Same Knit Different Day

2011 Year in iPod Pictures

2012-01-04T11:25:00.001-05:00

I was going through my iPod the other day deleting old pictures and there were many that are too good not to share. Many are terrible photos but I love them anyway.

This is an Irish dance solo dress that Caity *seriously* wanted. Um, no.

Caity grilling for the first time on Father's Day

New glasses

(yes I brought my wheel to Virginia)

Chocolate covered twinkie to console myself

Some store owner in Williamsburg thought I was pregnant in this

More car knitting

Short stop in DC

Totally charmed by the double heelix pattern

SIIIIILLLLLLK!

Three

Children- at the same time.

Napping

Still charmed

Cookie A's class results

Crazy ass swatch from another Cookie A class

What happens at Sock Summit STAYS at Sock Summit


Anna Zilboorg taught me perfect button holes.					(WHY didn't I take a picture of Anna Zilboorg??!)

Is that Sandi Wiseheart, Lisa Grossman and Astrid Bear having lunch with me? YES IT IS

Apparently I like to tweet pictures of my drinks


Fleece washing experiments

Janet and Jill at our first race- 1 mile, beer at the end

Second race- 5 k Wine at the Line (are we sensing a theme)

At a brew pub in Nashville, IN. Rob and I took our first trip without kids in 12 years for our 15th anniversary.

Best costume at Run like Hell

Monumental Run 5k, where Janet and I apparently decided we could run a half marathon next year.

Needles matter.


Drumstick Dash on Thanksgiving, and Caity's first race. Rob ran 4.5miles, Caity and I did 2.3

Oh yes I DID knit a 16 foot scarf

"Hey Man, I got your back"


Oooops

The Festivus Feats of Stregth (knock down Daddy)

After Christmas shopping.

Tada! It was a pretty good year.

Bowties are Cool.

2011-11-16T18:05:00.002-05:00

The first installment of the Time Traveler's club went out a few weeks ago, and now that everyone even in Australia has gotten their yarn it's time to reveal.

From left to right: Humbugish BFL, Classic Aran, Sheepy Feet, and All Your Lace.

Inspired by this Doctor:

They also came with this button:

Which came from this shop in case you want one/more(though it looks like they're on vacation for a few more days).

I happened to have dyed my yarn up a bit early, because I really wanted to make THESE:

(it's quite convenient that my teenager now has the same size feet as I do).

I wrote up the pattern for these and posted it (FREE) on Ravelry. You can find it here: Bowties Are Cool

download now

It's quite fun to knit, the little bowties appear by magic.

I hope you like them too. And I've already dyed up my samples of January's club color. It needs to dry so I can play with it!

In which I can't think of a good name

2011-11-08T17:56:00.000-05:00

I have been terrible at keeping up the blog lately, so here's a random update:

This is a shawl called Lazy Katy which I finished a while ago but haven't gotten photographed until recently. It's a really interesting shape and was a joy to knit.

The yarn is handspun 2 ply Corriedale from Spunky Eclectic (colorway: Thermograph), and it's just slightly thinner than fingering weight. I really like the way it hangs with that shape and might make another one.

And here are some ongoing projects:

A pair of colorwork gloves I've been working out for the past few months. I'm down to the fingers on both of them, which requires some more designing and then I should be able to zip through them.

And a Doctor Who scarf for my nephew that will be just over 20 feet long when it's finished (I'm at about 14 ft now). (Shh, don't tell, this one's a secret.)

There's another one that I've been working on but I need to keep it under wraps for a few more days.

Busy

2011-10-15T15:29:00.002-04:00

I swear some day I will be one of those people who blogs twice a week.

I've been busy churning out club yarn, and my husband and I went on a long overdue trip for our 15th anniversary. Actually our first trip anywhere without our kids in 13 years. We stayed at a B&B in Nashville, Indiana, which was just the thing. We slept in, and walked and walked and shopped and ate and drank local beer and wine. It was probably the first vacation I've taken in 15 years that actually felt like a vacation. My only regret is I wish I'd taken more pictures. I got a lot of knitting done but I can't show you (yet).

In other news, I've been running. You can see the widgets over on the right. I still can't call myself a proper runner but I'm not giving up until I can actually run 5K. My friend Janet and I did Mallow run a few weekends ago and finished it in 51:29. I'm hoping to trim some off of that for Run Like Hell (in which we wear costumes!)

And in Sheepy Time news... We opened up a Time Traveler's club with Doctor Who themed yarn which will be open for a few more days and then we're going to start dyeing the yarn.

And since I can't have a blog post without at least 1 picture.... I may have been sucked in to making a 4th Doctor scarf:

(If you know Andy don't tell him)

PUFFS!

2011-09-29T13:20:00.002-04:00

So, I've already posted pictures that implied I've fallen down the hexapuff rabbit hole.

The Beekeeper's Quilt is kind of genius. It's simple but awesome.

(Image used with permission)

Look at all those little puffs! They make me a little giddy.

I've heard some people comment that they could figure out how to make a puff from the pictures. And it's true, I could too. But I bought the pattern anyway, because the truth is I COULD, but I DIDN'T. I never would have thought to make teeny puffy hexagons and tie them together (NO SEAMS!) into an awesome blanket.

Lucky for me someone else did. And she took beautiful pictures of it and then wrote clear instructions and carefully formatted it into a pattern which I can buy for the price of a latte.

(That basket is almost full now). I love it, and they make me happy, and that's TOTALLY worth paying a tiny amount for, even if I could do it myself. I am a little amazed at how people will spend tons of money on yarn but when something is an idea, they won't pay even a few dollars for it.

Here are some other crazy things I've done with hexapuffs:

Insanely small puff

oh yeah, that's right. 00000 needles. Gossamer weight (hand spun) yarn. Teeny tiny puff.

Also

Giant puff. I knit a megapuff with sz 11 needles and double stranded worsted wool, then felted it. I did cast on more stitches, and bound off instead of closing it up, then cut the sides bigger and put in a zipper to make...

PUFF BAG! Now I have somewhere to store my puff supplies.

2 socks in 2 years

2011-09-17T11:47:00.002-04:00

You may have seen these socks over in the side bar, or in my ravatar on Ravelry. That is because it took me 2 years to finish them, so I want as many people as possible to see them.

They are the pattern in the Sock Summit logo, a pattern called Orion (ravelry link). I started them the summer of 2009 before going to Sock Summit.

The yarn is some Socks that Rock (Sherbet) that I happened to have bought at Lettuce Knit in Toronto the year before (for WAY too much because the exchange rate was horrible so I spent about $29 US because it was souvenir yarn.) So it was Tina's yarn bought at Stephanie's yarn store. And the black yarn is DIC Starry (I think the color is Black Parade). Starry yarn, how could I not use that in an Orion sock pattern? Sparkles! And the colors looked great together. Except that Starry is super expensive too making these the Most Expensive Socks EVAR(TM)! But whatever, they were going to be awesome.

The pattern well written and as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with it, except that it's toe up and I cannot make toe up socks. I knew this about myself 2 years ago, and I probably should have just switched them around to top down, which would have been really easy to do, but I thought I'd try once again in the spirit of adventurous sock knitting.

The problem is I have insanely high insteps. With top down socks it's super easy to adapt for that, just make the heel flap way longer than you think is reasonable, pick up extra stitches along those extra rows, and then your gusset is longer before you get back to your original stitch count. Voila! Socks that fit my feet.

(This is the only picture that is actually my feet)

For some reason the backwards calculating that is required to adapt toe up socks to fit me doesn't seem to come out right. So when I finished sock 1 it was about an inch and a half too long /FAIL.

I even went and started the second sock, figuring I'd fix the first one when the second was done. I got half way through the gusset increases when I realized I'd forgotten something a few inches back and that was it. They were very bad socks and needed to sit in a corner and think about what they'd done.

After I registered for SS11, I figured it was time to take them out of time-out and finish them. I didn't really have any problems with them after their time out and it took me a couple weeks to knit the whole second sock, then cut off the bottom of the first sock, remove 3 stripes, and re-knit the toe.

I love the way the color pooling goes across the feet. It's subtle because the black breaks it up.

There was so much yarn left over that when Double Heelix came out this summer I knew what I was making it out of.

These socks are absolutely charming to knit, and I am convinced that Jeny Staiman is a genius.

I was able to pretty easily adapt these to fit my crazy feet by casting on more stitches across the middle and decreasing them out as I went down or up the foot. And the heel construction is just brilliant.

(BTW these are also not my feet, which is why they're saggy around the ankles, because my daughter's feet are about as long as mine but she has normal insteps)

I repeated the helixes on the toes of mine. I love both pairs and wear them all the time now that it's getting chilly.

So 2 pairs of socks out of $58 worth of yarn isn't quite as crazy, right? Especially when they're both so awesome?

It's all up from here... right?

2011-09-12T16:36:00.003-04:00

It's been a hell of a week.

For weeks now I've been having headaches, what I thought were sinus headaches. The weather's been weird, it's fall, I thought a cold, or allergies. Except that none of my normal sinus remedies were making any kind of dent in it. And I tried all of them.

Then over the last week or so my upper molar started to hurt. The insurance at Rob's new job doesn't start until October 1st, so I've been trying to get by without seeing anyone for either of those 2 problems until then. I started to get the feeling they might be related, or at least making each other worse. Thursday night the tooth pain started to get to me and by Friday I started looking at where I could go on Monday that took uninsured patients at a reduced fee. By the middle of the night Friday I was crying in pain and we went Saturday morning to the urgent care dental place where I got... a root canal.

