Thursday, November 30, 2006
Hoo-whee, baby! Whole lotta cables goin' on!
I think I've found my niche.
Grumperina's Sharfik pattern for the Red Scarf Project, hopefully done by the first week of January.
My new Christmas Stocking, hopefully done before Santa wriggles his way down the chimney.
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I'm practically recovered today. Still feeling kinda rubbery in the limbs, but made myself get up and get moving. Found that that's helped a lot. Of course, it's always good motivation to see your garbage scattered throughout the street thanks to some menacing crows. In the suburbs its dogs, in the city it's crows. So, after I got all of that picked up, I decided that maybe its time to legitimately feed the birds and set up our housewarming gift bird feeder stuff in the back. Winter is supposed to arrive this weekend, and they'll be well stocked.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Knit Togethers
So I went to Tuesdays are for Knitting yesterday. Yeah, that was me. In terms of productivity, it was a wash. I was working on the second Christmas Stocking. There are two charts (that are mislabled in the magazine, I cannot mention this enough), and I was still using my post-it note method to keep track of where I am. Well, the post-its came off in the car. I don't know how this happened, as the magazine was closed, but when I opened it up, they were stuck other places. Ok, well, I'm in the middle of a round, I'll just look back and see if I can figure it out. Well, I thought I had made a mistake somewhere in the last two rows, and I couldn't remember where I was from one chart to the next. And then I thought, "No, I couldn't be that far along. I must have accidently gotten ahead." So I ripped, thought, "No, I was fine," started reknitting, thought, "No, I was wrong, I need to rip out even more. Ugh." Ripped some more. You add on top of that, twenty women in lively conversation, all crammed into one small space, in a shop full of wool, with the AC off, during a warm spell. Not the best mood for figuring out what the hell I did wrong. I think I unknit more than I knit. It was horrible, especially when I discovered that really, nothing had been done wrong in the first place But right now, it's what I have to work on, and it's going a lot better this morning.
Plus, I'm not feeling well. So if you sat next to me, start the Airborne today, and I officially apologize. I recommend the Pink Grapefruit or the Lemon Lime. I blame Cheryl. I read her blog where she said she was feeling sick, then within the hour, I had a fever.
PPHHHBBBTTT!
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Christmas Knitting, Half Way Point
Jealous? I thought you might be. :-) I'm sort of taking a break from the Christmas Knitting this year. Doing 5 knit toys a year is just, well, too much. Especially because 4 of them have to be the same, just with different colors. My mind flits about too much for that. Everyone has a handknit scarf this year. Well, almost everyone.
I was lucky enough to land a non-Californian relative in one of the family Christmases this year. Yay! And she hasn't gotten a scarf from me yet. Yay!
This here's 4 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK, knit into about 7 repeats of Double-Eyelet Rib, June 14th in the 365 Knitting Stitches a Year.
The colorway is one of those fabulously washed out Debbie Bliss pastels, this one taking on a turquoise hue.
I should tell you that this pattern ROLLS UP, so do a selvedge stitch or a seed stitch edge or something. I didn't do that, so I'm going to spend the next week blocking it into submission.
Now that I have all knit gifts for the year done, time to start on the second stocking.
Oh, and Justin, if you're reading this, I would make sure your coworkers aren't looking. :-)
I'm married to such a cutie.
Playing with the Manual settings on the camera. Fun fun! Hey, tell me if there are things um, things I could do better with the pictures. On my laptop, they look fine, but I haven't seen them on a regular screen, so I can't tell if they're too dark, washed out, etc.
Monday, November 27, 2006
I hope she grades on a curve.
I wouldn't normally be posting this early, hell, I wouldn't normally be UP this early, but Justin just left for work and he always nudges me awake to say goodbye in the morning. This morning, he woke me up from a dream that was such good blog fodder, I had to get up and write it down before I forgot about it.
It was finals week at my Alma Mater, but for some reason finals came early this year as it was the second Sunday after Thanksgiving, dubbed "my favorite Sunday of the year" at Kenyon. This first weekend in December was the absolute ultimate. The largest craft fair in the county took place at the athletic center all weekend. Then Sunday evening held a great Episcopalian tradition: the Nine Lessons and Carols concert. Both of these events were (and are) hidden gems on what is normally a very gossipy campus. The concert featured scripture being read by various members of the community. Following the British tradition, the first reading was done by one of the lowest folks on the totem poll, a freshie, while the last reading was reserved for the college president. But the best part was the music. Each a capella group and choir on campus would sing one of the carols after the lessons. It was great, a smorgasbord of all the best the musical community had to offer. And being all religious, well, you know it was right up my alley. Definitely the highlight of my Christmas season, up on that isolated hill in rural Ohio, having just bought most of my Christmas gifts from independent artisans, leaving what inevitably became the sweltering heat of the chapel to the crisp early winter air and the stars that cannot possibly be clearer at any other time of year.
But in the dream, I was in danger of missing it. I had a final the next day to study for. Not just any final, the Yarn Harlot's fiber (re) final. First question, of course, would be how to spell that word. I wish my dream had the arc of a good drama, "Did she go to the concert?", but it does not. I don't know. The important thing, instantly, was the final.
