Snowflake Scarf - Done!

The Snowflake Scarf is done and blocked, and I am quite pleased with it. I think when I started knitting on this one I thought it was going to be a replacement to my everyday black cashmere one that Joe had given me a couple years earlier and that I had lost. Silly me - I always think that I can knit fine lace and somehow bear to drudge it around the muck that is my every day life. Nope - I need something a little sturdier than that, which is why I ended up knitting the purple one a couple months ago. But this is beautiful, and it will be lovely for fancier occasions. But we'll get to that in a minute.

I started this scarf way back in December of 2006. I was full-throttle working on the blankie at the time, but I needed a project to keep in the car for the days when I couldn't get the girls to nap at home, but when they would magically fall asleep in the car and stay asleep long enough for me to drink a cup of coffee and relax with some knitting till my sanity came back into semi-focus. Those were some tough days, and as nice as it was to be able to hold some knitting and pretend to knit a row or two, progress was quite slow and sporadic.

The yarn was Fino by Alpaca with a Twist, which is laceweight 70% Baby Alpaca and 30% Silk, given to me by my SP 9 Pal in one of the best swap packages I think I have ever received. This yarn is scrumptious, and knit up nicely. I still have about half an ounce of it left and am wondering whatever I will do with this lovely little nugget. It is very soft, and has the silky shine and feel, but with a light halo from the alpaca.

The pattern is "A Russian Lace Scarf to Knit" by Dixie Falls and Jane Fournier, which was published in Piecework in the May/June 1995 issue, and more recently reprinted in the July/August 2007 issue, which is still available for order on Interweave's website. I had seen a knitter-friend of mine wearing a scarf that she'd knit with the pattern and she was kind enough to loan me her copy of the magazine to knit from.

I haven't seen the reprinted version (have just ordered a copy for my files), but in the 1995 version, the charts are hand-drawn with symbols that are not standard by today's standards at least. So I transcribed them into more modern charts using Stitch Painter Pro, at the same time combining the main pattern with the edge patterns so I could look at them all in one row. I'm horrible at memorizing stitch patterns. For better or for worse (I think for better, actually) I made a mistake when I was transcribing the pattern and omitted a row from the border patterns. It didn't make much difference in the look of the borders in the end, but it did work out so that the border charts ended on the same rows as the middle section charts. This meant that I could do exactly however many repeats as I pleased instead of working to a multiple of three as the original pattern required. One more repeat would have been no big deal in my case, but if I had been running out of yarn (as so often happens) having to choose whether to go another three repeats and risk running out would have made me grind my teeth.

Let's move on to the pictures! As I've mentioned before and as I believe the knitting community generally agrees, unblocked lace looks like crap.



Well, not entirely crap, but certainly not living up to its potential.

Oops - we interrupt this discussion of lace scarves for a cute-kid pic. The girls got new rain gear, and I let them go out in the nice, gentle rain we had all day Friday to splash around for a while. That was all the gettin' out of the house we did that day, because I'm still not quite well. My neck is better, but now my stomach is off. soon, it will be summer, and hopefully the solar radiation will kill off some of the germs that have plagued us lo, this long, long Minnesota winter.



Aaaand back to the lace. The scarf and I held a little blocking session, in which I once more employed my blocking-with-sock-yarn technique. I love blocking this way. I keep reading blog posts about how wonderful blocking wires are, and I get so close to buying a set, and then it comes time to block something and I use my standard technique, and I realize that I don't need another piece of knitting equipment filling up my yarn closet, and that I think I'm happier with this method anyway.



I use very few pins - mostly just at the corners to hold the ends of the yarn lines tight, plus a few along the longer sides to make sure I don't get dips. This time I got the yarn lines tight enough that they stayed almost perfectly straight on their own. I do measure half- and quarter-way down the line an make sure that the points are spaced evenly. In the picture below, you can see a pin that I stuck into the cloth just below the blocking area to mark where the half-way point is.



I like this method best because you get to string the "wires" in before you soak the lace, and I think sitting on the couch threading dry lace points onto sock yarn at my leisure has got to be better than rushing to get all the points onto the wires after they're wet but before they start to dry. But I've never tried wires, so I'm not speaking from full experience. Another advantage is that my "wires" are always exactly the right length.

I probably could have blocked it an inch or two wider, but I blocked it exactly 16" point-to-point so that it will fall into the scarf category at the fair instead of shawl/stole. The competition in the scarf category is stiff, and I don't necessarily expect to win a ribbon, but the shawl/stole category is even tougher! It'll probably need a fresh blocking by August, but it's not like I was going to wait that long to show it off. And, um, I'm not going to tell you exactly what method I ended up going with on the edge-joining. I'm just going to say that *I'm* really happy with the way it looks, and if you want to remind me, I'll tell you what I did after I get the results back from the fair.



And on to the glamour shots. Not very glamourous, really...but you can imagine if I had a nice dress on that it would make a pretty accessory for a fancy party.



And it would go just fine with my coat if I wanted to wear it to some cold-weather knitting event.



Yay!

I've already moved onward to the next project in the mean time. I've got a good little start on my Sunrise Circle. More on that in the next day or two - I'm really happy with how it's cranking along.

Scarf! Done! And other Randomness!

It turns out that I did manage to finish that simple scarf I showed you last week pretty quick after all. I knew I would have a little extra knitting time on Thursday and Friday, because although I hadn't mentioned it, I had a little minor surgery scheduled for Thursday, and had pretty much read Joe the riot act ahead of time to the effect of "You will be in charge of the kids and I will be left *!?%& alone for a couple of days!"

I was actually a little wound up leading up to Thursday because of the less-than-stellar performance Joe has given in caregiving after the births of both girls, and I was trying to play it cool, but then of course it all exploded the night before, and I ended up crying on his shoulder in the kitchen at midnight. Either Joe has grown much in the last two years, or my explosion hit home or some other magic occurred because he did a great job of letting me relax and recover from what turned out to be a pretty darn easy procedure.

Some of you may remember me asking about a certain procedure several months ago, and it is that one. Let's not go into further details, other than to say that I have no regrets at all whatsoever - even if it turns out to be less effective than I have hopes for it to be, it was a nearly painless procedure and recovery (I do have a very high pain tolerance, though) and I scored a day of near-total leisure out of it the likes of which I have not had since -oh- Julie was born.

But back to the knitting...I thought I was going to blog last night, and I took these pictures yesterday. The scarf looks like a rumpled rag in its unblocked state.



Daisy cat loves to be around my knitting, but I think she was actually a bit freaked out that I was arranging it around her like that.



Oh, and by the way, here is the status of the current pair of socks - both well past the heel, and I've knit on them a bit more this evening, so they're even farther along now.



I always do get a little nervous when my supply of mindless stockinette-in-the-round gets a bit low, so I went ahead and started toes for the next pair, which also served as good samples for the sock class I just started teaching on Saturday. I needed at least one sock set up on double-points to serve as a visual aid in my little lecture on the various needle choices one has when knitting socks - double-points, two circulars, magic loop, two socks on two circulars or magic loop (gods help us).



And since we're totally sidetracked from the scarf at the moment, I may as well go ahead and show you the skein of yarn that followed me home from the store. It's Opal cotton-wool-nylon blend sock yarn, just another self-striping variation. Wrapping up the blankie project had me thinking about how sock yarns come and go, and how I've passed up some lovely ones in the past that are no longer available and that I would really like to have. Also, I'm sensing a trend in the market away from some of the lovely self-striping commercial yarns that have been available in the last several years. I don't think they're going to go away altogether, but I've made up my mind to go ahead and buy a skein here and there when it strikes my eye. Plus, I need more cotton-wool stash - I like the socks, and I have a box of cotton-wool scraps waiting to get big enough for another project one of these days. Yes, I do think I should have two heirloom blankets for my two girls eventually.