It turns out that my tooth (bottom bicuspid by the way, NOWHERE NEAR MY SINUSES, or where I was feeling the tooth pain) was causing all my headaches. WAY before I was aware there was anything at all wrong with my teeth. Referred pain is weird.

I am sooo happy to be headache free now. The $1300 was totally worth it. I'm dealing with the post-root canal garbage pretty well, but I get tired easy and the antibiotics are mucking around with my body.

Today I was working on a document I was supposed to write last week, and in a fit of complete idiocy I closed the window, thinking I was closing a different window. It even asked me if I wanted to save it and I said no (because I didn't want to save the other window, duh). It's gone. 4 hours of work, poof, gone, unrecoverable. I tried.

As soon as another responsible grownup gets here it's time for margaritas. And more puffs.

Oncoming Storm

2011-09-06T17:18:00.002-04:00

Over the summer while I wasn't blogging I released a new Doctor inspired colorway, Oncoming Storm

It's a great stormy blue/black/grey color of a stormy night sky.

And while I'm talking about Doctor Who inspired yarn I have to share this shawl with you all

This is The Doctor Shawl, made from the new Stephen West pattern Earth & Sky. It's called that because it's made with Gallifrey, Screwdriver, and Oncoming Storm. It never even occurred to me to put those colors together but they look great! Awesome job Jeff!

In other news, I can't seem to stop making Hexapuffs

A Tale of Two Sweaters

2011-09-01T15:56:00.006-04:00

Earlier this year, around the same time, I started working on 2 sweaters.

The first was a handspun Tappan Zee

I'd wanted to make this sweater since I first saw it (which was before anyone else because it was in the same issue of Knitty as Summit and I got a peek at it when I was proofing my own pattern). I got the fiber (a merino silk blend) almost immediately after at a fiber festival, but it took me a while to actually get it spun.

The second sweater was Molly's VERY yellow Shalom cardigan, which I turned in to a hoodie and knit at a different gauge than the original.

It wasn't until I started working on these 2 patterns that I realized something

Yeah that's right, they are pretty much the same sweater. One is sport weight with lace diamonds, and one is super bulky with twisted rib, but they're both top down, short sleeved yoke sweaters with concentric rings of increases and garter stitch edges.

Same. damn. sweater.

It's ok, I love mine and Molly loves hers so it's all good.

SCHOOL!

2011-08-19T13:39:00.000-04:00

I have a lot to catch up on, but school started on Wednesday

3rd, 6th, and 8th grade (how did THAT happen???). Molly mistakenly took her bedtime medicine (melatonin and some vitamins) instead of her morning medicine the first day, so she was a complete zombie in the morning. The next 2 days have been better.

I've spent the past 2 days cleaning out and off my desk and organizing files. Look for more regular (weekly) blog posts from me from now on.

Badmittens

2011-05-17T22:05:00.007-04:00

A few months ago a man named Jack contacted the Indianapolis Knitting Guild looking for someone to knit him some mittens.

Well usually people who want something knitted run away when you tell them how much it costs, but the email he sent mentioned that they used to have a sheep farm and he had yarn from his sheep. It seemed like there was a better than average chance that he'd know what he was asking, so I met with him.

He brought me a couple pairs of these mittens that he and his wife had had knit from their wool 25(?) years ago.

They were awesome. Double thick, soft, and warm. And you could definitely tell that they had been loved for 25 years.

So Jack gave me some of his really lovely yarn (millspun Finn blend), and we agreed on some terms and I sent about remaking his mittens. He wanted to surprise his wife for Mother's Day and I finished them in the nick of time.

If you'd like your own pair of double thick mittens, here's how I made them:

Yarn: about Aran weight. I don't know the yardage used, however the finished mittens weighed 6.5 oz.

Gauge: 4.5 stitches per inch

Needles: I used size 8 DPNs but you could use magic loop or 2 circs. Use needle size to get gauge.

Note: Since when these are finished the inside is entirely enclosed, you will want to weave in all ends as you go.

Cast on 4 stitches. Slide stitches to other end of needle (as you do with i-cord).

Round 1: KFB of every stitch, and split stitches onto 3 needles (2, 2, and 4) if using DPNs.

Round 2: KFB every stitch (16 sts)

Round 3: *K2, m1, repeat from * (24 sts)

Round 4 and remaining even rows: Knit every stitch

Round 5: *K3, m1, repeat from * (32 sts)

For larger mittens work an optional round 7: *K4, m1, repeat from * (40 sts)

Continue knitting every round until mitten measures 5 inches from tip (or desired length. Take this opportunity to weave in the yarn from the fingertips.

Thumb: Knit 7 stitches and place onto waste yarn. Knit rest of round. Cast on 7 stitches over thumb hole. Continue knitting every round for an inch or 2 and then go back to work afterthought thumb.

Either use another set of needles or put main mitten stitches on waste yarn and use the same needles to knit the first thumb. Put thumb stitches on needles, and with new working yarn pick up and knit 11 more stitches around thumb hole. (18sts)
*SSK, k5, k2tog, repeat from * (14 sts).

Knit every round until thumb measures about 2 inches or as long as desired. K1, k2tog, k2, k2tog, repeat from * (8sts)
K2tog every stitch (4 sts). Break yarn and pull through remaining stitches.

Weave in both ends from thumb before continuing on with mitten body.

Knit every round on remaining stitches until mitten measures 18 inches.

Work second thumb hole in same manner as first (place 7 stitches on waste yarn and then cast on 7 stitches in the next round. Knit even for an inch or 2, then work second thumb as first one.

Continue working down fingertips 3.5 inches from second thumb (or same length as palm on other side). Weave in ends from second thumb.

If you worked the larger size start with *k3, k2tog, repeat from * for 1 round, and then knit 1 round. (32 sts)

Decrease round 1: *K2, k2tog, repeat from * (24 sts)

Round 2: Knit

Round 3: *K1, k2tog, repeat from * (16 sts)

Round 4: K2tog every stitch around. (8 sts)

Break yarn and run through remaining stitches. Pull tight.

It's kind of strange to weave in the last end from the outside, but you can kind of run it through a few places to make sure it won't unravel.

Push 1 hand inside the other hand. Voila! A double knit mitten.

Complete second mitten as first one.

This pattern is completely not tech edited or test knit, I just thought I'd share my notes. If anyone finds a mistake please let me know!

These could really be modified quite easily to be worked with almost any yarn. Keep working the increases until the hand is the size that you want, and adjust the number of thumb stitches accordingly. When it's time to start the second hand, measure the distance from the thumb to the end of the increases on the first hand, and knit the same distance from the second thumb before starting the decreases.

I know it's free but this pattern is still Copyright Mandie Harrington. You may knit as many pair as you'd like and sell the finished product if you can find someone willing to pay you for them, but please don't sell or give away copies of the pattern.

Cute

2011-05-16T17:16:00.000-04:00

I had some extra pictures of my kids goofing off during our Mother's Day shoot that were too cute not to share.

Stringtopia and other things

2011-05-15T12:29:00.000-04:00

At the very last minute I ended up going to Stringtopia. I haven't blogged it yet, mostly because I didn't bring my camera (it's a DSLR and I didn't want to have to worry about where it was all the time). But also because I just didn't have the words for it.

Life has been really hard the past few months and I have had a hard time talking about it. Rob is still not working a regular job. He's been subbing for someone who is out on extended medical leave, for we don't know how long, without benefits and the agency takes a huge chunk of his income. And I got a virus which turned in to pneumonia and camped out in my lungs for several months. And the girls have been particularly challenging and hard to be around. (We just figured out why, and that's the most I'm going to post about that on the internet, but you can probably figure it out. Both of them.) And some other stuff I won't bore you with, but there was/is a lot of it.

Plus I just had a 40th birthday which was hard. And it may have been really the other stuff that was hard but I was channeling it all into birthday feelings, which is probably more accurate.

So less than a week before Stringtopia while I was moping about it Sarah said I should try to go. I really thought it was all sold out and I couldn't afford it anyway, but it turned out it wasn't, and then Janet said I could share her room because she's awesome like that (and also maybe because I made her socks- it's definitely good karma, anyway).

So just like that, I was going. It was awesome and overwhelming, and I cried over lunch (but not really over lunch) and completely embarrassed myself. I must have some kind of breakdown at all major fiber events, apparently. I met and ate meals with Sandi Wiseheart (yes That Sandi Wiseheart) which was so cool, and she turns out to be just as charming and awesome as she is online, and didn't freak out too much when I started to cry over lunch, and ~~made~~ let me wear her crown because it was my birthday.

I won some pretty sweet door prizes, including this gorgeous merino silk bamboo from Miss Babbs

Also a cool pocket knife/scissors thing from Abby's husband, which I don't have a picture of, but it's cool.

And I bought one tiny Abby Batt

Which is YUMMY and totally my color.

I had really wanted to take Abby's class, but that class was sold out a long time ago, so instead I got to be in Jacey's class, which was totally just what I needed.

Jacey Boggs is a rather brilliant spinner and all around awesome. I have never really been very interested in spinning "art" yarns, but she has maybe convinced me that textured yarns are pretty cool.

