It just about killed me

But I won the battle of the Sock. I royally messed up the toe grafting by dropping a stitch and not noticing until I had the ends woven in, then tried to frog back partway - big mistake. Then ripped it all back, which ended up taking out a row of knitting I didn't plan on losing, etc. etc. - but it's all good, it fits me, and except for that Dratted Hole I am really happy with this Sock. It needs a mate though!

Grr. Holes. I will probably do the next Sock on the plane to Phoenix this weekend.

I've Been Claimed!!!

My Holiday Secret Pal has claimed me! I am none other than WickedCoolCovertAmigo's pal!

I have two really cool pals!

Ok, so, when I was whining the other night I *really* wanted to whine about the board messing me up, not about her.

Whoo hoo!!!

New blog!

I just joined the Knitty WIP blog / knitalong. How fun!

Check it out!

Happy Halloween!

I seem to be on a Green kick

Finishing lots of things that involve Green. But honestly, I'm in a gold-red-chocolate-denim-and-orange mood. The colors the trees turn (no, they don't turn denim). I mean I really love orange and gold trees in the fall more than just about anything else in life.

Well

The Knitty Holiday SP round started Friday night, and I admit I'm a little disappointed that I haven't heard from my SP yet. :( Whine whine (not really). And I'm one of the many people at the Knitty board who have been failed utterly by the horrid "debug" error - so when I tried to sign up a SP name there, it never did send me an email. I tried twice, two different names. No luck. Can you tell I'm frustrated with the board?

Finished the toe of one Camo Dream Sock - just need to bind off. I am on a roll!!!

Watched Monsters, Inc tonight. Fun! Love that movie.

Three pictures of Toddle - a Finish It!™ object

Scarf knit for Nephew 2 in DB Cashmerino.



Fiona modeled it for me outdoors -


And Grady modeled it indoors -



The main modification I made to the pattern was the bind-off. I did add a few extra repeats so that the cables matched on each side. I didn't like the pattern's bind off - it says just to bind off after row 8 (last row) of the pattern but that didn't match, so I knit one more repeat of row 1 (the C4F row) and then bound off. It held together a lot better.

This was a fun scarf to knit - too bad it too me six months to finish! It's a Finish It!™ object.

I just bought the Gold Hill.

Kirs, I should have the yarn in 3 days tops. WOO HOO!!

Ok, forget what I said

Now it's between Tuscany and Gold Hill. Tuscany has the blue in it.





What to do? What to do? I am really leaning toward Gold Hill.

C.Y.E. update

(Clapotis yarn expedition)

I didn't find any Safari colorway so I could just see what it looked like. I did find Tuscany, Pioneer and Mineshaft.

I'm really not sure which one to get. I did buy a hank of Pioneer sock yarn to see how it knitted up.

I did a sample last night on #6 needles and it looks great, nice and tight. I used some leftover LLS sport that I had from making socks. The colorway is Vera. very pretty!

So...I liked the red in the Tuscany but the monochromaticness of the Pioneer and Mineshaft.

And Grady got a bath this morning.

In the last two days I've been told I seem to have a very peculiar, savant-like ability to knit.

I've been knitting since February. I don't feel like a good knitter, nor am I particularly fast. But I have tried every which way of learning to knit I can, including English, Continental, Combined, and (my new favorite) Lever knitting. David over at Threaded Bliss knits this way and it looks like he is knitting continentally with the yarn in his right hand. He doesn't take his hands off the needles to wrap the yarn - he just uses his finger to wrap. Very cool looking AND fast.

So I think that maybe you just have to find what works for you. I don't know. My stepmom is kind of mad at me because she's been trying to learn to knit for about six months, and doesn't feel she has the hang of it yet.

Purl

I found it at Purl. Now to decide on a color...Kirs, I'll order tomorrow, I PROMISE.

Poor Momma

Zeke (our Great Pyrenees, who ain't too bright) found an ink pen and chewed it up entirely, resulting in a) blue dog (GP's are lovely lovely white) and b) large blue ink spots on carpet. This the week before they are going to list their house.