And now back to the scarf. I had been worried when I started it that my one-of-a-kind skein of 267 yards of handspun Blue Faced Leister wool averaging about sport or DK weight might not be quite enough for a good-length scarf. So I intentionally picked an open lace pattern, to stretch it out a bit, and I chose a rather narrow width just to be sure. If there were enough yarn after all, I could always just keep knitting it longer, therefore allowing enough length to wrap it several times around my neck. Turns out I had about the right amount.

It looks pretty ratty and scrunched up in this picture still, but you can see the strands of sock yarn that I ran down the sides to aid in blocking.



Then I got the sucker wet and pinned it out. It looks much better stretched to its openwork limits. Like a torture chamber for lace.



In case you're curious, the way I like to block lace is to use strong smooth yarn in the same way one would use blocking wires - run it through the edges, and then just pull it tight enough to make a mostly straight line. The additional pins along the edges help keep the lines from dipping too much. I tie a slip-knot at the ends and poke a pin through the loop to hold it in place. My poor guest bed acts like a giant pin cushion, but at least the vinyl gingham table cloth keeps the water out of the mattress and the checkers are very helpful in lining everything up straight. This method works even better on pieces that are less long and narrow.





This pattern is super easy, hardly worth calling a pattern. If you're interested in knitting something similar, here's what I did.

Cast on 31 sts.
K 1 row plain
Repeat next two rows till you're almost out of yarn:
Row 1: K3, YO, K2, sl 2 sts as if to knit at the same time, k1, pass slipped sts over (centered decrease), K2, YO, K1, YO, K3, centered decrease, K3, YO, K1, YO, K2, centered decrease, K2, YO, K3
Row 2: K3, P7, K1, P9, K1, P7, K3
K 1 row plain
Bind off loosely.

Lace doesn't get much easier than that.

Oh hey! Those bags I ordered from messie on etsy showed up in like one day. She is so fast on shipping, and she even waived shipping charges since I ordered more than $30 worth. I always get complements on her bags when I'm out with a project in one of them. They are quite handy and super-cute. Perfect for a sock project.



Here's what my family was doing on Friday while I was laying around knitting and watching movies - Joe took the girls to the zoo, and I pulled pictures off the camera when they came home. They love the area where they can stick their hands in the pools full of fish.



This picture cracked me up because that is such a typical Julie pose and expression.



Oh, and I've been wanting to show off these drawings of Julie's - I think I will have to frame at least one or two of them. The ones on the left are just a couple in a series she did over the last couple weeks - they are people floating away with balloons. The one on the right is a picture of the ficus tree in our living room. I love it so much I confiscated it. Julie loves doing art projects, and she's had a little leap forward in her abilities lately. Yes, they are totally typical four-year-old art projects, but they are *my* four-year-old's art projects, and so are utterly precious to *me*.



I'm off to bed, to drift off to sleep pondering which main project I'll pick up tomorrow - another lace scarf? One of the many sweaters in the wings? The entrelac socks? Oh, the possibilities! Oh, the decisions!

Blankie Friday - the Wrap-Up

I can't believe this is it - the final Blankie Friday. The culmination of what seems like forever, but really in the long run has been a simple blink in the eye. The blankie has been a huge part of my life these last 20 months. It has led me to many new friends, most far, far away in the computer, but a few real, in-person friends. It has been a constant companion, growing in my lap. It has been something to photograph and write about, to dream with. And here it is all grown up.

Let's start with a few fun facts:

The finished dimensions are 53" X 72.5", or 134 X 184 cm (diamond point to diamond point.)

The finished weight is 2 lbs, 13 oz or 1.282 kg.

That's about 5960 yards/5450 meters - or 3.3 miles/5.4 kilometers of yarn.

512 sts per square times 736 squares (counting each of the large squares as four) adds up to 376,832 stitches in the squares alone.

Each square took about 25 minutes to knit, and if you add five minutes to that for picking out the next color and weaving in two ends, half an hour per square adds up to 368 hours of my life just knitting the squares for the blankie. That over 20 months, start to finish, comes out to an average of well over one square per day, which was my original goal for progress on the project.

The Timeline...

Blankie was started at the beginning of July, 2006 - it first appears on the blog here, leading me to believe that I started it right around the first of July, 2006.



Just a few days later, I wrote a post that sparked a flood of gifts, sparked on by the Yarn Harlot's post here. It is hard for me to believe, in retrospect, that so many people so generously sent me their yarn on faith based on the tiny little start I had going in this picture.



Note the tiny basket of original yarn scraps. That was the sum total of my own scraps that I started with.

Lots of people were interested in knitting a similar blanket right away, and I felt like the least I could do to repay the huge response of yarn-scrap gifts was to write up a little tutorial. I do seem to be unable to write a blog post without embedding my family in it, so it's a long, rambly tutorial, but it gets the job done. Start Here, Then Read This, Then This, and Finally This.

Before I knew it, I was inundated with packages, and it was like Christmas every day for a while there. I spent hours and hours opening packages, photographing them, and thanking the senders in the blog. That was probably the most fun part of the entire project, except perhaps the last five minutes of applied i-cord knitting.

Before long, I was pretty darn well buried in yarn. The cats loved it...





Some of that yarn went to other blankie knitters, more of it went to charity knitters - my favorite was Jo-Ann in Ontario, who knits bears for various children's charities.



The blankie (and I) have gotten to meet the Yarn Harlot once in Eau Claire.



And again in St. Paul...



And hopefully we will get a third picture with Stephanie when she comes to St. Paul again in April. She has been so gracious in the past, I'm really looking forward to thanking her one more time with a final product in hand.

And before we get to the pictures you've really been waiting for, I'll announce the
Contest Winners...

Part the first was sock yarn identification.

Sock yarn C



was the most contentious, and at least a couple of people guessed that it was Fortissima Socka color Mexico 9072 Sundown. And it's funny because I actually knit a sweater for Julie when she was little (and which Sophie still wears sometimes) and a pair of socks for myself out of that color, or one in the series.



Sorry, but that ain't it. Fortunately, ikkinlala came up with what I believe to be the right answer, which is Opal Brasil #5001. She even found it available here, which is great, but I chose to order a skein of it through an e-bay seller because I found the whole "every fifth stitch is for g*d" thing a little creepy, and also her ordering system was kind of confusing.

Sock yarn A



turns out to be Trekking #131, correctly identified by Razor Knit Girl. Thanks for the help, RKG, and I left a comment on your blog asking you to e-mail me. On further reflection, I'm not sure that I'm going to order that one after all. As much as I enjoy looking at those colors playing together on the blanket, they are totally not colors that I would wear. So I will at least hold off on them for a while.

I'm a little disappointed that nobody even guessed on squares B



or D



because those are probably my two favorite and I would totally buy them if I could get my hands on them. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? I'll extend the offer of a set of notecards and a little surprise to the first person to comment with good information on what these yarns are.

The second part of the contest was giving away the remains of the blankie scraps. I did get a few responses on this one, including an offer to buy some of the yarn. Sorry, but there is no way my conscience is going to allow me to *sell* yarn that was gifted to me! But there is enough to pass along at least a little something to everyone who responded with a link to a picture.

Sandra is churchlady on Ravelry, and is blogless, but has a teeny little beginning to a blankie.
Sopranospinner linked to her latest picture on Flickr.
Jesse has pictures of her newly-started blankie up on Ravelry
Knit & Purl Mama showed me her little chunk of blankie
Alice debuted her blankie on her blog just for the contest.

All of you are winners! E-mail me with your mailing addresses and color preferences (I'll do my best - there is an awful lot of blue, brown, black and white in the mix). I'll get some packages in the mail soon-ish. Just remember - you're taking on responsibility for the care and wellbeing of this yarn - don't neglect it!

Okay, and finally the "show me the blankie!" portion of the contest...there were 116 entries, and the random number generator chose 53, which turns out to be StaceyK, aka moonlightknitter, aka moonlightknitter on Ravelry. Stacey, e-mail me your mailing address and I will get a fabulous package out to you soon!