(Pictures of Jacey and Jacey's yarn stolen with permission from Melissa's blog. She has many more good pictures of Stringtopia here and here.)

Here's what I ended up with at the end of class

Kind of a hot mess with a few good coils in it. It's hard, harder than I thought it would be to get my hands to do all those new things at once. But I went home and practiced all week and got this

Which is actually pretty good.

I am pretty pleased with myself. Coils! I made them.

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T20:15:00.003-04:00

Playing catch up

2011-01-17T11:11:00.006-05:00

Wow, so I haven't blogged in a while. I need to stop doing that.

Here's a few quick updates. Rob is still looking for a job. The contract that he was working for 2 months expired January 1st. They asked him to work an extra week twice, but that's done now. Living off of just my income is really stressful but I'm trying to make it work.

Everyone has the day off today so the family has gone sledding so I can get some dyeing done. I have 3 or 4 patterns in various stages of working, and a couple more that are just ideas in my head with no time to work on them.

Here's a few pictures of some stuff I got done in the last month

I finished this vest a while ago but I don't think I posted pictures on my blog. It's a heavily modified Wavy Textured Vest from SweaterBabe. I was really not very impressed with the pattern, it's written in a weird format that was a pain to knit, I added shaping and shortened it about 2 feet (it was a duster). But I do really love the finished project and wear it all the time. It's double stranded Cascade 220, 1 quatro, 1 grey, and I really like the effect of that, too.

These will have to represent all the Christmas knitting, because I was apparently too busy to take pictures of most of it before I gave it away. These were for my niece. There was also a really cool Doctor Who scarf in bookmark form (1/4 scale, fingering weight yarn), given with a Doctor Who book, and a cowl, and some other stuff. Oh and also this scarf from Creative Knitting: Accessorize in Style:

That very one, in fact, because I knit the sample for the magazine last spring and they gave it back to me. Awesome when you can manage to get paid to knit a Christmas gift.

I've also been accomplishing some spinning again after taking some time off.

Tiger Club from October. Thriller, BFL, spun into 2 ply sock yarn.

And this was from Spinnerette, some Punta top spun into fingering weight singles. I'm trying the singles sock experiment.

And last, some more Tiger Club, this one was Merino/bamboo/silk blend and was dreamy to spin. 2 ply laceweight will make something yummy eventually. Right now I'm just petting it.

After Thanksgiving SALE!

2010-11-23T08:21:00.006-05:00

If you're staying home to avoid all the crazy, you can still get great deals.

EVERYTHING in the Sheepy Time Knits store will be on sale on Friday, starting at 6 am Eastern Standard Time. 10-50% off!

Yarn, Knits, Patterns, even LICENSES. We hardly ever put everything on sale so this is a great deal.

Patterns and licenses will still say their original prices on the page, but will show the discounted prices in your the ordering process.

Have fun shopping!

Fawkes

2010-11-19T07:04:00.005-05:00

I finished the orange shawl yesterday. Blocking is the most miraculous thing in knitting. That blob of orange ramen noodles turned in to this:

My shawl inspired by Dumbledore's phoenix. I started it a year ago, churned it out quite fast until I hit the first beaded row and then apparently lost my love of it and it sat at the bottom of my WIP basket.

Every now and then it when I saw it in there it tugged at my mind, but for some reason I decided I didn't like beading it.

I'm terribly sorry dear shawl, I don't know what was wrong with me.

It also got a quick bath with some dye before blocking. I wasn't liking how the yellow streaks pooled, it competed with the lace. A little orange overdye and now it's much more subtle.

Ironically the pattern is Spring Things and it is decidedly NOT spring now. When I saw it I thought it looked much more like feathers and would make a perfect Fawkes. Yarn is Knit Picks Shimmer. I love the alpaca/silk, didn't care for the color repeats.

Now I'm off to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I. Not quite the midnight showing but 9 am is pretty good!

Contest!

2010-11-11T07:40:00.005-05:00

I sometimes think about the thousands of skeins of yarn and copies of patterns I've sold that never make it in to Ravelry and wish I could see it. I would love to find out more of what my work ends up as (it's one of the best parts of my job!)

To that end, I'm announcing a contest. Add your Sheepy Time Knits items to your Ravelry Stash and Projects. Every week for the rest of November I'll be drawing randomly from that week's added entries and giving away prizes. Free patterns, stitch markers, some other odds and ends, even some yarn.

There are 3 categories, Stash, Projects knit with Sheepy Time Yarns (any pattern), and Projects working Sheepy Time Knits patterns (any yarn). If you happen to use both my yarn and pattern that counts as an entry in both categories, and the same yarn can be added as stash and a project. WIPs count! It doesn't matter if you're finished, put them in. (I might disqualify a project that only has 3 rows knit though.) Pictures are required! That's the fun part. I may also pick an additional winner with a photo I love.

Here are some of my favorites so far:

Jtdalzell's Vulcan Boyfriend Socks in Fangorn Forest Yarn That Shall Not Be Named - the green version of the Vampire Boyfriend socks from Knitty (also proving that 330 yards is TOTALLY enough yarn to make a pair of socks)

Alysania's Hanging Vines of Envy In Green Eyed Monster Sheepy Feet (the very first club colorway soon to be released as a regular color). And honestly she has so many great projects it was hard to pick one.

flssgrl's ~~gorgeous baby~~ Swirl Hat

CrookedRow's Deciduous, which she made into a yummy looking scarf.

For stash I can easily sort by "recently added", but for projects, the options are to sort by recently started or recently completed, so please temporarily pick the current date when you enter your project for your Start Date (even if your project was started ages ago but hadn't made it into Rav). You can also add your projects to this thread.

Edited to add: if you have entered a project but haven't added pictures, you can add them now and change your start date to qualify. I noticed lots of no-pictures projects.

Have at it, contest starts now!

2 blobs

2010-11-10T12:57:00.003-05:00

The Surprise Jacket is so named because it looks like a blob until you finish and fold it up. Mine is growing but still looks like nothing much.

But if you fold it just right you can sort of get the idea

If only half at a time.

It would be bigger, but I've been distracted. Remember this blob of orange ramen I posted last week?

Well now it looks almost exactly the same as it did a year ago, except it has teeny beads.

The lifeline is where I quit working it because the bead row drove me crazy. Well the looming Harry Potter movie has me wanting to finish it. It turns out to be not *quite* as insane as I remembered. I picked it up on Monday and 2 days later I've done 3 bead rows. It takes about 2 hours to do the 60 beads in 1 repeat. Next repeat will have 66, and I think I'm doing at least 1 more after that unless I go insane first. The pattern calls for 3, When I started I was thinking 5, but we'll see. My standards might have gone down.

No loose ends

2010-11-08T18:28:00.007-05:00

I've been working on the surprise jacket and decided it was a good opportunity to show off a technique I've been meaning to blog about. I hear all the time people avoid doing stripes because they hate weaving in all the ends. But stripes don't have to mean more work at the end if you weave them in as you go.

When you are ready to change colors knit the first stitch in the new yarn to anchor it. You want to carry the old yarn and the new yarn along together. Here I am changing colors but it works just as well for starting a new ball of yarn that won't splice. I am a continental knitter primarily, so the first method is how I normally do it.

Here is how I run them through my fingers, but you can do whatever is comfortable for you. The new yarn (green) is on the right and the old yarn (brown) is on the left.

Now you want to duck under the old strand to pick the new yarn. Knit this stitch as you normally would.

On the next stitch, work above the old yarn.

You just keep doing these 2 stitches, working alternately under the old yarn and then above it, working 4-6 stitches depending on how slippery your yarn is.

Here I'm showing how it works if you are a thrower. Hold the old yarn in your left hand and the new yarn in your right hand as you normally would. It doesn't matter how you hold the old yarn, just keep some tension on it.

Insert the right needle in the next stitch.

Now pull the old yarn forward, between the new working yarn and the new stitch.

Wrap the stitch as normal with the new yarn.

Then put the old yarn back behind the needles. This series of maneuvers
works 1 stitch behind the old yarn.

Now work the next stitch with the old yarn in back.

These are the exact same 2 steps as shown above for continental knitting. Alternate working in front of and behind the old yarn for 4-6 stitches.

Here is the back of the work, with the brown yarn woven in. I can now just snip it off and move on. On the next row I will weave in the tail of the green yarn, leaving no extra work. This is the same method you can use for trapping long floats when doing colorwork.

Speshul Snowflakes

2010-11-07T12:23:00.005-05:00

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since I started the Speshul Snowflakes Yarn club. It's been really fun, I've managed to keep up with everything and get to know some of you better and haven't had to fake any deaths. So we're keeping it going.

Most people re-subscribed but we have a few spaces open right now. I'm dyeing samples for this month tomorrow and choices will be out next week. After that prices will be going up, so now is a good time to sign up! If you haven't seen it before, we offer 2 colors and several yarn bases every cycle (every other month) for you to pick from. We guarantee always a sock yarn and a soaker yarn will be included every month, and then often offer several other things for you to try. And I try to catch very different colors every cycle.

Here's a few previous colors

Drama Llama

Teal Deer

Blackberry Martini

Berry Pie

Foggy Dew

Tequila Sunrise (with Poolside pattern)

Surprise

2010-11-05T14:43:00.005-04:00

Wednesday morning I had actually caught up on all my work by 11 am, for the first time in weeks. Finally marking off the list from the previous week, I decided I'd earned a break, and I was going to ignore all the blanket squares and knit.

