Feather and Fan Finished!

Finally!

This shawl is so warm and cozy I want to wear it all the time. I want to get a pin for it before I wear it to work so I don't have to worry about it falling on the floor. I forsee it getting a lot of wear this winter!

A weekend of accomplishments

What a rare and wondrous thing! I feel like a lot got done this weekend and I don't feel exhausted. Friday night was Yarn Yoga and I worked on both the feather and fan shawl and the store sample stole that have both been on the needles for way too long. I was pretty tired, so I ended up leaving a little early and heading home.

Saturday we had hubby's family over for a work day. After the water fiasco in January we had cleaned out most of the garage, but there was still a bunch of stuff that needed to go. Most of it was donation stuff rather than garbage stuff. Two loads of stuff went down the road to the Value Village! The extra coffee table finally made it's way to his brother's house! The car once again resides in the garage! My half of the garage is still too full to park my car in there, but that's OK with me for now. We have to figure out what to do with the three bicycles that are in there before both cars will fit.

Sunday I sorted my stash. A while ago I decided I needed to get a grip on the scope of the problem. I moved almost all of my stash and UFOs to the spare room. Saturday night and Sunday were spent sorting and organizing. I'm not finished, but it's much better. And I have much to donate at guild next week. When I was mostly done for the day I showed my hubby how much work I'd done. He looked at me sideways and told me that I could get kicked out of the club for showing him the whole stash. :-)

Also on Sunday I finished the store sample stole! It's taken me 6 months and was mostly an endurance contest, but it is finally done. It's in the car and ready to be delivered to the store tonight after work. There are no pictures. We've hit the season of little light and most of it bad for photos. Also on the finished list are 3 cotton wash cloths that were done but for the weaving in of ends. I did that too.

I did cast on a Koolhaas hat, but it doesn't qualify as a new project. It's the second half of a UFO. The first half was to spin the llama yarn for a friend. Now turning the yarn into a hat is part 2. Still waiting to see if the fuzziness of the yarn works with the pattern. I've also picked up a pair of socks that have been languishing at the bottom of my bag, so progress continues. I plan to continue to work on UFOs for a while. I have plenty to keep me busy at least until January. We'll see if I continue the ban on new projects after the new year. On that note, I feel a disturbance in the force. ROE may make it out of the 'I still hate you' pile before long. :-)

Success!

Here we have the Scalloped Wrap! I finished the knitting, grafting, washing, blocking and crawled into bed at 1am. This morning she was ready to rock. I tried to get pictures of this with me as the model, but they all looked like ass, so here we have the lovely office chair!

If I can get better lighting and pics I'll post them. I may even show you my new shoes. Happy Samhain! <;-)

Can't blog, knitting...

The first half of the Scalloped Wrap is done. I'm 15 out of 27 repeats into the second half. I pinned out the first half to check how big it would be. I think it'll do, but if I have the time I may add a couple more after I get the second half complete. We have a pretty full weekend of non-knitting activities, so this looks like it's going to come down to the wire. Gotta go work now so I can knit this afternoon. I hope my phone is quiet today. :-)

Scalloped Wrap

The scalloped Wrap is coming right along. And I was able to get pictures of it. And I was able to get those pics from my camera to my computer. Truly the technology goddess was smiling on me yesterday. Of course, the penalty for all that was my total inability to open any excel files for the last 30 minutes of my day, but who wants to do any work then anyway?

I am currently working on my 23rd pattern repeat. This is made in 2 pieces then grafted together. I'll finish the 27 repeats the pattern calls for and do the other half. At that point I need to give it a bit of a blocking to see if it's really going to be long enough. I have concerns at this point, but it's impossible to tell what the final result will be without at least pinning it out a bit.

20 days until I want to wear this, I'm feeling good about my progress.

Wanted: more time.