Thanks to everyone who spewed happy comments on last week's post - it was so much fun reading them all this week, feeling your excitement along with my own.

Now for the real goods...















The photos speak for themselves, no? Happy Friday, everyone! Blankie Fridays are over for now, although I'm sure Blankie will be showing up again from time to time. I will enter it in the Minnesota State Fair this year, and I will bring it with me when I go see the Yarn Harlot in April. Oh, and I'll probably have it with me at Yarnover this year as well. If you see me with it, come say hello and give it a squish.

Lifecycle of a Sock

The other day I was wearing a pair of my handknit socks, as usual. This pair I remember knitting on the year before Julie was born, so they must have been about 5 years old, and have been in fairly steady rotation all winter long since then. The yarn is Lang Jawoll, and the only pair I've ever made from this brand because it contains some acrylic and they tend to get a bit swampy. Still, the colorway goes well with blue jeans, so they got regular wear anyway.



Five years is quite a good long life for a sock, handknit or not. On this particular day last week, I realized that they had lived just about to the end of their life.



The heel was just about ready to poke on through the sole, and the toe was getting quite thin.



I generally subscribe to the Yarn Harlot's school of thought of darning socks, which involves standing over a trash can and saying "darn it!" Really, I have tried darning socks in the past, and find it not worth bothering for several reasons. 1. I would much rather be knitting on a new sock than sewing on an old one. 2. I would much rather be wearing a new sock than an old one with lumpy darns at the heels and toes. 3. Never fails - patch up one hole on a sock, and the yarn next door starts giving way after a few more wears.

I did have a little light-bulb moment as I was pondering all this once again, though. I'm going to start saving my blown-out socks and maybe some day there will be enough of them to cut up and make a blanket out of - the nice stretch of stockinette fabric on the ankles generally stays in great shape, and it would be easy to stabilize it with some machine knitting, open the tube up and sew all the chunks together. I don't know if or when it will actually happen, but it couldn't hurt to hold on to the old socks just in case, right?

In the mean time, and just in time, my Fleece Artist Seawool socks were nearly finished. It really is magical how you can spend a few minutes casting on a sock, and then by simply stealing a few minutes here and there, knitting during a meeting or some other down moment in the car, you suddenly have a new pair of socks.



I took a little time away from the blankie over the weekend and voila!



Joe even agreed to take a happy-feet shot. (Rolling his eyes the entire time, I assure you.)



And finally, just in time for Valentine's Day, the new socks are taking center stage on my non-blankie knitting agenda. Vesper Sock Yarn's Love Stinks colorway.



You may remember that I had started this pair using the Rainbow something-or-other pattern with all the short rows. I frogged it back and am now knitting them plain-jane stockinette, and am very happy. Love no longer stinks!

FO - Socks

Nothing particularly exciting here - those damn ugly socks are finally finished.



They're not so horrible, really - just boring and not particularly wonderful. But they are warm, and they will match practically any blue jean outfit I might put on. And at least the yarn won't be wasted. I'm just glad to put them behind me and move on to the next pair of mindless socks.

The details, for the record - these were for me out of yarn I dyed - fingering weight Kraemer sock yarn. I used size 0 needles and my own toe-up sock pattern. The one slightly interesting thing about this pair is that on the first sock I knit K1P1 ribbing, which is not my usual M.O. So then when it came time to knit the ribbing on the second, I started in with my usual K2P2, and when I realized the mistake I just kept at it and figured I didn't care about it, and nobody else was going to notice either.

Felted Clog Round-Up

This is the second post today, and I'm afraid probably not the last. One of my goals with the blog is to stop posting such huge catch-ups and, especially for the knitting content, keep each post to one subject at a time. Ravelry has been a good motivator for this, since I'd like to start linking my posts to my projects in there. So here we have a post wrapping up the Joe's Felted Clogs 2008 project.

I finished the second, smaller pair, and then ran them through the washer about ten times, with a little hand-scrubbing in between. I had bought some leather soles, so then it was time to sew them on. This is the most hateful part of this project to me. I don't like to sew - I like to knit. But after an initial learning curve, it went much faster and less painfully than expected. The biggest thing I figured out was to put the pins holding the sole in place horizontally as shown in the picture versus vertically. They stayed in much better and poked me a lot less.



Obviously, my blanket stitch leaves a little to be desired. But from a distance, it looks good enough.



And the finished product looks pretty darn good, if I do say so!

Oh, and a little funny side note - I am not that great of a photographer by any means, but the hardest part of getting a little snapshot taken on this particular day was clearing enough counter space for a clutter-free shot.



The final step was saying goodbye to the old ratty slippers. They were literally falling apart - see the seam that was worn through?



The old soles were worn through the bottom...



Buh-Bye!



I put the new clogs where Joe had left the old ones when he left that morning.



I heard a happy Oh! when he walked in the back door, and then he came into the office room to say hello with them on.



Happy husband = worth the effort.

Monkey off my Back

No, I haven't been knitting the Monkey socks. But I do have a finished object to report! Actually, I have two finished objects to report, but only one really counts. I finally finished the border on the mitered-square blanket my class started at camp this summer, and it's blocking right now.



To review, I spent a week up at Camp Unistar over the summer with my family, and I (mostly) paid for our trip with my job there teaching knitting to the campers. The camp is run by and for the Unitarian church, and Unitarians are really into community service, so I planned ahead and brought a bunch of Plymouth Encore in a striping colorway. Any camper who wanted to could knit up a mitered square to go into a baby blanket for charity.

I knit up a couple of squares to start them off, then the rest of the campers pitched in and made enough to complete the project. Then, I was stuck with the "fun" part of sewing it together and knitting on a border. I put this off long enough, and as soon as the December gift knitting was done, I jumped back on it. I have to say it's a little psychedelic - not quite as beautiful as I'd hoped. But it is nice and warm, and this afternoon as I was knitting on the last few rows of border, Julie told me she wished I'd make her a blanket like it. So it must not be all bad.

I'm going to make a call or two next week to find this blankie a home. I definitely want to give it to a local charity - there are plenty of babies in our area who don't have enough warm things for our cold winters. I was originally thinking of the Minneapolis crisis nursery, and I think they will be my first call - but I see on their donations page that they don't want blankets - or maybe they just don't want *used* blankets. We'll see. A second option may be the Minnesota Visiting Nurses Agency - I think I remember having donated something to them through the Guild a few years ago, and I know they visit moms with new babies.

In any case, it's a feel-good finished object, and I feel like I'm finally fulfilling my promise to my campers who worked so hard to help make this blanket for some special baby who needs it.

Oh, and the not-so-feel-good project recently completed...



Here are the clogs I was working on for Joe. It turns out I *did* knit the size bigger than he needs, so I will be whipping up another pair for him right away. Also, I ran them through the dryer in an attempt to get those last unruly spots to go ahead and felt already. You know, every time I've made a felted project, it seems there are always one or two little spots that just don't want to shrink down and give up their stitch definition. That was certainly the case here. I thought the dryer might help get those spots to shrink, but it didn't. And now they're dry and lumpy looking. I need to run them through the wash one more time and stuff something in there to keep their shape while they dry. I may keep them for myself around the house, or more likely, I'll put some soles on them and give them to someone next Christmas. They are quite cozy - I was wearing them around last night.

I have to say, though - as nifty as these clogs are, and as popular as they are among recipients, it's a pattern that I just don't really enjoy knitting. It's too futzy. Not an interesting kind of futzy, like color work or something flashy. No, just futzy of the kind where you're always counting your stitches, picking up stitches, doing three-needle bind-offs, and sewing up seams. Bleh. Still - worth it if it can make someone you love happy, I suppose.

Massive Sunday Dump

Oh, there is so much going on here. So many things we've been doing to get ready for Christmas, and so very much left to be completed. It's insanity.