I've been wanting to make an Adult Surprise Jacket ever since I'd been to camp. I kind of had NaKniSweMo in the back of my mind, so when I finally had time to work on it, I picked out some Peace Fleece from my stash and spent some quality time with my copy of The Opinionated Knitter, paper, pencil, and calculator.

I knew I wanted to make alterations to the pattern, because the boxy look is way better on babies, and that has been the one thing keeping me from knitting that sweater immediately.

By the end of the day I had a sleeve and had cast on for the second one. Love.

(And I do realize that this means I am now working on 4 sweaters. Shut up.)

WIP wrestling

2010-11-01T17:55:00.006-04:00

Well I had far to many works in progress at one point a few months ago and that was making me uncomfortable so I started finishing things. Then I got to where I just really didn't have enough, so I started new things (ha!) I think I feel comfortable somewhere around 7-10 projects. When I get down to 5, the chances are they're all lace and cables and I need to start new public knitting immediately.

Right now I'm down to 1 pair of socks, these, from Sock Summit over a year ago.

They're a lot further done than that picture. The first sock is done and the second is about half way. They are toe up which is not my favorite sock structure, and there's a chart for the ankle, and I had lots of other socks, and then it was hot.

There's a fair amount of pressure over these, since that is the most expensive sock in the history of the world. They are made with Dream in Color Starry ($$$) and Socks that Rock (which I bought in Canada at a bad exchange rate). But I had to use them. The sock pattern is called Orion. How could I not use Starry? And the Socks that Rock is Tina's yarn and I bought it at Lettuce Knit in Toronto (Stephanie's LYS). It was like the universe was telling me to make a $60+ pair of socks.

Unfortunately because they're toe up, the first one is too long. I'll have to rip out the toe and reknit it when I'm done with the second one. And the universe doesn't seem to be telling me to finish them.

I also started this blob of lace around that time last year.

It's a feathery looking shawl I'm calling Fawkes. But I got to the beaded part and fell out of love with it so I buried in the corner and found something else to love. (Possibly that purple shawl I posted last week).

This is what's become of the rainbow hand spun. I still love it and it's still moving along, but slowly. I pick it up and do a few rows here and there. If I churned on it I could have it finished quick. I will, eventually.

Here's my Cuff to Cuff. The light does not do justice to this yarn in this picture.

I did pretty much what I expected with it, I ran right through the plain knitting and the intarsia in the round really fast after Knitting Camp. First bit of stranded work too, but it was summer and it was hot and so I grew weary of it. But I have a great head start and now that it's getting cold I expect I'll decide to finish it in the next few months. Hopefully.

This here was club yarn that I fell in love with and had to knit right away:

It's Lichen on Big Feet, which is a yummy squishy 4 ply DK merino, and the pattern is Evenstar. They seemed like a perfect match.

I started them planning on following the pattern but of course I didn't. There was substantial ripping back and reknitting on the first one, but I am happy and want to get the second one done pretty soon. I just need to knit the thumb on this one. (A gusseted thumb instead of the afterthought thumb it is written for). I'll post all the mods when it's done, and with better pictures.

Caitie has been complaining that she doesn't have a sweater (the last one I made her was several years ago, so she's not wrong). She picked out a pinwheel jacket in Kauni:

That's only about a week of knitting and it's probably half-ish way done (circles are deceiving, though). But she's kind of in the dog house so I am abandoning it for an Adult Surprise Jacket I have wanted to make, maybe for NaKniSweMo

But MOSTLY, I've been working on these:

which have been coming to my house full of these:

which in a fit of insanity I volunteered to crochet around and sew together into a blanket. It will be for Patience Ann, who's husband died suddenly. There are well over 200 squares so far and more are coming.

I'm losing this crochet the squares battle. I get help on Sunday. (If you live in central Indiana and want to help we're meeting at Strange Brew, Toni Carr's coffee shop in Greenwood.)

Doctor Who

2010-10-27T11:02:00.003-04:00

Over the summer the kids and I fell in love with The Doctor.

We started with Eleven when the new season started

Who is adorable and charming. I really like him a lot. I have memories of watching Tom Baker after school as a kid but I knew a lot of people who watched the new series and I hadn't caught it yet.

It turned out to be literally the ONLY show that my entire family would watch for a whole hour. So naturally we had to grab all the episodes BBCA plays once a day on the DVR and got through all of Ten

(yeah we watched them all out of order). David Tennant is perfect barmy/nerdy Doctor Who.

We eventually got the DVD from the library of Season 1 of the new series. No one in our family likes Nine quite as much as the others. I was just starting to like him at the end of his season, but never as much as 10 or 11.

So my kids started saying I HAD to make Doctor Who yarn. Which sounded great to me until I started thinking about how everying is black or grey or olive drab. Not quite everything, but a lot. And I don't like doing solid colors, so I wasn't going to do skittles Daleks or Tardis blue.

Eventually we came up with these colors.

Time Vortex (which goes more with the the opening sequence for Nine and Ten)

Screwdriver (because this could be more sonic)

Gallifrey (the planet of the Time Lords, with silver leaves and a burnt orange sky)

Bigger on the Inside (inspired by the colors of the inside of the Tardis)

and Adipose (obvious, right?)

They make me stupidly happy because I am a total geek. I especially love the labels.
In case you're that kind of geek too, they can be found here. And if there is a color I'm out of or a base you don't see listed I'll gladly dye any of them for you (that's true of pretty much any of my colors, as long as I have the base available).

Actual Knitting Content

2010-10-26T08:35:00.004-04:00

So now that I caught up with summer I thought I'd post actual pictures of some things I've knit.

There have been lots of socks but these are my favorite:

Just plain knitting, but hand spun yarn, 2 ply, Merino bamboo from Funky Carolina that I got from a Ravelry swap. I love everything about these socks, the way they fit, the yarn, how they feel on my feet. Yum.

I knit this tank up in a last attempt at extending summer. I got to wear it a few times before it got cold.

I saw it in a catalog 6 months ago or so but the pattern wasn't downloadable so I stuck it in my queue and thought I'd probably have to backwards engineer it if I couldn't find the pattern. Then one day I was in one of my LYS's and found the booklet on clearance. WIN!

Pattern: Empire Tunic (ravelry link). It apparently is downloadable now.

Yarn: Knit Picks Shine. I like it well enough, it's not the most glamorous yarn I've ever used but it's nice.

Modifications: Worked in the round. I cast on 1/8 more stitches and worked 5 k stitches in the rib lace instead of 4, then decreased the extra stitches out before the first cable. That gave me more room in the bottom. Also added short rows to the bust.

And I also recently finished Traveling Woman.

I actually finished it a while ago but after blocking was really unhappy with the bind off. It didn't seem tight but when I tried to wear it it was tighter than the shawl so it curled up oddly. And it was warm by then so I didn't need it so it got stuffed in the basket to do later.

Which I think is actually a great plan because then as soon as the weather turns you just have to finish it there it is! I ended up just taking out the bind off and doing it VERY loosely and now it's great.

Yarn: Briar Rose Grandma's Blessing. Love love LOVE this yarn. Love the color, love the way it knits and wearing it around my neck. I have about half the ball left so something else will come out of it I'm sure.

Modifications: Only 1. The pattern calls for an odd number of lace repeats, and I worked an extra one. I just prefer how the center eyelets run into the lace pattern, and how the center has a point.

This is one of my new favorite things. It became the new header of my blog (in case you're reading in a blog reader, check it out, I've got a new layout).

Lia

2010-10-22T17:48:00.005-04:00

So I had this idea for a sweater one day last spring. It was still cold so I was thinking about warm things. It was probably the first time I've ever had the complete design in my head from the beginning rather than it evolving from something else.

It sat in the back of my head for a few months and before I knew it the Deep Fall Knitty deadline was looming a few weeks away. I ordered some Chunky Malabrigo in a gorgeous warm handpainted grey. We went on that vacation to Chattanooga and I took the knitting with me, but it's not good camping knitting so I didn't even start a sleeve until the car ride back. But I had almost a full sleeve done by the time we got home. Instant gratification is wonderful.

The hardest part of knitting it was having thick wool on my lap in July. I tried it on a few times as I went and I could not throw it off fast enough. It is WARM.

I finished the pattern and the sweater, and Ashley stepped in as a last minute model for me as my original model had a hair perm incident which apparently made her unfit for photographs.

Ashley was a great sport and managed to not look like she was wearing a superthick wool sweater when it was 95 degrees.

I got it done just in time to send it in and go to Knitting Camp. While I was there I talked to Amy (Detjen) a lot about fitting a range of sizes. I believe Amy told me there was a 1 inch difference in the shoulder to shoulder width between her and Joyce (go look at the picture of the 2 of them). Standard sizing tells designers that there is a much bigger difference in shoulder width.

Armed with this new information, I made some changes to the fit of the pattern for my friend Nancy who test knit it for me, and when Amy (Singer - Knitty's editor) emailed that I was accepted into Knitty we made those changes which I think made it even better.

The pattern can be found on Knitty now here. There are some other great patterns in this issue, I feel honored to be among such great company.

Ashley is a bit smaller than I am by the way, she cold probably have worn a smaller size. Here's what it looks like on me:

And it has been cool enough lately to actually wear it and not melt.