My ravelry invite came last week. In fact it came the same day as the Harlot visited Seattle. Me and my Jayne hat made her blog! So today I've been playing around on Ravelry. My ID is Visionsister, let's be friends! I've done some things from memory, but have realized that I'm going to have to sit down at home and devote some time to sorting out my stuff so I can list it. Crazy! It's the new crack.

I have officially given up on the idea that I'm going to be able to wear my mystery stole any time soon. I still love the project, but the charts require a level of concentration that I don't have available just now. Since I have sort of set a precedent of wearing something hand knit for Samhain I was in a bit of a pickle. Until yesterday. I accidentally fell in to Village Yarn & Tea and bought yarn. And a pattern. And beads. oops! It's a lace wrap with a simple pattern that shouldn't take too long to memorize. I'm using Misti Alpaca lace in a berry sorbet kind of color. It's 2-ply and each ply is a different shade of berry. I'm loving it so far. Luckily the beads are only on the border. You knit 2 halves and graft them together in the middle. That being the case, I'm knitting both halves at the same time. I did the beaded bit last night and have almost finished the first lace repeat today. I have 5 weeks to finish. Think I'll make it?

Slip Slidin' Away

The summer has really just slipped by me. Again. It's been busy and crazy and fun, but I am ready for things to slow down to a more sane pace. So catching up then...

GenCon was wonderful. Four full days of geeky bliss! I hope we can go again next year, I'd like to actually sign up for a game or two next time. There was knitting on the plane, but that was it. I'm still trying to finish the socks I started at Stitch 'n Pitch.

MS3 is still in the same place it was before we left. Collecting dust most likely. I would like to finish it by the end of October, it would be great to wear it for Samhain. I'm starting to get the knitting jones pretty strong. They keep promising the weather is going to cool down, but it's 80 degrees again today. The internal clock is certainly telling me it's time for fall, I was having a fantasy about beef barley soup earlier.

Some friends of ours introduced us to Guild Wars. I never got into online pc games, but I asked about it while strolling around GenCon and next thing I knew we were completely sucked in. I'm really enjoying the game and the ability to hook up online with friends for a couple hours of adventure. The down side is that our evenings at home are now spent with the game and not the knitting. That's going to make it trickier to finish anything. Ever. Like I need anything else to get in my way there.

Once again I have too many books out of the library, too many projects on the needles, and too many things I'd like to do in my free time. Clearly I need more time. Can anyone spare an extra couple of... months?

Oh yeah, and I just checked and there are only 642 people left ahead of me on the Ravelry waiting list. I'm sure that'll help!

This and That

No pictures today because as usual I am lame. I have more MS3 pics, but haven't had the time to deal with the fact that my computer and my camera don't like each other. So, that will have to wait. I have not yet received socks from my Sockapalooza pal. I mailed the Sangria Monkeys on the 2nd and they have safely arrived in California with Cpurl.

Tomorrow we fly to Indianapolis for GenCon, the four biggest days in gaming (or so their website says) for a geek filled vacation. Tonight I will be packing and deciding what knitting will be going with. I'll have to decide if MS3 is worth packing along to knit on the plane, or if it's better to stick to socks the whole time. Such a dilemma!

Mystery Stole 3

Yes, I am another one who has fallen down this rabbit hole. And what's more, I've taken my mom with me. She's in town this week for tonight's Stitch & Pitch game. We had a nice chance to sit and compare our work on this project so far.

First there was this.

Which quickly turned into this.

Right after that dried and I was happy with the guage, this happened.

It didn't take long to finish the first clue. I'm loving the beads and the look of this as it grows. It's fun to see how the chart pictures become real in the knitting. I'm currently working on clue 4 and I have progress pics of clues 2 & 3. If I can manage to get my camera and my computer to play well together, I'll post those soon.

ETA: If there's a way to reply to comments, I don't know what it is. I'm using size US 3 addi lace needles.

Sockapalooza Socks Finished!

I hope my sock pal likes these, I sure do! It's a good thing that my pal's feet are smaller than mine, or I'd be tempted to keep these.



