long past time

Well, it's been a while. And as you can see, I lost patience with the other format. Actually, lost patience isn't quite the phrase I was seeking. What was it again? Oh yeah. Hate. I just dislike this one, active hatred isn't part of it. What makes me upset is all the wasted space over on the right of the screen that could be used as part of my text block, and I'm not 1) competent or 2) resourceful enough to fix. I've sent it to the resident computer expert, AKA Mr. Buttercup, to see if he can do anything with it.

This week has been somewhat hectic. Number two daughter was in for her spring break. I took her to Knit One and let her experience it. I also got her a kit for this.



Cute, huh? She did it in one evening watching television. I told her she can avail herself of some of my sugar and cream cotton if she wants to make another one.

I've been making socks like a crazy woman. I finished my Jaywalkers, finally, after ripping them back three times. (I was doing the double decrease wrong and it looked wonky.) I could not be happier with these socks.



They're heavenly soft, and they fit. The colors are amazing. The pattern is so easy that I immediately cast on another pair, with some modifications.

This is Knitpicks Sock Memories in S'Mores. Instead of doing a knit front and back for the increases, I'm doing yarn overs. It should make for a stretchier leg.

All in all, it's been a week or so of successfully ripping out things and making other things out of them. The lace stole I started is in good progress at being a different, slightly narrower lace stole/scarf, and needs a few more rows before it's worthy of a picture, but it's coming along well. I've also done some spinning, some blue and green for the sweater project, and an alpaca/silk blend that was pure therapy spinning.

Really, though, I'm delighted just to have broken the ice for patterned socks. Not really that hard, after all! So much so, that I started Ostara Socks for the girls.
Lena's got one already made, in a simple cable pattern. I need her to try it on, though, before I make the second one, to make sure it fits.


The actual color falls somewhere between these two.



For Anna's, I'm using the pattern "Overlapping waves" from the stitch dictionary that I have.


I'm doing the heel flap now and haven't decided if I'm going to continue the pattern down the foot or not. I'm kinda doing the math as I go, if it looks too complicated to continue the pattern I'll drop it.


Bob brought me some wonderful roses for International Women's Day on Friday. He's a nice guy. And the roses are spectacular.

Things are waking up in the yard. We had a couple of good "sit outside and go aaaah" days over the weekend. Unfortunately, I'm having some vertigo issues with the change in weather. Not sure if it's allergies, congestion, or what, but I'm decidedly off-balance.

Figment got to spend some time outside, as well.


We've had a good week and a half with Anna. She's pretty good company, when all is said and done. We've watched some good movies, I've cooked some darned good dinners, and we've continued to improve our relationship as mother and daughter. Easy to forget that those kinds of relationships need ongoing work too... how I wish MY mother would remember that sometimes. She never, ever calls me, she says it's up to me to call her since I'm the daughter. It's so hard not to be stubborn with her.

I don't have a whole lot else to say. I'm tired, dizzy, and not looking forward to going to work tomorrow, so I think I'm going to let this Meclazine take hold and go to bed early. Until next time...

nota bene

I hated how narrow the post space was in the old template, so I changed it. The links can be found at the bottom of the page, now.

I am not real happy with Blogger just now, but this is a little better.

Oh, it's a froggy holiday with Buttercup...

This has been a good and frustrating weekend.

First, some photos of recent spinning, I seem to be a bit behind on those.

For the upcoming pinwheel sweater project, I've got these done. I have about 300 yards of each and enough for 300 more yards of each. These were batts from an ebay vendor, and they're marvelous. I'm very happy with the fiber and the finished result. The purple is 90/10 wool/mohair, and the pink is 70/30.









In the realm of purposeless therapy spinning, I started in on a multicolored roving that I've had in the stash for a while. I loved the run of the colors, and didn't want to ply it because I wanted maximum yardage. I got almost 500 yards out of it. It's between fingering and sport weight, but it's very curly. I weighted it when I set the twist, but it still curls a little. This yarn is very frustating.


Gorgeous colors, a bad first experience with trying to create singles. Back to the drawing board with me.
As a side note, the book "spin to knit" is completely useless. Instead of giving you ways to fix this problem, it suggests you "enjoy it as the designer yarn it is!" Bah. I want to knit with it like a normal yarn.

So, I started an easy lace project with it, a stole in "overlapping waves" pattern. It looks like poopy. I think the needles are too big. I am not happy with it. So it's going to be frogged, and probably re-stashed until I can figure out what to do with it. It might just end up being plied anyway.


