded and dipped so that a black spider covers the front (and back) of the shirt. I haven't been able to figure out how they did it, but I love it and will wear it until it's tattered beyond recognition.

What is your most inspiring image, flower, or object in nature? Cara's blog header. When you refresh it a different picture comes up. I find them all lovely and my children enjoy guessing which picture will be up next. Buying a few of her prints are on my someday list.

Tell me the best quote you’ve ever heard or read.
"Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left." ~Hubert Humphrey

Do you have a wishlist? Yes, I do. If you'd like it, let me know and I'll send it along.

Now on to the Bad:
I sprung my knee. I injured it many years ago, and hadn't had any problems with it until last week when the youngest ran full tilt across the living room to give me a full body leg hug, at which point I felt the muscles, ligaments and tendons above my knee go poing! Stairs, stick shifts, standing, and moving it at all are not good right now. Analgesics and icy-hot are keeping the worst of it at bay.

More bad (and quite a bit of poor me whining too):
for mothers day I was given a poster with a somewhat snotty-humored poem on it, an unsigned card, and a "huh, they said your gift would be delivered by Saturday. I'm not worried though, it'll show up", the last added when I started to suggest tracking it at the UPS website. I went out for a couple of hours Saturday, then came home, put the young children to bed, and spent two hours cooking a special mothers day dinner while the eldest and the man who lives here played video games. At least no one objected when I suggested that someone other than I clear the table and put things away. Not the most stellar of mothers day here, but it could have been worse.

The Ugly:
my laptop has a design flaw. The ac port is smack next to the vent for the heat sink. A years worth of hot air flowing over it has deformed the plug housing on the ac converter, which I noticed, and caused the insulation inside the plug to deteriorate, which I had not noticed until half of it fell out. The left half, or the right half, depending on how you look at it. Charging the laptop now involves manipulations akin to performing contortions while holding the rabbit ears on the tv set. The only reliable way is to twist, fiddle and maneuver the plug until the charging icon comes on, and then hold it in place. Yeah, I'm so into doing that. I've ordered a replacement, they quoted me a delivery date of May 17th. I ordered it on May 6th, and didn't expect it to actually take that long.

The ugliest? FedEx has had my ac converter since May 7th, in their Portland, OR facility, and has not yet done anything with it at all. Unless they plan on flying it across the country tomorrow, I don't think it's going to get here by the 17th. Bastards. It's seriously irritating me, because there are certain things I need on a daily basis that I cannot access without the internet, and right now I can't get down the stairs to the desk top. I lucked out earlier and actually got a full charge on the laptop so I'm able to blog with both hands. Yay!

The Better:
I dyed some yarns, and they are pretty. I'd show them here but one of them is going to my Dye-O-Rama partner.

The Best:
I've joined the Amazing Lace and it's prompted me to get going on the Rosey-Fingered Dawn Shawl kit I started months ago. (no comments or speculation on the name, I wouldn't have chosen it personally and find it rather funny but I try to keep the blog PG-13) I've doubled what I had finished on it in the last couple of days, and it's a highly irritating knit. The charts are off in stupid ways, mostly effecting symmetry. For example, on one side of the row she has you do o/o/o/o/ which needs to be \o\o\o\o on the other end of the row, but she doesn't chart that part, she just makes a notation that 4X means repeat o/ four times, so I have to remember to change it at the end of every row and I don't always remember. Most of the time I catch it and can tink back, but when I don't notice it for a couple of rows, I leave it. It's faggoted mesh so I can probably block it straight. Still, HIGHLY irritating, even though the shawl is beautiful and the patterns really are simple to do. Her charting method is one of the most confusing I've run across. I'm keeping notes and I intend to knit it again at some point, probably with alpaca laceweight, but I'll want to rechart it into a way that both makes sense, and is correct.

Other than that, nothing much has been happening around here. Kae, I found the addi, but I need your address, which is on the laptop. Email me and I'll put it in the mail for you.

exhale

2006-05-03T00:30:00.000-04:00

I'm going to go knit now.

I'm dying over here!

2006-04-26T21:54:00.000-04:00

It started out with these two skeins. Both from the same place, and I really like the yarn. The colors left a lot to be desired, in my opinion. The one on the left is nine hundredish yards of an alpaca cormo blend, the one on the right is 1600 yards of cormo/angora/cashmere. Lefty was supposed to be handpainted in a colorway called wildflowers, righty was supposed to be mulberry colored. What they are is...Not what I wanted at all. So, after whining to Kae, and more whining to Kae, I broke out the books and figured out what I could do with them.
*insert lots of pictures of dyeing process here*
What? You don't see them? Huh...Neither do I. Oh yeah, that's right, when I went to transfer them from camera to computer, I lost half the batch. Sorry. I do have one that was salvaged, but it's kinda blurry. That's not the same yarn? Why...You're right! If you go to a very well known website that rhymes with picnic's and look at a lace weight yarn they have whose name rhymes with swimmer, you just might find that yarn in the bowl on that page.
oh, and here's another picture of the "mulberry" yarn with a handspun skein of debouillet merino. Luscious stuff, that.
*insert more pics of dye process here, la dee da... *
Basically, I used a prochem washfast acid dyes sample kit that included synthrapol, albegal set, glaubers salt, ammonium sulfate, and citric acid crystals (hey, Kae, guess what? The crystals don't have all the dust that gave me issues when I used the powder. Fancy that!)
oh, here's some rhymes with picnic's peruvian worsted weight yarn that I dyed a while back. Now, I never used to use all those fancy additives, dye powder and a crapload of vinegar was peachykeen with me. Until I realized huh, I'm not getting the results I want near often enough. Like this batch, they were all supposed to me the medium color, bottom right of the photo. Instead, I have a whole sweaters worth of yarn, in three distinct colors. Orchid (light color) Raspberry (medium shade) and Rose Wine (dark shade) and all of them have lots of variegation. Mottled, tri-colored Rogue, anyone? Don't all of you jump through the screen now.
So anyway, when I did up those skeins, I mixed up the dye, glugged in the vinegar, cranked up the heat, and when it was good and steaming, I added the skeins in. Now, I had soaked the skeins in separate containers in groups of five, so they were added in groups of five. The dye struck pretty much instantly, it took nearly two hours to get that much depth of color on the orchid skeins. Learn from my mistake, all the fancy crap has a purpose. I think of them as a safety net.
Anywhoo, back to the funkin fug that was the laceweight. I had to think about what I could do using the colors they already were. Now, I'm not a color theorist, but I do know that when I overdye, things seem to work out better if I use a primary shade. Blue is popular with me, I find blue quite attractive, I don't often buy orange tones yarns so the resulting colors usually turn out in the blue/green/purple ranges. Red is another okay one, although I find that it's picky on what it will cover, and I have to watch the pot closely or it goes from pretty to mud fairly quick. I decided to go with blue over the "wildflowers" and a red violet over the "mulberry", aiming for a dark plum. I measured and mixed, soaked, stirred it all up, put the yarn in, then popped it on the stove. The "wildflower" came out a beautiful, brilliant sapphire with dark forest and royal purple variations. The "mulberry" came out a loverly maroon, on the brown side. Um, so not what I was aiming for. What went wrong with this one? I think I had the pot a little too high so it struck faster than I thought it would(it was the first skein) so it sat on the stove cooking longer than it should have, and when I was mixing the dye, I cut back on the blue, figuring the violet would pick up for it. It didn't. So, back into the dye pot with a couple of teaspoons of bright blue, and a smidge of jet black. It was a nice, inky midnight blue, and it did just the trick.

A lovely, wine Burgundy with some small shots of purple from where the skeins were tied a little tight (it's a BIG skein). This all was done on Saturday. Yesterday I did up the alpaca/silk lace weight in the eye searing turquoise colorway. I went with green. Now, I didn't expect it to turn green, I was aiming more for a variegated teal colorway, and that's pretty much what I got, although it's varied shades of blue-green rather than teal, and there is a difference between the two. I can show it to you but I can't put it to words, sorry. I think that were I to do this again I might try a yellow green dye, but I'm quite happy with it. Anyway, here's that one.
well, actually it's two skeins, but you get the idea.
Now, what did I do while all this dyeing was going on last night?

windywindywindy. I named the pic OW, but in reality, my arms were tired, but not sore, and there was no stiffness or soreness today at all. I credit my Strauch ball winder with that, it's a marvelous machine once I popped the feet off. They're clear cushy silicone jobbers, and they allowed the winder too much movement. One fell off, I popped off the other three, and voila, a stable, steady machine that is a pleasure to use.
Yes, every ball in that picture was wound from the skein by moi over the course of about 7 hours, including the break for supper. I had some aggressions to get out. All gone now :)
Ooo...Shall I do a little flash stashing? That pic up there constitutes most of my lace weight collection. Well, the commercial stuff, anyway. On the left we have the pink mass of the ex-rogue yarn, two skeins of pink and one of blue/purple from handpaintedyarn.com, the wine Burgundy laceweight, the sapphire alpaca/cormo laceweight, some sockweights in the middle, There is handpainted opal in rosehips, chtx2 in the peacock colorway, a skein of dale baby ull I dyed under the inspiration of the peacock cth, opal rainforest in parrot, two skeins of pingouin wool/nylon sock yarn that I overdyed from a medium grey to a charcoal to better contrast with the pale silver grey I'm suing it with in a fi sock, a skein of some variegated acrylic blend called marbles or something or other that I want to make a sweater for one of the kids out of (I have a couple of more of them, but they're still in their neat little center pull skeins) various assorted alpaca lace and merino lace, I'm sure if you kept open the rhymes with Picnic website, you too can find such yummy yarns, more handpaintedyarn laceweight, those two green balls of it just above the ball winder are from my excellent sp7 pal, Lisa. Oh, that glaringly white ball of yarn? It's actually ecru, and it's cobweb weight 80/20 merino silk. I have 5 ounces of it, enough for two large shawls. That's about two ounces right there. I bought it from the knitters underground a couple of years ago but they no longer carry it. Jean Miles used it in a few of her creations, if you care to go peruse her lace pages, and recommended it highly. Actually, I like to go peruse her pages anyway, she has some lovely knitting there.
Hey, there's still a pic hanging out down here. What is this? Some sort of a yellowy-green merino laceweight. Hmm...I wonder what this would look like with a dollop of forest green and a dash of jet black....

Nerdy News

2006-04-21T15:53:00.000-04:00

I'm working on a fair sized post regarding what I've been up to, fiber-wise. I'll probably post it tonight, or perhaps tomorrow night. I've my first final tomorrow, it's the Anatomy and Physiology Lab Practical. I predict lots of Mt Dew in my immediate future.

Looky Here!

2006-04-11T21:08:00.000-04:00

It's Hedgie! Fully felted and ready to rrrrrrrruuuumble! Here we catch him perusing the blogs and Look! He's at Ideaphoria, catching up on what's been happening with her since she sent him off into the world to be all that he could be. *
Thanks Karen and Jewel, the kit was a lot of fun to make (and a super fast knit!), and Hedgie has been a lot of fun to play with, both the kids and I agree. I opted for stuffing him with leftover scraps of yarn, so he's less squishy than some, but since he's already been sat upon, more than once, I think the resiliance will be a good thing.

Spring break started today, the teachers were all reminiscing about relaxing, taking trips, drunken parties and such. The students were all looking at each other wondering if graduation automatically erased the fact that finals start the week after spring break from their minds. Not having class just means I have that much more time to study. And write. And PowerPoint. I'm about burnt out on power point and I still need a few more slides to flesh it out.
On the spinning front, everything has sat idle, I've looked at my tools and petted some fibers but I'm honest enough with myself to know that anything I tried to spin would be screwed up because my mind wouldn't stay on it and I'd wind up reciting the urine production process instead.
On the knitting front, I was working up a pair of socks in my own design, toe up with short row toes and heels, and then an old shale type lace cuff, both socks knitted at the same time. I reached the cuff, figured out I didn't like tha pattern over the amount of stitches I had, increased a full repeat, liked that better, tried them on and realized that the foot of the sock needed more stitches, so they went to the frog pond. I think I'm going to knit the yarn into a pair from Nancy Bush's knitting on the road, probably the conway socks, and knit the ones I want to design from some knitpicks plain sock yarn that I have. The STR that I was using is too precious to rip and knit only to rip and knit some more like I tend to do when I'm noodling around with my own ideas. I'm thinking about the shaped arch in meg swanson's knitting, with a french toe from nancy bush and a little barbara walker lace tossed in for good measure. We'll see.
Have a good week!

*The picture doesn't accurately portray Hedgie in all his glory. I finally figured out why everything is yellowish even when I play with the pictures on the computer. I take the vast majority of my pictures in my bedroom, where the walls are painted pale orange, the sheets are gold, the blanket is a dark cream, etc. Everything has a yellowed cast! LOL I never said I was the sharpest crayon in the box.

I can't believe I knit the whoooole thing...

2006-04-07T01:08:00.000-04:00

The hedgie kit I won arrived yesterday. Thanks again Jewel! I think you must have already been at the post office waiting when I sent you my address, it got here that fast.
Speaking of, it had the cutest packaging, with ribbons and a really pretty card attached. Note the past tense. I didn't even pause for a picture. Would you like to see it now? Well, you can't. Blogger is wearing it's asshat this morning, apparently. You'll have to go here. I'll wait. HmmmHmmmHmmm *checking watch* Oh hi, welcome back.
All done but the felting. I have no idea how I managed to knit the whole thing in one day. Well, actually, I do, but it didn't seem like I was getting that much of it done. I cast on around ten this morning, worked on it for a bit, took it with me to the dr's office, and then just worked on it between the kids, supper, a make-up exam, class, and managed to finish the front and pick up the stitches for the back. the back took the longest, I started on that at 8:30, and finished it at 12:30. I was going to quit at midnight but I was sooo close.
Tomorrow, my first felting experience. Woo Hoo!

Introducing...

2006-04-04T22:56:00.000-04:00

My secret pal! Hi Lisa! Go, visit, I'm sure she'll be tickled pink to have more visitors. She's striving to survive spring break with both teenaged sons intact, I wish her well. And, I found out where she got the wonderful soap that I've been bathing with. Her store. Isn't that fabulous? Send your friends, I highly recommend the Summer Bouquet.
I've been bad about blogging her last gift and a pretty card with a sweet, chatty letter that she sent me. The other female in my house saw the gorgeous butterflies on the card, squeed thank you! and took off with it. I did convince her to give it back to me long enough to get it out of the envelope and actually read the card, barely, but it's now firmly stowed away in her underpants drawer. I'm not really interested in the kind of traffic the picture of an underpants drawer belonging to a small female child would generate, so I didn't take one to post, but I did steal this pic. This represents the two (!) skeins of gorgeous emerald lace weight wool from hand painted yarn. I have the start of an idea for these little pretties, and it doesn't even include caressing them with my clutching hands and crooning my preeessssscccciiioooouuuussssss to them. Well, not frequently...by my standards....
I'd also like to introduce you to the lady I sent presents to, Kae. Kae is an awesome person. She's working on getting a small dye business going, I can't wait until she's set up for business and I can get my hands on her ToT sock yarns. Prrrrrreeeeessscccciiioooo.... oops, sorry, s'cuse me. *ahem* moving on...
I've decided that I'm not going to enter any more contests. I've won three this year. In the first, I was runner up for the best joke at Fillyjonk's blog and won a good sized box of sock yarns, handy dandy yellow post-its (Erica, if you read this, the post-its have been put to use again and again, thank you so much! Your impulse has been so handy I went and bought more lest I run out of these Pressscccio I mean useful items.) pencils, and she decorated the box with Squee!! producing stickers. Yes, parts of the box now reside in the smaller females underpants drawer. I'm wondering if there's much room for underpants in there any more? Kae, Erica is from your region of the map, different city though.
The second contest I won was the Name Wendy's New Pink RaZR Phone and Headset contest. I again was second runner up (we actually entered the same name, the other lady was faster with the email though) for the entry Pinky and the Brain. (Do I really need to link to one of the most famous bloggers? Oooookayfine Rob, here's her blog) My prize is two skeins of Lorna's laces sock yarn in the Somerset colorway.
The third contest I entered was a guess what this is a picture of contest. I actually won this one, thanks to Mia the cat's obvious good taste. Thanks Jewel, I'm looking forward to new little fuzzies! I have a feeling they'll fit quite well (and if not will be pounded until they do) into a certain four year olds' underpants drawer, quite likely accompanied with lot's of Squees! Maybe I'll mosey on over to AC Moore after the kit arrives and see if I can find something in pink to make it with first, because while any fuzzy will rock, a PINK fuzzy, obviously, rocks harder! and mom will be allowed to keep the plain jane normal (read DORKY) colored one.
Actually, gwen's not that bad. She always asks, most of the time she remembers to say please and thank you, and I frequently get a kiss and a "you're the best, mom" for anything she gets to tuck into her drawer. I'm not kidding about the Squees! though. They're usually accompanied with hand clasping/clapping, bouncing and bright shiny excitement. Her enthusiasm knows no bounds, it's a beautiful thing, which is probably why I've caught myself considering pink sparkly craptastic toys at the store lately. Gotta get my Squee! fix, don'tcha know. Anyway, as much as I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of the Secret Pal exchange, I think I'm going to sit number 8 out. I didn't have as much time as I thought I was going to to blog, and I feel as though I did a disservice to Lisa's great efforts. I thoroughly enjoyed everything, really! However, we're coming up on final exams, I'm up to my seat in papers to write, and I just won't have the time. I'll be back for number 9 hopefully. And yup, I will be back. I've met two great new people, ones I hope to keep be in contact with for a very long time. And that's probably the best gift of all :) Night!

I am an irritating girl.

2006-03-16T15:32:00.000-04:00

With apologies to Snow, although I’m fairly sure that I’m not her irritating girl.* We live more than half the country apart, and I don’t think my reach is quite that long. I know that I am an irritating girl because the last time I asked about a stitch n bitch at the LYS in Charleston, the owner started to tell me where it is, and her mother (co-owner of the store) interrupted her to tell me that I wouldn’t want to go, it’s too far from where I live and I wouldn’t like it. Fair enough. If she felt I wouldn’t enjoy the meetings, she probably would go out of her way to make sure I didn’t. So I don’t go.
This was not the first time that I’ve felt I’m the irritating girl. No, my history of being the irritating girl stretches back into my childhood. I could amuse you with stories of how spastic I was, clingy and needy, or of how the other kids had fun leading me around by my nose. But I won’t. They’re quite painful, actually.