Suddenly I was transported to the learning table at the back of Knit One, about to embark on my most difficult final. The questions are what I wanted to remember, the reason for such an early post. Stephanie came out of her little office in the back, handed out a sheath of paper an inch thick, and sat down to work on a sock.
First question: Spell fibre. (I KNEW it!)
Second question: On the table there are three socks, can you spot the one made of Koigu? (Bonus points to name the colorway.) Give the properties of Koigu. In your opinion, is it the superior sock yarn? Why or why not?
Three: How do you store your stash? I thought I had this one nailed, as my answer was both creative (in old potato and onion bins, I lost points for one of them smelling of patchouli) and took the yarn's safety into account (in my grandmother's old cedar blanket chest, in a large collection of Hollinger acid-free archival boxes).
Four: The Lorax comes to town and gives you an ultimatum: You must abandon your entire yarn stash. The Truffula Trees are being chopped down and all knitting must stop in order to save them. How would you divvy up your stash? What would be the first items to go? Which would you horde and hide from the Lorax in order to keep as long as possible? Which yarns would go immediately into projects in order to save the fibre? (Her being a Canadian, I had long since picked up on how she wanted me to spell that word.) Which of these projects would you start first?
Five: Name the varietals of both wine and chocolate suitable for consumption when a lace shawl goes awry.
Then came the math section:
Your sister tells you she is pregnant this morning. How many hours of labor will she have to have gone through before you start the heirloom layette set you have in mind?
If the gauge of the pattern is 18 sts per inch on size 5 needles, and you're getting 16.5 sts per inch, how many stitches must you add or subtract from the total amount cast-on to achieve the proper fit for your boyfriend's sweater when he has a chest size of 38 inches? (This, of course, was a trick question. You should never be knitting a sweater for your boyfriend. Therefore, gauge is irrelevant.)
The final then moved into running around the shop, where various cards asked you to identify various yarns (approximate gauge on size 7 needles, fiber content, potential allergic reactions, and of course brand name) from nothing but balls without ball bands and gauge swatches.
At this point, I think the Yarn Harlot was kidnapped as I remember everything devolving into chaos. Or it could have been twenty-five knitters all running around squeezing yarn balls. Then Justin woke me up. I don't know if it was a good dream or a bad dream!
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Thanksgiving redux
Thanksgiving went extremely well. The turkey came out all juicy, the oyster stuffing was well received (although still not superior to the regular stuff in most peoples' minds), and we managed to churn out 4 loaves of bread before 6 PM. The potatoes came out a little mealy, but hey, I've never made potatoes for 20 people before. The best part was that we had pretty much every member of the family present and accounted for, all in one small space (no buffet style for us). The star of the show, though, was not food, but the 8th member of his generation.
Born just 5 days before Thanksgiving, we were all thankful we got to meet him.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Almost...deep breaths now.
By the by: This picture was taken WITHOUT a flash, at 8:45 tonight. I LURVE this camera!
Well, here we are. Nine PM. Twenty hours or so from guest arrival. Much better. Thanks, Justin. I couldn't have done it without you.
Oh yeah, to the other thousand people who were in Whole Foods at 8 AM this morning: Driving a Chevy Suburban kind of goes against the whole "Whole Foods" ethos, don't you think? Maybe that's why they make the parking spaces too small, to keep you from entering the parking lot like a secret service caravan.
We're a bit behind
Thirty-five hours and counting. What you should be seeing are three tables, complete with tablecloths, maybe even some plates. Instead is a bare expanse of living floor that needs to be scrubbed, the coffee table / sideboardlet for the nonexistant living room table. The large white expanse is, in fact, a table with a tablecloth, saints be praised. It's also 50% of our kitchen counter space. The turkey this year will be stuffed on a coffee table. And the expanse in the back is the dining room. Clean floors in there, but not much else.
The reason we are a wee bit behind. Damn I wish I had a picture, but even I have some pride. I was so ashamed of what happened yesterday, I called the Hubster at work, in tears, and apologized for what felt like 10 minutes.
We're experimenting with a bread recipe for the bread machine for Thursday. We haven't got it right yet. The first try, the thing came out like a large biscuit. Edible for breakfast with plenty of jam, but not what you'd call Turkey day fare. Add more yeast, a little less flour, and we got what looked like a promising loaf. All that was left to do was to find a place to put the bread and a cutting board to cut it.
In our charming home, our charming oven has a charming drawer below the actual oven. It provides a safe haven for our cookie sheets, a wire cooling rack, our cutting boards, and the occasional family of mice. But nay, this is not a vermin story ending with me pulling out the Hubster's trombone and escorting a family of rodents out of the kitchen and down the street. That shall be for another day.