See? Not good. Maybe I should just do a scarf for my ex-boss out of it because she admired mine so, and call it a day. To the frog pond with you!

Having finally finished Bob's Brown Sheep Wildfoote socks, (finally finally! I will never knit with that again unless it's given to me for free! and even then I might have to consider carefully.) I started on a pair for myself out of Koigu.

Now, as we've discussed before, KPPPM (Koigu Premium Painter's Pallette Merino) is the caviar of handpainted sock yarn. It's beautiful. It has short runs of color that never pool or flash. Never.



Leave it to me to be the weirdo. I continued knitting on them for a little while, considering what to do, and realized that if I was calling the colorway "bruises and tarnish", that I might be better off frogging.

So, seeing how gorgeous the colors DID act in the heel flap, I opted to Rip-It too, and started a pair of Jaywalkers.


So far, as you can see, SO much better. This will be my first pattern sock. I've already got adaptations planned, when I get to the heel , I'm going to revert to stockinette for the foot, because from what I've read, the pattern runs narrow, and I have wide feet.

I wanted to put it out there, as well, that Figment is an excellent shelf cat...


Biscuit is more than a little bit strange...


And our dogs have a very, very hard life indeed.




Until next time!

Ice and Heat

Mostly photos this week.

In the stark cold and ice, there was beauty.


The ice confused mundane things, and turned them into things of wonder and weird mystery.




Life fought to persist within the cold shroud, and we all hope it succeeds.


A landscape transformed, haunted.









In other news, we shared Valentine's day as a lazy, play-hooky day due to the ice storm that hit our area on Tuesday night and Wednesday. All in all, we got about six inches of snow, and about an inch of ice. The driveway is now passable, at last.

I finished Bob's Irish Hiking Scarf, it's lovely. He adores it. It was his Valentine's gift.


I've started spinning some mohair blend roving to go with the next big project, a pinwheel sweater. I have a color scheme all planned out and the fiber to do it. I also made elder daughter a pair of fingerless mitts from Alpaca yarn for part of her birthday gift.

We had a good day today, celebrating elder daughter's birthday two days early. I took her to Trader Joe's and bought her groceries-she thought it was the best thing ever. We had Thai food and a wonderful chocolate torte. The Penguins won again, and that makes 16 games in a row without a loss. Younger daughter will be home in two weeks for her fall break. I love my husband beyond reason, and he feels the same. The Italian lessons go well. (Va bene!) Life is good, and complete.

Si Dice Cosi

I'm refreshing my long-ago education in the beautiful language of Italian. In the dim memory, the darkened past, beyond the mists of time, before such a thing as an internet even existed, I took four years (four years!) of Italian Language instruction in High School. I was something of a languages geek, I took all that were offered, including three years of Spanish and a year and a half or so of French. The only one that I subsequently used was Spanish, when I lived in Texas, and also because there's a Spanish-speaking woman where I work and we sometimes banter back and forth so I don't completely forget. Literally, I have not spoken more than an odd sentence of Italian in almost thirty years. (Some of them were very odd sentences, indeed.)

A couple of years ago, at a Mensa gathering, I picked up an Italian Grammar book called "Si Dice Cosi", hoping to refresh my memory. As is the way of things, I completely forgot that I had it. Well, last week, I started downloading some instructional audio files, and I now have a complete course of Italian 1, 2, and 3 on my computer, as well as a more casual/tourist oriented course called "Learn Italian in Your Car". I've been loading them onto my Walkman Bean, and happily feeling my brain tingle at the long ago learning being reactivated. Much of it is still there, which amazes me. I think I'll be up to speed in a year or so.
Funny thing is I am kinda speaking Italian with a Spanish accent. My R's are still all wrong. It'll come back.
This is my Bean. It's adorable.

(well, it's not MY bean, but mine looks just like that.) The sound quality is the best I've heard out of any MP3 player. Ipods can go pound salt, they don't capture music like this does.

On to fibrous undertakings. Here's Bob's scarf, about a third of the way along, now.


A detail of the cables.

It's actually getting a little boring. I've also finished one of his socks (FINALLY) and cast on the second. Poor Bob, so patient for his handknits!

Speaking of patience, here's some shots of my sweater, all sewn together and pinned out on the blocking styrofoam.
It looks weird because of the angle here, but here's the whole thing.


A closer look at the underarm and shoulder


The collar


And the cuff detail


I ended up doing two rows of a scallop edging on the bottom, the collar, and the cuffs. It smooths it out a lot, and the collar actually looks really nice with the edging. I think it'll be fine. It's a bit itchy. I washed it and rinsed with Downy before pinning it outso hopefully it'll be more comfy. If not, I'll just have to wear it over a tee or something. It's too nice to not wear.