Specs: Monkey socks, no mods. Fleece Artist yarn in the Sangria colorway. US 1/2.5mm addi lace needles (magic loop).

I loved knitting these so much that as soon as they were finished I cast on a pair for myself! Also Fleece Artist but in the Renaissance colorway. This stuff is like crack, must... get... more...

And then it was June...

Wow, it's been a month since my last post. Let's see... My birthday was great. It was nice to see friends and family and celebrate another year. I didn't do much on my day but sit around and spin and knit. Quite frankly that was just what I needed. It was nice. Thanks to those who sent birthday wishes, much appreciated.

June has been just as busy as the last couple months have been. Some friends got married, it was a lovely event. The Hubby had his wisdom teeth out and was doing a really good bruised chipmonk impression for a couple days. His advice is to do that when you are young. You just don't heal as quickly at 42. Father's Day was nice, much hanging out with the Dads occured. All good things.


This last weekend was the highlight for me. I went to
Black Sheep! My mom and I met in Eugene and had a great time wandering through all the vendors and seeing the animals. I'd love to show you the pictorial of all we did, but the truth is that my camera never left my bag. I had plans, lots of plans to take a ton of pictures, but it just never happened. All I have is a couple crappy shots I took with my camera phone. Alas, I am a bad blogger.

There is still hope for me though. I do have some loot! And if I can get my you-know-what together I'll post pics of my stash enhancement. It was fun shopping with mom. We each had a set amount of cash to spend. We made our first pass through and saw everything that was there. Then we went and had lunch and pondered what really called out to us. After lunch we hunted down the things that we couldn't pass up. We didn't realize until we got back to the hotel that mom had purchased all fiber and I had got the all yarn direction.


We spent Saturday night watching the Mariner's game in the hotel and each of us bouncing from project to project with a bad case of crafty ADD. The whole experience was a little overwhelming. There was so much to see there's just no way to take it all in. I got a little knitting and a little spinning done, but not much. I had a great time and am looking forward to going again next year. I'll be sure to get my registration in super early next year!

Happy Birthday to me!

Well, my actual birthday isn't until the 31st, but I usually have the birthday bash on Memorial Day weekend. This year has been pretty low key. There will be karaoke on Saturday night and a BBQ on Monday, but I have been too busy and tired to put much effort into big plans this year. I don't even know what I'm going to do as my special treat for myself on Thursday. Perhaps a pedicure, I've been wanting one for a while now and haven't found the time. Last year I did the whole spa package and it was nice, but again with the meh this year.

The knitting has been pretty slow. I haven't found a gauge I'm happy with for the Jayne hats so they've been put on hold. I think I'll need to go back to bigger needles and try doubling the yarn. The sockapalooza socks haven't seen much action because I haven't memorized the pattern and haven't had much uninterrupted knitting time with the brain cells to work on them. Hopefully this weekend will provide some time for those. The pattern for the cotton wrap store sample is totally easy and now memorized, so that's been getting the most consistant work. The yarn is still splitty, the pattern is almost boring at this point and I'm just about to join the second of 5 skeins, so you can predict the boredom factor kicking in there...

It's my birthday and I feel a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Lame. At least the lawn is mowed.

Time keeps on slippin'...

Well I see it's been over a month since I posted anything here. Where does the time go? Partly it's been a matter of work life being really busy. Since I mostly get my blogging done at work, there just hasn't been time for that. I have knit (some) I have finished a thing or two, but I have no pictures.

The biggest news is that I finally (yesterday evening) finished pair #6 of what should have been holiday socks. The pair that became "your effing socks" when discussing them with the hubby. There's a long story that I don't really feel like telling just now, and probably don't have the time anyway. Bottom line? They are done, they fit beautifully, he wore them around the house last night, then I said "give them back, I have to take them to guild tomorrow to prove I finished them and didn't just stick them in the closet of doom." He was bummed, but said he's wear them tomorrow and that was ok. He's a good one!