No, this is a different story. The clever cutting boards like to stage a coup every now and then, declaring the drawer their "turf" and refusing entry to the humans outside who deperately want to get in to USE the cutting boards. Yesterday was such a day. All I wanted to do was slice up some bread, but the drawer stoutly refused to open. It teasingly came out an inch, but then jammed. I'm wondering if any of you have some techniques for when this happens. I know I can't be the only one this has happened to. Sometimes the jam happens far enough back that you can stick your hand in there and sort of poke around and get things into shape. No room for that this time. I went to the Wooden Spoon, employing the same "hand" strategy, but with a far skinnier implement. The cutting boards all but laughed in my face, breaking the poor measly thing within five seconds. Clearly I was dealing with a superior intelligence. Maybe I can, oh, I don't know, "shuffle" the thing loose. Sometimes there's just one cutting board down at the bottom of the pile that shifts to a jaunty angle, causing the rest of the cutting boards to come out of joint and stick up at even jauntier angles. I pulled out hard on the drawer, pushed back hard on the drawer...and ended up with a pile of broken glass at my (bare) feet.
Hmmm...guess I don't know my own strength. What had happened was that the entire glass front of the oven door decided that it had had enough of my shenanigans and decided to intervene on the behalf of the cutting boards who, really, only wanted some privacy.
My first thought was, of course, an expletive. My second thought was that I had rendered the oven inoperable. We would have to take back my new camera and put the money towards a down payment on a new oven. Two days before Thanksgiving. When I have 20 people coming.
I took a break, called the Hubster, picked some glass shards out of my feet, too early for a glass of Merlot so I had to use Diet Coke, and got to work. First up: Let's turn on the oven (with the pile of glass in front of it that, for some reason, was crackling like a bowl of Rice Krispies) and see what happens. Will the now exposed metal front of the oven get red hot? Will it even turn on? Yes! It did turn on. An hour later it's warm but not hot, and the glass is gone. Two hours later, at 325, it's hot to the touch, but won't produce a burn. And three hours later, I deem the oven workable, but the drawer still resolutely stuck.
In a way, the oven door shattering into a million pieces was something of a blessing. (This is a new thing I'm working on, finding the blessings in shitty situations.) The removal of the glass front of the oven enabled me that extra half inch of access that I needed to squeeze a butter knife over the top of the drawer and jimmied that head of the Cutting Board Privacy Coalition (CBPC) back down into the pile where he belongs.
Then I cleaned out the half pound or so of glass that landed in the drawer.
So if you're coming to my house for Thanksgiving, you now know the reason the floor in my bedroom isn't scrubbed. It was the hour I took to blog.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Fresh Start
The world is new again today: New computer, new camera, new knitting.
New computer is a Gateway laptop. It's the Hubster's baby, so I can't describe it except that the keyboard makes great noise. Not enough to be annoying, just enough to let you know you're typing. We got it a week before Intel announced their new Centrino Quattro, so we're outdated already, but that's life in the big city.
The new camera...now that's MY baby. My old tried and true was a Nikon 3500. I think it had, like, a single megapixel to work with, although it somehow produced some real gems. We did tons of research, went to a dozen websites, went to about 5 stores trying to find cameras that actually had working batteries that we could play with (Circuit City plugs all of theirs into AC adaptors, but the prices were too high), and finally landed this little guy.
The Sony CyberShot DSC-W100. Some fortuitous coupons from Best Buy enabled a further 12% discount. Yay! A note to the guy at Best Buy, when someone comes in and tells you she knows exactly what she wants, just because she has a big rack (it was not a glance, but a stare...yes boys, we notice...yes, every time) DOES NOT mean she would OBVIOUSLY be more interested in the PINK camera just because a portion of the cost goes to breast cancer research. And since I have large breasts, I'm OBVIOUSLY intent on donating. Before someone jumps on me, I buy the stamps, I turn in the yogurt lids, but with a major investment, unless the thing has a reputation of being high quality, I won't buy it simply for the pink. BTW: Why don't they do that with the pink Razr?
Anyway, according to all of the reviews, you can't really beat this camera for awesome pictures with no flash, even in questionable light. Hmmm...sounds right up a knitblogger's alley.
Let's test it out on the latest finished object. See, I had to reward you with something.
This is from the Holiday 2006 Vogue Knitting. Pattern 1, simply called "Stocking." This pattern was incredibly fun. Easy, predictable cables, but kept me on my toes too. One PATTERN ERROR that they refuse to acknowledge: They screwed up the chart placement when printing the magazine. When the pattern says "Cable Chart 1", use Cable Chart 2. Yarn: Blue Sky Alpaca & Silk that was supposed to be for the first Husband sweater but just started coming out too fuzzy. He's really not into the Yeti look. I can't remember the colorway, but...gray.
Justin and I agreed that with the institution of our new family, new Christmas stockings were in order. We were willing to wager that our mothers would want to keep our childhood stockings, and we wanted something matching anyway. Purrrrfect. There's actually a cabled band at the top that will be completed after I finish both stockings. Why I love my husband: Holding off on the bands was his idea.
Stitch definition in the picture, awesome, coloring, pretty darn accurate. I'm incredibly pleased.
Off to work on Thanksgiving stuff. We're having somewhere between 17-20 people coming to the house. The kitchen is pretty well ripped up right now. ooh! ooh! I bet I can take pictures of it!!!
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