It's been a bit of an unplanned vacation this week. I've had a horrible cold, woke up sick on Saturday morning and was pretty much confined to the couch until yesterday, when I managed to get up and move around a little. I'm coughing up unspeakable things, and my sinuses are exploding. It's not fun. At least the body aches are gone now, but at this point, there's no point in going in to work, wearing myself down, and spreading contagion to my co-workers. We'll just start over on Tuesday. Thank goodness for paid sick time. I'm going to try to get to the Doctor's office tomorrow or Friday, since I'll have to have a note from him to return to work. Last night was the first time I've slept more than three hours in a row, and it was very nice. A whole five uninterrupted hours of sleep! I'm hoping to top that tonight.

The dogs conspire against me.

I'm not going to bore you with tales of how my fiendish corgis conspired to prevent me from falling back asleep at 415 this morning. It is sufficient to say that I'm not terribly happy about it. At any rate, I thought I'd take a moment to update.

I'm within about five inches of having a complete set of sweater pieces. I should be finishing it off tonight. It's so boring that I'm not going to post another progress shot, just consider that it's more of the same and be done with it. I will definitely have enough yarn left over to do a crocheted edging on the sleeves and the hem, so I can get rid of the stockinette curl, which I much prefer to the look in the book, which leaves the curl and considers it a "design". I think this yarn is too bulky for that, and I know that I'm definitely too bulky for it.

Also, an Irish Hiking Scarf is on the needles for Bob, and I've started making Log Cabin chair covers for the dining room chairs. I have a pile of Lion Brand Homespun in three different colors that I can't imagine making a garment of any kind out of, but it is working up nicely as decorator fabric. I'm envisioning pillow covers for the living room and possibly a cover for the piano bench, if my hands don't revolt and leap off the ends of my arms in protest at working with so much unyielding acrylic. And who says having multiple projects is a bad thing? This way, I can reward myself for getting more of the log cabining done by going to the Eco Wool that is making the scarf. There are other rewards, the look of the fabric I'm creating is terrific-I'll get some photos up once I get one chair cover finished.

Incidentally, don't ever let anyone tell you that cables are hard. They're not.

I also spun up some Steelers Yarn over the weekend.


Two skeins, about 115 yards each.


I also made a hat out of the alpaca/merino blend that I spun up a while ago.




It's WARM.

Yesterday, going from work to the bus stop, I learned something about wool. I knew this in theory, but it was my first concrete experience with it. I had my coat open (dummy that I am) because my hands were full and I was just trying to get to the mailbox. Once I'd arrived at my destination, I was able to do up my coat for the rest of the wait. My neck and shoulders, though, where my scarf was wrapped, were so cozy and warm that it was radiating warmth through my whole upper body. No wonder sheep look so contented.

Friday was my real birthday. I took the day off of work and did some spinning and some knitting. We watched the hockey game and drank some extremely good wine. (Bully Hill Vineyards, seriously delicious stuff.) Friday, Bob took me out to Mad Mex for my official Birthday Dinner. Ate WAY too much. Sunday was the family over for cake. Bob gave me a gift card from Burlington and a dozen roses. Lena gave me a Starbucks gift card. My mom gave me two hats that she made out of yarn I spun for her. I am not sure how I feel about that... it felt like a weird kind of regifting. She also gave me a gorgeous cross-stitched pillow and a box of brainteaser kind of things. It was a too-busy weekend but not a bad one.

I'm working on a concept called "Pronoia". Googling will tell you all you need to know about it. I got the book and am actively trying to apply the concepts to my life. Not easy.

Also, I interviewed for supervisor at work last week. I am unsure as to whether I'll accept if it's offered... I think my sanity is worth more than a one step level increase in pay.

Half a blog is better than none...

It's been over a week and no update. I started several times. Attempted to come up with something pithy and meaningful. No such luck.

So just a brief update, in the Flylady milieu of "work done imperfectly still blesses your family" or some such muck.

The sweater's trucking along. I'm down to the sleeves now. I started one by picking up and knitting along the armhole, but I am not crazy about how it looks. I'm going to rip it back, and follow the pattern as recommended this time. Perhaps not ideal, but better than having a funky looking sweater that I'll never wear. It's knitting up nicely, though.

That's the back and part of the front.


And that's a closeup of the yarn and the fabric. Pretty, huh?