So I found this thing online that said to use 90% isopropyl alcohol - rubbing alcohol - and dab, don't pour, and then go over it with the carpet cleaner. And it mostly came out. Now there's a dull "leftover" stain, and they were going to give a carpet allowance anyway, but I think Mom is seriously stressed out all of a sudden.

Yarn update: This is getting ridiculous. LYS #3 has LL Shepherd Sport but not anywhere near the colors I want. Am going to post at Knittyboard to see if there are any people out there who can find it for me.

Strike Two

Ok, LYS #1 does not carry Lorna's Laces. LYS #2 carries only Shepherd Worsted, Angel and Helen's Lace. Will go to LYS #3 tomorrow or Saturday. If not, it's Jimmy Beans Wool for me! But honestly, I've never seen this yarn, I hate to order a colorway blind but LL's is always beautiful.

Also will check the eBay stores.

Congrats to the White Sox.

Clap-a-long!

Ok, it's settled. Kirs10 and I are having a Clapotis Knitalong. She's got Somerset LL's, I'm gonna try to find Aslan or Safari, and we'll be off!

She is wrong, however, that I will finish mine in record time and she'll be putting along. I predict we'll both putt. We'll be putter knitters. Or knitting putters. Putting knitters.

Ok, that makes no sense. :)

YEAH baby!

Quote from a review of Spooka Lucha (The Codenames):

"The Codenames could read the phone book and I'd listen!"

Check 'em out! Full disclosure: I am their web designer and I also designed the album, so I'm not entirely impartial. Oh, and I wrote the Tour Rider.

Also

I would like to make KnitandTonic Wendy's Girlfriend's Swing Coat Sweater - we'll see if I can find a deal on the yarn...it is so, so soft...

Today

I think I am gearing up for a Knitalong with Kirs10Knits, doing a Clapotis out of LL Shepherd Sport, if she wants to. But I need to wait until payday to get the 3 skeins of yarn I need. Payday is Friday.

I listened to the Kate Gilbert knitcast last night while I walked. It really really really made me want to make Clapotis. Especially since I don't feel silly now every time I say CLAPOHTEE.

I frogged the heel of the sock last night because I'm doing a short row heel that consists of a lot of backward yarnovers that are taken back into the knitting again by doing sssp or k3tog, depending on which side, all with stitches twisted. Well, I was doing the twists right and the k3tog right, but I realized AS I FINISHED that I had been knitting 3 together through back loop on the sssp instead of purling through the back loops. So I frogged. Much happier now! I have about three yarnovers left to reincorporate and THEN I will post pictures of Sock.

More later on this CBS station. It's lunchtime!

I spilled hot water on my keyboard today

it didn't like it. Had to own up to it and get a new keyboard, on account of fact that every time I clicked something it control-clicked it. Whoopsie.

Finished the heel of sock #1 and did quite a few rows of Scarf. I've decided to adopt the lace pattern from Cozy for my ex-branching-out scarf and make it a Cozy scarf.

Uncle/Auntie bought a house in Mississippi this week. Mom is listing her house in a week or two. This is starting to feel a little surreal. It will be so fun!

Speaking of yarn-overs

I'm doing that sock heel right now.

Haven't blogged about the Fitzgerald investigation, but the word all over is that big things are going down in next couple days.

Hilarious to watch Ron Reagan simper about how honesty and integrity are important things to him in government, and equally hilarious to hear Kay Bailey Hutcheson say that perjury is a technicality.

Knife cuts both ways, indeed. In my personal opinion, Bush has shown himself to be a fine liberal president. Total lack of fiscal responsibility, mammoth increases in pork, huge increases in the welfare state and expansion of the Nanny state regarding moral issues sounds just like the Democrats to me. John Kerry couldn't have done it better.

What's a lonely little right-leaning libertarian centrist like me to do?