Side note – my good friend Rob, who comments regularly and brings much joy into my life, just text messaged me with a hilarious message involving walruses, bagels and cream cheese. I love you man! Got the new phone, didja? Check your voice mail.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. As I was reading Snow’s posts about her irritating girl, I understood her feelings. Their group was well established, it was a comfortable, entertaining place to go and spend time engaged in interesting conversation while knitting. Someplace where they could relax, be themselves, and let most of it hang out. It sounds wonderful. Then, their irritating girl came along. While I can understand their difficulties, and indeed I do think that irritating girl should probably leave the group, I empathize with their irritating girl. So when I read the comments for her posts and saw people recommending ditching her, publicly humiliating her, and some offering the idea that she should be dealt with by treating her with meanness and outright hurtful behavior, I suffered. I also got very angry. Who the hell were they to think it acceptable to ever do something like that to another being? Do they even know the kind of damage it could cause to an already socially inept person? Is that the way they would appreciate being treated? To answer the last one, I’m pretty positive that no, they wouldn’t want any of that to happen to them, so again I wonder why do they think these are acceptable ways to deal with someone?

Now, I don’t think Snow is evil or is doing anything wrong. She has a difficult issue that she is trying to deal with and asked for advice, and she’s expressing her frustration with the situation at the same time. Something I’ve done on more than on occasion, this post being an example. I don’t think that just because it’s been suggested in her comments that she will run out and behave like a bitch to the girl without provocation. If she’s provoked, well heck I’d likely be a bitch too. I don’t have issues with her. What I don’t like and don’t understand is that why people want to act in the ways suggested in the comments. No one owes this girl free psychological assistance, nor should they be forced to suffer her unacceptable behavior, but what happened to compassion? It is possible to tell someone that it’s not working and they need to change or leave with kindness, in firm and clear language without resorting to snarky nastiness, regardless of the behavior of the recipient. It’s more effort, but she’s a human being, she has feelings, and it’s going to be uncomfortable enough, why deliberately make it worse? You could think of it as public service, the next group she joins will be better for her having learned some lessons in socially acceptable behavior. Even if she responds with a public screaming tantrum, she will hear what you are saying and at some point it will be processed, and hopefully implemented.

I wish I could say that I know the correct thing to do. I can’t. I only know what I would do.

* There are posts between and around those two I linked to that deal with irritating girl and hate mail et al but meh, go here and search them out if you're interested, I'm too tired to post all of them.

Just sayin'

2006-03-14T22:35:00.000-04:00

We've had the plague here. On the upside, my 4 year old washer is well and truly broken in, every towel, sheet and blanket I own has been washed (and rewashed and re-re-re-re-washed) and my bathroom has never sparkled this much. It should sparkle, it’s been cleaned top to bottom with bleach five times since Sunday. I swear, children need to learn that it’s not going to kill you to put your face near the toilet when you get ill, but I might if they don’t and I have to wash the walls, floors, counter, window and tub again, and the cats will if I have to empty, scrub, dry, then fill their litter box and bowls again. Plus, if you don’t feel good use the potty or the bucket by your bed and then call for me, don’t come into my room at three am and throw up on me and then tell me you don’t feel good, and then proceed to throw up on everything between here and the bathroom, and then say I all done now, only to start it back up again just as soon as everything is cleaned up. I’m just saying.

What Dragon Are You?

2006-02-22T22:41:00.000-04:00

I am an Aurora Dragon!
Hey, I took the http://dragonhame.com/ online Inner Dragon quiz and found out I am an Aurora Dragon on the inside.
In the war between good and evil, an Aurora Dragon tends to walk the fine line of Neutrality....When it comes to the powers of Chaos vs. those of Law and Order, your inner dragon is a risk taker and answers to no one....As far as magical tendancies, Your inner dragon has the ability to conquer the world of magic, but it will not be easy....During combat situations, a true Aurora Dragon prefers to defeat opponents by the use of spells and other tactics....The Aurora Dragon likes cool air and wide open spaces. It comes out at twilight and shies away from direct sunlight. The Aurora Dragon is independent and opinionated with a firm grasp on its desires. They love adventure and will try most anything once.'The Aurora Dragon appears to be night blue, but something about it's scales (or perhaps it's magical nature) creates a multicolor holographic effect around its body, almost as though it is constantly flying through an ever changing cloud of color.'Highly intelligent, The Aurora Dragon likes games of mental challenge and tends to finish in the winners bracket. They are perceptive and intuitive but tend to hold grudges. Very verbal--not a quiet or shy dragon, the Aurora Dragon makes friends easily. It is with great difficulty that The Aurora Dragon puts aside any injustice it has ever received--whether real or imagined. The Aurora Dragon loves freedom and would wither if put in constraints.'This Dragons favorite elements are: Opals, Wind, and Free Spirits
http://dragonhame.com/

My secret pal 7 gift!!!!!

2006-02-19T23:39:00.000-04:00

She likes me, she really likes me!
On the couch, Vogues' winter issue and a pretty journal.

On the box we have, from L-R:
a pretty blue and white soap that smells really fresh
two skeins of bernat sox in the Jazz colorway
a pretty red soap that smells nice and earthy

In our imaginations we have six pretty beaded stitch markers!

YAY for stitch markers! I'd show them to you but all of them are in use (it's a lace pattern) and it's a gift for someone who may read this blog. I really wish I had restrained myself, but they were pretty and I was having issues with the repeat. I'm so sorry Secret Pal. I will post a picture of them when I'm finished with the project. They were her first stitch markers that she made with her own hands, just for me! I'm so touched! *sniffle* She also made the pretty soaps (one of which has been used and replaced in it's baggie for the photo shoot) When I asked where she found the soaps, she replied and told me that she has her own company and makes soaps, bath, and skin care products. I'm going to have to scope it all out when I find out who she is!

I do really like everything, it's all lovely. While I was opening the gift, my daughter, ever the girly girl, saw the yarn and squealed look mommy, your friend sent ME something! She's been asking for a shawl of her own, the bernat is machine washable and probably fairly durable, and there is 400 yards of it, so I'm thinking it's a match.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate the thought and effort that you went to to pick such wonderful and generous gifts. I look forward to meeting you!

PS, I do spin.

Fly by posting

2006-02-13T07:55:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note before school to let ya'll know that I'm being a bad blogger and secret pal. I received two very nice boxes last week, and intended to post about them this weekend. Now I'm intending to post about them tomorrow. I hope. But, I wanted to let me SP7 spoiler know the box arrived and was much appreciated, thank you!

2006-01-18T21:17:00.000-04:00

Ugh! What a week I've had. Exhaustion and fatigue have been my constant companions. But that's okay. All work and no sleep makes Enjay a loopy girl :)

What have I done this week. Hmm...
Other than school, kids, and home stuff, I:

advised a new knitter on why her knitting looks "weird" (her words, she asked me why her knitting was weird and didn't look like everyone elses) turns out she's an eastern uncrossed knitter and was knitting in the round for the first time. She hadn't decided if she was going to keep the twisted knitting or if she was going to try to retrain herself for knitting in the round. I sent her to Annie M.'s great references on Eastern Uncrossed.
kinda halfway decided that I'm going to save up and collect skeins of a certain kinda expensive sock yarn to make a sweater out of it. in the peacock colorway cause I'm a peacocky kinda gal. I might just get two or three and call it a shawl though.
found a really interesting new to me blog with this wonderful Quote (from a June '05 post) "I love lace with a passion that only a short, middle-aged, Rubenesque woman who looks like an ambulatory lace pillow wearing it could feel." I completley, utterly understand where she is coming from. Thank you, Pamela, for saying it so succinctly.
I tried to tempt my spoilee into trying her hand at needle felting, and when I failed I had to send her the link to the really cool kit I'd wanted to get for her as a teaser. I am now thinking about (Insert luscious yarn here) yarn. Maybe.
Spent Martin Luter King Day sitting on my bum in my jammies reviewing the notes I had taken in Ethics on the movie we watched about the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Some good info there on that site. Heavy things to consider, the fact that the initial reason for the study, other than watching the effects of syphilis, was to prove that Black people were lesser to the white race, with smaller brain capacity etc. The man who originally pushed for the study stressed that that the men in the study lacked intelligence enough to figure out what was going on. They were uneducated and did accept the word of the official doctors without question, but they were well within normal parameters for intelligence. The cavalier attitudes of the researchers and the people involved in the program towards the health and well being of these gentlemen, their wives, and their children never fails to floor me.
still trying to decide between remaining in the Dental Hygiene program or switching to the Nursing program.

Other than that I haven't really been up to anything much. Gonna go kick back and watch a bit of the idiot box before heading off to bed.

Have a good night!

GAH!!

2006-01-13T23:06:00.000-04:00

School started, and I'm almost finished for the week. I have a Saturday biology lab this semester, so I have classes six days a week. Ugh. Manageable, though it won't be the simplest feat.
The Bad.
Still stuck dealing with the young and clueless, some of whom guesstimated my age on monday as in my early fifties or late forties. I'm 34, people! They blamed it on the grey hair, I blamed it on their being young and thinking everyone is old, but I eradicated the grey hair monday night, just in case :) I do have to say that it is interesting watching the fresh out of high school freshmen struggling to digest the new to them dynamics of college. I try to keep in mind that up until now they haven't been extensively exposed to the real adult world (not that college is it but it's closer than high school) and haven't been expected to have real, adult opinions and discussion, but please, for the love of all things dear, please stop trying to relate Marxism to the high school track team. It isn't working and we're not all staring at you because of our awe at your oratory skills.

The Tolerable.
My general psyche prof seems somewhat biased against women. He's a very nice man, but he constantly makes the stereotypical comments like "guys, back me up on this, that's how women are, right?", talks about kow-towing to his wife to keep her from nagging and such. It's tolerable, he's a very intelligent man, and I *think* he's pushing the envelope for a reason, so we'll see how it pans out.

The Good.
My biology prof is a cute geeky guy who looks like he could star in the next Revenge of the Nerds movie, but he's much better dressed and his glasses are in perfect working order. He knows his stuff too. Since he's an adjunct, I wonder what his real career is.
My ethics prof is a wonderful woman, not at all afraid to say that she doesn't know, and very willing to discuss alternative beliefs and viewpoints. We're dealing with some very heavy issues in class right now and it's making me think about things I've never chosen to consider before.
Lastly, I soo want to be my Sociology professor when I grow up. She's a very well educated, highly opinionated, outspoken and assertive woman. Her class will be challenging, it will be interesting, it will make me think and re-evaluate assumptions I've always made, and I will do my best to absorb as much as I can.

My brain has been stretched and pulled in directions I never even knew it could go, which makes biology that much more dear to me this semester. It's solid, it isn't open to interpretation, and so far it hasn't made me question my views.

The Best
My Secret Pal contacted me today! S/he sent me a very cute e-card reminding me not to study too hard. I replied to their card, I hope they liked it! (Secret Pal, I hope the music was okay, I couldn't hear it on my PC, but I think I picked music box dancer) (my pc normally plays all music fine, and I heard the lovely tune on the card you sent me, it just wouldn't play the samples I got to choose from) I look forward to hearing from them again!

I've also contacted my spoilee, and we've been having a lot of fun emailing back and forth.
Oh, and on the way home today, I saw a triple rainbow! :)

Talk to ya'll later!

Secret Pal 7 Answers

2006-01-08T22:11:00.000-04:00

I just checked my email and received my notification of my Secret pal. Guess that means I'd better post this, huh? :) Sorry, Gifter. I'm starting Spring semester tomorrow, and what with everything happening today it kind of went by the wayside. That would be me, a bit disorganized :)

1. Are you a yarn snob (do you prefer higher quality and/or natural fibers)? Do you avoid Red Heart and Lion Brand?
I'm not really a yarn snob intentionally. Acrylics have their purposes, but I don't often knit them, I prefer to save up for the good stuff. I do have to admit to really liking the one pair of Susan bates quicksilver (the grey coated line, if I'm mis-remembering the name) sock needles I bought when I lived in Georgia, but they're not to be found in these parts.

2. Do you spin? Crochet?
I do spin. I have a Babe and a Schacht wheel, and several spindles. I know the basics of crochet, but it's not a craft that I prefer to do often as I feel the resulting fabric is frequently too bulky for garments.

3. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
I have a fabric case for the set of dpn's I bought from QueerJoe a while back, other than that they're rolling around in a drawer in the kitchen or stuck into various balls of yarn that were handy at the time.

4. How long have you been knitting? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
Gosh...Well, my grandma taught me to knit and crochet when I was under ten. I got the basics down, and then put it away for many years. Occasionally I'd buff up my needles and make a swatch and then put it away again. I'd always been drawn to spinning, and picked that up in 2000, and then started knitting again as a way to use up my yarns. Lately I have only had time for one or the other, and knitting has worked better in that regards.
As for my skill level, I will try anything, and the level of patterns that I find not too difficult are usually advanced intermediate/adventurous intermediate. I've tried some expert patterns and I can do them, if I take it one step at a time and have patience.

5. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
I do have an amazon wish list, if you'd like to see it I can email it to you. I tried to link to it but blogger didn't like that and gave my hands a hearty slap.

6. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products etc.)
For things like candles etc, I prefer homey, pastry type smells like pumpkin pie, sugar cookie, ginger, things like that. For personal use I prefer floral/oriental scents like coco or coco mademoiselle. (edited to add holy CRAP! I just looked up the prices of those and man, do I ever have expensive tastes. I keep the scent thingies from the magazines and use them when I want to smell pretty, Kev gets migraines if I wear a strong perfume often)

7. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
I do like candy, but I don't eat a lot of it. I prefer chocolate to anything else, and don't consider chocolate a candy. Dark semi-sweet chocolate is the best. I refuse to believe that white chocolate is indeed chocolate, and as such it is not favored. Neither are walnuts.

8. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do?
Oh, my three favorite words. Say them with me...Some Assembly Required. Sexy, aren't they? *shiver* I looove to put things together, take them apart, and to see how things work.
Aside from that, I like to cook (is that a craft?) I have made one quilt, and might like to make another some day, but becoming a quilter isn't on my list of priorities. I like needlepoint and tapestry, candlewicking, I've done silk ribbon embroidery, but I'm not a big project person. I have kits I've been working on since high school that I take out, work for a bit, then put away again. They may never be finished, and I'm comfortable with that.
I like to dye fibers and yarn, spin, knit, and that's pretty much it.

9. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
I like country rock, hard rock, classic rock, metal, Glen Miller, Frank Mills, Trace Adkins, Garth Brooks, Def Leppard, Uncle Kracker, Dansig, Allanis Morrisette, Coldplay, Nickleback, Violent Femmes...Just about the only music genres I don't choose to listen to are opera and gansta rap. My computer can play mp3's, I don't have a stereo, and the CD player in the van only takes CD's.

10. What's your favorite color? Or--do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can't stand?
I love deep rich teals, blue greens, green blues, and jewel tones. I'm good with brighter, saturated colors too, but I'm not a fan of the day-glo colors that have been popular. Pastels are alright. I prefer topaz and golds to sunny yellow and pumpkin or warm peach to orange. Pretty, bright colors like Opal Petticoat and Parrot, Lornas Laces Rainbow and some of the STR yarns are great.

11. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
Kevin (my significant other, partner, and also known as the man who may no longer live here when he ticks me off) and I cohabitate. We have three children, two sons (11 and 2) and one daughter (4 this month) We have a dog, Shaela, pictures in the last post, and one and a half cats, Bielset my fluffy grey boy, and New Kitty, a black DSH Kevin came home with. (btw, New Kitty is officially his name, and he answers to it. That's what the kids started calling him and I didn't feel up to a new pet after my Pongo died this fall, so New Kitty he will remain.) I usually name my animals after Shetland sheep colors and markings or Gaelic words.
My children also have more traditional UK names, Timothy, Gwen and Liam.

12. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
Scarves, yes. Hats, when I live somewhere cold enough, yes. Mittens, no, I prefer gloves or fingerless gloves, and I wear them regardless of the season, my hands get cold easily ever since the carpal tunnel surgeries in '98. Ponchos, no, I don't think I have ever worn one, they seem like they would get in the way.

13. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with?
I like wool, alpaca, silk, blends. My favorite types are smooth, plied, classic styled yarns. I would love to try some Kid Silk Haze for lace.
I don't generally knit with anything larger than heavy worsted, and prefer sport or dk for socks when I knit them. I will knit socks from some of the thicker fingering weight yarns too, and use sock yarns for shawls. I wear my socks around the house instead of slippers and need the density from a thicker yarn knit densely.

14. What fibers do you absolutely *not* like.
I don't do much with cotton because it generally doesn't have enough give and wears my hands out quickly. I have tried the stretchy cotton sock yarns, but my tension was all over the place with them so they're shelved. For now.

15. What is/are your current knitting obsession/s?
Lace. I'm a big fan of the "classics" lace, aran, and fair isle. Although have you seen some of the gorgeous stuff Kaffe Fassett has done? Oh. My. God. I might have to get me some of that there soon. (have I mentioned that I live in the south now? I try to acclimate LOL)

16. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
Judging by what I have been doing lately, swatches! I've been interested in doing some felting, and looking for a good sized bag pattern to haul some textbooks and a bit of knitting around in. Otherwise, I like to make shawls, sweaters, sport weight socks, the occasional scarf when required. I like using fine yarns and small needles even for big projects, so sock yarns are something I would use, just not for socks unless they were thicker fingering weights. Some of Cat Bordhi's patterns look mighty interesting, but I haven't seen the books in hand to make the decision yet.

17. What are you knitting right now?
A shawl from the Heirloom Knitting book in a singles yarn from handpaintedyarn.com, Rosy Fingered Dawn by Hazel Carter bought as a kit from blackberry ridge, I have a plain jane sweater back on the needles for me, from the handy book of sweater design in patons merino and my own handspun, and I have one worsted weight slipper sock to finish the pair.

18. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
I think so. My sister made me a ten foot long red heart scarf once when I was in high school and I wore it every year until the washing machine shredded it 8 years later. Then I cried.

19. Do you prefer straight or circular needles?
It depends on what I'm doing. Knitting in the round, on a large project like a fair isle in shetland yarn, I actually prefer loooong dpns, but my set broke and I haven't found any replacements, so I use inox or bamboo circs. For shawls, I prefer circs. For sweaters for the kids, scarves and smaller projects knit in pieces, I prefer short straights, and for socks I prefer 6 or 7" dpns. I'm not a fan of brittany dpns, or long straights, they're hard on my wrists.

20. Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
Bamboo, wood, casein, bryspun and teflon coated needles rock!

21. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
I do have a wooden swift. I had an elderly plastic ball winder, the handle of which broke off last weekend. I am thinking about saving up for a more durable wood ball winder.

22. How did you learn to knit?
Grandma originally, books and the internet for refreshers, and books, the internet, and bugging people like Mar for technique refinement.

23. How old is your oldest UFO?
I believe it is from August. I tend to frog frequently if it's not working for me, but I am a slow knitter and do take turns with my projects.

24. What is your favorite animated character or a favorite animal/bird?
If you mean like a mascot, I don't really have one, nor do I collect them. I am fond of Eeyore, I like classic Pooh as opposed to Disney pooh, and I like colorful animals like moths, butterflies, appaloosas, poison arrow frogs etc.

25. What is your favorite holiday?
I like Christmas, fall, the fourth of July, Valentines is a bit schmaltzy, but it's cute from the kids. I try to celebrate every day because that's more fun :)

26. Is there anything that you collect?
Besides fiber, yarn, and the tools to manipulate them? Books. I'm a big fan of science-fantasy authors like Piers Anthony, Anne McCaffrey, JK Rowling, Laurell K Hamilton. I also collect old housekeeping manuals and cook books. I also seem to have developed a collection of yarn Color Cards.

27. What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
None currently, although I am looking at the Interweave magazines, INKnitters, Twists and Turns, and Wool Gathering.

28. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on?
Oh my yes.
Books-
I have lists, if you want I'll send them along to you

Yarn-
One of the lace weight yarns from here
I love Cherry Tree Hill lace weight in the peacock colorway, two skeins would make a lovely shawl!
Kid Silk Haze.
Hebridian yarn from Virtual Yarns
a J&S color card, I'm gearing up to knit a FI in 2007.

Patterns-
the raku suri stole, reflections shawl, forest path stole from here
I'm a big fan of Mary Dominsky's mosaic sock patterns and Lucy Neatby slip stitch sock patterns as well, but I don't have any.

Needles/Accessories/Misc-
I would like some more Susan bates Quicksilver needles in their smaller sizes
I would love some of the longer (I think they were ten or fourteen inch) dpn's for making bigger projects on in size 2, I truly need finishing needles. I can't keep hold of those things to save my life.
I would be tickled to death to get one of the introductory spinning kits from Skaska designs. I have cashmere and thin silk thread set aside for the day I get a russian spindle.

29. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
Not at the moment, I'm too busy trying to refine what I do know :)
Argyle will eventually have to be conquered as I do want to try for the master knitting program.
Support spinning with a russian spindle too lol

30. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
I do knit socks but Kevin steals them before I get any wear out of them so I just make them in his size and schlepp around until he notices and then liberates them. Why fight the inevitable? I also make the children socks, usually with my own yarns. I wear a size 9-10 ladies, size seven men (can't always find ladies tennies in size 9/10) they're about ten inches long, my tape measure has wandered off, with some help I'm sure. I do cuff my socks.

31. When is your birthday? (mm/dd)
July 16th, I will be 35.

Well, now that's done. I hope I don't sound really picky. I'm pretty happy with whatever, I just wanted to give lots of options and help, it's hard figuring out what other people will like!
I'm off to pack my backpack for classes tomorrow. Have a good week everyone!

Not so Fug

2006-01-06T19:26:00.000-04:00

Who wouldn't love a face like this?

<--My, what a tasty looking cracker you have!

That's my biggest baby, Shaela. We've not had her a year yet. She's about 3, possibly 4. She might be spayed, although we had a few hours of excitement with some stray male dogs last year where she kept her bottom firmly planted on the porch steps and showed them her pearly whites until I finally got them shooed out of the yard. (note to self- don't leave the gate unlocked all night, they were sleeping between the sheds)

Shae's the most expensive dog I've ever owned, considering we picked her up on the side of the road. We've already invested more than a thousand dollars in her health care, fixing the heartworms that the people who abandoned her seemed content to allow to kill her. I've raged about that both here and elsewhere, so I shan't get into that again, mainly because when I think about their irresponsability and what it nearly cost my dog, I find it very difficult to sit still because it still makes me that angry.

However, today we got the best news I've heard in a long time. Shae's bloodwork came back and she is now free of the chemicals the worms release into the animals system, they could detect no eggs in her blood, and there were no juvenile heartworms either. Meaning, if she has any heart worms left in her, and she' probably has one or two, they're not female, there are none looking for a place to latch on, and the neighborhood animals are safe from being infected because of my dog. The heartworm preventative she is on will kill any eggs produced and any juveniles introduced through mosquitoes, and the few remaining worms will die of old age shortly. YAY!! She feels so good now that she was doing the Shaela boogie when I got home, which consists of launching herself into the air, all four feet off the ground, then bouncing from side to side in front of you while folding herself in half to look at you so you know just how happy she is to see you. She's not so much with the clan of couch potato any more. Therefor, I have decided to set a goal for her. This year, Shae is going to lose the excess poundage she carries. She weighs in at 107.7 pounds, and the vet would be much more comfortable seeing her at a more svelte 95. It's healthier for her heart, which has had to overwork itself most of her life, and will strengthen it. I'm overweight too, but when it comes to exercising for my health, pass the bon-bons and where's the remote. However, my dog needs it, and she's going to get it. I know that there is at least one person who occassionally reads the blog who is active with her dogs, I'm hoping that there are others too who can give me advice on things to do with her to help get her moving and building those muscles. Any and all suggestions welcomed!

WTF???

2006-01-05T21:40:00.000-04:00

JenLa asked for Fugly Avatars. I didn't intend to post one at all, but I did go mess around with the program. This is what Yahoo did when I asked for a short razor cut. I didn't mean quite THAT short! Unless they thought I meant a brazilian...

Fair Enough.

2006-01-04T03:55:00.000-04:00

Hi there! How are you today? Me? Well...I'm fair.

My morning consisted of Kev turning off the alarm so I could sleep in, waking up late to get to the bookstore, rushing to get there before the line was out the door, spending five minutes picking out the supplies and finding the required textbooks, and standing in line for more than an hour to pay for them. I was tired, irritated and hungry from the get go, so I bought lunch for the family at Hardees. I splurged on one of their obscenely large Angus char-broiled bacon double cheeseburger meals with curly fries for myself. All the way home it smelled divine. When I got home, I plopped the bag of food down on the table, went and got my books put away, and had a rest in the rest room. Kevin asked if I minded if he gave the kids some of my curly fries, I said it was okay. I came back out and my plate had half a dozen fries and about a third of a burger on it. I think it was about a third of a burger, but I can't be sure. It was in a few pieces, for one thing, and I wouldn't touch it, for another. I sat down, speechless, and stared at it, then at everyone else around the table as they were happily munching on their fries and sandwiches and chicken thingies.

"What happened to my food?"

They proceeded to tell me that my curly fries had been divided up, and that was my portion. Never mind the fact that no one had wanted curly fries when I called to get their orders, and I specifically asked about curly fries! They didn't divide the straight fries up because they all already had some, and obviously I didn't want straight fries or I would have ordered them.

"Okaayyy, but, what about the burger?"

Well, the eldest asked if he could have a bite and Kev didn't think I'd mind, so he let him. Then the little ones wanted a bite too. Then the eldest said it tasted really weird, so Kev took a bite, and discovered that it had mayo. I don't eat mayo, so Kev set about wiping it off, at which point the eldest saw that the burger had red onions on it. He can't stand onions, so he picked those off, and after the top was back on he took another, bigger bite, a bite the size of which only an 11 year old boy can achieve, because his first one had been ruined by onions and mayo and it wasn't fair that his bite was yucky. To be fair, he first broke off another bite for each of the two preschoolers, who may or may not have put their bites back on my plate, hence the pieces I found. He wasn't clear on anything other than the fact that the bites did start out by being placed in the preschoolers mouths because he was too busy trying to breathe around his 11 year old boy sized bite of my cheeseburger, which he couldn't even close his mouth around. Yes, I'm sure it was very cool.

After having my food distributed, mouthed by everyone, manhandled, picked over, and wiped with a (clean? Hopefully!) dish cloth, I was no longer interested in it. I asked to have one of the four sandwiches I'd ordered for Kev and the eldest. As Kevin apologetically swallowed the last of his second sandwich and said I was a little late in asking, the eldest handed me the remnants of his last one, more than half eaten. I handed it back and told him to finish it, and then we had a long lecture about taking advantage, manners, and being "fair." I was in good shrew form, even though it only appears to have been somewhat effective. Their FULL STOMACHS must have muffled it. It's not like I spoiled myself and cheated everybody else, they had ham sandwiches and chicken thingies, all items they chose for themselves when I called to enquire as to what they might like to eat.

Kevin, newly christened as the man who may no longer live here, made supper to mollify me. It was what he called Kevin surprise, #42. Kevin surprise, #42, consists of boil in a bag rice, hamburger (simmered in water, bleck!) and cheap summer sausage sliced and cooked with the hamburger. When it's "brown" dump it, water and all, into a pot on top of the now boiled, un-bagged rice. Toss in large amounts of random seasonings that might be good with it, with no regard as to how the seasonings might taste together. Let it cook until it looks like a good consistency, the consistency benchmark being hamburger helper. Serve with a can of peas and voila, Kevin surprise #42.

While he made this glop, he also cleaned out the fridge. I was willing to eat this glop, because he cleaned the fridge. I ate the glop, because if I didn't the kids wouldn't, and he made it, and *sigh* he had cleaned the fridge after all. Besides, in all fairness, I was starving.

Kev went straight to bed as soon as his glop was gone, to "get in a nap before his shift this evening." I was rounding the island on my way to rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher when I discovered the real reason for his quick retreat. I was assailed by this...funk...the funk of old food. I reasoned that it must be originating from the leaning tower of pseudo Tupperware stacked in the sink, with the matching Mt Lid-more piled next to it. From when he cleaned out the fridge. As I neared the toxic plastic tower, the scent became more noticeable, and I began to wonder if he had run the disposal long enough. As it turned out, No, he had not run the disposal long enough. Well, he might actually have run it long enough, but there was nothing in the disposal for it to be run upon, since he hadn't emptied any of the containers he had removed from the fridge. He merely removed the lids and stacked the containers inside each other, old food and all, and then proceeded, as is his habit, to dump the used utencils and assorted garbage and debris from cooking Kevin surprise, #42, in and on top of them. Now, none of the left overs were fuzzy, and all of them were recognizable for what they had once been. However, pasta gets this weird sweetish musty wine-becoming-vinegar smell when it jumps the shark, and every one of the nine large containers had some sort of pasta in it. I cleaned it all up, ran it all down the disposal, and added a good dose of lemon juice too. My kitchen still reeks like wine on it's way to being vinegar, but at least Kev cleaned out the fridge.
So, come hell, high water, and anything else the universe feels like throwing at me, tomorrow I am going to drive myself the twenty minutes up to Hardees. I am going to go inside, order a bacon double cheeseburger meal (no mayo) with curly fries, large size it please, and I am going to sit down, eat every crumb that I feel like eating, and not share one iota of it with anyone. I will stay there as long as I choose, and I might go elsewhere when I have finished.
Fair? Ask me if I care.

Meme La Seconde

2005-12-30T23:33:00.000-04:00

Geeze, let a few people know how to find you online, do one meme, and the next thing ya know... (and look! I even deviated from my new habit of trying to add a little edjamacashun to your life by not putting a definition in the title. The things I do to keep you people happy!)

1. What time did you get up this morning? 4:30 ish, 6:30 ish, 8 ish, and got out of bed at 9 am.
2. Diamonds or pearls? Both, why limit myself?
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? The newest Harry Potter
4. What is your favorite TV show? CSI, Forensic Files, The Investigators, Animal Cops (New York, Detroit, Miami and Houston) I'm sensing a theme here.
5. What did you have for breakfast? Cheese crackers and Mountain Lightning (generic Mt Dew)
6. What is your middle name? It was supposed to be Anne, but my father forgot so I don't have a middle name, no matter how many people at the DMV insist that I do.
7. What is your favorite cuisine? Italian
8. What foods do you dislike? Mayo. I am sooo not down with the whipped raw egg and oil thing.
9. What is your favorite chip? Pepper Jack Doritos
10. What is your favorite CD at the moment? Uncle Kracker and Allanis Morrisette have been receiving heavy play in the mothership lately.
11. What kind of car do you drive? I drive the mothership, a "Light Fern Green" (it's freaking grey, people) Dodge Caravan.
12. What is your favorite sandwich? philly beefsteak or a meatball sub
13. What characteristics do you despise? Hypocrisy
14. Favorite item of clothing? my big dog t-shirts, they're roomy, and have snotty sayings on them without being rude. I have three I have worn out, I need to go looking for more.
15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Everywhere
16. What color is your bathroom? Big bath is white and blue, half bath is like a pale cream white.
17. Favorite brand of clothing: Big Dog (I really like the quality of their clothing), Whatever looks okay, suits my needs and hopefully is on sale. Not a fashionista here. Alice Starmoore, Beth B-R, Kaffe Fasset, a bunch more knit wear designers.
19. Favorite time of day? Afternoon/Evening, when it's cooling off, the kids are slowing down or in bed, and I can focus on something other than the ginormous list of crap to do.
20. Where were you born? Dodge County, WI
21. Favorite sport to watch? Dressage and Jumping events.
22. Who do you least expect to do this meme? no one, I'm not going to spread the "joy"
23. Person you expect to do it first? see above statement
24. What type of detergent do you use? The big white container of liquid detergent that's on the shelf next to the big square buckets of the generic 5 bucks a pop powder detergent at Sam's club. I think it's Sun? I dunno, the label came off when I washed the spillage off last time.
25. Coke or Pepsi? Either, but in a picky way LOL Diet Pepsi, or Classic Coke, or diet coke with lime. Otherwise it's diet dew, regular dew, and my fav code red dew.
26. Are you a morning person or night owl? Night Owl
27. What size shoe do you wear? 9 or so, depending on the shoe
28. Do you have pets? Yup. Bielset, Grey DLH cat, Shaela, Gigantic Yellow Lab Cross (107 pounds and 26 inches tall as she stands right now, trying to get her down to 95 pounds but she pulls the puppy dog eyes on the kids and they put out) and New Kitty, Black DSH cat.
29. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone? Not that I can think of.
30. What did you want to be when you were little? A gymnast and a horse trainer.
31. Favorite Candy Bar? The special dark chocolate bars.
32. What is your best childhood memory? Having beat the pants off of all the people in my school to take first in my school division and third at state in individual dairy judging when (at that point) I had never lived or worked on a dairy farm.
33. What are 3 different jobs you have had in your life? I have worked as a private security officer, I have worked at an adult book store, and I worked for Motorola.
34 What color underwear are you wearing? Uh... I have my flannel jammies on, pink with skiing polarbears, and a pink t-shirt.
35. Nicknames: Enjay
36. Piercing? Tongue
37. Eye color? Brown
38. Ever been to Africa? No, but I want to, I have a friend who lived with us for six months who is from South Africa. Hi Merle!
39. Ever been toilet papered? Nope.
40. Love someone so much it made you cry? Yes.
41. Been in a car accident? Several fender benders, two minor ones, and one that ended my dream of being a competitive gymnast and required me to have c-sections to deliver my babies.
42. Croutons or bacon bits? Croutons
43. Favorite day of the week? Saturday
44. Favorite restaurant? Bocci's
45. Favorite flower? Magnolia
46. Favorite ice cream? Godiva Dark chocolate, or the pistachio with dark chocolate fish in it that Ben n Jerries had when I was pregnant with my daughter.
47. Disney or Warner Brothers? Pixar
48. Favorite fast food restaurant? Hardees
49. What color is your bedroom carpet? Beige, what I can see of it.
50. How many times did you fail your driver's test? I've taken it 5 times in three states, failed it the first two times when I was trying to get it initially.
51. From whom did you get your last e-mail? Julie, and I also see that my YesAsia order processed
52. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Webs, Knit!, knitpicks, Grafton Fibers, Elann, someplace that sells chasing rainbows and or fleece artist, way way too many fiber vendors to list, oh! and thesilkworker.com
53. What do you do most often when you are bored? Surf the web and pick on my kids.
55. Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire? See #22
56. Last person you ate out with? The eldest boy.
57. Ford or Chevy? Dodge and foreign cars.
58. What are you listening to right now? Forensic Files on TV
61. How many tattoos do you have? Four.
62. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Soooo not interested, although my take on it is the chicken, since it would have had to evolve to produce the egg, can't have progeny without the parent, and since mutation allows for variation from the parents, somewhere along the line some sort of microbe developed the ability to eventually lay eggs. That microbe would be the chicken, as I see it. I'm a proponent of the idea of guided evolution.

*whining* can I be done now? No more memes, I'm not that interesting.

Meme

2005-12-27T03:35:00.000-04:00

A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

When I started this blog, the Meme craze hadn't made it onto my personal radar. The first few I saw seemed kind of interesting. Then they started getting repetitive. Then somewhat annoying. Now, they're kind of rotating back to mildly interesting. Today, I got my first tag. From Rob who happens to be a long time friend and confidant. He's been there for me through too many things to remember, and I hope I've managed to return the favor.

5 Weird Habits Of Mine

1 I have three children, and if they are not home or are asleep I have to have the TV on or it's too quiet and it drives me nuts. I go to sleep with the TV on.