Not to mention that we are all sick again. We had just gotten clear of the November cold, when this new super-duper December cold struck. Sophie has it bad, and my poor sweet little thing is clingy and crabby while her little nose runs like a burbling fountain and she coughs herself awake night and day. I know exactly how she feels, because I have it about the same. My head hurts, my chest hurts, my eyes itch, I'm exhausted. Am going directly to bed after I finish this.

But enough of the whineing. We've been having lots of fun, too, and that's what I'm really here to share. In no particular order, except that which they came off the camera...

We've been baking like crazy. I think I made six or seven different kinds of cookies. Here's the day we did sugar cookies. Poor Sophie wasn't at all happy about being sidelined in the high chair. Julie was frustrated because she wanted to do all the cutting and dough-rolling, but it was almost too sticky for me to handle, so he was relegated to the sprinkles duty. They turned out fine.



I sent cookie care-packages out yesterday to my uncle in Japan (who, it turns out, due to my late sending, his plans to leave town on Christmas, and a Japanese postal holiday on the 22nd, is likely to receive three-week-old stale cookies when he finally returns. Oh well). I also sent a package to my BIL Dave and to my future SIL Jinnie. I think they will receive theirs relatively fresh, and hopefully will especially enjoy the oatmeal-raisin ones that I made on Dave's request (and I loathe oatmeal-raisin cookies, so it truly was an act of love - oatmeal chocolate chip are devine, but oatmeal-raisin are evil - even though I love raisins in my porridge. Go figure.) And Jinnie is getting some brownies, along with all the more festive varieties. I really must remember to take a picture of the plate I plan to put together for serving on Christmas. There are still a ton of cookies in the freezer.

We've been doing our little Playmobile advent calendar every night, and I know it's nowhere near as exciting as all the hand-crafted ones I've seen in blogland, but the girls are enjoying it, and to be honest I think Joe and I are too. I'll have to remember to take a picture of the finished scene after Christmas.



The girls and I went to see the Nutcracker display at Macy's downtown last Thursday. They enjoyed it, and the crowd was not too bad, so we walked through twice. Sophie was already coming down with the cold-from-hell at that point, although I didn't realize just how bad it was going to turn out to be.



Here's Julie's class performing on Thursday night. Julie is in the red dress, sitting on her teacher's lap off to the left. The kids were incredibly cute, and quite well-trained for a bunch of four-year-olds. I really wish Julie had been willing to get up and do it with them. She and Joe had a little tiff right as we were headed over there, so she was grumpy and uncooperative. Oh well.



Here she is after the performance, following her little friend Ben around like a shadow...



And eating cookies...



Why, oh why, did they feel the need to ply our children with Hawaiian Punch and store-bought sugar cookies right before bedtime? Idonotknow.

Friday we saw our favorite little playdate friends and I was able to deliver their new mittens:



In case I didn't cover the details in my earlier posts on these, they are Malabrigo knitted in the round on size 5's, then felted. It's my own concoction, not written up, loosely based on my friend Jean Christensen's Felted Gauntlet Mittens pattern available at the Yarnery - her version has a more interesting cuff.



Little H and big M seemed happy with their gifts. H wore hers around the house for a while, and I hear that she showed them to her "papa" as soon as he came home as well. I'm happy.

And here are the mindless socks I've been working on for the last several weeks. I didn't want to show them here because they were for my friend J's birthday present. She knew she was getting socks, but I wanted the colors to be a surprise.



This is the Regia Galaxy yarn in colorway 1553 that I bought during the shop hop a couple months ago. It was fun to watch the colors do their thing. I used my own toe-up short-row heel and toe pattern on size 0 needles. I'm pretty sure she was pleased too as she put them on right away and kept them on for the rest of the day. I love knitting for people who appreciate my work, and actually put it to good use.



And now that the pretty gifties are done, these ugly things are back out of the pile, on hand for mindless-knitting emergencies...



Really, the socks don't look too bad once they're knit up, it's just the yarn is not so lovely to look at while I'm knitting it, and it's all very boring. Give me some stripes or swirls for the mindless knitting, I say! Still, they will make good warm socks that go with a lot in my wardrobe. So I'm going to finish them up and then move on to something super-fun!

I still have one more knitting project that I'd hoped to complete before Christmas - Joe's clogs. I've only done one of the soles so far, but they don't take all that much knitting. We'll see how far I can get in my "spare" moments this week. Ha!

We did finish the holiday cards tonight. It felt like a little sweat shop sitting there writing them all out - I always have the bigger stack for some reason (there are quite valid reasons for this, don't worry) but Joe did all the sealing and return-address stamping. He's smiling because he had just been hiding his face behind the card to tease me, not because he actually enjoys writing cards out.



D'oh! I was going to either scan or take a photo of our card so you could see it better - must do that for next time. I'm really happy with how it turned out this year. If you look closely you can get an idea - it's just the picture of the girls sitting in the leaves from our pumpkin-hunting day in October, but the layout we picked from Tiny Prints complemented it really well. I also really liked the card stock it's printed on. It's a postcard-style single sheet, but instead of photo stock, it's printed on nice card stock, which was much easier to write on and felt much classier than the photo version - all at about the same price.

The girls and I have been doing a lot of little crafty things - we ate up a good hour or two yesterday making long paper chains to hang on the tree and along the wall in the living room. Julie really liked that, and Sophie was so miserable she sat meekly in my lap and watched.

We've also been putting together some of those cheezy foam ornament kits, but this tree one turned out pretty cute. All three of the trees came from one kit. I have to admit, I finally buckled and bought a hot glue gun, which made the gluing parts much easier. But now I feel a little trashy.



Julie was in charge of the one on the right ,and did all kinds of interesting things with her stickers. Take a good look at the star on top.

And now, my friends in the computer, it is time for bed! I'm exhausted, and I'm betting Sophie will be up complaining at least once tonight. I needs me some sleep!

Little Happy Pants

Guess What?! I feel like a knitting machine. Only a hand knitting machine, not an actual knitting machine. I mean, I'm being all metaphorical and stuff, not talking about the two knitting machines stored under the bed a few feet away. Can you tell that it is late and I should be headed to bed right now? Oh, but it is, and I should.

But down to business. Look what is blocking on the bed behind me just a few feet away:



Some of the cutest, happiest little pants that anyone ever did see, that's what. I can't believe how fast these knit up or how cute they turned out. They would be even cuter on a new baby, but instead they will be going to live at the Yarnery in a few days. I hope lots of other people think they are cute and buy the pattern. I think I am going to go ahead and make it available this week. Don't worry, dear test knitters, the offer still stands - but after having knit one pair in almost every size, I think I have my math right, and I've revised the wording a few times so I'm pretty happy with that. I'll still be able to swap out the copies at the store if someone has great suggestions on the instructions, but I feel pretty good about this one. Yay!

Everything else here is going well. I cast on about a million socks before that sock class on Saturday, which went smashingly well. I love my classes at the store lately - I've been so lucky with awesome students knockonwood. So now I'm knitting away on some little socks for Julie in an attempt to keep up with my class and have a sample ready for a heel flap and one for a turning for the next class. Julie's been asking for more socks and who am I to say no?

I'm also staring down some of the UFOs scattered around the room and trying to decide which one gets some attention soonest. The charity blankie that we all worked on up at Unistar this summer is making the strongest case, and it wouldn't take all that much to finish it up and ship it out to some family who could really use it. I think I'm going to make some time for that this week. The sock yarn blankie - you know - THE blankie - is still at the store on display, but when it comes home, it's getting center stage now that the weather is cooler and I've had a nice little break from it. I'm going to finish that sucker this winter.

Anyway, there's one other thing I've been wanting to mention, and while I'm looking around the room, I'm staring it down too, so here goes. And update on the yarn dyeing business...So far, I've sold quite a bit of that giant pile of hand dye I worked on all summer. I appreciate every order, and I've been running to the post office pretty much within 24 hours of getting the e-mail saying someone has clicked the checkout button. It's so much fun sending my little skeins of fuzzy joy off to new homes!