OK I admit it

2010-10-20T10:03:00.006-04:00

I suck at blogging.

I used to blog more, but then Ravelry happened, and I am just not as good at it. I don't want my blog to become a business newsletter, so I avoid blogging "look at this new thing I have for sale", and then I put off the hobby blogging because I haven't got pictures yet.

Last time I blogged I was going to talk about Knitting Camp next, and I think I just do not have the words to describe the experience (and also, I totally forgot to take pictures most of the time I was there). This is the camp in Wisconsin started by Elizabeth Zimmerman and now led by her daughter Meg Swansen. I took one of Meg's classes at Sock Summit and immediately knew I needed more of her in my life.

Amy Detjen is hilarious and brilliant and I had a great time hanging out with and getting to know her. She swiped my Summit shawl and walked around with it, which made my day

Also, she is more obsessed with purple than I am, which I didn't know was possible.

I don't know how long they've been doing it this way, but they have this fantastic video setup so you can see everything Meg (or Amy) knits from the knitter's perspective.

(Meg knits almost exactly the way I do, and I feel only a teeny tiny bit smug about that.)

We talked about all kinds of knitting minutia for 3 days, and it was fantastic. I'd love to just live there all the time.

I made the trip with my good friend Janet, shown here looking totally punch drunk by all the knitting, and wearing the spiral yoke sweater (and possibly actually drunk from the box of margaritas, I'm not really sure when this was taken).

See all that stuff behind her? That's about 1/4 of all the knits that were there. Original, Elizabeth and Meg knits. We tried lots of them on, found shopping lists in the pockets. Tried not to drool. I got a little weepy looking at the February baby sweater and longies (and damn if I didn't FORGET TO TAKE A PICTURE of those, too).

I fell in love with this sweater

and bought the yarn and cast on for it before we left. Mine is purple, of course. That is intarsia in the round there, by the way. Fantastic.

I feel certain that some of what I learned that weekend has already fallen out of my head, and the only solution is to go back again several more times. We barely slept, the food was mediocre, but there was more than enough beer, margaritas, and knitting to make up for it.

Some other random things:

Across the street we found this place:

Which surprisingly had pretty good beer.

And down the street we found Janet's own yarn and craft store:

Which amused me greatly.

Amy Meg and Joyce were just a joy to be around, and I want to soak up all that collective knowledge and experience some more.

Finally...

2010-08-11T19:30:00.004-04:00

School started today!

Sean was very excited (check out the flame Chucks). Molly was too but she did NOT want to take a picture. And Caitie is too cool to have her mom wait at the bus stop with her.

What this hopefully means is that I'll have more time to blog. I have so many pictures.

One thing I've been doing a ton of this summer is spinning.

Spunky Eclectic Wool Blend in Rosy Fingered Dawn. 2 ply, about fingering weight. No idea what to make from it yet. Goes to proving my theory that everything from Amy is wonderful.

Tiger Club shipment from last month. I've been in this club for a few months now and I've not regretted it a bit. Everything is pretty, and it's expanding my horizons. This is Wensleydale (LONG staple length) and it was lovely to spin.

Remember this from the vacation pictures? Well it turned out like this:

I love everything about it. It's merino fiber, it came in a bag of strips, which I split in half and spun sequentially. I am amazed at how well they matched when I plied it (I actually wanted a little more overlap than I ended up with.

Here's what's on my wheel right now, waiting for me to have time to finish the second half:

Most recent Tiger Club shipment. 100% bamboo rayon fiber. I never would have bought this, and I was a little afraid to spin it but it is absolutely wonderful to spin. It's slippery, so I have to go a little slow, but I kind of like that about it. And also, it's GORGEOUS. And such a great tactile experience. I really wish I had time to finish it.

I haven't had time because I've been dyeing this:

That's yarn club for August. I'm happy to get it out early this cycle. With only 2 or 3 exceptions, it all left my house on Monday, thank god. That was a shitload of grey yarn, I tell you. You can't tell because the pink is all on top, but it was mostly grey that people picked. 58 skeins of grey. Really sick of grey.

Today I got lots of dyeing done for Stitches Midwest (which is very very soon and stressing me out!) This:

is the most recent colorway called Gallifrey. Part of a new Doctor series I'm working on.

This one is called Time Vortex and I think I might be keeping it all for me. (no not really).
There's a couple more I haven't got pictures of yet. In case you can't tell, the kids and I spent the summer watching all the Doctor Who episodes of the new series. They are a bit obsessed with the Doctor. Molly walks around with her hand out and says EXTERMINATE! EXTERRRRRMIIIIINNNAAAAATE! It's pretty hilarious.

Next up- Knitting Camp!

Finale

2010-07-24T17:52:00.005-04:00

This is the last vacation post, in case some of you were getting worried about that. It's mostly pictures, because I love pictures and some of these really amuse me.

Rock City is cool. If you ever get a chance to visit I highly recommend it:

Right about where Caitie is standing up in the distance of that picture above is where she dropped her phone.

Right after here is about where we found it. Turned out that people below us yelled up after a few minutes and said her phone fell all the way through, but it was (mostly) unharmed. Rock City is a maze that criss crosses over itself at different levels (mostly naturally occurring). So it's a good long walk from 1 level to another but we got it back.

My favorite quote of the day from Caitie "Hall of the Mountain King. That sounds like something from the Hobbit!"

It's not a place for people who have a fear of heights.

This is my favorite part of camping. In the morning the kids snuggle one by one into our sleeping bag.

Sean got Last Airbender tattoos from McDonald's and was positive that Daddy needed one since he doesn't have hair.

I agreed with Sean. All day long at the pool kids kept asking him to bend air.

There was plying.

I finished this batch in the car on the way home, so yes, it's yarn yet. I'll post pictures later, I love it!

Caitie and I went riding. Sean wanted to go but I asked him if he wanted to ride a horse or have ice cream and he chose ice cream.

It was pretty cool and a great way to spend our last day.

Next up: Actual Knitting Content.

Part Deux

2010-07-23T13:49:00.008-04:00

I kinda think showing people my vacation pictures is boring, but they've actually been *requested*, so I feel like I can do it with a clear conscience.

We practically lived at the pool.

(Rob is a terribly good sport and a great knitter's husband)

(Thank God for Gortex! - Sean's cast was waterproof)

Also, the family complained that I didn't post pictures of myself on the jumping pillow, so here:

And this one is too good not to share too, even if it is blurry:

Heading in to town one morning. Molly wasn't tired, as you can see:

We took a ride on the Southern Belle riverboat (which I totally forgot to take a picture of when we weren't on it).

There was spinning...

Later we met up with Dana from Unwind Yarn

We had a great time hanging out, she laughed at my kids being silly and kineared a woman who was playing in the fountain wearing white linen pants and red underwear. ahem.

Later we went out to dinner at a brewpub (I don't remember the name, but it was yummy). I was having such a good time I was a really bad mom and totally forgot how late it was.

oops

Here's a rare moment of all 3 kids playing nicely together.

We spent a day at Chickamauga battlefield. Rob and Sean loved it, Caitie and Molly tolerated it nicely even though they thought it was insanely dull.

Caitie found a weird bug, anyone know what it is?

Here's another example of my son's inability to eat properly. Clearly I've fallen down on my duties.

That was a jawbreaker.

Chattanooga

2010-07-22T12:58:00.005-04:00

A couple weeks ago we went camping near Chattanooga, TN. We were actually camping just over the state line in Georgia.

I think the best part of the camp grounds was the jumping pillow.

It's serious fun. Like a trampoline but on the ground and surrounded by sand.

We had a great site and stayed 8 nights.

They had lots of junk food

Apparently I haven't taught my son how to eat. This was a recurring theme.

The incline railway was fun. It's a mile long and I forget how steep, but STEEP. At the top we visited a civil war memorial/park. I don't have very many pictures because the kids took turns being little shits that afternoon, but there's a few winners:

I'm so proud.

Caitie having a tantrum at the top of lookout mountain

More tomorrow!

Summit

2010-03-23T08:16:00.008-04:00

So now the cat is out of the box.

I'm in Knitty!

Sock Summit was so amazing, just walking around. Every other minute I saw some sweater or shawl that made me say ooooo! I have a bunch of slips of paper with names of yarn or patterns that I brought back, things I thought were awesome.

And then I saw Sue at the Ravelry party. She had this white sweater on that was mind boggling. I mean WTF. How the heck? Wha? People were talking and pointing, How do you DO that? Is it increasing and decreasing? what? I've seen a lot of knitting, and I'd never seen *anything* like that.

I went up and asked her and she told me her story. She was a perfectly lovely woman. I can't remember all of the details of her story anymore, but it involved buying this sweater on vacation somewhere, and that it had been machine made. And also that apparently someone (a vendor?) told her you can't knit that by hand.

WAT?

Yes you can. There's nothing a knitting machine can do that a person can't do. I was sure of it (and so was she, though she didn't know how). She really wanted someone to figure it out.

I'd started a sock and didn't like it anyway so I was going to frog it. I whipped the yarn out and started playing around. I swear I could feel my fingers tingling. I had to go back to her sweater and look at it a few times, but I thought I had it figured out.