2 I am the Queen of the Losers. There is nothing I cannot lose. Nothing. Because of this I have to have my keys attached to my wallet. If I don't do this, I don't get to go anywhere because by the time I found one I've lost the other. I will also not carry a purse because of this. Since I can't shove it in my pocket, I will leave it somewhere and not miss it until days later.

3 No matter where I am, I almost always have something to drink handy, even if it's just water, and it will always be in a container with a lid of some sort. I refill and reuse bottles that are "the right size" for drinking ie gatorade bottles and 1 liter soda bottles, and run them in the dishwasher between uses. Odd, yes, but my carpets don't have nearly as many stains as they used to. I do have real glass glasses for when guests come over or I'm feeling high maintenance. Amy, a friend from school, was over last semester, saw my bottle stash in the cupboard, and confided to me that they use mason jars with the screw on lids at their house, but liked my bottle idea better because they won't break. Do I really need to say that we both have small children and are klutzy ourselves?

4 I'm a sampler. I have swatches out the ying-yang, knit with no project in mind and no notes about the swatches what-so-ever, knit because I felt like knitting and seeing what would happen if I did this or that. I have several containers overflowing with little sample skeins I have spun for the same reason. I was really bad about it, but after I sampled away fiber and yarn that I would rather still have, I got a grip and now I set aside balls of yarn and bits of fiber just for this purpose. Doing this has improved my stash, and I am now able to keep project quantities of fibers and yarn without having to work them up immediately for fear of wasting them otherwise.

5 I used to have a habit that was bordering on OCD. I had this thing about symmetry, if I did one thing with one side of my body, I had to do the same thing, or at the very least tighten the same muscles, on the other side of my body, as though they were taking turns. I think it came from years of being in gymnastics, but it was completely unconscious. In college (the first time) it drove my riding instructor completely batty until we figured out what was going on because the schools horse would pick up on those muscle contractions and think (s)he was supposed to act on them. My own mare and gelding apparently knew to ignore it. Breaking that habit was really really difficult, but once gone my riding performance increased a hundred fold. It's been so long now that I almost forgot about it.

There ya go Rob, laid my quirks bare for you. Hope you had a kickin' holiday without too much stress from the fam, and hey, what's this about Las Vegas?

Officious

2005-12-22T00:24:00.000-04:00

adj : intrusive in a meddling or offensive manner; "an interfering old woman"; "bustling about self-importantly making an officious nuisance of himself"; "busy about other people's business"

The other day I noticed that there was a really big debit to amazon on the e-bank statement. I didn't incur it. Ah, Kevin must have been Christmas shopping. Hey, I sent him my wish list...wonder what he got me? I had oodles of things for him to choose from that would have me squealing in delight: Wish #1 or Wish #2 or Wish #3and more. Or, if he didn't want to get me all fibery things, a recommended book. I starred, Highlited, circled, and otherwise generally made sure he couldn't miss Must Have #1 and Must Have #2.

His order? A book I'm not sure I'll like and Coupling.

I'm not dissappointed. No, I'm not. No, really, I am not. It's obvious he tried. I had been thinking about ordering the book for a few years, but I have a copy of the Quick Reference Version and I wanted to wait until I could see the full version in person before deciding if it was a necessary purchase. If I really don't want it, I can quietly return it and he won't ever know, because the two books look enough alike.

The DVD's I did ask for, but they're for him more than they are for me. Let me explain. While Kevin has scored some fantastic things for me that suit me to a T (a drum carder one year, some rare knitting books another) he usually buys me things he thinks are interesting and that he hopes I will like. I'm tired of being given D&D gaming modules, classic cult movies, video games, and Sci-Fi books I'm not interested in reading. I like Science-Fantasy as opposed to most old school science fiction that requires a calculator and schematics to understand, which Kev devours voraciously. Asimov and Heilein are too dry for my tastes at this time. Don't get me wrong, Kevin goes to great lengths with whatever he gives me. It will be well chosen, in fantastic shape, usually a limited, special, or first edition, and will only appreciate in value. They are truly magnificent gifts that I have no interest in or use for what-so-ever other than to appreciate their quality and how much effort he went to, which touches me deeply. Most of them are now in with his collections and the fact that I owned them originally is a distant memory.
I headed him off at the pass this time. This past spring Kevin discovered Coupling on BBC America on demand, and introduced me to it. He loves the show. I find it amusing, and certainly don't mind watching it, although it's not something I would have chosen to buy on DVD for myself. However, I do enjoy popping a bowl of popcorn, tucking myself into bed next to him with my knitting, and snickering along with him, and I knew if he saw it on my wish list he'd buy it. Now I have 28 hours of time with him to look forward to. That, my friends, is a priceless gift.

Dichotomy

2005-12-14T17:29:00.000-04:00

: a division or forking into branches; especially : repeated bifurcation

I discovered that I did not really mind having my guts up on the blog. I appreciated the comments greatly, and tried to reply to them all. I know or know of most of my readers (all six of you) and feel comfortable sharing. However (and you knew there would be a however, didn't you?) I did feel uncomfortable leaving it there for random strangers to find, so it's been removed.

On to regular life.
I've finished the semester. The only grade I have back so far is Biology, with a solid B. Haven't heard anything from the other three classes yet and it's driving me bonkers.
No knitting today. I've been miserable with a rapidly progressing cold. Rapidly progressing as in i was fine this morning, ate breakfast, and by lunch i felt like crap. It's been down hill since then.
I did do some fiber work last night. Dragged out the carder and worked with some lovely fiber I bought from Margrett, gcni, romney and mohair. The carder, which is old, of unknown origin and indeterminate functionalism, is now crap. It wasn't always so. When Loverboy bought it on ebay, had it shipped from Canada, and gave it to me three years ago, it worked okay. It was fussy, and it took some care to turn out nice smooth batts, but turn them out it would. Now, the problems it had (mainly with the carding cloth, it was poorly installed) are very much exacerbated by the local climate. It has the old, leather backed carding cloth, and the leather is stretching out, turning odd colors, and it developed a case of mildew this summer when it sat out on the screen porch for a weekend. I treated it and the mildew hasn't returned, but I fear that the carder is kaput until i can get it reclothed. I'm thinking about actually buying a different, new to me carder with a fine/fur drum, and eventually having this one redone with cloth for coarser fibers. The other option I see is finding someone who can rebuild i and have them work on it. Either way, it will be months before I can make plans. Good thing I got those hand carders.
time to go make some dinner like substance and then go to sleep.

Random \Ran"dom\

2005-11-28T02:47:00.000-04:00

a. Going at random or by chance; done or made at hazard, or without settled direction, aim, or purpose; hazarded without previous calculation; left to chance; haphazard; as, a random guess.

That would be me lately, my apologies.
I've been going nuts studying, and then avoiding studying, for finals, which start this coming week. I'm not going to do well this semester. I'm doing better in biology than I thought I was. Tanked the midterm in biology lab, really tanked it, and knew it as I was taking it. Checked my grades online, and I had a combined 61% for bio lab and lecture. Holy Shit! that's an F! I worried and fussed over that for two weeks, then I was looking at it online yet again (because I'm a masochist) and noticed that I had a 5 on the lab mid term. Now, I did poorly, but it was better than a five. Much better. Went and talked to the teacher, it was a transfer error. She fixed it and my grade shot up to a B. *Dance of Joy* I don't want to think of finals...moving on...

Made a great turkey this year. I used Alton Browns' recipe for brined turkey (found at www.foodtv.com) and I made my ever popular pumpkin pie recipe. I've doubled it every year except the first time I made it, so I can trade pies for some of Loverboy's mother's pumpkin loaf. Don't know how, but when I doubled the recipe this year to get four pies, I wound up with ten pies. Fortunately I have a deep freezer, but WTF? Whatever, the kid's'll be more than happy to help it dissappear.

Still no word from the rat x. The eldest is torn up about it and isn't ready to talk about it, but I can see it. What I wouldn't give to pop the top on the rat's head, twiddle around with some things in there, and screw his head back on, straight. While we're at it, let's neuter him too. Awwww....c'mon....it'll be fun! Promise!

On a good note, he did finally put G back on his health insurance and enclosed an insurance card for her in the last child support payment. Check-up here we come!!

Shit, I gotta run, kids'll be up in 3 hours. Bye!

Blather

2005-11-13T23:28:00.000-04:00

I've been going through somewhat of a rebellion recently. Don't wanna do homework, don't wanna do housework, don't feel like knitting, don't feel like spinning or blogging either. I don't really feel like doing anything but being a hermit.

I did go out last weekend. The local knitting guild (Coastal Cultured Purls) had their 2nd annual knit out, so I met some local knitters, and met a local blogger (Hi Vera!) which was fantastic. Vera makes the most beautiful things, especially her crocheted doilies. We chatted a bit, I confused the heck out of her husband*, and we did have a little bit more of a visit, but she was swamped with crocheting students most of the time I was there. It was interesting to hear her teach. She didn't discourage students from trying anything they wanted to try, nor did she tell them they were doing something wrong, she just pointed out a better way or a better first project, and left the choice up to them. She was as patient with the last student I saw with her as she was with the first. Me, I'd have been hiding my name tag and denying I knew what a crochet hook was at that point.

*having seen pictures of and read about Vera's hubby on her blog, I came up to him and said Hi Mr Vera, how're you, completely forgetting that he had absolutely no idea who I was, thusly proving that I was the biggest dork there. He was very gracious about it. I'm sure he also went home and brushed up on stalker laws. :)

After leaving the knit out, I walked to Knit!, the lys in downtown Charleston. I have heard that there is another knitting store on James Island, but I don't do bridges, and we rarely if ever have business on the islands, which nixes Kevin driving me over to it. peeeeaaachykeen okayfine with me, don't really need to be 500 feet in the air going 65 miles an hour swaying back and forth on a tiny ribbon of asphalt.
Anyway, I arrived at Knit's new store, and really like it. It's huge, in a lovely historical building with fantastic original wood floors (I think they're original at least) and they have a really nicely appointed sitting area with lots of comfortable furniture. They also now have Koigu! I petted, lusted, plotted, planned, re-thought, changed my mind, drove myself nuts, and eventually settled on.....Cherry tree hill supersock in peacock. Huh? What about the koigu?
I admired greatly the Koigu. I sincerely wanted the koigu. Why didn't I buy any? I'm not sure. I've done the same thing with other yarns, and I always tell myself that I need to let it percolate before I commit my money. I honestly don't think that's what it was in this case. I believe that I had been hearing about koigu for so many years that I had in my head exactly what it was going to be like, and it wasn't. Trust me, it's not a bad yarn, but because of my pre-conceived notions it's taking me a bit to be sure I will be happy with what I choose. That and she has every single colorway (or so it seems) and the choices were a bit overwhelming.

I have been knitting, I finished one of the charcoal paton's merino socks for Kev, haven't started the second one though. I made it toe up, which was really interesting in some ways, and really boring in others. I used short row toes and heels, which were interesting, but the cuff got boooooring. Very boring. Usually when I make socks I do them from the top down. I use the heel and toe as a reward for finishing the boring stretches of the cuff and the foot, but with a toe up design, there's nothing to look forward to once I turn the heel. Yuck.
S'okay, I have this charcoal sock done. I hadn't used a pattern per se, just instructions on turning a toe, and I got a nice, sturdy, cushy sock. I decided to measure the gauge and write some things down to make it easier to do the second sock. The gauge is 7.5 spi. In a worsted weight yarn, on 2.75mm-ish needles. (I would have to get up to give you the exact number, and I have a purring cat in my lap, no way that's happening any time soon) No wonder I very much dislike the sock that is being knit from Nancy Bush's new vintage sock book. The gauge is 7.5 spi for a fingering weight, it feels loose and floppy to me. I think I need to lighten up on my gauge ideas. I swatched up a bunch of yarns, and decided that I prefer ten or more spi for fingering weight yarn. Since I have no interest in knitting socks with sub-zero needles, I'm trying to learn to appreciate how soft and bouncy a more relaxed fabric feels.
I have the same problem with lace, I don't like to see big gaping stitches in stockinette so when I'm making something I want to knit the stockinette areas more solid. I know that blocking removes a lot of the "Mooseness" in the stockinette areas, but it's hard to adjust for that when I'm looking at it as it comes off my needles and the stockinette is gaping at me like it just came off a #19 needle.

Other than that it's been pretty eh here. Had an emergency dental appointment, the dentist is really cool, I have boat loads of homework in every class, we're dissecting this week in bio lab. (sheep brains, I wish I could bring in a fleece and call it good)
I'm at 45 days of waiting for my heirloom knitting order to arrive. I've heard anywhere from 3 weeks to 65 days, so I figure I have another two weeks or so before it arrives. DO I wish I'd chosen the faster shipping method? No, not really. I'm impatient, yes, but I kind of like the anticipation, I *REALLY* don't need another distraction right now, and, well, ya know, it was cheaper. Since I'm getting the same items no matter how it was shipped, cheaper is mo'bettah in my book.
Have a good evening, I'm off to go calculate the molarity of some solutions.

Mad as a March Hare

2005-10-31T23:45:00.000-04:00

I worry about my kids. Their mother is kind of a nutter. I know from experience, she's been driving me nuts for years. Seriously. I have proof. 4 pictures of my kids in their halloween costumes. Did I take them before dark? Of course not, it was too early to get them in costumes. Did I take the pictures inside? Duh, no, I want action shots. There's no action inside! Why are these pictures so dark? Hmmmm.....guess the grandparents will get pictures from the day after, with the kids redressed in their costumes.
*sigh*

Today in biology I learned that the contractions of the heart muscle are not controlled by the nervous system. Because the heart has it's own stimulation apparatus, it will continue to beat as long as it has oxygen, even after brain death, even when removed from the chest cavity. This explains SO much. I wonder how long I've been brain dead. My guess would be for about 6 weeks, which coincides with the entry into my life of Stoichiometry, and the mass exodus of the joy in my life. I've barely knit, spun or done anything but study stoichiometry. I spent the weekend holed up in the bedroom with the laptop, all my chemistry books, manuals, idiot guides, calculator, a box of 48 pencils and a pencil sharpener. The small children kept asking Loverboy when mommy was coming home from school. He finally brought them back to prove I was actually in the house, and all I could do was yell at them because they scattered my homework climbing over it to give me a hug.
*sigh*

I apologized, Liam accepted it with his usual huh? and kept on going, but Gwen was really hurt and upset, so we had a mommy/gwenny girls only sleep over (at 1pm) in my room, with popcorn, a chick flick (3 year old speed - Aristocats) and popcorn, while I sat slightly behind her and tried very hard to type and turn pages as quietly as possible. I wasn't quite quiet enough, but she was mollified with some paper and a pencil so she could do her homework too. Which was way bester than Timofy's homeworks. I asked her if mine was better than Timothy's too, and was told no, that my homeworks was not bestest AT ALL, MOMMA. My homeworks was NAUGHTY.
What's one to do with naughty homeworks? Put it in the corner, naturally, and snuggle a little girl while we watch silly cartoon cats dance around. That taught it a lesson! And Mom learned one too.
I might be brain dead, but at least my heart isn't, so I think there's hope.

Experience is the name everyone gives their mistakes. ~O.Wilde

2005-10-26T00:08:00.000-04:00

Ran across that quote today when I was researching the effects of Perestroika on the Russian public, and how it effected the economy, specifically artisans who made their living spinning and knitting. Special, innit?
That, basically, is what I have been doing since I last posted.
Oh, and writing the ever present formal lab reports for chemistry. Yee-Hawwwwwn.

I have managed to get in a bit of non-school reading, so far it's been:

Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys & Arans, Gladys Thompson
Big Book of Handspinning, Alden Amos
How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Everyday, Michael Gelb

I'm quite enjoying all three. I'm a little surprised by the Thompson book, I had expected it to be more dry, an instruction book. It's not, it's more of a journal of her travels through the UK in her search for traditional family patterns, her talks with the owners/knitters of the patterns, and the patterns.

I didn't expect to like Alden Amos's book, I'd heard from just about everyone that I asked that he's overbearing, opinionated and somewhat biased in his beliefs. I can see where someone who was very sensitive might think that, but I am very much enjoying what he has to say. He seems to cover a topic broadly (like fiber prep, he gives the basics of the big four) and then in the next chapter comes back and fills it in. At first I found this a little confusing because he started the next chapter talking about something I thought he'd already covered, but once I stopped looking at it linearly, and started following along, listening to his "voice" as though it were a conversation (albeit one sided) it was much easier for me to read.

About the bias, well, he's telling us how he does things. He gives plenty of history, but ultimately the methods he describes are the methods that he personally has worked with and finds to be the most effective. I don't really see much of a difference in his presentation than other authors, Zimmermann, Stowe, Righetti, they're all opinionated too. Peter Teal's handcombing wool for worsted yarns, now there's a tart character. All in all, I'm enjoying the book and information enormously, and have a difficult time putting it down.

The Michael Gelb book. It's interesting. Very full of information about Da Vinci, so far I haven't gotten into it enough to know if it's a useful tome. I think it might be, but time will tell. I found it while I was looking for B-day and X-mas gifts for Kevin. I bought him two books on Da Vinci's notebooks. Fascinating stuff, he had plans for an accelerated flyer in there.

I have been knitting. I swatched this:

"this" being a 3ply, 14wpi yarn spun from a Romney X Montadale fleece. It's not quite that color, it's a little lighter, but I had to darken it up to cut down on the shine. Yup, those little white spots aren't lint, not variegation, it's pure gloss.

I also started the shawl for mysteryshawlalong2, I've finished the first chart. Here ya go-

I'm doing the shawl in Knitpicks dye your own lace weight. I dyed it shades of green from emerald to tourmaline to deep forest. Unfortunately the new to me camera I have didn't come with color as an option for the photo editing, so it's showing up blues to me. For the more astute readers, yes, I'm knitting it with two strands, I'm alternating them because I inadvertently put one skein on top of the other in the dye bath. As a result, they took up differently and do not match well. I don't want to put them through another bath, they've had two, and while the second one helped it some, it wasn't a lot. The strands started clinging to each other, calling at all hours just to say whatcha doing? I miss you...following each other around, sneaking behind their backs and reading the other strands emails...it was getting ugly, and since I don't want to encourage a felting obsession, they're done drinking dye liquor.