One thing continues to puzzle me every time I glance at the pile, though. Remember when I was test-dyeing little skeins and I knit up that messy sample and everybody loved the orange and brown yarn that I said I didn't "get"? I swear at least five people said "make that yarn and I'll buy it!"



So I did. I made a pile of what ended up being called "Brick House". And it's all still sitting right here. I sure hope someone decides they really want it, because I feel kind of sorry for it. You can still go visit it and its friends over at my etsy shop.

Monday Ramble

All day long, I've been thinking of stuff I wanted to mention in the blog. Let's see how much of it I can remember...

First, the freshest in my mind - a bit of a rant. I just had another angry-making interaction with a doctor's office! This time it was an appointment for myself. I'd met with a nurse practitioner at this office about a month ago, and on her recommendation had scheduled an appointment with a doctor to consult about having a certain procedure. Then, Joe takes off work and comes home early so I can go to the appointment, I get to suffer through the humiliation of an exam, and then the doctor tells me that she doesn't *d0* the procedure, and proceeded to tell me that I should do XYZ instead. X being quit nursing Sophie, Y being put up with the problem, and Z being take a drug every day (and pay the $30 copay every month) until menopause. And that may or may not solve the problem, but at least we'll know we tried. I left the room feeling humiliated and angry.

I should not have been scheduled with that doctor. Thankfully, we ran into the nurse practitioner on the way out, she saw the look on my face and got me to tell her what was wrong, and has now scheduled an appointment with a doc who *does* do the procedure, and she swears is her favorite. Still, that will probably mean another day leaving work early for Joe (I'm not going to explain this problem to my MIL - I'd rather tell the whole Internet about it than try to explain it to her - so I'm not going to ask her to watch the girls for this one.)

Okay, and without going into details in public, anyone out there had or considered having an ablation? If so and you're willing to discuss it via e-mail, that'd be great. shellyk at shellykang dot com.

And now let's talk about something nice. Brownies! mmmm....brooowwwnies....



I made them (obviously) in my new Bakers Edge pan. See how all the pieces have lots of crust? That's the point. Mmmmm! I've been coveting this pan for well over a year now, and finally I just broke down and bought it. We had dinner guests on Friday, and they were a good excuse to bake. I immediately gave away the leftovers to my awesome neighbors so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat them. Good thing, too, because I thought about those brownies All.Weekend.Long. I'm still thinking about them, actually.

I also spent the weekend thinking about Rhinebeck and wishing I were there. Joe says once I'm done nursing Sophie, I can take a knitting vacation of my choice. This might be it next year. For those of you who were there and blogged about it this year? I am so jealous! I would have loved to be at that Ravelry party. I would have totally crashed it.

But instead of oogling all things fiber in upstate New York, I got to buy a new minivan (still loving it!) - and to answer a couple of questions - no, no stickers on the new vehicle. I put them on the Civic because I figured it couldn't look any worse than it already did, all covered in hail damage, so that was my chance to express myself in the particular medium. The van color is dark pearlized gray. Yes, I got the automatic doors, and they so totally rock.

Yesterday we spent some time in the yard raking leaves, a chore that I actually look forward to with the girls. Julie loves jumping and playing in the piles, and I see my job when we're out there as 80% entertaining them, 20% getting the leaves raked.



Oh, yeah, she's wearing the leggings and the tiger hat I knit for her last year. Sophie got in on the leaf-lovin' action too.



I finished the little mittens for the Mitten Fairy last night, and threw them in the washer today. Before:



And After:



And to sum up that quickie project, they are Malabrigo leftovers from the hat and mittens I made for Julie last winter, knit in the Felted Gauntlet Mittens pattern by Jean Christensen available at the Yarnery.

Alright, I promised a ramble, and you sure are getting it. Another little thing I've been up to is entering some of my stash in Ravelry. I kind of want to clean out my yarn closet, so I'm combining some bins into bigger ones so that I can store them in my upstairs (clothes) closet. I just finished entering my collection of Brunswick Pomfret, a yarn that hasn't been made for at least 20 years, and with which I have something of an obsession. Looking at it all the last couple of days, I am a little scared of just how much of an obsession I seem to have. I love this yarn to death, but it's frustrating to knit with it because when I design something, it needs to be in a yarn that's currently available. Still, I will get around to knitting with it. Really.





Those are just two of the 24 colors in my collection, totaling almost 20,000 yards. And that's not including the little bin of scraps! Ack!

Tonight Sophie tried on a couple of hats I pulled out of the FO stash - more hand-me-downs from Julie. The green one is cute, but a little tight.



This rainbow one is also cute, and a little loose, but serviceable.



I'm still clicking away at the little leggings. I think the legs will be done before bedtime tonight.



Ah, and finally, speaking of bedtime, that leads us into some utterly gratuitous cute-kid pics.
Bed time has evolved into a little wild goofy time the last week or so. Sophie thinks it's hilarious to hide under the covers on our bed and play peekaboo.



These photos are grainy because they came off the Sidekick, and because Sophie was moving so fast.



Julie gets in on the action, too. A moment before I took this one, both girls were climbing all over poor Joe.



Believe it or not, there are about ten other things I was going to mention, but I think we've all had enough for one night!

Pants! Finished! New Projects! Started!

It is such a relief to finally be done with these little pants. I finished Julie's pair Monday night.



That's a heck of a lot of mindless stockinette stitch! If you look closely at the top of the bigger pair, you can see the wider, brighter blue stripes that I used to stretch out the remaining self-striping yarn I'd dyed. And it worked out pretty well.

Tuesday morning it was plenty cool weather for wool leggings, and the girls were excited to put them on. Too bad Julie had an "accident" about two minutes after she got dressed. It was freaky - she hasn't done that in months. Still, there was one very cute, very willing model all dressed up with no place to go...



This particular moment just about burst my heart. She was taking my picture while I took hers! It worked out well to keep her standing across the room far enough away for me to get a full-length picture.



In non-knitting news, Julie decided it was time for a major image change.





So far it's been much easier to comb out in the mornings, and that was pretty much the whole point of the exercise.

Back to the knitting for a moment. Almost as soon as I finished Julie's pants, I hurried up and cast on two more little legs for that shop sample pair.



I'm still trying to decide whether I like the magic loop enough to keep doing it. Luckily, I'm making the newborn size, so they're knitting up fast. I've already whipped up several more inches since the picture was taken this morning.

I also cast on for a new little pair of mittens. This pair is not for Julie or Sophie. It's for some child in St. Paul that I'll never meet. The Yarnery is sponsoring "The Mitten Fairy" by collecting mittens through November 16. Then they will donate the mittens to St. Paul public schools to be distributed to kids who come to school without mittens.



When I heard about this effort, it appealed to me enough to actually follow through. Dropping off and picking up Julie at pre-school last year, I saw a lot of little kids with naked hands even on the coldest of days. Every time I saw that, I thought about how I'd like to make those kids some mittens like Julie's, but of course you can't do that mom-to-mom. This way, I get to fulfill that fantasy, but in a much better way. So I'm knitting up a pair of mittens, and I'll drop 'em off at the store when I'm there next week. You can look for them on the display next time you're at the store, and feel free to knit a pair of any size to donate too.

And back to the kids...here's what Sophie wore today.



I put this little sweater, a hand-me-down from Julie, on her for the first time, and it just happened to perfectly match some jeans I bought last year at a garage sale. I'm so lucky to have two girls so I can get more use out of the super-cute hand knits.

And finally, the girls had their first appointment with the dentist this morning. They have the most awesome waiting room I've ever seen...





The girls loved this little play house, and on top of that, they had halfway decent books for us to read too. The ladies in the back room were really nice, too. Sophie had a great time sitting in the big chair, checking out the equipment, and having her teeth counted. Julie - well, Julie had a more difficult time. But we were all patient, and eventually, she agreed to open her mouth for a peek when I sat her down in my lap. Maybe we'll get to the x-rays and the cleaning next time.