This is my friend Carol who is an awesome knitter and who was a fantastic sport and willing to pose for pictures in a tank top in late November. I was wearing gloves and a hat when she posed for that picture. I sent it to Knitty in December and got back a Yes! Amy wanted me to take more spring like pictures. We had a foot of snow when she said that, but I told her I'd give it a shot. Carol was again a sport and we trucked all over town looking for a greenhouse or something as a background. The problem with greenhouses is they're all glass. It may be warmer in there but it's still obviously winter.

I finally took these:

I kind of love this one with the motion.

The only one that made it in was this last one, which I took in my kitchen!

Thank you to everyone who sent congratulations! I must admit I'm terribly proud of it and very relieved to be able to talk about it. It made me feel incredibly clever.

Some people have asked me about substituting yarn, and how much was used. You should be able to substitute yarns pretty easy. This yarn was sport weight. It felt only slightly heavier than fingering which I think would work fine, maybe on 1 size smaller needles.

The shawl itself weighs 6.8 oz, which calculates out to 765 yards used. If you use a smaller gauge you would need to do more columns and rows to get the same size shawl, so you might need a bit more, but I think 200g of sock yarn would be plenty to make that size.

Part of what makes the shawl hang the way it does is the weight of that particular yarn though. I think it will feel quite different if made with 100% wool. I would look for something with at least some silk, bamboo, linen etc content if you want the same drape.

Edited because I forgot to mention, DO NOT be afraid of the crochet hook called for in the instructions. You only need it to do some chain stitches in the bind off (and you can even do it with needles if you prefer). I'm going to post a video of how to do that in the next week, hopefully.

Jabberwocky

2010-03-18T12:11:00.002-04:00

Wow were these ever on a long journey here

Last summer I registered for Sock Summit, and one of the classes I was lucky enough to get in to was Making the next Monkey, with Amy Singer (editor of Knitty).

I'd been designing sock patterns for a while, and I'd submitted one to Knitty before that was turned down, so of course I felt like I had to come up with something great to show Amy at the class, but nothing I could come up with was innovative enough. This idea came to me just a couple days before I left for Portland and I churned them out in record time. I knit almost all of the first sock on the planes.

Amy liked my pattern and thought it had a good chance of getting in (sweet!). She gave us all some tips and I went home and took them all in and submitted it for winter issue, and waited. A lot.

They didn't make it in that issue (and I'd seen Skew in person and kinda knew why!), but Amy was interested enough to ask if she could hold them for the next issue. So I waited some more.

Well they finally did get turned down, and now that I've edited it together into a PDF for all of you I've added it to my store.

The pattern comes in 4 sizes, from tiny women's (the first pair was too small for me and went to my friend with wee feet) to Men's. Knit top down, and a really fast knit, with just a little something to keep you interested. The gusset wraps around the front of the foot and lets the swirly twisty thing go straight down to the floor.

The name is inspired by Through the Looking Glass, because of the way the socks are mirrors of each other (with maybe a small nod to the Lost Sideways reality). Hope you like them!

Resolutions

2010-03-16T08:30:00.003-04:00

Hey, remember when I used to blog?

So, it's a little late for new year's, but I'm making a resolution to start blogging again regularly. I had been searching back in the blog archives for something recently and I've decided that it was Ravelry that killed my blog. It was shortly after I discovered Ravelry that the blogging went down the tubes. But I liked looking back on it so, I'm bringing it back.

I have so much to tell you! There is a lot of new designing to share, and lots of knitting. Are you getting tired of seeing those Orion socks over there in the WIPs? I know I am.

In the mean time, I'm going to tease you with pictures of new patterns.

Day in the Life

2009-10-07T09:30:00.004-04:00

So I read the day in the life on Abby's blog and I thought it might be interesting to do.

(And yes, I know I haven't blogged in ages. Read this, you'll see why. Also, there is so MUCH to say, I just don't know where to start.)

7:00 wake up to Molly stomping in the hallway and loudly playing The Great Pumpkin.

7:10 Coffee/check email for urgent stuff. Husband does more morning duty than I do, helps with breakfast, and general bustling, but he's also getting ready to go to work at the same time, so it's a little crazy. Check ravelry and twitter for non-urgent stuff. Solve a lost shoe crisis, a jacket crisis, and argue about brushing hair. Usher little people around trying to make sure everyone eats, brushes their teeth, and leaves on time.

7:40 Say goodbye to Mr Wit and wait outside for the bus with little wits. Molly thinks it's funny to push me from behind. It's not.

7:53 Back inside. Remind oldest wit to brush her hair and teeth, and tell her (3 times) not to wear capri pants when it's 45 degrees. Still checking ravelry and drinking coffee, trying to wake up and shake off the foul mood and sense of failure from yesterday.

8:12 Send last wit out to bus. Finish reading mindless stuff online.

8:30 Pick up the family room/kitchen- wipe off table, put stuff away, turn off bedroom lights and shut doors and other various shit that people have left on. Notice that Thing 1's laundry is full but don't wash it. She's old enough to be responsible for her own. Get a load of Thing 2&3's laundry, start it, remember the agitator in the washer isn't working right, and my all efforts of figuring out how to take it apart have failed. Soak laundry anyway.

Clean up, fix hair, brush teeth. I don't shower in the mornings when it's cold when I'm going out in a few hours because my hair will be wet for at least 4 hours and blow drying makes me want to stabl myself because it takes so long. Go and look for pants that aren't plaid or covered in ladybugs (my dye day clothes). It's between black cargo pants that annoy me when I wear them and comfy black knit pants. Go with the black knit.

9:30 Eat breakfast: leftover chicken and rice - I'm weird with breakfast. It's oatmeal about half the time in cold weather because it's quick and warm and good. But the rest of the time I eat something completely not a breakfast food. Make to-do list for the day. Discover hole in leg of pants. WTF? These aren't even that old. They were either cut with scissors by little hands, or snagged on something somewhere. I'll probably never know.

9:45 Start moving again. Check DVR for something to have going in the background. I find bad reality TV keeps me moving more than music sometimes. Flipping Out- great. I always feel less crazy when Flipping Out is on.

Lay out red yarns in a better way to get them to dry already. Get more coffee. Pack up box of kid's summer clothes that have been in here for a week because I didn't have a box. Pick up living room. Call my dad for advice about washer. He says he can come over in the afternoon and look at it.

10:15 Sit at desk to work. Find pile of school papers I need to take to meeting today because for some dumbass reason, the teacher thinks Molly is capable of reading this newspaper and shit, and also sent home a letter saying she can't go on a field trip because she didn't get 90% points for behavior. PISSED. Dude, she's autistic, she's not going to behave like the rest of your class. Sometimes I wish these teachers could see what she was like a few years ago so they can be impressed that she's in their class at all and not punish her because she can't get 90% behavior points. OTOH, she's throwing pencils so what do I know.

Try to figure out how to deposit a check. Our bank accounts are with Irwin (the company that laid my husband off just before they were seized by Federal Regulators). They've been taken over by another bank, our money is secure, but at the moment, there's no where to go to the bank except driving all the way downtown, which is Mega Inconvenient. Put check aside to figure out later. Check email for the 1000th time looking to see if I have a reply about my skein winder. It is the single most expensive business expense I've ever bought and the motor burned out yesterday. I have 6 skeins of 1300 yard laceweight to re-skein, not to mention 8 kilo cones of sock yarn to skein, and a burnt out skein winder. It should be under warranty, but this is really bad timing.

10:30 desk (mostly) clean, office/family room mostly clean, time to go to school meeting and then plug full on into yarn club development when I get back.

10:45 Meeting with special ed teacher and Molly's behavior specialist. Gen ed still says she can't go on field trip, but we worked some other stuff out. Still trying to get her to stop pinching people and throwing pencils.

11:30 Back home. Realize I forgot to go to the library while I was out, but don't care enough to go back. Make calls to medicaid, respite, and school psychologist. Get through to no one. Bang head on desk 48 times. Eat chocolate. (Hey, it's dark chocolate with cherries, it's good for you).

12:00 Behavior specialist stops in after observing at school and we talk about things. Try to make a plan for support so Molly can be in Girl Scouts. 3 more calls on the list I need to make.

1:30 Dad shows up trying to fix the washer. I decide that laundry soaked for hours and then agitated by hand is clean enough, spin it out and the washer starts leaking. Great. Dad starts taking the back apart. I can't help much so go back to working on my computer. Dad is muttering a lot. Not encouraging. Worked some more on club setup intermittently and helped with washer. (Note, this is not an efficient way to design a web page).

2:30 get Sean and Molly off the bus. Help Dad put washer back together (unfixed, but not leaking). Talking to him I find out that last time we were at his house there was money missing too. FML.

3:00 begin fighting with Molly about homework. Starts with me saying it's time to do homework and her screaming for 10 minutes that it's not time to do homework. I win that fight. Then I tell her she has to read something. Anything. Resume screaming that she doesn't have to read. I tell her she has to read or I'm taking away the hexabits (little toys she likes to play with). More screaming, along with stomping and door slamming. I calmly show her to her room, remove the hexabits, and cry in the hallway. 30 minutes later she says she will read, but she wants to read News for Me. School has sent no News for Me today. More screaming. 3:55, she says she'll read. 5 minutes later, done. Resume swearing at washing machine and trying to reassemble it. Dad calls washer repair place I can't afford. Somewhere in there got Sean to do his homework with minimal drama or supervision.

4:30 Oldest girl-child is home. We begin the dance wherein I tell her to do her homework and she sits at the table looking like she's doing something. I'm trying to do some graphics work while breaking up fights between little people and telling people to put their food away.