I might wet the shawl down when it's done, and pound a little dye into the too light spots. Maybe. Otherwise, I'm fine with it. It's not for me anyway. It's for my big sis, NC's reigning tae kwan do weapons champ in the woman's age 40-49 color belt class. I'm struggling to avoid the whole my sister can beat up your sister game.

(but you know she could! neener neener neener!)

sigh

2005-10-16T22:59:00.000-04:00

Waiting for all the bloggers to get back from a fiber feast really, really sucks. Esp when the ones who have returned somehow managed to return sans pictures and haven't even posted their loot now that they're back in the land of fresh batteries.
*sigh*

I apologize for being cryptic

2005-10-14T21:06:00.000-04:00

The situation has been resolved. To those involved, a deep, heartfelt thank you!

Where to go, and how to get there

2005-10-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

I've had a few people ask where I got some of the things I bought and what I have planned for them, so here's the list and the links.

Grey Romney/Border Leicester fleece. I bought it off of Ebay, but the lady who grew it is Dee Heinrich at Peeper Hollow Farm. She is a new to me shepherdess, but it appears as though her fleeces did well at some shows this past summer. My intentions are to wash it, and then sample with it, spinning from the flicked lock vs combing it. Elaine Benfatto has a great essay on plies and plying twist in her blog archives that caught my attention last year. Since reading it I've been looking for a lustrous grey longwool fleece large enough to spin a many plied worsted spun dk-ish weight yarn to make an aran or gansey from. I have a gorgeous romney/montadale cross, unfortunately the ewe threw her coat and got into a mess, so her fleece weighed out at 4 pounds. Not enough for experimenting and making mistakes in my opinion. I plan on spinning as much as possible into the same yarn, so I'll probably have matching something or others for someone around here. Of course some of the fleece will find it's way into the dye pot, and on the carder, and in a blend, that's what I usually do with the oddments (the odd length, different crimp, off handle bits that just about every fleece has, and perhaps some wool that has to be skirted out, but is too good to throw away) It's been a long time since I've dug into a raw fleece, I'm really looking forward to it.
The carders, swift, the russian lace book and the Stowe book are from the Village Spinning and Weaving shop. I had not ordered from them before, and if everything goes as well as it looks (I already have the tracking number and am bugging the heck out of UPS tracking the progress, it's slated for an Oct 7th delivery date) I'm seriously considering ordering some of the rovings they have there. Nothing fancy as far as colors go, but I like to do my own prettifying so plain, good rovings are a staple to me. They have Targhee. I like Targhee. Enough that I debated even mentioning it.
The Walker books are from knitpicks. Do you really need a link? I think we can all find them ourselves, thank you. I bought enough of the white wool of the andes for a sweater, enough of the white fingering weight merino for a sweater, and I really for the life of me can't remember how much of the white lace weight merino I bought. Not enough for a sweater, I've retained enough sanity to refrain from that.
I bought the mosaic sock kit, the twined sock pattern, the Hazel Carter Rosy Fingered Dawn kit and the Spider Queen pattern from Blackberry Ridge woolen mill. If you can quickly scroll past the scrappy jacket ghastlies at the top of the page, the links to the things I like are at the bottom. I'm not a fan of mixed media such as quilting and knitting, although I have used an old, ugly, felted afghan as batting. I intend to make the Spider Queen first. I have the pattern in the copy of Ms. Carters' shetland pattern book, unfortunately that shawl has a slightly different centerpiece and I don't like it. At all. But this one I like, and if it turns out the charts are the same and the sample shawl was wonky, I still won't regret buying the pattern. Must support the Shetland Lace designers. Rosy Fingered Dawn may become Mauvy Fingered Dawn, as I've seen pictures of a few completed shawls. Some were gaudy, some were fine, I'm hoping it was the photography skills of the posters. I'll know when I get the yarn in my hot little hands.
The yarn. Wow. It's from Handpaintedyarns. It appears to be a singles yarn, 850 yards per 100 grams, $5.95 per skein. I bought two each in Buscando Azul LC, Damask Rose LC, Emerald LC, and Indigo LC. I think the LC stands for the cooperative it came from, or the dyer. Whatever, LC makes some gorgeous colors. I almost bought geranio, and I'm seriously, seriously considering buying olive dusty, sauterne, and one of the violets, even though my order has already shipped.
Last, but the polar opposite of least, is the patterns and book I purchased from here. I had thought about purchasing the book in the US, but I really wanted some of the pattern packs she lists in her projects section. Particularly Unst, and the Ring shawl, her newest limited edition. I have not seen her pattern packs being sold anywhere else, and since I had to get them from her site, why not get the book too? She has some special deals that as far as I can tell are permanent. If you buy the book from her, you receive either a pattern you choose from a selection she lists, or two inox needles of your choice that they carry. For any three pattern packs that you buy, you have your choice of a free pattern, same choices as the one for the book. They don't defray the expense once one considers international shipping charges, but they're nice to include them. I did choose the surface mail option, since the other options put the total dangerously close to too much. When I got up the next day, there was an email from them letting me know that they'd already shipped my package, so I'm looking forward to it's arrival, in two and a half months.

As far as I'm aware, that's the sum total of my orders. I'm not positive that I didn't forget anything. Knitpicks and Blackberry Ridge do not include a copy of the invoice when they email the receipt of order confirmation. All my ordering was done in the wee small hours, and I know particularly at Blackberry Ridge I had several things that I put in and took out of the cart, so something may have been missed. I think I ordered another Hazel Carter pattern from them, but I can't remember. Maybe my next order should include some of those whatchamacallit pills that make you not forget stuff.

As an interesting aside (well, I find it interesting, and it IS my blog) I noticed a few things about myself while shopping. I must have a reason to buy something. Duh. No, seriously. I have to have a logical, clear need or reason for buying something before I will allow myself to buy it. I want it, I like it, and it's pretty don't cut it. Once I make the decision to buy something, I look at as many choices as feasible (and online that's quite a few) decide what I require, what I can compromise on, what I like/want/is pretty, do a price check, and often reevaluate myself out of buying anything. The Heirloom Knitting products were difficult for me. I left the shopping cart sitting open for over an hour, hanging at the point where I had everything entered in and all I had to do was hit one button, and it was a done deal. Why was it so hard? Not only was I not being economical, but I was going about it in the most expensive way possible save for having each item shipped independently, and it was a purchase that I had no guarantee of ever being capable of using. When I finally decided to click, I closed my eyes and squinched up my face, telling myself that the cart has been sitting there so long it's timed out by now, if it's timed out I won't redo it, I'll just let it go. I clicked. It went through.

I know I will enjoy everything I bought. I have need of most of it. Tangled skeins piss me off. I have many fibers that are too fine for my drum carder, and my old hand carders self destructed.

Speaking of self destruction, I'm on my way to bed before it happens to me. Night, happy shopping.

Please, Somebody find a paper bag...

2005-09-30T22:29:00.000-04:00

I have been practicing the great art of retail therapy. I feel faint whenever I think of the bills, but I knocked my want list way, WAY down.
Shall I share with you?
It started with this:

Grey RomneyxBorder Leicester fleece bought off of E-bay, it's from last years clip. I'm thinking a nice sweater.

That felt good, so I moved on to some things I've been needing:

That would be a pair of Strauch Cotton/fur half size hand cards

A lovely swift

And because I'm a literary kind of gal:

I've been looking for this locally and couldn't find it.

Since I was ordering anyway...

This looked really interesting.

I decided to complete my collection:

and start a new one

A mystical mosaic sock kit, St George pattern, Black and Blue/Violet colorway

Beth B-R's twined sock pattern

Hazel Carters Spider Queen Shawl pattern

Her Rosy-Fingered Dawn Kit.

I then purchased a selection of the knitpicks dye your own yarns. No pics, they're um white, I'm thinking you can visualize white yarn...

But since I was buying all these lace patterns I needed to get some more lace yarn.

Porn anyone?

Hmmm...That's enough for four shawls, plus the knitpicks, and I only have one pattern...

Must Have More Lace.

So, I did it. I bit the bullet, and ordered these:

The Spring Shawl Pattern

The Unst Bridal Shawl

The Rosebud Shawl

The Ring Shawl

and, since I was paying all that shipping:

There are a few things I will still pick up, I would like a copy of Rogue, a nice little sweater pattern Terri Shae designed, some more needles, but I have to let the card rest a while (and wait until I can get Paypal to accept my new account) since it was screaming for mercy.

Cheaper than a Therapist, but I still hurt for my little guy. The vet let us know on Wednesday what killed him. It was a cottonmouth. It was fast, but it wasn't easy for him. We have a professional coming out to scope the yard, house, and sheds for snakes and Make our home less palatable for them.

Thank you for the condolences, both public and private.

In My Life, I Love You More

2005-09-26T19:48:00.000-04:00

Rest Peacefully, Sweetheart.
July 16, 1996 - September 26, 2005

Autumn Memories

2005-09-25T22:52:00.000-04:00

Leaves crisping under my feet, a warm cozy sweater, chill nipping the ears and nose...
Yeah, well, it's still in the 90's here in the greater Charleston area. However, I remember fall in the Midwest fondly.

Truth be told, the best fall weekend that I've ever spent was in Iowa in 1990. I had requested time off from my first adult job, and driven down from Wisconsin the night before to visit my sister in her big, old victorian house. It was her very own, her first house, quite a coup for a single 27 year old woman. She had turned the attic into a guest suite/yarn storage/closet, so I awoke to a bright, airy, color filled room. I pulled on some leggings and a sweater and ambled off downstairs to find my sister. We met up in the kitchen and were sharing some hot oatmeal muffins with apple butter, when the phone rang. It was her office, she needed to come in and review a case that was now emergent. At the time she was a coordinator for a major companies' in house health insurance, so interruptions like this were common. She apologized profusely, but I told her I'd be fine on my own and it would be enjoyable to have the day to myself.
After she left for the office, I decided to get something in the crockpot for supper. Beef stew sounded just about right. After browning the beef, seasoning it with fragrant bay, rosemary, and a few grinds from the pepper mill, I started searching through the fridge for vegetables. Realizing that all she had for stew veggies were some left over baked potatoes and a rather wilted carrot, I pulled on my shoes, tossed her wool muffler around my neck, stuffed her mittens in my pocket, and set off for the local grocery. On my way there I ran across a small gourmet fruit and vegetable stand. Deciding that the higher cost was worth not walking six more blocks, I picked out some carrots, potatoes, onions, a block of cheddar cheese, and a bottle of red wine. Crossing my fingers that he wouldn't card me (I was 19 at the time) I paid for my purchases. The lovely man behind the counter told me that this was his last day of the season, so I turned around and bought a paper bag brimming with green, rosey cheeked apples. Carrying my purchases back to her house, the scent of tangy apples and fresh paper bag were a perfect companion to the bright maple leaves crunching around my feet, and the crisp chill in the air.
Upon returning, I cleaned the vegetables, tipped them into the crockpot with the beef, along with a generous measure of the wine. I prepared the apples, and dug out the ingredients for lunch, and a pie. While the soup simmered and the crust baked, I pulled out some of her housekeeping books and started reading. There's just something about autumn that brings out the homemaker in me. After lunch I slid the pie out of the oven, built a fire in the living room fireplace, and curled up with her cat under one of the afghans my sister had knitted. As the fire died down, I layered another afghan on and cozied in for a nap. A bit later she called to let me know she was done and asked me if I wanted her to bring some McFood back with her. I turned down the McFood and said I'd scrounge something for us to eat. Knowing I had about a half hour, I hurriedly whipped up some biscuits, started her old percolator going with a family recipe for mulled cider, and cleared up the kitchen. Inspired by the books I had been reading, I searched her buffet for supplies.
When she came in the door, the dining room table was set, complete with table cloth and wine glasses, the stew was waiting in a pretty pot I found (it turned out to be a soup toureen, but it worked) and there was a big basket of steaming biscuits. She made up a salad and we dug in. Chatting with her about this and that, I watched the tension drain from her face. She reassured me that she had the next two days off as we cleared the table and took our pie and cider into the living room. She built another fire and we spent the evening talking, reading and knitting. At the time I knew how to knit, but had not gone any further than making the odd scarf. My sister worked on sweaters and afghans, and I knitted a garter stitch scarf from some green wool left over from a cardigan she designed. We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out in our jammies, watching old movies and reconnecting.

Now we have children, and men (aka big children), in our lives. The big old victorian has been "upgraded" to a split-level ranch in suburban North Carolina, and I am in South Carolina. She has been promoted and executized, and hasn't had time to pick up her needles in many years. I think the afghan she started that weekend was one of her last. I'm a full time college student, now I am the avid knitter, and a spinner too. We've both grown in separate directions and years go by without us seeing each other, months between calls, but we both still remember that weekend, when we were young and life hadn't gotten in the way yet.

Thank you, Princess Knits, for your contest and prompting me to remember that weekend. Even if I don't win, I have the best prize.

Cool Toy!!

2005-09-18T20:03:00.000-04:00

I was futzing around with stuff (still under the weather) and went looking for a way to magnify or do something to hilight the row I'm knitting on excel spreadsheets. Found It! It works with anything on the screen you want to magnify, and I believe it's packaged with all XP accessories. It's called magnifier, and the path is start menu --> accessories --> accessibility --> magnifier. Windows also has a taskbar magnifier in their power tools area but I don't care for it as much because it doesn't go the full width of the screen and it's not as easily parked (I had to move the whole taskbar whereas with the packaged magnifier it was click and drag, and it's resizeable to one line rather than the three the taskbar one does) on both you can adjust the magnification. Really handy little toy. I see much more charting and scanning in my future.
Downside? the packaged app has a box that stays on top of everything whereas the taskbar app does not. Eh, i just park the box in the corner.
have a good evening!

Insert Title Here

2005-09-18T02:39:00.000-04:00

For some reason I've been having trouble getting the title to show up in the last couple of posts. I guess I shouldn't complain considering it's frequently months between posts. *sigh* Semester started a couple of weeks ago. I've a heavy science load on top of an eng class with a prof who enjoys highly structured, philosophical assignments, and her greatest pleasure is watching students have moments of discovery be it in their thinking, lives or deciphering MLA formatting. So, if you ask a question she doesn't answer it, she tells you a story about it. Greaaaaat. I haven't had too many difficult questions, but her style is annoying. Other than that I really am enjoying my classes this semester.
On the needles, well, I have an v-neck pullover that I mentioned previously, I'm knitting a lace scarf for my sister with some moss green alpaca laceweight and I'm trying out a few different things with it, like the way of knitting scarf and edging at the same time as in the orenburg shawl book, using some shetland motifs and basically winging it. So far it hasn't been bad but conversely so far all I have knit is the bottom edging lol
I have been trying to make the mediterranean lace shawl from gathering of lace, I've cast on for it something like 31 times, and I've even gotten through three repeats of the pattern but something seems to happen each and every time. I have to admit most of the time I lose one or both needles out of it and it starts unraveling in my backpack. I need to figure a better solution for toting my knitting around, but I don't want to carry two bags. The doors at school are awkward and heavy and close really fast, so frequently my rolling backpack gets slammed in the door, and my knitting saves my laptop. Maybe I should break down and use some point protectors or something lol Ah well, the yarn is getting an attractive, cushy halo around it from being yanked back so many times. I'm starting to think I'm going to have to brush it to make the rest of the not-nearly-so-abused yarn match. We'll see, if I ever get to keep knitting on the damn thing.
I've been under the weather last night and all day today. I didn't even get out of bed today. Kevin did everything, and my sole contribution was dropping a handfull of fish sticks on the kids plates at dinner time, and then staggering back to the bathroom. I'm better than I was earlier today. Serious time was devoted to pondering how I could move the bed closer to the bathroom, because those 5 steps were too far. I also found myself cursing the former owner of the house for removing the bath part of the bathroom, it would have made clean up so much more pleasant when I lost the guess which orifice is going to spew game this morning.
I do have to say that the laptop and the wireless router has been the best investment. I seriously was worried about spending the money, but man, it's been a life saver. I can do homework anywhere in the house, and I can even take it outside and study while the kids play. Today I accomplished no studying, I devoted my time to pressing myself as flat as humanly possible on the bed, and reading blog archives. Bloglines ate all of my feeds, every single one, so I've been cruising the knit, spin, and fiber rings to find them, and running across some interesting new ones. Some of the ones I had to have back immediately? Knitting Curmudgeon, Queer Joe, Yarn Harlot (and today I went and re-read her archives, great way to pass the afternoon) Boogaj, Wendyknits.
Okay, time to go be flat again. Have a good weekend.
PS Shaela's a great dog, we vetted her and found out a) she's only 3 years old, b) she had heartworms (we're saving to get her treated, almost there!) and c) she's closer to a purebred than we thought, the vet thinks she may be pure unregisterable. (what he calls the dogs that the good old boys breed for huntin' and such.)
bed time now
*Edited to add*
Not that I care if Shae's a purebred or not. She's fantastic, she's sweet and funny and beautiful just the way she is. Pedigree doesn't even enter the equation.

I'm still here

2005-08-10T23:52:00.000-04:00

Barely. I just finished up summer semester on Monday, and recieved my final grades today. Coll Skills-A Computers-A Biology-A Statistics-B for a grand total of (drumroll please....) a GPA of 3.769.
i'm pleased, and I highly doubt I will attempt a full credit load during summer semester again. Packing that much stuff into 10 weeks was overloading. Cconsidering these classes were all numbered in the 100's (statistics does have prereq's but I tested beyond them in the entrance exams) I'm thinking trying that with the 300 range classes I will be taking by the time next summer rolls around would be suicidal.
on the needles - a sweater for me out of patons merino and some handspun, your basic V-neck with drop shoulders. I'm using elements from a couple of different patterns, copying something I liked on another pattern (that I don't have, so I'm winging that bit) and then drafted my own pattern to my measurements, with shaping. Nothing exciting, but it's knit a bit looser than what I'm used to knitting (apparently I like bulletproof fabric) and it feels really good, soft in my hands, so I'm looking forward to wearing it. Indeed, it's already been worn in a way. We had torrential rain that started after I left my umbrella at home, and I was the leaving a trail of water wherever I walked kind of drenched just from walking 40 feet from the parking lot to the door. Of course the classroom was sub-zero, so I whipped out my trusty knitting, broke the yarn, and wore 3/4 of the sweater back as a mini-cape for the next two hours. Tres Chic, I know, but it helped muffle my teeth chattering so the other students could hear.