What next? I'm working on a store sample for Ben Franklin so I need to keep that moving. I'm also trying to pick up and finish some things that have sat too long on the needles. I do have to start one pair of socks for my Sockapalooza 4 pal and I have to make 3 Jayne hats before we go to GenCon in August. But I think that will be all the new stuff this summer. Mostly I want to finish things right now. I'd like to clear the slate a little so I can turn my attention to some spinning projects I've been waiting on until I had more time... heh!

Happy Little Hats

Here are the happy little hats I finished last weekend. This weekend I have another finished hat and have started a fifth one. I've got plenty of yarn left, we'll see how long the happy little hats keep coming.

If you are interested in making happy little hats for Dulaan, (or anyone else) here is what I am doing.

Using US 8 needles and LB Homespun yarn, cast on 80 stitches. Join without twisting, knit and knit and knit until you have about 7 inches. For me that's about from wrist to fingertips, so it's an easy measurement. Decrease 8 stitches per round - K8 K2tog around, then K7 K2tog... you know how that goes. Thread the tail through those last 8 stitches, pull it tight and weave in the ends. Badaboom, happy little hat.

With 80 stitches on size 8 and my knitting, these hats fit me. I, however, have kind of a pin head for a grown up, so I'm hoping that they'll work for a variety of noggin sizes. The roll of the brim also allows for some variability in the size. I'm completely content to knit these for a while, though I hear the call of socks and lace in the distance, so we'll see how long this lasts, eh? At least I will have my 5 for sure.

I am a Dorkfish.

I think that I'll blame it all on pms. It was a weird weekend for me. Friday before I left work my boss and I were having a conversation in which I cried. Not that he's a bad guy, he's not. In fact I like him quite a bit. But we were talking about the state of the office and what we'd both like to see happen in the upcoming months and I brought up some stuff that had been frustrating for me... tears. Saturday the Hubby and I ran some errands because he couldn't sit in the house all day. I totally could have, but I went with him anyway. My contact lens was funky and hurt my eye all day. Sunday I did not leave the house, nor did I leave my jammies. Sunday evening I cried again. Actually, while sitting on the couch knitting and watching episode after episode of Clean Sweep and What Not to Wear, I had several tearful moments. At that point I decided I must be hormonal. Today, as if all that weren't clue enough, I have the dropsies. Does anyone else get this? I spilled my lunch on my sweater and my pants. Classy! Then I knocked a full cup of tea off my desk onto the floor. Sweet! I didn't really want that tea anyway... I took pictures of the 3 hats for Dulaan I made over the weekend, but I can't get my camera to talk to the computer and be able to use the mouse or the keyboard work at the same time. I was planning to work on our taxes tonight, but perhaps it's better I don't touch anything.

Sock Randomness for Wednesday

Two posts in the same week? Weird. I turned in the store model socks without pics. Perhaps I'll stalk them with the camera once they are on dispay.

The "Hubby socks that would not end" have met an unfortunate fate. I did not have enough yarn to get all the way to the toe, and toe-less socks are right out. So last night with a heavy sigh they got frogged. Back to square one. A do-over with bigger needles is coming, but I just couldn't get them started last night.


Another pair may be destined for the frog pond. Here are my Rockin' Sock Club socks so far. As lovely as they look, they are a bit on the roomy size for my feet. I did the toes on US 1 and the foot on US 0 needles, I may have to go smaller. I'm going to continue for another inch or two so I can get a better feel for the fit over the ball of my foot.

Monday night I went to the Eastside Knitter's Guild meeting. I enjoyed it, I joined. Ryan was there talking about Dulaan. It gave me ideas about what to do with some yarn I recently cleaned out of the garage and was planning to donate somewhere. I'll be perusing the suggested patterns section to find some inspiration. Maybe since I'm having sock trauma, some quick and easy charity hat knitting is just the thing.

Monday Monday!

I finished something! Ok, it's the model socks for the store and they seem to have gone MIA before I could get a picture. I thought I put them in my bag so I could drop them off on my way home from work, but clearly they escaped. Perhaps tomorrow I'll capture them and get a mug shot for you.