5:30 Ask oldest girl child how she's doing on that essay due tomorrow. She hasn't started it yet. Sick of this crap. Molly and Sean are fighting again. Now it's time to put out fires and give up on getting work done today. Mr Wit comes home and breaks up fight.

6:15 Start fire extinguisher mode. Make leftovers for dinner, wash dishes, put away red yarn. List of things I did not get done today is long, but I am too frazzled to work or play with anyone.

Well I started this blog post because I thought it would be interesting but it was just depressing. This is the point in the day when I begin feeling like running away from home.

Bloomies!

2009-07-06T16:34:00.003-04:00

It seems like I've been working on this pattern forever, but it's finally done, and I'm very pleased :)

Bloomies! Cute little bloomer pants, for use as soakers, or not, depending on what yarn you use.

The pattern is quite simple, no gusset, an easy first garment, with options for waistband and several different ruffles, plus optional ruffle butt

(I have a friend who is due any minute and I can't wait to try those on her little one).

The pattern is all up, the web site is updated, Ravelry is updated, and I am ready for my nap!

Random Tuesday

2009-06-30T23:49:00.006-04:00

I haven't been blogging much because I've been busy. So this is a random catch-up post.

One thing I've been busy with is driving almost an hour each way to take Molly to camp. This camp is called Lose the Training Wheels, and it's remarkable.

For as long as I can remember, therapists have been trying to get Molly to pedal. Apparently this is an important way to practice motor planning, something that Molly doesn't do well (which is why, she has always sucked at pedaling).

I wanted to get her into this camp last year but it filled up before I could find the money. (FAST). This year we got in to the *last* slot. 2 weeks ago, Molly could barely ride a trike or bike with training wheels. She could only go a few feet, then she'd get stuck and frustrated, and get off. She just wasn't coordinated enough.

They started them out on those bikes (above) with the roller wheel. There are 8 different rollers that allow the bike to tilt more or less, depending on where they were at. By the end of the first day, somehow, Molly was riding that thing around the rink and grinning like crazy.

By Thursday, she was doing this:

Poor Courtney who was her assistant had to run with her around that parking lot in 90-94F heat. (She ran a marathon earlier this year, I am dully impressed. She needed the training for this.)

By the last day, she was riding her *own* new (PINK) bike, with no handle. And I got to run along beside her (I am so not in enough shape for that- wow, it was hot).

I am so impressed with this program, and so proud of Molly. That was HARD work.

Other random things:

Today I tagged all my WIPs in ravelry for WIP wrestling in July. I have a LOT. (I think 11 that I tagged, and a couple more that I didn't even bother) Here's one:

Yes, that's Noro Kureyon sock yarn. Yes I know it's not superwash and can felt. Yes I love it anyway. If you don't like it- fine, don't wear it, but stop telling me about it!

I've also been finishing some things:

Yarn is Hedwig (mine). Pattern is Pulsation. LOVE them. Tons.

I finished this today. Pattern is the Honeymoon Cami from Knitty, altered a lot. Yarn is Eden Mardil (bamboo). I love it too, love the color and the drape. It's splitty though, but worth it. Ironically now that it's done, the temperatures here have dropped 25 degrees. High of 68 and rainy tomorrow.

These are for my friend Tammany's baby, that is due soon (and not soon enough for her!)

Those bloomers are a pattern I'm working on. That's another thing that's keeping me busy. It's late in the test knitting phase and I hope to have it available for you very soon.

Oh and speaking of wheels

That there is my friend Peg's wheel, a Reeves. It is beautiful. She thinks I'm borrowing it. I don't think I'm going to give it back. Wheel? What wheel?

It is such a wonderful time-suck. It's also one of the only things I can do with my kids around, surprisngly enough. And so there is lots of this:

Lots of it. I am having so much fun.

Sock Summit meltdown

2009-05-26T19:59:00.004-04:00

I have been ruminating over Sock Summit for months.

When I first found out about it I really wanted to be a vendor. REALLY wanted to. I thought, what better way to get my name out than at the ultimate sock event? I kept trying to figure out how the hell I would get my gobs of yarn out to Portland (WHY did they have it in Portland, anyway?).

After months of thinking and wishing I had to admit it wasn't really practical right now. Maybe Sock Summit II will be in the middle, or on the Eastern side of the country. Something I could drive to.

Then I pondered whether I could go. The class list and teachers were nothing short of awe inspiring. I wanted to go SO bad. I coveted it. I wished. I talked to husband about it, but he asked me how much it would cost, I estimated. I thought it might be a pipe dream. Also it's the week before school starts. I didn't think he could get the time off.

I am certain that I said (more than once) "I can't go... can I? I really want to go." To which he replied "yeah, I don't see how" and "probably not".

Today we had the following conversation on chat:

Me: registration for sock summit is going on
it's so not fair
Him: I saw.
Me: I want to go SO bad
Him: What would it take?
Me: um, well someone to watch the kids
and, like $7-800 at least
and I would have needed to register half an hour ago
Him: When is it?
Me: August 6-9
Him: Did it fill that quick?
Me: it's half sold out now, yes, it did
are you seriously telling me I should go?
because, I've been SAYING I wanted to go for like 6 fucking months
Him: I know and I haven't been saying you shouldn't...
Me: GAH!
I have no idea what that means
Him: I'm checking to see if anyone is taking time off then...
You're going nuts at home...
Maybe you need a break.

NOW he tells me! PANIC!

Nothing like trying to figure out what classes you want to take of the classes that are still open, when you haven't prepared at all, or looked at the email with instructions on how to register because you didn't think you could go, while classes are literally disappearing while you look at the screens, and when you're already having a really bad and indecisive day when you can't even decide whether to have cereal or toast for breakfast (and are so wishy washy you have neither).

My friend Janet talked me through my panic attack, and helped me figure out that I could register for whatever I could get now, even if I wasn't sure if I could go. The most I'm out is $10 a class. So, I did.

I ended up getting a class with Amy Singer (Making the Next Monkey) and Meg Swansen (Elizabeth Zimmermann's Wearable Art Stockings), and also apparently registering twice for Spindle Spinning Basics (with Abby Franquemont, who's son and my daughter are having a fiber fair romance). Just when I was giving up on getting anything, the Amy Singer class reappeared (sweet!). Same with Abby Franquemont.

So, I guess I'm going to Sock Summit!

I think.

Hear Me Roar

2009-05-23T12:02:00.003-04:00

So, you may recall my post from a few days ago, when my Pi shawl looked like this:

I'd decided that spring was here and it needed a gentle wash and re-blocking. Things were going great until a thread broke in the border. I believe Caitie actually broke it by jabbing the blocking wires into it too hard (no, that's not why she's in trouble).

After I'd finished the shawl last year I had an entire ball left (plus a few yards, which I can't find). So I'd passed it on to my friend Janet, who brought it over to me Friday afternoon so I could perform a little emergency surgery:

I pinned it all out first, to get a good look at the damage. Good light and steady hands are required.

One tiny broken thread, on a stretched out lace border. Really it could have been worse. It's merino, and single ply, so there's a fuzz to it, and it doesn't like to run to terribly far.

These pins are color coded. The ones in the top are marking the path of yarn in a place that isn't broken. The ones in the bottom are there for me to use as a guide to re-create the stitches that unraveled. First I wove the end of the new yarn in a good ways so it couldn't come loose. Then I started following the path that it was supposed to take, over this loop, under that one.

Behold!

I am awesome. I just performed miracle knitting surgery. Dude I rock.

That is unblocked, too. It's so good now I can't even find the spot where it was.

And now my shawl is all blocked and wonderful again. I am so amazed with my own ingenuity. Really.

Funny pictures to embarass my kids

2009-05-21T16:21:00.002-04:00

A contraption Molly has created to reach leaves in trees. She was climbing our fence to get to the neighbor's leaves (because she ran out of leaves in our yard), but after getting in trouble for that enough times, she made this. She drags it around the yard (which isn't small)

Sean making pickle faces.

And Caitie cutting the grass. With scissors.

She is 11. And in really big trouble. The reel mower misses some grass, so it's getting out of hand. I'm making her cut it by hand.

Fuck.

2009-05-20T13:41:00.001-04:00

Wrapping up the week

2009-03-16T08:18:00.004-04:00

So Thursday wasn't awful, although I was frazzled from the rest of the week which sucked. There was a lot of jostling of schedules and driving and kids. Rob working late and Caitie having dance class. I talked my mom into taking the girls to dance while I took Sean to knitting. Molly apparently had a freak out for no particular reason. Then when we all converged on the parking lot while the knitters were switching from Borders to Cheesecake Factory (a big improvement I might add - Asian Pear Martini's and blueberry white chocolate cheesecake is an excellent way to wash a bad week off of you), Sean slipped in the car and split his head open pretty good. It bled for a long time (as heads tend to do), and it almost needed a stitch, but the doctor said since it was in his hair it wouldn't be worth the trauma. Liquid band aid stuff to the rescue.

BUT- there was the shawl, and that was GOOD.

Pattern is Sweet Honeysuckle Wrap Yarn is Baby Twist. Pictures and words cannot fully represent the awesomeness of this stole.

Believe it or not, I followed the pattern pretty much.