So

Here is what I did today:

1. went grocery shopping in freezing cold weather for: oxyclean, tp, paper towels, kleenex, and feline pine
2. met kim for lunch and Elizabethtown, since I've been to E-town several times and thought it might be cool (it wasn't, very)
3. came home and worked on scarf
4. went out to Kathy's going away party, had asthma attack
5. came home, tried to frog a cotton Old Navy sweater, but it turned out to be knitted with four strands of laceweight cotton held together, and was pretty much un-salvageable, and I made a real mess of it
6. vacuumed, obviously
7. tried to re-start Branching Out, and once again ended up with 30 stitches when I should have had 31. I didn't like it anyway. Am frogging and modifying the lace pattern from Cozy for this scarf. Some Lace Knitting is not for me. I already decided I *hate* laceweight yarn...now I think I just basically *hate* yarn-overs, unless they are part of
8. the heel of a sock, which I worked on next. Short row heel and toe socks, Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in Camo, #2, 40" needle. Very easy pattern except for the way you undo all the short rows. That is pretty challenging but I really like doing it.
9. Told Mom there's a tornado watch
10. Ordered Anakin's Jedi Starfighter for Nephew

Am thinking about what kind of yarn to use for a sweater for him. The pattern I'm going to work is a top-down raglan, generic pattern where you take a few measurements and knit away. The pattern seems pretty straightforward except for the author's notable lack of illustrations - she used her keyboard dashes and backslashes to make a drawing of how to place markers, etc. I will redraw them. All. But the problem is, what kind of yarn? Wool-ease is ok, dirt cheap and machine wash. Maybe charcoal grey. Maybe I should upgrade to Encore Worsted, but that will require 5-6 skeins at $6 a pop and I'm not sure the sweater will be a success. Has to be machine-washable and at least partly wool.

I'm still thinking.

Today we went for Mexican food and the zoo. I have a relationship with Mexican food which can be summarized by saying - if I had top-secret government information someone wanted and I was holding out, and someone decided to dangle a bowl of cheese dip in front of me, I'd give it up in two seconds flat. Torture for me is not being able to eat cheese dip. (I have an unnatural relationship with most of the dairy family.)

The zoo was fun. The elephants were sort of antisocial, the red pandas were fun to watch, I saw an alpaca with a funky 70s haircut who was trying to eat the deadbolt off the fence he was in, and a goat tried to eat the zoo map out of my back pocket. So I got this brilliant idea I would pull a branch down for Goat to nibble. Six other goats showed up! One was preggers and followed me around after that. Then we watched an anaconda get fed. Poor little rabbit. He was already dead when they put him in there, and then she - the snake - squeezed him up anyway. She squeezed the poo out of this little bunny and kept sticking its head down her throat. We were waiting for her to finish her meal but she wouldn't. Kids were gathered all around, and it was amazing how many parents just let their young, young kids watch.

Then Waffle House and general hanging out. A perfect day. :)

Another Knit PICKS rant

Well, I emailed Knit PICKS and Crafts Americana (your KNITPICKY online yarn vendor) a complaint about the name change thing.

I just think the name change is idiotic. I had a bad experience with Knit PICKS recently anyway - first I noticed how badly designed their website is. Very, extremely, unbelievably hard to find anything. And then I had bad customer service. And a terrible shipping experience.

They do have some nice yarn. But why should I order from them instead of somebody else? Is it worth ordering from a snotty company with a bad website who takes forever to ship to you and can't answer your questions to save a dollar or two on a skein of yarn? I don't know.

Actually, it's Crafts Americana I'm mad at, not Kelly at Knit PICKS.

HOLY COW

Did you see this?? I'm really glad Ashley and Brian are okay...

Also, today I tried to post a comment at Glampyre and it told me I couldn't post because apparently I am a known spammer.

No, I'm actually not. I'm not even an unknown spammer. Sniff.

I mean REALLY...

What was Vogue Knitting THINKING???

(What's in the horn, gunpowder??)

Oh beautiful

Kathy (aka Grumperina ) has made socks so gorgeous they bring tears to my eyes. Now WHAT is the "pretty way" to pick up stitches along the heel flap?

It sure is pretty! I mean seriously!!!

SHAME SHAME SHAME on Knit Picks for apparently forcing Knit Pixie into changing its name.

Cold-blooded and totally unnecessary.

I mean you like to think that knitting is about friendship and making things and nice warm happiness, and then you get some a-hole big-business stupid thing like that happening, and it makes me really mad.