Spring cleaning mode has hit me hard. My house of chaos is probably the biggest reason. This experience has really brought home the fact that we have entirely too much crap. Trying to get things organized and back to a working order is exhausting. There has been a lot of sorting and culling and parting with things. Not just of things that were damaged, but of all the rest of the stuff too. It feels good to let go of stuff that hasn't seen the light of day in years and has just been getting in the way. The major accomplishments of the weekend were moving my knitting stuff up to the dresser in the spare room so I can get to my dresser, and hubby parked his car in the garage for the first time ever! I have a big basket of clothes I'll never wear again to take to the donation station, the garbage and recycling cans are ready for pick up day!

Happy spring!

Eureka!

Yes, I finally found the USB cable for my camera! And we have a bathroom upstairs again! I am loving the new tile... ain't it pretty? At this point I think the contractor is all done with our house. Tomorrow the people come to run a gas line into the laundry area for the new dryer, and the new washer and dryer will be delivered on the 10th. I'm not sure we have enough clean clothes to get us all the way to the 10th, so I may have to do one more laundry run to my friend's house this weekend. Normalcy is returning at long last.

This is for Carole. This is what the cherry tree in my front yard looked like this morning. It really illustrates what March is to me. The last gasp of winter doing battle with the first blush of spring. I apologize for the quality, I don't have a steady hand when trying to take a picture over my head. :-)

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue...

It was going to be so clever with pictures and everything. But even though I have my camera and took pictures, I have no idea where the cable is to connect camera to computer and upload said pics. Crap. So allow me to try the thousand word version since the picture deal isn't going to happen...

Something old:

I finished the Austerman Step socks for my sister-in-law. The were pair 5 of 6 (for those of you keeping score at home) of the holiday sock-o-rama. This weekend I had an overwhelming urge to finish some stuff. The socks were top of the list. I'm sure that this need to finish was really inspired by my house which is still in a state of total chaos, but whatever, I finished the socks!

Something new:

I started new socks. These are for me and are in Trekking XXL color #131. Very bright and springy, don't you wish I had a picture? Me too! So far I've got a little over an inch of 2x2 ribbing, but it's the beginning of happy socks all for me! Also in the new category we have a spinning wheel! I am now the proud owner of a Lendrum folding wheel and I love it. I have signed up for a spinning class starting the 27th, but have already made yarn. I have also knit said yarn into little wrist cuff things. They aren't much since I only had a little over 50 yards of yarn, but they are all mine!

Something borrowed:

I went to the library and checked out Wendy Knits and EZ'a Knitter's Almanac. So far I've mostly flipped through to look at pictures, but I'm sure I'll enjoy reading them as well.

Something blue:

I am really enjoying working on my Trekking sweater. I'd love to show you the pictures, but alas, I'm lame. Take 8 balls of trekking sock yarn in shades of blue, pair them up and switch color pairs every 10 rows. I'm loving the look and can't wait to have more than 6 inches to look at.

As for the inspiration for the title, we will be celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary this weekend and I'm totally looking forward to a couple days away with the hubby. I'll even bring his socks (6 of 6) to work on while we're gone. :-)

The comforts of home

I have had cause to think quite a bit about house and home and comfort. I recently went on a bit of a binge with the online shopping. I couldn't figure out why I suddenly felt compelled to buy all that stuff. When I really thought about it, it was a comfort thing. My house is still all topsy-turvy trying to recover from "the incident". Not a single room in the house was really usable for a couple of weeks. In short, my home was not providing me with the comfort I needed. Naturally I turned to my knitting for the comfort I was lacking. No such luck. I was sick of socks. I didn't have the concentration required to knit lace. I had swatched for the sweater I was really excited about, but until I washed the swatch to make sure the gauge was in fact good, I couldn't work the sweater. Unfortunately we don't have working laundry at the house right now and I kept forgetting to take the stupid swatch to the laundromat. Without home and knitting comfort, I turned to shopping. I finally ordered some Rockin' sock yarn. I ordered three books from Knit Picks. And I subscribed to IK at long last. Several times I was able to back down from the ledge and finally asked myself, "what are you doing?" The answer was looking for comfort. Once I realized what the issue was I was able to take other steps to make things better. I moved a bunch of stuff that had been stacked up in our bedroom up to the spare bedroom that won't require any construction. My personal sanctuary was restored to some semblance of order and the compulsion to comfort shop has relaxed. Whew!