In Which We Are Very Pleased

When we came home from the State Fair on Sunday, we brought home some new little pets:



Julie saw these little guys in the butterfly house and wanted to bring them home. Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, I wanted them at least as much as she did. When we bought the little cage, there were two caterpillars in it. Then, yesterday morning, one of the caterpillars had attached itself to the side and over the course of the morning formed itself a pretty green chrysalis. The other caterpillar has been busy on and off since we got it eating up the milkweed leaves. The leaves are starting to dry, so today we were able to hear it making little crunching noises. Sort of like potato chips, only much smaller. We are very pleased, and I think we have already almost gotten our $6.50 worth of value from the little plastic cage - especially if you include the anticipation for what happens next.

This morning we spent some time with our friends J* and W*. Here the girls are playing piano with W*, who was singing the ABC song as he tunelessly pounded on the keys. It was adorable.



I'm really liking this new technique of holding the camera away from myself and taking a picture pointed back over their heads.



Oh, and when we came home the caterpillar was still eating, and our hidden friend had done a little decorating on its green pod...



There is now a gold metallic-looking ring around the chrysallis. I have no idea what's up with that, but it is SO COOL! And we are very pleased.

Finally, the item which pleases us most this evening - an FO of the brightest variety.



Sophie was very pleased in her own little way, and seemed to enjoy modeling her new pants, turning around and raising her arms like a little toddler super-model.



The pants fit just as I hoped they would, with plenty of room in the back for her cloth diapers (she's wearing a paper one in this photo since she was getting ready for bed, and I got tired of getting up at 3 a.m. to change wet cloth ones.) There are about four inches of extra length in the legs, and that was intentional as I'm hoping she'll wear these for the next eight or so months.



They look great rolled up to her ankles, and there is enough looseness in the width that she shouldn't have any trouble fitting them even if she fills out a bit in that direction - she's on the thinnish side at the moment.



They even seemed comfortable enough as she crawled into the bathroom to say hello to Julie, who was "indisposed."

A blocking shot:



The picot edge at the cuff:



The smooth edge at the waist band, and the seamless casing for the elastic, with which we are indeed quite pleased.

FO - Pomatomus Socks!

Yesterday I finally finished this pair of socks - socks that I started back in March. I worked up the first one as a sample for the class I taught earlier in the summer, and once the class was over, the pressure was off to finish the socks and that last few inches just didn't happen. What finally motivated me to get these off the needles is a little embarrassing...I wanted to enter them in Ravelry, but I didn't want to own up to another unfinished object. I'm not saying there aren't a whole lot more UFOs in my stash, and maybe some of them will end up on my projects list in Ravelry before they're finished, but for now I at least get to add one more completed item.

The pictures, unfortunately, suck because it's been raining outside.





But I really love these socks. The Koigu is so soft and springy, the stitch pattern so beautiful. For once, I resisted the handpaint yarns and stuck with the solid color that I know works best with lace.

The other thing I wanted to share last night was the results from the class I just finished teaching at the store. My students rocked! I love it when I get a good group, and these ladies were a ton of fun. On top of that, they all did really well, and this is the set of hats they came up with.


I'm pretty sure they enjoyed the cookies, too.

Anyway, it's been too long since we had a video, so I'm sharing two new ones with you tonight. Julie was having fun in the back yard the other day.

Remember these bouncy balls from when we were kids? I loved the bouncing balls, and I love watching Julie bouncing around.


One thing I didn't have when I was a kid, and unless you're from Europe, you probably didn't either is a running bike. They're great for helping little kids learn to ride because they work on their balance first before adding in the complication of pedals. When Julie got it for her birthday last year, she begged Joe to "Buy the pedals for it, Daddy!" Now, she's pretty much mastered it, and I think next spring she'll be ready for a bike with pedals. Julie on her running bike:

Too Much

Often, I run into the problem with this blog that I have so much to say that I don't know where to start. Then, what inevitably, I end up just writing giant posts dumping it all out willy-nilly. Get ready, here comes another one.

I worked on Sophie's pants quite a bit at camp. We tried them on again today. Let me tell you, it's hard enough getting her to stand still long enough for me to check the length - getting a picture was pretty much impossible. The waist is high enough in front, but needs a bit more in back. I wish I had done more short rows, but I'm not ripping back. It would be perfect if she were wearing disposable diapers, but with the cloth she needs a lot more room back there.



Speaking of camp...we knitters worked on a community service project while we were there. These squares are going to come together to make a baby blanket to be donated to a local charity - maybe the crisis nursery. I need to figure out exactly how I want to sew them all together, and also how I want to deal with the various sizes. I may re-knit the two really big squares, and there is one smaller one that has a super-tight cast-on. I do have a plan for a nice border, though...it's going to be cute.



Also while at camp, I finished my Baudelaire socks. They fit wonderfully and feel great on my feet. Unfortunately, it's really hard to see the cables and lace with the handpaint yarn. I swear, the next time I knit a texture pattern it will be with a solid yarn. Really!



Oh! and I just added this project to Ravelry. It's only one tiny little step, but I want to start digging in over there. Want to be my friend? My username over there is shellykang. It's a little embarrassing how little I've done over there considering how long I've been in.

Left over business from before camp - I want to give a shout-out to a couple of crafters from whom I've bought sock project bags in the last month. First, www.messie.etsy.com - her prices are great, her service was fast, and the bags are not only cute but really well made and totally reversible! Go check her out!





Second, I ordered a couple of sock monkey bags from Allena, who was selling them to Sockapaloozers for only $15, with your choice of coordinating monkey fabrics. She was also fast and great to work with. Super cute bags - one for me and one for my 'palooza pal.





Finally, speaking of Sockapalooza, I have to show off my new socks. They Monkey socks knit from Cherry Tree Hill, and they fit wonderfully!



I love this color, I love the pattern on my feet a lot more than I did seeing it in pictures on other people's blogs, and I'm SO grateful to my pal Aine for knitting enough repeats of the monkey pattern to cover my giant feet! She also included a cute stitch marker in the package. Thanks, Aine! You rock!



To answer a few questions and comments -

Beth, tune in this Friday - there will be a blankie update!

Suze, don't be so jealous of Sophie sitting in the sling. She does her share of squirming to get down, although she also likes to ride sometimes. The thing is, my hips start to really hurt after not all that long of carrying her these days. The sling makes it easier on my arms and back, but an extra 20 pounds is an extra 20 pounds!

Someone wanted to know whether koigu would work for the knitted hammock. Um, no. The hammock at camp was knitted several years ago by campers using thick nylon cording and broom handles. It is plain garter stitch. I wasn't involved in the project, I just admire it. A project like this takes thick, strong, weather-proof fiber. Koigu would take forever to knit, wouldn't be all that strong for holding people, and would not stand up to outdoor weather. Basically, it's just a big rectangle. I don't have a pattern for it, but I think Annie Modesitt wrote one up a few years back.

Sockapalooza Socks Done

My Sockapalooza socks have been done for I think almost a week now, but I finally got around to blocking them today, so I took some pictures, and will post this blog entry to the pligg before I pack them up and get them ready to go out August 2. I'll have to mail them out before the revised mailing week because we're going to be out of town then.



These are knit with Schaefer Yarns Anne, and there was no colorway name listed on the label. The sock pattern is Waving Lace Socks from Interweave's Favorite Socks book.



I think they're pretty enough, and I really hope my pal likes them. In retrospect, I wish I had picked either a different yarn (something more solid and a lighter color) to show off the lace pattern better or a different pattern - maybe simple Jaywalkers - to show off the yarn better.

One last thing to note about this yarn - when I washed it, the colors ran and ran. This is what the sink looked like when they were on their fourth soak. I'll have to include a note to my pal to beware!



Thanks for looking!

Hat!

I finished the hat today, and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It hasn't been blocked yet, and I still need to type up the pattern changes, but both the sample and the patterns should be at the Yarnery by the middle of next week (it would be earlier, but I'm teaching on Tuesday night, and it seems silly to make an extra trip to St. Paul to get the stuff there four days sooner.)