Stupid Knit Picks. I mean you have NoNo Kitty yarn at KPixie, which is luxury handmade that is absolutely to die for, and then over at Knit Picks you have a lot of good basic, no-nonsense, inexpensive yarn. I like both, for different reasons. They each have their place.

Nobody is going to confuse those two shops.

Well

I am starting to feel better. It was a bit dodgy this afternoon, but I took my comforter cover to the cleaners (because I chucked some cat-pee filled pajamas onto it last night, but thankfully nothing soaked in and it didn't smell, but I figure it needed cleaning anyway); I vac'd, I lysol'd, and I have the a/c set at 68.

It was 89 FREAKING DEGREES TODAY.

Mom is going to be in the path of Wilma. If only she can sell her house before a storm takes it out...sigh...shingles blow straight through the screens on the lanai, etc. Then you can't find anyone to replace them because EVERYONE needs screens. During Jeanne I was there, and it was the oddest thing - the surface of the pool was completely still. You could have set a piece of paper on the patio and it would have stayed put. But ten feet up? 100-mph winds.

It was the oddest thing. I hope Wilma goes to hang out with Betty instead of going to Daytona Beach.

Just Got Yelled At

By Mom. For not using my inhaler properly. I've got that stupid asthma barking cough.

I've been turning off the a/c at night, because it keeps running even though it's only 50 outside, and I didn't want it to cost a fortune.

Turns out a/c controls humidity, which controls mold. And I found a large colony of mold growing on the cat grass this morning. And two days ago, large amounts of mold on fresh strawberries. That is a humidity problem.

So...tonight I will: vacuum; wipe down every available surface with Lysol wipes, including ceiling fan blades; turn the a/c down to 68 and leave it; and keep the patio door shut when Fee is out there at night. Also run the vent fan when I take showers. Usually my apartment is screechingly dry, but apparently I've been slacking off.

So,

we are going to make Branching Out for a friend, in Garnstudio Silke Tweed - some amazing color of RED, and I can't wait to finish it.

Birthday present. I haven't even cast on for it yet...

Needle expedition #2 was a failure. Well, I'll wait a while and figure out what to do next. I'll get the Addi Turbo - it just involves going to yet another yarn store and I've spent about $30 on yarn in the past two days, and that is Quite Enough.

Back on Retin-A...blech...

It's cold this morning

As in 42.

I knitted another swatch last night - this time on 3's. I am happy to report it Does Not look like a Hairball. Thank goodness. But I don't think I like the Glorianna scarf after all. Next I'm going to try the white one with the eyelets, and if that doesn't work out or I can't stand knitting it then I'll be gifting the yarn and pattern to someone...she knows who she is, she's Miss "I'm on a Yarn Fast for REAL" and it might be fun for her. I am starting to think I like yarn with a bit more...substance...to it. I do have some yummy yummy yarn to make the Opera Scarf - it literally glows. Trouble is I buy this stuff thinking "Kim's birthday" or whatever and then I knit it and fall in love with it myself. Not this time! Must. Have. Discipline.

It's 7:20 and my hair is still rolled in a towel. There's just no excuse for me today! Let's see if I can get to office by 8:30. Arrrrgh.

Ok

Addi makes a size 1 with a 40" cord. I'll go to LYS tomorrow and get me one.

Frustration!

Ok, let me say again I have the BEST Secret Pal ever! But I frustrated right now because I went to get a #1 needle today to knit some lovely socks with my lovely lovely SP yarn AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY. I have 2's and 3's - great for sport weight, which is all I have done so far. But no 1's! So I was looking forward to expanding my needle collection - BUT I WAS FOILED.

Drat. Drat I say!

So tomorrow I guess I will call another LYS and see if they have one. If not I am going to buy some needles from Knit Picks or something. I need a 4 anyway, I think.

I ordered some lace yarn for myself and worked for two hours last night on a swatch, blocked, went to bed....woke up to a lovely knitted hairball. I mean HOW do people make lace look so ELEGANT, and then I work for hours and sweat and grind teeth and I get a lousy flipping hairball?