Last Saturday I ventured down to Tacoma to check out the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival. It was lovely and next year I may actually attend classes. I got my book signed by Stephanie! Then I went to the market. It was lovely wandering around the booths looking at all the wonderful fibery goodness and being wrapped in the loving comfort and wool fumes. Several things happened at the market. I was fondling some fiber when a woman behind me started explaining the properties of some yarn. I knew that voice, I just couldn't remember from where. I moved around so I could see her face and she was really familiar, but I still couldn't put my finger on it. She looked at me and said, "welcome back!" That startled me because I hadn't been there before. Eventually the epiphany hit. This was the woman who taught my mom and me to spin! What a wonderful small world. Next I met Teyani, and had a nice conversation about spinning.

It was a really great day that ended up like this... I joined Knitters Anonymous. I bought a new spindle and some fiber. I have been spinning a little bit each evening when I get home, and I am in love! Hopefully this dose of comfort shopping will hold me over until my house is back in order. If not I have set my sights on a spinning wheel asap, so perhaps that motivation will keep me from getting out of control in the internet...

We'll see!

Let's recap...

So 2007 hasn't started out the way I had envisioned. Our year end trip to California was great. We spent 5 action packed days at Disneyland and California Adventure. Then a couple days in the Pasadena area including the Rose Parade. The down side is that with the long hours and lack of sleep, the dry climate and the air quality, we all came home with a cough and sniffle. We got home late Monday night to find one of the trees in our yard laying over into our neighbor's driveway. Luckily nothing was damaged when it fell. We had 2 evenings to do our laundry and clean up the disaster we left when we rushed out of town before my parents arrived to stay for a week. It was great to see them and my mom very generously shared her cold with me. So back in bed I went over the weekend feeling like total snot-headed crap. I even missed the rescheduled Christmas gathering with the in-laws due to my yuckiness.

Monday things got really interesting. A load of laundry was started before everyone left the house for the day (not an unusual occurance). Upon arriving home we discovered that the washer had malfunctioned and pumped large quantities of water into my entire house. The laundry room is upstairs in our house and directly over the garage. The hallway was soaked and the water was making it's way into the other three rooms up there. It was practically raining in the garage and the furnace was completely filled with water. Water made it's way down the stairs to the hardwood in the diningroom and through the walls/floor/ceiling to the family room below and rained onto the leather sofa below (missing a large stash of sock yarn by inches!) What a mess!

We have spent the last week in a hotel while our house was full of drying equipment. I just got word that the new furnace is in and the blowers and dehumidifiers have been removed. The carpets are getting cleaned tomorrow and the insurance adjuster is coming Thurday. I'm sure it will be a long process of putting everything back together, but I'm so excited to sleep in my own bed tonight!

What about the knitting, you ask? I worked on hubby's socks on the plane to and from California, but since I've not felt well and the light in the hotel room sucked, I've done very little. I did buy a sweater kit and did a little swatching for that, but I'm not jumping in on that quite yet. In my cold medicated state while my mom was here I managed to somehow end up with the wrong number of heel stitches on the other pair of gift socks I was madly trying to finish, so that didn't happen. I will finish them and they will get to the intended recipient, but I just didn't have it in me last week. I am very ready to get back to the normal routines of our life. We haven't really had that since before Thanksgiving.

Think happy thoughts for us, and I hope 2007 gets better very soon!