Saturday was younger daughter's 21st birthday.

We took her to Damon's for her first drink, where she managed to lose her wallet. No money in it, but a lot of inconvenience.
My family is pretty weird, sometimes.


I leave you for now with flowers, and a cat. Here's to better cheer in the days ahead, and a long trip towards being well again that might just begin some time soon.

Happy Rebirthday to Me

If you look way down at the bottom of my page here, you'll see a thing called a "quitmeter". It shows you that one year ago today, I stopped smoking. So, today is my "rebirthday".

More than the new year, more than my birthday, today I've really been thinking about what I'm going to do to improve my life now that I've got the first year done.

It was not easy. In fact, it was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done. Nicotine is a bastard, one of the most (if not THE most) addictive substances there is. Throw in the additives that the tobacco companies put in to make it even more addictive, and the strongest person is screwed. I am far from being the strongest person, but I was sick of being sick. And it was going to kill me. I've been free of cigarettes for one year, and I am one week shy of being free of nicotine for a year, as I chewed nicotine gum for the first week of my quit.

To celebrate, I cast on a sweater. I've finally got enough of this.

Just a very basic stockinette sweater with a rolled collar. The sleeve length will be determined by how much yarn I have when the body's done. I can spin about 200 more yards if need be. Photos soon. It's knitting up very nicely on size tens. It is time I moved past socks and scarves!

Happy Rebirthday to Me!

Finally, back to fun stuff

Well, other than the ten-hour day grind, that is.

It was a nice two week stretch of not going in for my regular 9.5 hour shifts. You see, when there's a holiday in the week, I work from 8:30 to 5, and I can take the bus in from Penn Hills. (For now-that's apparently going to change, but that's another rant for another day.)

I finished some projects that made me happy, and have picked up some more unfinished ones. All the Dread Holiday Knitting was completed, happily, and everyone liked what they got. I think. I don't know what my Aunt Ginny thought of her scarf, and my mother's reaction to her shawl was distinctly underwhelming.

I finished the scarf for myself that I was working on over the holidays. It's made of that lovely blue superwash merino that I posted about a couple of months ago. It's a bit over seven feet long, and about a foot wide. It's easily wide enough to be a head wrapping if need be, which is how I wanted it.
I tried several different stitch patterns before settling on a plain checkerboard pattern that showed off the yarn to its best advantage. To me, it looks like rain in an impressionist painting.

Here's the whole thing...

...and here's a closeup of the stitch pattern.


I just love it. It's my favorite thing that I've knitted so far.

I've also been working on socks for myself...

(knitpicks memories-100% merino on size 1 needles)

and for Bob, finally.

(Brown Sheep Wildfoote in a blue/white speckle. I do NOT like this yarn, it's very stringy and splitty-perhaps it will bloom well in washing, I certainly hope so.)

I've started work on the entrelac scarf again, but with a mind toward making it a jacket collar instead of yet another scarf... how many scarves do I need? We'll see. I'm almost through the second ball of yarn and will see how it shakes out.

I like how the two different colorways worked out. I'll continue with the darker blue-ish colorway and finish with the same one I started with, if that makes any sense at all.

Got some spinning in over the weekend, too. Gads, I really missed spinning. This is alpaca/merino blend.

And this is some roving I've had for a long time-I've done three other skeins of yarn from it, and have maybe enough for one more.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it's enough to do something "real" with. I'd like to also get back to the roving for my sweater plan, if I can actually get it spun any time before next winter.

I hope to write something substantive soon. For now, pictures will have to tell the story.

Welcome, 2007

I'm happy to see the backside of 2006.

It wasn't all bad. I learned to spin, and to knit. I quit smoking. I started blogging, and hope that this will spark me to more serious writing in time.

I've been sick, but many have been sicker. I'll get better. I'm going to try very hard to get better, in 2007.

Resolutions are not my cup of tea. I have a firm belief that making them is setting yourself up for failure. But I can continue to try to heal. I can try to grow as a person ,as an artist, and as a writer. I can be a good mother to my children as they reach adulthood. I can keep going to work and find ways to make it bearable until something better comes along, knowing all the while that something better probably isn't going to come along. I can continue to try to reduce my footprint, to recycle, to buy less, to clutter less, to keep a cleaner, more organized home. I can love my husband as much as he loves me. (that part is easy-peasy.)

Try is the operative word.

Tomorrow brings relatives over for the annual kraut and pork fest. I've got cooking to do and a cake to decorate. I have a present to wrap for my mother. I think it's bed-time.

Happy 2007, world.