Sigh.

I don't like ordering from KP though because they take a long time, and I've gotten 2 packages in the last two weeks (one was from SP!) that lingered in the office for about a day before I got them. And I never got a note, so I had to sort of stop in and check, and that annoyed them about as much as me. So I am not looking forward to doing that again...

but I am going to order some needles. Maybe they have a Crystal Palace bamboo circ in size 1. I hear they had bad joins, then they fixed them...so maybe it will all work out! Or I'll try Webs.

The Cheesecake Factory is supposed to open any day. Guitar Boy and I tried to go today but it's not open yet. I love the Shrimp and Bacon Club. Mom and I always get it in Orlando.

Oh, they appraised her house today for THREE TIMES what they paid for it ten years ago. The realtor thinks they will sell within a week of listing, and they hope to be in Memphis by Christmas. (So nice to not have to trot through airports at Christmas!) Mom applied for her nursing licence today - so they are for real. I have been wondering if they would really do it!

I will miss her pool, though, but it will be nice to see my mom once a month or whatever.

The Schmade

If Grady was a superhero, he'd be The Schmade - bred for his skills in laziness. Mere mortals cannot hope to achieve in a lifetime what he does every night on the couch.

Finished Nephew Scarf

Not too glamorous, but it will keep him warm and be practically indestructible. Modeled by Big Cinnamon, my lifelong companion since Christmas 1972.



I found him a v cool Star Wars hat that's black and blue with some gloves to match.

Today

I have approximately 37" of 50" Nephew Scarf done in 2 x 2 ribbing and black Wool-Ease - double strand of worsted on 10.5s. It's kinda skinny so I'm making it extra long for extra head-winding capability.

I cleaned the tub with Comet.

I cleaned the manky bathroom floor with Pine-Sol.

I cleaned up the cat barf with Tide in the carpet cleaner (it works best).

It's 11:15am. Back to knitting.

Finally some pictures!

Click the photo if you want details; it will take you to my Flickr page and you can see the notes.



And now for the siding guys who were banging loudly on the walls and scaring the cats all week...They also took down the gutters - the gutters are at the back of the yard area behind my apartment. Looks like they also had a little help (click for bigger image)...



I had one of those dump trucks when I was a kid and I am not kidding when I say I wore it OUT.

And here's a picture of Fiona, hogging the cool new bracelet I got from SP 5...

Ok

I made it through this week. Kind of amazing.

I have some nifty Secret Pal gifts to show off, coming soon! I already took the pictures and just have to edit and post. She got me some Palette yarn (pretty blue), Zinnia sock yarn, two yummy candy bars, some yummy pumpkin bread mix, a LUSH bath bomb!!!, some orange tea (just as I was out, it will become my work tea!) and a REALLY cool green beaded bracelet that I wore yesterday and love.

THANKS AGAIN, SECRET PAL!!!

In other news, I have a funny bump on the knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand, right where it meets the back of my hand. Of course now that I noticed it I can't leave it alone. I wonder if I should go to the doctor about it. It's just sort of a small weird bump, and I am not sure it's bone, but maybe it is arthritis.

Update - it's just the tendon. It moves around. Weird.

Frankenglove

(I frogged the gloves.)

Nephew wants his scarf now, to go with his Darth Vader snow boots. He said "I am going to look like Napoleon Dynamite" and he was excited about that.

Which is just so funny.

"Oh you silly stupid pastime of mine"

that line makes me so sad, but Fiona Apple is really great at writing about relationships. I've had several I'd call silly stupid pastimes.

But not this one. :)

Making a Cigar glove out of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. I like it so far but I really messed up the increases for the thumb gusset and had to frog (sigh, miss dyslexic, read them wrong, did them wrong). I got the thumb stitches on waste yarn and kept going. I had giant gaping holes when I tried to rejoin after putting aside the pinky stitches. It was at that point that I finally realized I have got to make a pattern work for me - not just follow it. So if she says "rejoin" then obviously that means "rejoin in a way that gives you little to no gap." So I did better with the next join.