Still fiddling with lace. I've enough of knitpicks alpaca lace weight to knit a shawl in both the lilac-y color and in autumn, but I haven't found anything satisfactory yet. I bought the first two Walker treasuries at the same time and have been swatching a few laces from them, but so far the things that I like the looks of are more effort than I want to go through right now. I only have ten days left of my two weeks between semesters, I'd rather spend them knitting and spinning rather than doing figures and struggling.

Adios, I'm off to zone in front of the tv with another lace swatch.

Woof

2005-04-22T23:37:00.000-04:00

I had a post I'd been working on over a few days, but Blogger burped and *poof* it's gone.
Basically I wanted to say that I've been considering insane projects and I got a dog.

The insane knitting projects?
I've been practicing my lace spinning. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to achieve a consistant gossamer shetland lace weight. Right now I'm able to get gossamer with areas of laceweight. In the meantime, I have a lot of lace yarn floating around. I bought a nice long 0 needle at the lys because they finally had one in and I want to support their stocking lace materials and tools. So I've been swatching some of this lace weight yarn with it. I really like the lightness and drape of the fabric I've been getting, and have had thoughts of a lace weight FI sweater (scroll down to the June 12th entry for a link to the pic) chasing about my head. Of course it wouldn't be a particulary fast project, but I do enjoy knitting with fine needles and fine yarns. I swatched brioche with the 0 and it was beautiful, soft and airy with a glow about it. I switched to 0000 dpn's and swatched stockinette, not as soft and not as airy, but nice and stretchy with an attractive opacity. Reminds me of the sweaters my mom had stored away from when she was a teenager back in the 40's.
I've also been looking at making a pair of socks for the fair this year. I bought a pair of commercial socks that I really love a while ago. Thick soft cotton yarn, slouchy tops, really comfy and they keep my ankle warm at night. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to see if I could deconstruct them and reproduce them with some fingering weight knitpicks merino. I gave them the once over today and the cuffs are brioche, short row heel, and i'm not sure about the toe but i think i can do it with kitchner.
I swatched the brioche stitch, some stockinette and a short row heel using their proportion of wraps, and it looks good so far. Some mods I'm thinking about are a tubular cast on, knitting the cuff flat then sewing it up (the brioche sts looked better when done flat than when i tried it in the round) and definately tightening up the gauge on the foot. I might even do the cuff in laceweight and the foot in fingering. Haven't decided yet.

About the dog
Her name is Shaela. At least now it's her name, who knows what it was before. I got her from the sales manager of a new subdivision. she and another dog had been running loose for a few weeks in the area, no one had seen them for a few days, and then shaela showed up at their office alone, begging for attention. Her companion still hasn't been seen.
Best guess would say she's a mastiff X yellow lab with a definate nod to the yellow lab in color and jowl structure. Might be some hound in her too. She's an older dog, in the neighborhood of eight or so. She has beautiful house manners, listens very well, is very good with the children, and has a really laid back personality. She also is huge, and fat. 25 3/4 inches at the shoulder, 46 inches from nose to base of tail, and is well over a hundred pounds. You can't feel a rib on her after three weeks on the road. I have to wonder how fat she was when they decided to dump her. She also has arthritus, but we've been giving her coral calcium and she's moving around much more freely. Tonight she's a bit stiff but we're having a storm and i'm feeling it too.
We're working with her to teach her some leash manners, and to see if she can learn to play in a more acceptable way than the wrestling that she seems used to. tug of war seems to be catching on, and she'll chase a stick and leave it where it lands, but balls have no meaning to her. Same for rawhide chews, she licks and licks them and then goes and buries them in the yard. Silly.
Judging from her behavior, she did not get a lot of extended petting sessions previously, but she's adaptable. she's discovered ear rubs are good and belly rubs make her groan and sigh and roll over on her back all four feet in the air. she seems to have been one of those "go away until I want you" pets. Until they didn't want her any more.
I realize that because she's old, she's a big breed dog, and her physical condition wasn't well maintained that she probably won't live with us for more than a few years. i have no time or interest in a puppy, she fits in with our family like she was made for us, and at the very least she will be loved and appreciated for who she is while she's with us. I tend to look at older animals as very little investment for a huge loving return, even if it's a short term pay off.
off to swallow yet more migraine meds and hit the sack.

Oh! How could I have forgotten to mention, I have a comment! YAY! thanks so much Fidgetybudgie!

swatching around inside my head

2005-04-11T01:19:00.000-04:00

I swatched the pattern that wasn't looking right in the border for the shawl mentioned in my previous post, and in the doing of it i realized that I was knitting it improperly. The chart is engineered to start with pointy "arrow" shapes (that's what I call them in my head) then a few rows of zig zags and ends up with a lozenge type motif at the top. I'm picking up stitches from the center of the shawl and knitting outward, and want the lozenges near the center and the points at the edge, so I had been knitting the chart from the top down without thinking about it. It was a crazy mess; the only thing that was recognizable was the arrows. Once I realized what I was doing wrong I played with it a bit and figured out if I go to the first row for each motif and start from there I can place them in the order I'm looking for and it looks fine. The zig zags still need some work but I think that's more of a gauge issue, I was using what fell to hand to swatch and the needles were bigger than I would have wanted for the yarn if it were for real. It was a very satisfying aha moment, and made me feel mucho competent when it worked.

While I was at my therapists office her receptionist and another knitter employee were oohing and ahhing over my swatch in progress. The receptionist mentioned she was thinking of trying her hand at lace so I was trying to explain to her what I was doing and that it was fairly simple, but she kept interrupting me to tell me that it was way more complex than she was capable of. *sigh* no not really. it was reassuring to hear that she's working on a project in size six needles with a non-fruu fruu yarn. It's acrylic but at least it's not a fluffy fizzy broom handle contrivance.

The therapist overhead the conversation and it segued into a discussion of self-worth and esteem, the end result, which was to assign me to knit something for myself.
I've started a lot of projects for myself over the years, but i always seem to set myself up to fail when it comes to my stuff. either it's so simple it's boring (heaven forbid I should make myself something nice, mom killed that instinct quite effectively) it's too much of a waste (i'm not a small person and yarn isn't cheap, i can get much more mileage making something for the kids) or i dither around and come up with ideas that i don't know if they're even possible or i attempt something that has a scary new thing in it and then manage to bugger up the simple parts and rip it because obviously i'll really fuck up the scary new thing, thus reassuring myself that nice things aren't for a fat stupid failure like me.
Strangely enough, I really want to do this. I guess I'm sick of being intimidated, self-depreciating and scared of things I want. I mean, it's yarn for crying out loud. if it's a big mess i know how to rip, so what's the big deal? dunno yet, but i'm going to do it and see what demons crop up on the way.

Ya know, I lied. I've actually made something for myself. I made myself socks out of a tequila sunrise colored bfl handspun sport weight that I dyed with wilton's food coloring. I still have a leftover ball of it. I wore them for oh, half an hour, and took them off to go shower. I came out and they were on Loverboys feet. He thanked me profusely for making such warm and snuggly socks, and batted his big baby blues at me until I sighed and said he could have them. I also presented him with a hand-spun hand knit bfl/llama blend scarf that winter too. Bfl (wool from blue faced leicester breed sheep for the non fiberholics reading) makes an amazingly soft, thick, cozy felt when washed in the washing machine. I cut the tops off the socks and the three year old wore the feet as slippers this winter, the cuffs worked as pajama leg extenders for the two year old, and I sewed the much shrunken felted scarf into a purse and gave it to a friend in Georgia when we moved. Loverboy's learned to sort his laundry even when he's in a big hurry, but that didn't prevent me from quietly frogging the sweater i was making him.

anyway, current projects are swatching and figuring what i want to do for the shawl, and figuring out what I want to do for me. I thought briefly about making jackie e-s's all over lace Faeroese shawl, a pattern that I love and have cast on for twice, but i think two lace projects at once would be counter productive. Socks aren't enough of a commitment, esp since i know i would blow off the second one. a sweater really seems the best bet, i just need to wrap my mind around the novel concept.

I think it's back now

2005-04-03T14:27:00.000-04:00

I see it's been nearly three months or so since I've updated. Man, Im almost feeling guilty here. Hopefully you'll understand (other than the problems I've had with Blogger) why it's been so long.

Health
We had viruii that we passed from one to another for about two months. Finally got shed of that just in time for allergies. yay.
Three weeks ago I turned my weak ankle and pulled a couple of muscles so it's been difficult for me to get down to the computer, and uncomfortable to stay on it for any length because I can't keep my foot up.

School
Went and signed myself up for college again. I'm going to a local tech school. Waded through and have most of my financial aid done, one loan left to apply for to use for supplies and a new computer, I'm thinking laptop. the amount of time I spend on the road waiting for the kids, Loverboy, or whoever would be better spent studying than my usual reading/knitting/staring off into space. which segues into

Computer
The computer I have now isn't a bad puter, and it's fairly new (in my opinion anything that costs as much as a computer stays new until it's dead LOL) but updating the hardware for it is starting to be tricky and it's about maxed out on the memory front. Plus, the a drive, while still installed and functioning enough to register and allow the computer to run, thoughtfully grinds to powder any disk inserted into it before it tries to read it or write to it. I consider it the ultimate in security. I tried to salvage the a drive and the burner from Loverboy's defunct puter but it won't recognize the a drive (damned proprietary programming, and no it's not worth the money to me to buy one from the manufacturer that it will recognize considering they want ten times what it's worth) and the burner requires software that he no longer has and can't be tracked down online.
Unfortunately mine is the only operational computer in the house, and Loverboy is also going back to school. In my mind's eye I have this vision of us working as a team, scheduling our time on the computer, respecting each others needs, all that sweet stuff that I know will never happen. Most likely it will be more like tapping toes and watched clocks, rushing over to jump on the computer when the other turns around to reach for a drink, and other vulture like behavior.
I'm also going to be stockpiling and stashing paper, printer cartridges, and other office supplies. Loverboy has no restraint when it comes to printed materials and the means to make them.

Knitting
Finished the Snowdrop shawl, and gave it to the recipiant. I'll see if I can get a picture of it sometime.
I really liked the making of it, although purling alternate rows was very tedious. Really tedious. Force-myself-to-work-on-it-because-of-the-boring-purl-rows type tedious. I knew not all lace has the plain return rows, so I dug up my copy of Hazel Carters lace book and paged through it. Things that looked incredibly complicated and very difficult suddenly looked quite doable. Hmmmm. I have a friend who is pregnant with her last baby, due in October, wouldn't a cute little shawl be sweet? I spun some samples in cormo and delaine merino, decided I liked the merino, only once it was spun i don't have enough of it to do an entire shawl. While digging through the rest of my stash to see what I might have that's soft and fine, I ran across a ball of handspun that a friend in OZ sent me. I believe it's perendale, it's spun very fine and she won first place with it at a fair. It looks and feels quite like shetland lace yarn. A while back I dyed it with blue, pink and green, and it came out a lovely periwinkle with slight green-purple variegation. Lianna loves blue, so I did a really quick swatch, ripped it (i only have so much yarn and I know that it won't be enough to do the medallion, the border and the edging) and started in on it. I'm using a variation of shetland twins for the medallion, an unnamed border that I got out of the lace sampler book (number 90 for those who have it), and planning on an edging from the hazel carter book. I'm about halfway through the border now, but I think I'm going to rip it all out. It's just not coming together like I'd hoped. It's really difficult to see the pattern in the border, even when I block it out. I think it needs a tighter gauge to pop. I'm also not pleased with the corners. I'm using a yo k1 yo increase in each corner except one, that one has a yo k2 yo so I can wrap one of the k sts and reverse direction, something I based on a tip I read about here . It looks fine, but I think I'd prefer to k2 in each corner, to make it look more alike. Last, but not least, Loverboy pointed out to me that the toddlers don't care for the feel of it when they sit in my lap while I'm knitting on it, and that he thinks it might not be the best choice for a newborn if i want it to be a shawl that gets use instead of being stored.
I was kind of hoping that this would be something Lianna and the baby would use for nursing, and maybe something that the baby would wear (or the baby's spouse would wear) on their wedding day. So, I'm thinking. Right now I'm spinning some superwash into a sport weight yarn to make a layette for the baby, once that's done I'll probably dig out the cormo and start anew on the shawl.
UPDATE
I took a break from typing the post to look at the shawl again, then put it aside and fixed supper. The littlest wee one heard me talking to Loverboy about ripping the shawl and went ahead and started on the deed for me while i was cooking supper. *sigh* So now it's wound back in a ball and waiting.
Okay, off to pop the babies in bed and contemplate what to do about the shawl and how to do it.

The Weirdness that is me.

2005-01-10T22:05:00.000-04:00

I was going to scan in the progress on the shawl, but when I got to blogger and looked at the previous picture, I realized i only have about ten rows to show. Hardly worth the effort, really. I've been working on it religiously, but today I had to rip waaaaay back because somehow or other a yo had been bungled and wound up with a strand bisecting it. I waited to rip it until I was parked in line to get the eldest from school, and oddly enough while I was unpicking it I found myself humming along to the radio, kicked back in the cool breeze of the car vent, and actually enjoying it. It was relaxing. Huh? most of the time ripping is accompanied by curse this and foul that, but today i was just too happy to be bothered by it.

Other projects I'm working on?
Not the By The Sea sweater. The eldest and I discussed it and we both agreed it wasn't working, so he looked through my books and picked a sweater from the copy of the celtic collection that i won last year from a contest on KBTH. He's chosen the Galway children's sweater (link from knittingbeyondthehebrides.org, click on celtic collection at the top and it's in the list there) in a deep teal green generic acrylic i have. Yeah, it'll probably pill, but i doubt that it'll fit him long enough to be too annoying, and as it was a mill end from a big bin at a local craft store, the price was more than reasonable. unfortunately the eldest is at the age where he's too big for a sweater that isn't a major investment in time and fiber, and too careless for me to be willing to make that investment. He's learning though.

Of course, it probably won't be done until next Christmas, so I've cast on with some handspun superwash and am working up a hat for him too. Most days I thank my lucky stars that I have the stash to see me through the lean times. Some days I wish that I had more than just handspun yarn or unspun fibers awaiting the caress of my fiber tools. It is a good way to keep startititus at bay though, kind of hard to cast on for ten different projects if you have to spin all the yarn first, although i do often wind up changing my mind and ripping out what i've been working on to start something else with the same yarn.

Strangely enough, the girl child is very careful with her clothes and greatly appreciates anything I make for her. She's also small enough that 300 yards or aran weight will cover her and then some. I whipped up a little vest for her from a bag of mixed breed meat type sheep that i spun and space dyed in funky colors. Lots of orange, blue, fuschia, it's very pretty. It'll probably only fit her this season, so when it gets too warm for it i'm going to rip it out and make some socks with it. It's a wee tad too girly colored for me to be allowed to put it on the wee-est one, although the sparkling gold princess costume he insisted on borrowing from the girl child's dress up box this morning didn't phase anyone. Odd, isn't it? he was adorable though...

It's been in the high 70's to low 80's during the day here, our camilla bushes are blooming, the pansies are flowering their little green hearts out, one of the azealea bushes is gearing up for it's third burst of floral display, the grass is still brown so it doesn't need mowed yet, and we have broccoli that we'll be picking this weekend. what's a few rows of ripped knitting in the face all of that false spring-ness? And, we had company this evening. Loverboy's father and grandmother. This is a regular thing, we have spaghetti nights on mondays. Family is a good thing, and I am greatful how welcoming Loverboys has been. Speaking of, I'm shuffling off to veg on the couch with Loverboy and see how many rows I can knit tonight that I'll have to rip out tomorrow.

Got this much back

2005-01-08T01:46:00.000-04:00

At least you get to see the crapscan, but the color is way off. irl it's a heathered blend of blue green red with a few white flecks, on the scanner it's pewter grey apparently.

The fiber is silk and merino spun on my schacht dt, the pattern is the snowdrop shawl via the yarn harlot. It's my first more or less successful lace project. I've tried lace before and wound up ravelling it and re-stashing the yarn because i was making waaaay too many mistakes, and couldn't for the life of me figure out where they were or what the problem was. this is a down and dirty pattern, politely straight forward without a lot of handholding. I like handholding. Well, for the first few dates at least. That's why I'm so surprised that I'm actually able to knit this one. I've ripped it to hell and back, by my row count of rippage I should have a shawl and a half sitting here. I think what's prevented me from tossing it back into the stash is the fact that i was able to read the problem with what i had done. Ripping back isn't the happiest thing i do with my knitting, but ripping back because you KNOW there's a problem but you can't figure out what it is, or even see the problem, even after placing it in a bag and marinating for a week, is particularly frustrating.



Some Things I've Discovered About My Knitting

i was taught to wrap yo's the wrong way. previously my yo's were not much bigger than the stitches around them.
   if you wrap yo's properly, it's MUCH easier to see them.
   Yo's are slippery little buggers, and when the shawl is all soft and limp quite often they masquerade as a dropped or missed stitch. 
   I've learned that while I *can* drop down and fix a problem with the lace, it's not a good idea for me yet, especially when it may be as far as four rows down.

    i really need to unpick the stitches, whipping the needle out and ravelling means i'm going to be ravelling to the cast on stitch because with all the increases, decreases and other fancy yarn tricks, putting the stitches back on the needles is far more frustrating than re-knitting six inches of lace.

  I'm thinking about changing the i-cord edging she has around the long edge of the shawl. Stephanie (I hope she doesn't mind if I call her Stephanie, she and my son have a one-sided thing going, ever since she emailed him earlier this week he turns bright red when I mention her name or he sees her blog on my puter) Ahem anyway, she recommends using a needle a size larger for the i-cord, to make sure it fits the edge. Kim Salazar talks about her experiments with i-cord on her daughters poncho and mentioned making a few rounds between live stitch pick-ups. I think Kim's method would be rounder, and i like the idea of a rounder i-cord. my yarn is a heavy lace weight that i tried to spin elastically, but other than the soft matte wool texture the silk seems to be wearing the pants and i'm pretty sure it will stretch and grow. stretched out i-cord doesn't appeal. we'll see, i may decide to crochet one of the lace edgings in some elderly books I have, the ones for lingerie are small and dainty, and don't look neck irritating. Eh, we'll see.