Joe makes a much better model than I do - trust me, I started off wearing it and he took the pictures, they were hideous. I love the way Joe always looks like he's in pain when I make him wear something handknit.



And from the back:



Joe has a relatively tiny head for an adult, and I have a good-sized noggin, so I'm pretty sure the one adult size will fit most.

In review, this hat is a shop model for the Yarnery, out of Claudia Handpaint sock yarn. It's also a prototype for my new adult version of the baby hat pattern that has been so popular this spring. Both patterns will be available at the store, and if you are not local, but want the pattern, you can e-mail me and we can work out a deal - basically, $6.00 either by Paypal or personal check will get you a hard copy in the mail.

In response to a couple reader questions -

Why would I rewind yarn that is already in skeins before dyeing it? I'm doing self-striping sock yarn, and the way I do it is to wind it into very long skeins and dye stripe-length sections. There's an entry or two about it somewhere in my archives in the last couple months.

There are no plans for a class for this hat at the store. We offered the baby hat as a class a year or two ago, and it didn't get enough people signed up to fly. To be honest, I think my pattern is clear enough and the knit easy enough that most people can do it on their own.

Speaking of classes at the store, though, the Knitty Lace Socks class starts on Thursday June 21, and has enough students to go for sure, but there are still four places available. If you were thinking about signing up to do either Pomatomus or Baudelaire, now's your chance! Also, some of the new Claudia solids at the store would be perfect for either of these patterns.

Connie mentioned the book "The Paper Bag Princess" by Robert Munsch. It's funny you should ask about that book, because we happen to have it, and Julie happened to pull it out of the book shelf all by herself yesterday and has been reading it all day today. We like this princess book. She's a tough chick, but Julie is still trying to understand why Prince Ronald is a jerk.

Now, it's time to go make up with the blankie. I think I'll start off weaving in some ends.

Knitting Catchup

It amazes me how quickly an evening can get eaten up when you have a baby up and crying (again) with the teething and the gas. Add that to a huge stack of papers and crap to be dug through on the desk, and a mess all over the house in general and you get nothing fun done till 11:40 at night. I'm going to fill you all in on the knitting for the last week and then I'm off to bed with no down time at all tonight. I've been up too late the last two nights and I want to be functional tomorrow.

So anyway, let's start off with the Rainbow Barf. Guess what? They're finished!



All that traffic in L.A. really sucks, but it meant lots of knitting time for me as Joe did all the driving. The socks are modeled here on the new-to-me sock blockers I received from Andrea last week. She had a bunch of vintage ones and was willing to share for the price of postage. Sweet!

After knitting these up, I've had second thoughts about possibly dyeing this yarn again. I think I just may dye up some more but fix the problem where the pinks and browns got more rows than the rest. I really love the color play with the shifting colors, and I think they would look even better with one row per color as originally planned. We'll see.

Also completed are the little footie socks I started for Julie out of the sample yarn I dyed up in that class at Yarnover a few weeks ago.



You can see in this picture that I tried two different ways of spreading the color around when I was doing the dyeing. The one in the foreground is more willy-nilly, the one in the background is more structured. Julie was just happy they were done, and insisted on sleeping in them at bed time tonight.



All these finished socks mean one thing - newly emptied needles!



I need to cast on the second pink-and-brown sock, and then I'll have two more sets free to start my sockapalooza socks. I still haven't decided what I'm doing with that, but I want it to be something good.

Speaking of exchanges, my first SP10 package arrived while I was gone, and it is a doozy! Look how pretty the packaging was...



Until I ripped into it like a five-year-old at Christmas. The part that I'm most excited about is the Bamboo sock yarn. I've been wanting to try this for some time now - it's just going to be hard to let it mature in the stash for a while till I get a couple other sock-type projects going. I am *not* going to use this for Sockapalooza because I want to try wearing them myself! Also in the package were a pumice stone, a crafty foamies kit for Julie, and the book Favorite Socks. I'm feeling thoroughly spoiled. Thanks, Secret Pal!



And finally, a little non-knitting content. You knew it had to happen. We finally turned Sophie's car seat around to face forwards. The pediatrician recommended keeping her backwards for as long as possible, so we did till Joe re-installed the car seats after our trip. She is 15 months old, after all! Anyway, it provides a better view of sleeping car-baby.

Finally!

The computer is still not up to 100%, but most of the laundry list is cleared up. Did you know that Photoshop Elements 5.0 doesn't fully cooperate with Windows Vista Home Premium? Well, just don't try to use the organizer side of the thing and so far so good. At least I can use the editing part, which is what I want 90% of the time. Also, I seem to have lost pretty much every e-mail anyone has sent me in the last....forever. Yep. For now, at least, I can't recover my backup file. It sucks, but Outlook 2003 locks up every time I ask it to open the damned thing. I'm also going to have to figure out how to synch my Sidekick contacts back to Outlook without accidentally losing that whole mess. But anyway, if you sent me an e-mail recently and haven't heard back yet, best send it to me again, please! Barf. Enough of that boring stuff! The good news is that I have saved up all kinds of fun goodies to share with you, and here we go!

In the order that they came off the camera:

A finished object! My first pair of self-striping socks from my own hand dyed yarn. It's KnitPicks with Wilton food dyes, my own toe-up sock pattern. I am pleased.



Here's Julie being shy and reluctant when we first got to the bowling alley the other night. You should have seen her at the end - she was running down to the lane grabbing the ball - the pink one - the moment it was her turn.



Of course, one pair of socks finished, another pair of socks had to start. I cast on for a little pair for Julie out of the small skeins I dyed at class last week. I'm glad I'm doing toe-up, because it's going to be barely enough and the cuffs are either going to be very short or I am going to have to add some other yarn in at the top. Julie did a good job letting me try it on her foot, and of course Sophie wanted to be involved.



Julie was having a little party with her friends at home the other day. I have a fun little video of it to share with you, but I am so sick of looking at the computer it's going to have to wait for another night. I've been thinking of designating a certain day of the week home video day. I'm thinking maybe Sunday nights so those of you who go to bed early can get up on Monday morning and have a nice start to your work week. That's a homemade magic want Julie's holding. She made the star in school and the teachers had her put it on as a necklace, but the moment she got home she had us snip it off and asked me to help her make a wand for it to go on. More about that when I introduce the video.



Sophie was stuffing her face with strawberries the other day, and it was just so cute. I take way too many highchair photos, I know. But look at the happy face and the chipmunk cheeks!



Here's a picture of the computer. Look! A new mouse! It's a Microsoft wireless model, and so far I'm loving it. It works really well, and I don't have that giant wire to drag around when I move the computer. Also, one of the first things I did when I got the thing up and running again was change the desktop wallpaper. Toshiba has some butt-ugly default wallpaper.



I got a schweet little package in the mail today from Suzanne in Pennsylvania. Suzanne, I would link to you if I had your URL, but my stupidity ate all my e-mail history. Please comment with it and I will edit the post to reflect your lovely self. I'll have you know, it's not reflected in tonight's pictures, but I've already knit two of your yarns into the blankie, and may add the glittery one next, as soon as I look up whether it's superwash or not. The cotton ones are also beautiful, and I've added them to that stash. Thanks.



And speaking of the blankie, here are your long-awaited pictures! I am so sorry it's been so long. I'm counting 35 new squares in the two weeks since I posted a picture. That's 2.5 squares a day, and not too shabby considering that I have a busy life. I'm still within a reasonable schedule. I'm just another row or so away from having a square blankie, which will make me 2/3 done. Yay for milestones! Click on the picture for the full-res version.





Hey look! See the turquoise and blue square right between the two big ones? That's yarn that my dyeing teacher gave me!



Hey look! See the blue, burgundy and brown square second from the right in this picture? That's from those socks I just showed you.