But, at the index finger I used a cable cast on - you are supposed to set aside 12 stitches and then cast on two and keep going. The two fill in the gap - the space between your fingers. But the cable cast on looks sort of twisty and has an odd bump in it.

Now seriously the problem is I cannot decide if I want these to be full gloves or half-fingers.

Be right back with a picture.

Ok, I've been a bad blogger. I've been working nonstop - 60 hours last week. Deadlines hit at a bad time. Plus it was GB's birthday and it was a rare opportunity for me to buy him something, since there was actually something that he wanted and asked for.

I finished the sleeves on my sweater and started the back. I have about 9" of it done. I have to knit for 14.5" before I start the sleeve decreases. I want to wear it now now now.

Interesting article about church architecture at Slate. Why do Protestant churches all have to be boring and ugly??

Lunchtime...turkey sandwich...salt and vinegar potato chips...more later about my weekend.

LOST

The thing is a crummy TIMER???

Ana-Lucia, you *****! Here we have all been expecting you to be cool and you turn out to be a bad guy?!

I feel so betrayed.

PS: The Fiona Apple gets my album of the year this year. It's been a long time since I've heard anything quite like it.

Now Playing

in the iPod:
The Libertines
Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan

anyway, someone left a comment with this hair salon name: Last Resort Hair Salon

now why would anyone go there???

i wrote a letter of complaint today to the skeezers at old navy, gap and banana republic for redesigning their site to be incompatible with safari.

losers.

I have to remember to pay the rent tomorrow.

My arms hurt. I spent four hours looking for a silly image for ONE PAGE of the magazine. I want to go to the yarn store and binge on something since I didn't spend all my spending money this week.

But really, I just started the sleeve cap decreases on Scoopie, and I want to go home and finish them. Also it looks to be an interesting plot twist on Medium tonight, and I can't miss it.

I also want to make My So-Called Scarf for my sister since she is depressed about Chicago, maybe a pretty purple-y scarf would cheer her up. But it requires $30 of Manos, and that means going across town to the LYS that carries many colors and which closes at 5 and there ain't no way I'm leaving here before 4:30 today after the stupid four hour image search.

Now, the other question is 'what can I do with three skeins of Wool of the Andes'?

Melodramatic disaster dorkiness

Owing to the sunburn, my eyebrows, on which I spend embarrassing amounts of money to have dyed along with my hair (which is dirty dishwater blond and gray), and which I spend inordinate amounts of time on each morning carefully brushing in dark shadow so they don't disappear -

are now at least 40% blond.

Ok, the Karabella section at Knit Pixie needs to be officially categorized as yarn pr0n.
Oh, and I did order a boatload of stuff from Knit Picks, only not the DK merino I was thinking about and not the Wool of the Andes I was thinking about, because it's hard to commit to yarn and I want to wait two more weeks (and try to finish Scoopie) and I might as well face that everything I knit now is not going to be done until it's too warm to wear it but I did order plenty and we'll just see if I ever knit anything of it.

Poor Titans

And I am being gracious.

Friend got tickets to the game today that came from #9 himself - they were great seats. Five rows up. 10 yard line.

But it was hot. H-O-T. It's October 2. What's a reasonable temperature for October 2 in Tennessee? 75. Possibly 80. But this? This was so hot that the sun hurt. At the very very least a heat index of 95. And I forgot all about packing sunscreen, I mean seriously, it's OCTOBER.

I got so sunburned. I mean really, really sunburned. My arms are bright red, with a nice Hank Hill farmer's tan, a white watch band and the insides of my arms are burned too. And the right side of the back of my neck. Oops, sorry, left (dyslexia).

It's very very warm. But the good news is I didn't really have any asthma problems today, and my face didn't get burned. (I really don't want to look like a leather bag.) And I have some leftover MSM lotion from years ago that will help it a lot.

The game was depressing. 31-10 and I really do not understand the Peyton Manning Is God contingency. He barely speaks English (I mean that is a truly bad accent), he's arrogant and mean to everyone. I just don't get it.

But he did get sacked once by our defense, and I admit I stood up and cheered when it happened.

So now I am going to have popcorn for dinner.