As usual, opinions welcome.

Pissy now.

2005-01-08T01:20:00.001-04:00

I had a whole nice post about what I'm doing, why i haven't blogged, and even PICTURES (okay, picture, and it really isn't a picture, it's a crappy scan but still...) of my current wip, and a review of the pattern i'm using that i find useful for myself, (after all, I'm the only one who reads this anyway, aren't i?) and blogger ate it. lock stock and crapscan.

ARGH!!!

Comments

2004-11-28T01:52:00.000-04:00

Looks like comments are working again.
Still slugging away at that sweater for my son. I've damned the torpedoes and cast off three stitches for each armhole and hopefully that'll do the trick. It'll probably end up some weird shaped Quasimodo sweater, but the eldest is such a sweetie (and a guy) he won't know notice unless it causes physical pain, and he'll wear it to shreds cause Mom made it for him. Ah, the beauty of the Y chromosome.

I am a Knit Twit.

2004-11-22T21:19:00.000-04:00

Let me clarify. I'm not a knitdweeb, or at least I don't think I am. I know how to knit, I know how to purl. Decreases, increases, I've done my share. I actually know several ways of doing all of them, if you want to get technical. I don't like the new fashion yarns, I feel that they distract from a well knit project. Which, for all I know, may be their purpose. I don't usually want instant gratification. I enjoy watching a pattern build up row by row, and I appreciate fancy stitch patterns and colorwork. I have mentioned that I aspire to someday knit Starmore patterns, but in truth the main thing that holds me away from trying them is finances. My cables are proudly erect on their background stitches, my floats don't peek through to the surface, my fair isles aren't ruched (mainly because I rip those sections out but hey) and my knitting even, to gauge, and quite consistent for a not new yet not really experienced knitter.
However, I have today come to the conclusion that I am a stupid knitter.
Please, allow me to present the evidence accumulated over the past few weeks.
Last year my eldest son chose a sweater pattern that he really liked, a raglan aran, and requested I knit it for him. This year, when I asked him if he'd like a pair of socks or a scarf for Christmas, he said no mom, I really want you to make that sweater for me please. I sighed and said sure, let me dig it out. I found the pattern and the yarn and the needles and off I went. Stupid mistake number one, I didn't actually look inside the page protector that I had the working copy in to make sure it was all there. It isn't. I have the directions for the front and the back and about half of the first sentence for the sleeves and that's it. Okay, I'll just retrieve the book and make a new set of copies.
Stupid mistake number two. When I got the working copy set up, I did not make note of what pattern book it came out of. A pain in the arse but none-the-less , I'll go to the storage shed and dig through my patterns, it's not like i have that many, maybe one large size box full, if that even.
Stupid mistake number three, I actually attempted to enter the storage facility after Loverboy had been the only person to visit it for weeks. within 5 minutes I had been smashed on the shoulder by a falling toolbox, and conked in the head by a different, yet almost as heavy, box from the other side of the rickety stacks of boxes. I went back to the van, put the kids back in their car seats, fired up the mother ship and blasted on home, all the while thanking the high heavens that I hadn't actually gotten far enough into the storage shed that the children were in the door yet.
Okay, I didn't want to do this but I'll have to see if i can figure out what book it is and buy a new copy. The only clues I have are that the pattern name is By The Sea, and it was designed for Patons Astra. No designer name, nothing but page numbers, 32 and 33 , and the pattern number, 8.
I go to the Patons' website, and see a bunch of books. Unfortunately, they don't list the names of all of the patterns in the books, much less show pictures of them. I thought I might contact them and see if they could tell me where the pattern is from, however as far as I can tell, there is no email for them listed on the site. I do a google, nada. I ask around. Zip. I post a cry for help to a well visited knitters forum. 30 views, but Zero replies. I guess that'd all fall under mistake number four.
Stupid mistake number five. I decide to say friggemall and do the pattern up myself. Upon closer inspection of the picture, I decide I don't like the raglan sleeves and want to do set in sleeves. Not a huge deal, really. I'll use the same motif that is in the center of the body of the sweater, run it up the sleeves, put a cable on each side, fill in the extra room i need with the same twisted rib used in the sides for sizing, it'll be fine. It might look a little weird where the shoulder seams join because I'll be joining cables to twisted rib, but I really don't think it'll look that weird.
Stupid mistake number six was thinking I could read, count, and do simple math.
I have a book that is supposed to help people figure out how to make their own sweater patterns. it's The Knitters Guide To Sweater Design, which is highly recommended by some people. It seems very well written, but I don't know how to get the information I need from the book, and I'm realizing just what poor skills I have. I can't tell what my gauge is. Oh, I know how to measure gauge, but on the aran there is no real flat surface to read it from other than the reverse stockinette, which I can't read it from. I flipped it over, and read it on the stiockinette part of the back. 5 sts per inch. Cool. Then I happened to set the ruler on the twisted rib, looked at the book for a minute, went and counted gauge again quick and came up with 4 sts per inch. Mmmmmkay....so which is it? Oh wait, this is ribbing, it's probably different. Yep, every section of stockinette on the back was 5 sts, every section of ribbing 4 sts. Okay, I'll count the total sts and divide that by the width in inches, that should give me gauge. 7.05 sts per inch. .05 sts? What the Fuck? oh wait, I added two sts for the seams, okay, refigure it, and it's 7 sts. so I'm knitting a sweater at either 4, 5, 7 or 7.05 sts per inch, or some other number that has yet to rear it's sorry ass, and I need to figure out where to decrease for the set in sleeves I want to put on it, plus figure out the pattern for the tops of the sleeves. And I haven't even given thought to neck shaping yet.
Then, thinking I might be able to fudge some things without having exact gauge, I went on to look at figuring out what to put where. They tell me to tie a measuring string around the boy and measure him in 14 spots. He wriggled around and the toddlers did their best to get in the way but I held all of them down and managed to get it done. Who needs a baby sitter when my own broad beam serves so well, eh?Then I started plugging numbers in and realized that the books sizing is slightly off with ease measurements (no big-e) and then it dawns on me that there is a potential problem in the fact that I've already started the pattern in size ten (big on the boy but he prefers clothes with about 8 inches of ease and he added something like 6 inches to his rib cage measurement just this year alone, so it won't be big for long) and I will be figuring out the rest of the sweater based on his current measurements. Now I have the additional confusion running around that says since I know the size the piece measures, and i know his size, do i call that "ease" and go from there, aren't I still going to wind up with a size ten body and a size 8 armhole? I've had daymares about cone shaped arans ever since.
The whole evolution has taken about two weeks. I probably should have ripped it out and knit up a different pattern. My son really has his heart set on this one, but he's a good boy and I know he would understand and easily accept a substitute. However, I want to set a good example for him and not shy away from a little adversity, and he's well aware I'm having troubles with the pattern. Hell, the neighbors across the street are aware what with all the Loud discussions I've been having with that pile of knitted yarn lately.
So, if anyone out there could help me figure out what's going on and point me in the right direction (and maybe check my figures once i get there) I'd really appreciate it.
If the comments aren't working please feel free to email me. (enjayk AT lycos DOT co DOT uk)

I'm going slightly mad...

2004-11-09T14:56:00.000-04:00

My favorite Queen song. I've been introducing my son to essential musicians and songs and even he immediately recognized the genius that Freddy Mercury was.
Coincidentally, the internet is driving me batty. Lost all my comments, even though I had taken pains before we moved to make sure they were carefully tucked away in storage. Can't attempt to get them back because the old email address is defunct and i can't reinstate the old account because they want to send a confirmation email to the old address, can't get a new one set up until i have an email address, which i won't get until i get our account number, which i won't get until time warner sends us the first bill. gaaaahhhhhh! I did turn on bloggers' comments so i hope there is some sort of way to communicate with me. Which segues right into...

If anyone has ideas on cleaning potting soil, rust, and other assorted crud and stains i'd rather not think of off of my dpns (some plastic, a few steel, most of them aluminum and bamboo) I'd really appreciate any suggestions. The plastic shoe box i had them in got shoved under a potting bench at the m-i-l's house and then covered in bag upon bag of potting soil she got a great deal on. Apparently the only one who knew where it was was her cat, who was found sleeping in the open box after it had been filled with dirt.

Since I really wanted to knit on dpns, I started the sleeve to a philosophers wool sweater on bamboo clovers i had tucked away elsewhere. The pattern is sunshine something or other, it's in the new knitting encyclopedia i got a few weeks ago. i'd find a link or even bestir myself to go find out the name of it, but i'm not using philosophers wool, i'm not using similar colors, and the fi charts are pretty basic. It's mainly those diagonal zigzag and pyramid shapes that I see most often as peery designs between motifs. Think of a big boxy cardigan with larger motifs in rainbow colors and you've about got the sweater. Despite all that, i'm really enjoying it. I miss knitting, and even though this will be a simple cardigan done in big yarns (well, big for a fair isle) it's cheerful, the colors i chose are coming together nicely, and it's challenging enough to pay attention to without risking burn out. I'm considering it practice for the smaller gauge, more expensive, and infinitely more sophisticated patterns of Alice Starmore that i aspire to knit. Okay, time to go. Have to pick up the eldest at school (it's german club day today so he's later than usual) and burn a few gallons of gas getting errands done.
Talk to ya'll later!

Hum Dee Dum

2004-10-27T20:34:00.000-04:00

Oh, Hi there. Long time no see, eh?
Yeah, I know, it's my fault. I fell off the face of the internet. Sorry about that.
Let me see, what's new around here. Hmmm....Well, the here is new...how's that for a start?
Way back when, when I was talking about Loverboy and I getting kersmackitied, the decision we were trying to make was whether or not to move. Not just your run of the mill across town hike, but all the way from Georgia to South Carolina. Not all that far geographically speaking, but it was far enough thank you. So, we did. We stayed with his parents for two very interesting and rather long months (I bit my tongue enough I considered it an aperetif) and we are now firmly planted in our first house. Nothing major (70's ranch, 3 beds 1 1/2 bath etc) but its 1499 sq feet seem spacious compared to the 648 sq foot house we moved out of. We have a real, fully fenced yard, gated driveway and all, with lots of trees, a gigantic magnolia that the previous owners son committed horrible crimes against, a screened in back porch, camellia bushes, hydrangea, gardenias, and the obligatory azaleas, which are EVERYWHERE in the yard in no planned pattern that we can see. The previous owners were divorcing after 30 years and the old guy was rather...well...He had a calling from God to move to Missouri to build a 21 room house on his fathers land and take in children to teach how to fish off it's roof. A very noble purpose, I'm sure, I just hope God calls him with a better landscaping layout for his future digs than the one he didn't use here.
Let me see....any other news than the big moves...no, not really. Between house hunting, child rearing, moving and then moving again, painting, getting my eldest settled in school (oh, there's a point...more about that later) I really haven't had time to do anything fiber related other than caress my tools and books and put them away with a promise.
About my eldest
We'd been homeschooling him since second grade, and he was now aged enough to be in fourth. I was really nervous getting him in school, but he took the placement tests, and for the most part placed right in with everyone else in his grade. Go Mom! Okay, yeah he did the testing, but we did a good job of keeping him current with his peers, something that was nice to hear. And, he made Honor Roll with his first report card. I was amazed that it is report card time already, i mean didn'the just start school yesterday? Has it been nine weeks already? He swears its been aaaaggggeeeessss mmoo-oooo-oooom LOL ah well, time is elastic I guess.
Okay, the wee ones are in bed, the blog is updated, and the Loverboy is enticing me with the first TV we've been able to sit and watch in three weeks....I'm off!

Life throwing a curve ball

2004-06-23T00:50:00.000-04:00

Loverboy and I were talking about some options that have been presented to us lately, and started joking about life grabbing us and giving us a kersmackity to force us into doing what we want to do but don't really want to do because of the way we have to go about it, when the ceiling fell in our bedroom. Not the whole ceiling, only about half a sheet of drywall's worth. BUT it was right over where our heads are when we sleep. Kersmackity noted, decision made, thank you.

The landlord was really great about it, he came out monday morning, assessed the damage, and had his family out fixing it within an hour. They tore up half the roof, ripped out the rotted subroofing, and properly replaced that half of the roof, all in one afternoon. that's how small our house is. This morning one of them came back and replaced the rotted drywall sheet.
One of the things that makes me so happy with our landlord is he told me yesterday, out of the blue, that he's real happy having us as tenants and he's very glad we're here. *Sniffle* He's always been sweet like that. We were talking outside while I watched the lovely young men sweat up on the roof, and I told him that I spin and knit, and showed him my drum carder and a sock I was knitting. His fingers started twitching when he found out I also have a spinning wheel, it was too funny. He's always been fascinated with the process (He worked at Bibb Textile Mill here in town, maintaining the heating and cooling system for 50 years) so I dug my spinning wheel out from behind everything that got dumped into the living room after the ceiling fell and I'll let him fiddle with it tomorrow when he comes back to paint the ceiling. Who knows, maybe he'll become a convert.
And that's about all the excitement in our lives lately.

Dull and rambling

2004-06-18T00:59:00.000-04:00

That pretty much sums me up the past few days. Heat, lack of sleep, and the weather systems moving over us have bowled me over with migraines and general malaise. It's not an excuse, but it's the reason I'm behind in sending out personal thank house to those who have responded to my appeal for critiques on my design.

So far everyone has been really supportive. Thank You. I will do my best to get caught up with the personal responses this weekend. I do have to go back and re-write a few, I wound up sending the emails to the service that was announcing the comments on my blog, rather than the commenters *sigh* (Ingrid, this means you lol) I did switch the comments to haloscan because I didn't like the way blogspot handled them, but I do still have the old ones. I had to hide them when I turned off the blogspot comments or risk blowing up the internet and everything attached to it by having conflicting java crap.

I still have a lot of questions, such as how far is it okay to strand, or should I put a small motif in the empty half diamonds at the edges of the rows to break up the floats? I'm seeing something fleur-de-lis ish to go along with the somewhat crest like motif, but I do like them empty, I feel it gives the eye a rest.

side note here, Mar's June 15th post on her blog covers her take on what makes a good fair isle design, and Joe has designed several wonderful color work sweaters if you're looking for tips on designing one.

how do I figure out where the chart should start and end so I don't have to chart out the whole freaking thing?

how can I get it from my hand drawn chart to a more easily read chart? I do have excel and I know that many people use it all the time for charting but I've had a difficult time figuring it out on my own and I can't find the directions I had for it. I mean, I can take the graph and make it so it's taller than it is wide and use x's to fill in the blanks, but I find the x's difficult to read and I haven't been able to nail the proper box size so the motifs don't squash themselves when knit. The graph paper I used is supposed to be for knitters, but it came out so tiny when I printed it I can't tell.

I know that there are differences between the Dale type sweaters and the Scottish Isle type sweaters, are they both called fair isle or is that more specific to the Scottish type sweaters and I should call this stranded colorwork or some other term I'm not familiar with?

I actually didn't have any pre-conceived ideas of what the design was going to be like, I told my brain design me a fair isle and this is what came out. It took about four hours to get it to the point where it is now, and I think subconsciously I did something more appropriate for two colors because choosing a colorway is still intimidating. In my mind I have been seeing this knitted with two strands of zephyr in this color for the background and this color for the patterning. I have seen reference for zephyr used in fair isles and it's really pretty from what I've seen but I don't know if it was more of a novel, I'm going to do it just because I can type thing or if it's actually an acceptable yarn for such a project. At my current skill level I wouldn't attempt it in anything besides a nice grabby wool but in the future I'd like to try it in zephyr, it intrigues me.

There is a new online magazine that is gearing up right now. I don't know when it's going to be published, but it's called Chiagu and it's being put out by Ivete and Liz. I was hoping to submit it to them when I'm able to get it going as an actual pattern and see if they feel it's worthy of publishing. I may still do that when I'm more certain the design is the way I want it to be. I'll be certainly scoping out test knitters then. Unfortunately I have several issues I need to work out right now both in knitting and personally before I can move forward with it, so it has stepped down a bit on the priorities. Just a bit though, I'm still going to be picking at it, and if nothing else I'll probably have a pillow with a big ass two colored stranded design on it by next spring.

My Fair Isle design

2004-06-12T10:32:00.000-04:00

Now that i seemed to have figured out links last night, I was going to post a pic of the fair isle chart that i have been working on. I tried posting it here to the blog, unfortunately I have it at the geocities site i made ages ago, and apparently they don't allow people to link from blogs to it because it shows up for a split second, then goes blank. So, here's the link
Please, tell me what you think. It's my first attempt, and I feel it's a honking big ass design, and each motif is going to be ten inches wide. I'm seeing it as a two color design, which is why i felt more comfortable making it so busy, and done in a fingering weight yarn, which would scale it down some. Still, Big and Ass are the two words that come to mind when I look at it.
Please excuse the largeness of the jpg, i was having a difficult time seeing the details when it was smaller.

PS forgot to mention last night, while we were in summerville (see, told you most people wouldn't recognize the name) we dined at Sticky Fingers twice. Once a rather lackluster buffet, and the other time, oh my, *hot flash* the other time was all you can eat ribs night. 5 different styles of sauce, dry rub, bbq chicken, and three sides, all bottomless, all delectable. We wallowed in it. Hedonistic food orgy comes close, but not quite, to accurately describing the experience. they do have online ordering, but for ribs it's waaaay expensive and involves fed ex. The sauces are divine, I personally recommend the dry rub, the memphis original and the carolina sweet. *drooling at the memory*

Alrighty Then

2004-06-12T02:32:00.000-04:00

Non-knitting Blather
Sorry to have left y'all hanging for a while there. I know you were all just on the edge of your seats waiting to hear from me again, but life intervened as usual. We went to Charleston, had an uneventful time, it was a really nice trip. Loverboy wasn't able to catch up with his buddy, but we did get to meet his sister's new squeeze, and we both liked him a lot.