Oh, and did I mention that I got my Sidekick 3 back in the mail? I am so happy! I missed my little buddy. I am so addicted to constant e-mail connection. It's sad, really. But I just realized that some of the recent e-mails are on there, and therefore I can respond to a few comments.

Emily, yes, I did try all kinds of software for the DVD player before resorting to wiping the hard drive. It was an issue with the DVD driver, and even after uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers it was still doing this thing. The Toshiba tech thought it had something to do with the version of Quicktime I had installed, and so I'm going to be very leery about installing Quicktime again any time soon. DVDs are working just fine right now. I've had Sesame Street A Musical Celebration! in there about 20 times over the last two days, checking to make sure that it still works after every new install, and I've been setting restore points out the wazoo in the hopes that if something I do does screw it up I'll be able to fix it this time. I'm also considering buying some imaging software for whole-system backups just to avoid these headaches again.

About those cookies - where did I get the idea for the cayenne? Well, cayenne and chocolate have always gone really well together since the ancient South Americans started using chocolate. Putting it in the cookies was not a very big leap. It goes really well in brownies, too. As for how much, that's up to you and your taste buds. If you like spicy, put in a bunch. If you don't like spicy, put in a tiny pinch. Just mix it in with the flour mixture before it goes into the dough mix. Use a wire whisk so it gets spread throughout. I just shake a little sprinkle in - maybe 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon - and it ends up making just a nice little afterburn of pleasure.

Oh, and Ruth - it's only the new Nestle DARK chocolate chips that are soy-free. Always check the ingredients list carefully, and save the package to show to your friend as well because sometimes allergen ingredients hide under confusing names. Also, I bet they're all made in the same facility, so if your friend is highly allergic to soy, she may still decline eating them. Enjoy Life brand of foods makes allergen-free chocolate chips, which I'm pretty sure are made in a separate facility because the whole company is aimed at allergic customers. I've tried them, and they are good too.

Oh, and about the yarn dyeing - I'm sorry, but the Rainbow barf yarn is a one-of-a kind skein. I'll never make that one up again! 40 colors - I'd have to charge $50 if I were going to make another skein of that!

Someone asked about Yarnover and how to get notice of the event and to sign up. It's open to the public, but you have to join the guild to sign up for classes. I'm a member of the guild, but I rarely make it to meetings any more because of my schedule with the kids and with teaching. I hate missing bed time. If you join the guild and pay dues by the end of a calendar year, you will get the Yarnover signup information and priority access to classes for the following calendar year (like if you paid your 2007 dues by 12/31/06, you were eligible for this year's Yarnover early signups). If you're not a member, you still have to pay membership dues before you can sign up for classes, I think. There is no fee to simply attend the marketplace, though. All the information is available on the guild website.

Meg asked why I don't weave in ends as I go on the blankie. I personally don't care for the technique where you weave the ends back and forth as you knit the next little bit on - I've tried it in this and several other projects, and it never looks as neat and lovely to me as I'd like. Also, I just don't think it's as secure as the method that I use (described ad nauseum in the tutorial for which you can find a link over there on the right somewhere). I do weave in ends every couple few weeks or so - when they start driving me crazy, or when I'm planning to take it somewhere. I don't do it square-by-square because I don't want to have to move off the couch to grab a needle and scissors, and I don't trust myself to keep needles or scissors with the blankie stuff because the kids might get ahold of them.

Alright, it's way past time for me to Back. Away. From. The. Computer.

Little Things

I have lots of little things to talk about - little things that are all good, and have been adding up over the last few days. I've been busy in my spare moments trying to crank away at Pomotomus - I really wanted to finish that sock in time to display at the shop before Wednesday's spectacle, but this little project demanded my full attention so picking it up and putting it down during the day with the girls wasn't working for me. The few times I tried that, I ended up spending more time ripping back my mistakes. I did finish it last night, though, so it will be at the store for the Harlot event. All that boils down to is that I had to make a choice between eating up an hour writing a blog post or having an extra hour to knit, and this week more often than not I've chosen the knitting.

Pomotomus is done, though, and now I can blog, and get back to the other projects that are waiting so patiently. In the mean time, let's bask in the joy of an FO for a moment. Pomotomus takes a break in the back yard, admiring the green sprouting up in the grass while it waits for me to find a darning needle and kitchener up the toe.



Pomotomus found some pitiful tulips by the back of the house - they are just under our dryer vent where it is warm.



Pomotomus complete and on the hoof. Woot!



It was chilly today, but at least not pouring rain. Sophie fell asleep in the car again on our way home from the morning's entertainment, so I let Julie play with bubbles for a few minutes while we waited for Sophie to wake up.



While we were eating lunch, the UPS truck showed up and dropped off my new camera. Yippee!



I don't think we'll see much difference in quality of pictures in blog posts - the real difference will be in print quality. That, and maybe I'll get a few better action shots since it does snap the photo much faster than the old one. I'm still fiddling around with the features, but most of the menus are similar to the older model, so it's a pretty easy learning curve.

Here's a picture of Sophie on the old camera:


Here she is on the new camera - almost identical!



My friend Elizabeth dropped by this afternoon with her new little girl. Baby A's birthday is just a few weeks after Sophie's, so she will be able to wear all of our hand-me-downs, and I had a couple of tubs waiting to get out of here. I'm glad I have someone to just give it all to instead of having to organize a garage sale. Some of those things are so cute, it would be very hard to watch strangers pawing through them to pick and choose.

Elizabeth makes beautiful bags out of old kimonos and sells them on Etsy, and she brought me one today as a thank-you gift. I love it! I was just wishing for a second knitting notions bag, and now I've got it!



Elizabeth got a kick out of Daisy's napping spot, and since I had my new camera in hand, I took a picture to entertain my readers. That's the base of a potted ficus tree. She sleeps there all the time.



Oh, dear readers, there are so many other things I've been meaning to share with you, but I am so tired and my brain is so addled! Let's see....we had a staff meeting at the store to prepare for the Harlot event. The managers and Maura have been working so hard to iron out the details, and it is going to be great! Every single person who comes is going to get a special gift, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say what it is yet, but it's really nice. I got to bring one home and I hope there are extras because I'd like one or two more just to have around. Even if you didn't get a reservation and are just on the waiting list, they have enough for everybody. We are very sad that not everyone can be accommodated...until New York last week, there had never been a Harlot event this big!

Oh, I know! I wanted to go back to the topic of that top I mentioned wanting to knit the other day. I got several suggestions from readers about adapting the pattern, or using a different pattern that is similar to knit something up with. First, let me just reiterate that I will not be knitting up any lacy tops for myself in the near future. There is a blue striped sweater awaiting finishing, and there is a poor neglected blankie that desperately needs some love. When those are done, I need to work up some projects for my girls for Fall, and there is a Bohus kit that has been ripening in my stash closet for about two years now. (I swear, it's been in there long before Wendy and Stephanie and Susan and Sally started theirs). I mentioned the top because I really like it, and I just wanted to vent about wanting to knit it because I knew that it's not going to be a reality any time soon.

That said, I got a giggle out of the idea that I should buy a pattern in order to rework it with different yarn in a different gauge, probably with long sleeves instead of the short. A huge part of what I love about knitting it the figuring-it-out part. It is not all that often that I knit a pattern written by someone else. No, I love to look at a picture in a magazine, or see something in my mind's eye, then try to create something of my own that is unique and special and more my own than someone else's. I will cut out the picture and tape it in the notebook I keep of design inspirations. There are several other wrap and faux-wrap sweaters in there, so I'm sure I'll get to that style element eventually. Some day when I have the time, or when my mind tells me that it's really time to do this project, I will look at the photo again. I will take my measurements, or more likely the measurements of a similar-fitting garment that I like to wear, and I will do a big gauge swatch in a lace pattern or two, and I will work up the numbers and make my own from scratch. I'm not saying that it's the easiest way or that it even makes sense, but that is how I like to knit.

And now, I am completely exhausted. I'm pretty sure everything I've just typed was incoherent. I must go get some sleep!