Knitting Blather
While in Charleston (and I'm fibbing we were actually in one of the suburbs of Charleston but who cares?) I got to visit a better yarn store than i have locally. of course i whipped out the plastic and wore a layer off it. Purchased were:
-1 ball Katia Mississippi 3 in a sort of a spring/neon green, it's really bright and i'm thinking socks for the daughter
-1 ball cleckheaton 8 ply in a silver and white marle, for swatching
-1 ball of regia stretch in the ocean colorway, socks for one of the kids
-2 balls of smart superwash, in gold and royal blue, to swatch a fi design i charted
-1 dale of norway lace and fi tunic pattern (3010 rose is the specific pattern)
-1 knitting pure and simple neck down pullover tunic 9726, it's a basic v-neck long sleeved tunic
-1 reynolds lite lopi pattern 850, it's a twofer, with a pattern for a cardigan/and/or/vest and a pullover, both in fi, nice and conservative looking for the loverboy
-1 copy of I hate to finish sweaters by janet szabo, I did not have a copy when I wrote my essay the other week, although it certainly was on my list. guess it must have been fate.
I also picked up the knitters issue with the lily of the valley lacey thing in it, but i got that at books a million.

Since then i've also received a box of cascade 220 that was on back order from the big webs sale, and I've cast on with it for the same damn sweater more times than i can count. I even got an inch or three into the body once before I had to rip it out. The first two times it was because I have all these lovely colors and I realized i was limiting myself to the more safe less eye-catching colors so I ripped and forced myself out on a more colorful limb. the rest of the times were merely the result of trying to cast on while the toddlers were awake. around the fourth time i cast on i was in the middle of it when all of a sudden the circ zipped cleanly out of the stitches i'd already cast on, out of my hands, and chased my 2 year old across the floor. got her put back down for the rest of her nap, tossed myself back into the chair grumbling something about fava beans and a good chianti, re-started the re-starting process, got about a quarter of the way through when suddenly the yarn is quite wet. WTF? leaned over the arm of my chair and oh, there's the 1 year old teething on a good handful of it, and I heard the 2 yo giggling behind my chair. okay, guess naptime is over today. *sigh* I did finally get it cast on without twisting it, miscounting or loosing count, and have knit three rows of the corrugated ribbing. It's sitting right now because the window ac decided to announce to us that it has no drainage hole. all over the carpet. the carpet the landlord installed just before we moved in here. unfortunately we think the ac had been trying to send us this message for a few days, but the dresser cabinet thingy we had in front of it was holding back the tide while apparently taking up the hobby of mildew rancher. it pressured the wall into the mildew habit too. fortunately the brand new carpeting decided it was too good for mildew, i just hope it doesn't decide mildew ranching is beneath it. So, i've been fighting the war on fungi recently. so far, i've reclaimed the dresser cabinet thingy, the wall has been clean for a few days now but it's still requiring close supervision, and the carpet, well it looks okay but it's young and better capable of keeping up a facade, only time will tell. We did get a different ac unit installed today, one i have had for years, so i know it's properly set up and it drains as fast as wallets at a yarn sale. all there is left to do is finish drying out the carpet (i live in the deep south, the humidity is 71% at 2:30 am, this has the potential to be a life time goal here guys) and figure out how to break the news to the landlord.

knitting at large and people in particular

2004-05-28T21:26:00.000-04:00

You know, it's interesting to sit back and watch all the knitters discussing various parts of the craft. String or Nothing is a blog I eagerly turn to every day, Karen is a reliable poster and boy the knowledge she has! Wendy amazes me with her productivity and generosity, QueerJoe is very talented and it's nice to see what a male's perspective is. The guys at Threadbare are a hoot, Rob's blog is such a riot of color. My friends are always near and dear to me, Stasia, Nannette, Teresa, Linda, Rosemary and the rest of you all. However there are two people in particular who really appeal to me and whose blogs I would read even without fiber talk. I do not have a personal relationship with either of these ladies, as a matter of fact one of them I have only posted to their blog once, and that was earlier today. Mar is an incredible knitter, who has offered to help me with neck steeking, or figuring out pattern issues if need be (and trust me Mar, there will be a need) reminds me so much of my mom, with her biting humor and acidic wit. And her sweetness that I've seen her portray toward those who are close to her.
The other lady I really enjoy, her blog is bossy little dog and her name is Catherine. Catherine is a strong, independant woman who lived through the hell that cancer is, much like I did with my mom. (really, my life doesn't center around mom, but my son was talking about her today and it got me to thinking) Catherine's journey into hell lasted about three years I think, mine started when I was five and lasted until she passed when I was 28. Someday I'll post more about her, but not now. Anyway, Catherine seems very much like one of my personal heroines and someone I aspire to be when I grow up, my sister. Smart, strong, and tired most of the time seems to be a trend in my favorite people lately.

and on that note, i'm off for three fun filled days with loverboy's family and friends. have a great memorial day, don't forget to hug a soldier!

Blogdweeb in action!

2004-05-27T23:51:00.000-04:00

(this was written Thursday evening and posted Friday morning)
In reviewing wednesday's final post, boy did i ever sound like one of those people who expect you to find every stitch they make fascinating. In actuality I don't, but some friends to whom i sent the blog link requested that i post my current wips. I aim to please some people and y'all got to share the bounty. Lucky you.

In responce to my commentors-

Elissa, YAY you like me, you really do!! hehehehe and do get a blog, it's not that bad. They wouldn't even take my first born (or any of my children for that matter) in trade :( Thank YOU for making MY Thursday!!

Mar, believe it or not, I actually knew that you preferred a three needle bind off for shoulders. Don't ask me how, probably something that stuck in my brain from the first incarnation of your blog (or would that be the first reincarnation of your blog?) I figured for munitions belts to rotate smoothly and comfortably you'd want to kitchner the belts, which is what I meant to refer to as kitchnered and disguised as shoulders, sorry. For what it's worth I did picture the belts to have the full compliment of J&S strapped to them like those criss crossed belts the gunslingers wore across their chests in the old westerns, what better ammo against fashionistas, eh? As for the Haloscan stuff, twern't nothing, if it was in the way it was in the way. I did email Janet Szabo about the posts so she could check them out and approve or sue me, but once they went away I re-emailed her and said never mind. Huh, guess I should probably re-re-email her, but by now she's going to think I'm insane.

Anthony, Your shawl is quite pretty! I do have your blog on my list of favs to check regularly, and i look forward to it when I'm making the rounds, but for some reason i'd been missing it lately. I went searching and found you hiding in my favorite purveyors of fiber-crack folder, go figure. It was cool to catch up on your adventures today.

I've been getting grief from the loverboy all day over having Mar firing tri-pod (or vehicle, he just bellowed into my ear) mounted 50 cal guns from the hip, one is physically impossible much less two. I say get a grip, he says she couldn't because they weigh 30 or 40 pounds apiece. *sigh*

In my other life
We spent today getting ready to hit the road friday as soon as Loverboy gets home from work. We're off to Charleston, SC to visit his family and catch up with an old crony of his that he hasn't seen in a couple of years. Woo Hoo! Atlanta last weekend, Charleston this weekend, i feel positively cosmopolitan.
It looks as though Webs is finally pulling themselves out from under the ginourmous backlog that their anniversary sale created. I did succomb, and ordered a dozen or so skeins of cascade 220 in various assorted colors two and a half weeks ago. UPS sent me notice today that the order has been checked in with them, and my card has been debited, so I'm excited about that. I don't know what it is, but i hardly ever order yarn online. It's not because we have great selection of yarns locally, we don't. Actually, i think that may be part of the problem. I'm a tire kicker and i don't like risking what little money i carve out of the budget on yarn that i am not familiar with. I've heard good things about cascade, so i got some with a philisophers wool style sweater in mind. Some might remember that i was spinning and dying a fleece to make one last year. Unfortunately i processed half the fleece first and then needed more, so i went to wash the other half and chose one of my more stupid days to do it. Big felted donut, anyone?

Oh, Yeah, fiber content

2004-05-27T00:08:00.000-04:00

Let me see, on the needles i have the ribbed cable cardigan from sweaters for men, for my SO, in tornado teal naturespun sport, a pair of socks in lionbrand magic stripe (it's the only locally available sock yarn, yes i live in fiber hell) socks in blue handspun Gulf Coast Native Improved (aka gcni, or as Stasia likes to call them, Louisianna Beach Sheep) from Margrett of Runningmoonfarm. Love the story behind the name, see if you can chat her up and get it from her. And last but not least, a soft cables moebius in pale blue alpaca/merino/cashmere blend, pattern and yarn from elann.
On the wheel, i have a mohair wensleydale blend from greenwing on ebay. I bought the two rovings ages ago and then blended them on my drum carder, and tossed in a little bit of a shades of grey cotswold fleece to tip it more into a purply burgandy rather than a red burgandy. I'm thinking some sort of simple stitch gansey type sweater with that. On the carder I'm working up a pale fawn shetland fleece from my friend tricia in canada, i have some grey crossbred ram from her too that's slated for next, and i'm washing up a lovely grey romney/dorset cross fleece from Melissa at skylines farm. Really lovely fleeces.
Oh, and i have this fair isle pattern that i charted last weekend. It was running around my head bothering me, so I drew it out but I have no experience with fair isle so I don't know if it's any good. I'll swatch it when I find some suitable yarn and we'll see.

Little ditty 'bout Mar and knitzombies...

2004-05-26T21:53:00.000-04:00

okay, here is the schedule of events-

I thought up a really cool on topic post for the comment section on Mar's blog (aka the knitting curmudgeon...google it, you'll find her)

I started writing out the really cool comments post in Word, which although simple, it took me most of the afternoon and evening. Two toddlers and a nine year old kind of slow things down, ya know?

Mar moves her blog to her new domain

I make my post to her old blog site, 13 comments for the post and one fairly philosophical post about making ribs doesn't make you a chef.

Mar's Haloscan comments, the comments I made my post in, go buh-bye.

Yup, zero. zip. nada. all gone. *sigh* since I still have the file I go and see about posting it to her new comments.

Hmmm...have to get a blog to post comments....

Since it's no longer on topic at Mar's blog, and I have this here space to fill anyway, here's the original comments post, enjoy.

Endless seas of knitzombies, rigidly marching in formation, fluffy crap swirling, to the tune of “Cast ON!! Yo LEFT (knit to the end) Yo LEFT (knit to the end) Yo LEFT (knit to the end) Bind off one, two, three, four, FUZZY SCARF!!” pouring from a tiny figure wearing a crochet helmet.
What has this world come to? Are we doomed to drown in crap? Scheduled to swelter in frippery that won’t breathe? Just as we give up on our last hope…? OOOOOEEEEOOOOOO ooo ooo ooooo…..ooooEEEEoooooo oo oo OOOOOO…..over the ridges we see her. Slowly emerging, the clean classic lines of a Fuzzy Poncho in traditional shades of Lime, Hot pink and …Wait just a durned minute Mar, I thought you were supposed to be our Savior, wtf are you doing? Going over to the Dark….
“ShutthefuckUP can’t you see I’m COUNTING??????!!!????”
oh…sorry….
AHEM
Finishing the row and carefully tucking it away, she flings the crappy disguise off to reveal a design so breathtaking in its complexity our hearts surge with joy. It was merely a ruse!!! Tearing open a bag of swatches and scattering them to the four winds, she watches them sail over the troops.
“OMG SEED STITCH!! NOOOOoooo that’s too HARD!!! EW EW EW EW EW!!!! WOOL!! My GRAMMA knit with WOOL!!! HAHAHAHA BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY!!!!”
“Look at how fine this is! There’s no way I could knit with it, and how would people know you loved them without the big lumpy stitches in their tube socks to remind them with every step?”
Shoulders slumped, she turns, prepared to climb down the slope, resigned to hunker down in her stash bunker and wait out this new siege upon the knitting community, when she hears, off in the distance, a lone voice cry
“WOW! That’s SOOO KEWL!!! I bet I could knit this, and it’d be so AWESOME with…”
Whipping around she squints over the glare of glitz and sees a teeny tiny figure hunched over a swatch, counting stitches and doing some rudimentary math in the dust.
Quickly a Fashionista drops a fizzbomb on the figure, entangling her in screaming neon sparkle, and medics drag her off.
“that’s IT, now I’m PISSED”
Mar reaches up and tugs on her expertly kitchnered shoulders. As they rotate around we realize that she’s wearing munitions belts, cleverly knitted in pattern to disguise them from the fashionistas. Reaching up under the back of her sweater she whips out her trusty 50 caliber pneumatic machine guns. “Bite me Fashionistas!!!” JJjjjj JJjjjjj Jjjjjjj n sssssssssssssssss Jjjjjj JJjjjjj Jjjjjjjjj n ssssssssss

As a unit the fashionistas turn and start lobbing Fizzbombs at her. Tattered skeins falling short, one big ball of Kid Seta went the distance. As Mar ducked she thought “That’s been wound on a ball winder, it shows thought and planning ahead…maybe there’s hope….”
With a loud Pflouf!!!! It hit her and exploded, proving itself to be just the outer strands of a Kollinette Kwik-Wrap. The shapeless mass quickly knitted her into its broomstick embrace and started seeking entry into her soul. She straightened, giving the Vile Wrap a chance to get a good grip. A fizz is heard, growing louder until with thousands of pops the bulletproof gauge of Hank 8 forces the wraps digestive juices back on itself and it fizzles into packing peanuts. Shedding peanuts like a newbie drops stitches, Mar turned, hands at her belt mounted sock keeper. Flipping the switches, the strands retract and an Aranmaster 3000 rolls up the rise.
Swinging into it’s Honeycombed seat (ridged for her…oh, wait, that’s a different story altogether) she starts firing needles, dpn’s, straights, and circular bolo’s, none of them larger than a size six. She twiddles some knobs and side compartments click open. With a smooth, well lanolined snick two cannons slide into place. Braced against the recoil, she pulls the triggers. BLATT BLATT the machine rocks. The front lines of the knitzombies fall, entangled in strings. Blissssssssssssss soft yarns froth forth, to entrap more. The tiny Crochet helmeted one in the distance, comfortable in her foxhole, squawks into a cell so covered in cozies it’s hard to believe it actually works any more, and a cadre of mini vans tear into range, tires screeching like acrylic on needles. The doors fly open and more knitzombies pour out. In the distance behind our Heroine we see miles of headlights, prepared to open the floodgates and let the crapola enrobe our savior, our last bastion of classic knitting.
Mar jumps down, pulls off her Dale hat and waves it, attracting their attention. “I don’t want to wipe you all out, we can get along fine! Just reach out and embrace knitting, push yourself beyond garter stitch and froufy crapola!”
”It’s too hard! We can’t do it! We don’t want to think!” the ranks chant back.
The Tiny Crochet Helmeted one jumps up from her fox hole and shouts
“That’s it my beauties! Let me give you my patterns, I will design your destiny and together we will travel the garter path, knit in the new summer colorway Forest Sprite!” *Vannaish hand flip* En Masse the zombies ooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh and reach for their credit cards. “That’s it my pretties” the tiny one croons “It’s sooo lovely, sooo sparkly, with it’s new technological advance of being corespun over brush curlers, it’s guaranteed to snarl on itself beyond repair, but that’s okay! It’s only ten dollars per yard, and the stole only requires 200 yards! You can knit it after dinner and still have time to review the Letterman tapes before lights out, but of course you’ll have to buy some of the new Diva © brand size 100 needles to work it up on!”
With a heavy heart Mar pushes the buttons that will bring the penultimate raining upon their heads. She waits as the machine begins to vibrate and hum.
”ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssSSSSSsszzzzZZZZZzzz ssssSSSSSSSZZZZZZZZZ SSSSZZZZAAAAABBBBBOOO-OOOO-OOOmmm!!!!” It echos throught the realm. Knitzombies crumple into dust, those further a field stumbling, clutching their eyes against its brilliance. The tiny Crocheted Helmet one cries “NOOOooooo….no one can learn to enjoy finishing! It’s Not Possible!!! I’m melting….melting….mel…..”
“Poor, innocent souls. May the knitting gods take pity upon their souls.”
Swinging back up into the saddle of the Aranmaster 3000, she pauses, and turns suddenly as we hear, faintly, “cough cough…cough…I think cough cough cough that it’s 5 stitches to …..to the inch…cough cough but it’s only a part of a stitch…..maybe I can’t….can’t….can’t do it after all….”
Whipping around she kicks the Aranmaster into gear and charges down the slope, one hand on the cables the other yanking out her uncozied, gleaming cell.
”QueerJoe? QueerJoe we have a live one, and she’s almost got gauge figured out! Round up the posse, we’re going to need a lot of dk! Yes, yes bring the color cards! And some size 3’s. Oh better make it 3, 4, and 5’s, and two’s just in case her knitting is tighter than a scared virgin on her wedding night. Oh and as long as you’re there could you pick up some of that Koigu that’s on sale? Something to match that skein you and I had the tug of war over last week……”

This should be interesting

2004-05-26T21:25:00.000-04:00

I went to post a comment on a friends blog, and blogger told me I had to sign up. Since I had been thinking seriously about starting a blog, I went ahead with it. I even already had a name picked out, Knitting like a sailor, because I have small children and usually my daytime knitting goes something like knitknitknit don't do that please. tink tink tink dammit I said stop. Yes you look cute with mommy's yarn on your head no no get back here don't... crap! okay I'll put it up for now.
you get the idea.
something I should probably note about myself for those who don't know me. I had surgeries on both hands for carpal tunnel. I had a "strongly moderate" case, in both wrists, and it's left me with some permanant nerve damage. What that means for you dear readers ( or should I say dear reader? hell, no one knows about it yet, dear self will work. anyway....) Ahem, what that means for you dear self, is that i often do not capitalize except at the beginning of a sentance, and i am the typo queen. Since i usually put effort into making things look nice when i post to other peoples comments and in emails, and this is my own blog, well, there's plenty others about knitting out there if you don't like the way i communicate, i wish you good luck finding someone else whose typing capabilities are more to your style. Boy, the first post in my blog and i'm already dictating. The power is fairly blowing my mind. I like.