I did 36 repeats instead of 40 (if I had done 40 it would have definitely required an extra ball of yarn). I didn't do a gauge swatch, since it's a stole and all, and my gauge is usually pretty average. This is quite a bit bigger than the pattern measurements call for (which is quite alright with me, it's the perfect size), and I added an extra eyelet to the border (yo, k2tog). That's it (that's practically nothing, right?)

Cutting it close

2009-03-16T07:42:00.008-04:00

So I know it sounded like that last post was my Friday the 13th, but actually, it was just Tuesday.

The rest of the week sucked too, but not as bad as Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday the kids had half days, and it got cold again (below freezing) after a few days of light jacket weather. I hate when that happens. It is clearly just mother nature faking you out.

Also, on Wednesday I found nits in my hair. Ugh. Molly sometimes uses my towel after taking a bath, so I assume that happened sometime over the weekend. And I really wrenched my back nit-combing Molly. So now I got to do it to myself too. Fun times. Also apparently lice treatment makes my hair curly.

Someone in the comments wanted to know if anyone in Molly's class had lice. No, not that we know of. The nurse checks the whole class. Basically no one we know has had lice but us. It must be something not here though. I can't understand it.

I got basically nothing done work wise. There was massive amounts of laundry. Really massive. And even when it was warm and lovely I couldn't hang it on the clothesline because it's the heat from the dryer that kills the eggs. There was whining and screaming and normal kid behavior, but more of it than normal because they were home instead of school.

Oh, and my favorite was when one of my friends told me that it was time to give the girls short hair cuts. I pointed out that it doesn't matter how long your hair is, and she said it's easier to keep it clean when it's short. I said it doesn't matter how *clean* it is. She keeps going on about "clean". Molly's hair is clean. MY hair is clean. Sheesh. She might as well have just said me and my kids are filthy slobs. Thanks. I kept trying to give her ways out of it and she kept making it worse. I swear, it doesn't matter how often you wash your hair. You can't wash lice out of your hair.

The only thing keeping me going for 2 days was the purple shawl.

I'd been working on it (almost) monogamously for about a week, and it should have been done on Tuesday.

I saw the sample of this stole at the Alpaca with a Twist open house last fall and fell in love with it. It's a Sharon Winsauer pattern called Sweet Honeysuckle Wrap. And was lovely. Soft, and drapy and wonderful.

So I was down the the second half of the border, and damn if I wasn't going to finish that thing. It was going to be the one good thing in my day.

When I had 1 long side left I started to become deeply concerned about the amount of yarn I had left. It should have been enough, because the pattern calls for 7 skeins of yarn, and 40 repeats of the lace pattern. I stopped at 36 repeats because it was already quite long.

When I got half way through the side I looked at my ball again and got really worried. I weighed the ball. 18g. I knit 1 point, and weighed the ball again. 17g. 17 points left. I knit 2 more points. 15g. ooo this is going to be close. I started to sweat it quite a lot. Also, I had a bit of beer (the border pattern is easy). I started knitting tighter. Trying to will the yarn to go further.

12:20 AM I made it. I had this much yarn left:

Damn that was close.

I had to stay up late to block it because I was determined to wear that baby to Thursday knit night. Sean woke up and came and snuggled with me for a bit before we went back to bed. He came out as I was finishing blocking. His comment: "Wow, Mommy, that sure is a skinny blanket."

Oh come ON

2009-03-13T07:55:00.005-04:00

Tuesday morning I drove Caitie across town for a doctor's appointment. It went fine, except that they were out of varicella so I will have to bring her back again. But things were still good. It was nice even, Rob was working the late shift this week so we got to go to the doctor without Sean.

Came home, Rob left. I did some housework, looked over my list of things to do this week, took Sean to school at 11:45. All pretty normal.

At 12:30 I get a call from school that Molly has lice. Again. For those of you who haven't been lucky enough to meet Molly, she's a very tall, very strong, usually sweet autistic 9 year old girl, who will scream bloody murder if you even think about brushing her hair. Nit combing is a nightmare. One I can't really find the words to describe. Bad. Awful.

So, I drive to school to pick her up, kind of with the vague hope that maybe the school nurse is wrong. Of course she was not. We didn't see any live lice, but a whole mess of nits in 1 spot.

I left her in the office so I could go talk to her teachers about it, because I can NOT figure out how she has them again. There must be one thing of hers that we didn't get cleaned. I don't know. Also, I am stalling, because I know I'm going to have to nit comb her by myself (Rob working the late shift and all). My stomach actually hurt from thinking about doing this to her again. If you've never had to deal with lice, the way you have to treat them is mechanical. You can get all kinds of stuff to put on your head, but it won't kill the eggs, only the live lice. You pretty much have to use this thing called a nit comb. It's a comb with very very fine teeth, so fine that it pulls your hair when you use it. So fine that if there's an egg glued to your hair, the comb will pull it off. You have to do it in tiny tiny sections and it takes forever.

While I'm standing in the hallway talking to them, Sean walks by with a teachers aid because he'd peed his pants. Oh, and the extra pair he's supposed to have in his backpack weren't there. And school doesn't have anything that will fit him.

SO, I take Molly, drive home, get pants, go back to school, and drop them off. I actually dropped off 3 pairs of pants - 1 for him to wear, 1 for him to put in his backpack, and 1 that's too small to keep in the nurse's office for back up. Then I take Molly to the store. And we have a conversation like this:

Me: Molly, is there anything you want?

Anything I could buy you that would get you to let me comb your hair?
Molly: nope

Me: Anything?

Molly: No! Don't comb me. I don't want to be combed. I want to be EX combed. NO MORE COMBING. You can't comb me.

Me: OK but we have to comb out the lice. I know that you aren't going to like it but we have to do it anyway. I *AM* going to comb you. Is there anything I can get you to make you feel better?

Molly: Nope. No combing. I don't want any combing.

Me: what if I buy you ice cream? You could have it when we're done.
(She *never* gets ice cream- this is a major bribe. Gluten free dairy free ice cream is hard to come by.)

Molly: Nope

Me: Chips? Candy? What about a movie?

Molly: Nope

Me: Video game? Toy?

Molly: Nope. You can't comb me. No combing. EX combing.

Me: *sigh*

So, I buy some skittles for her and some dark chocolate for me, and some sugar free gum for Caitie because I'm going to make her help me. I don't usually like using food for bribes, but desperate times...

I also spent this whole time trying to call Rob so the name of the stuff that was our other option (there are several kinds of lice treatment, and the most common one is also the one that is the most toxic and least likely to work, but I can't remember which the other ones are- I only remember that there were 2 that were ok, and we used one of them before). He's not answering his phone. *sigh*

I'm sure that none of the stuff at the first store is the stuff we want, so we leave and go to store number 2, which has nothing. Store number 3 has stuff I *think* is the other stuff we almost used but didn't the last time. They definitely don't have the stuff we used before. All through stores 2 and 3 Molly gets more and more pissed about the whole business and is now just yelling about EX combing. (Everything is EX something around here). Call Rob again. Nothing. So I buy it, and a giant squishy hairy ball thing that Molly likes, drag her to the car and race home so I can beat the bus.

Molly wants to watch Wall-E. We can't find it. It's no where in the house, I have no idea. We settle for Tinkerbell. I put the lice stuff in her hair, which she cries about, but not that bad really. It says wait 10 minutes. I waited 20. I got all the sheets and pillows and stuffed animals and hats and start the mountain of laundry. Sean peed his pants AGAIN. I got the Time Timer and set it for 15 minutes. Gave Caitie the bag of Skittles, with instructions to give Molly 3 every time the timer goes off. I work on Molly's hair. It takes 3 hours, with short breaks every 15 minutes. In between she screams and I comb her hair. At some point I ate a hot pocket because I hadn't gotten lunch yet. 45 minutes into it Tinkerbell stops working. We take it out, clean it, put it back, still stuck. We finally had to skip a big portion of the movie. It seemed like the last straw for Molly. Not ONLY is all this horrible combing going on, but now the movie is broken. Hysteria ensues. By the end I was holding her with my legs, and my back is all screwed up.

I have to just say here that Caitie was fantastic that day. She had a school project and she worked on it in between running in to hand me things or feed Molly Skittles, and didn't complain once. She helped get Sean dinner, washed dishes, helped me strip the beds and gather hair supplies for decontamination, and was generally helpful and awesome. So much so that I was starting to wonder who she was.

So, I had just enough time to wash the crap out of Molly's hair, put it into a pony tail, get her dressed, change MY clothes, and run over to my sister's house to drop Sean and Molly off so we can go to the middle school open house (Gah- I am not ready to be the mother of a middle schooler). I practically threw them out of the car. Turning a corner on the way out of their neighborhood I hit something. I really couldn't even figure out what the hell it was but it made a really loud noise. I look behind me, can't see anything. Look at my right side mirror, it's folded up, smashed, and dangling by a wire. Great. I look back and apparently I hit the door of a grey (invisible) mailbox, which was open and sticking straight out. The mailbox was completely fine. Mirror is screwed.

Middle school open house seemed to go ok. Nothing terrible went wrong. I made it back in a reasonable time. Brother in law had made them dinner so I let them eat. Sean said he wasn't hungry. Oh, and he peed his pants again while we were gone. (Seriously?! He's 6. This is pretty ridiculous.)

Molly's favorite thing to do at their house is throw stuff down the laundry chute. Pretty much just anything. Down the chute. I was trying to wrangle all our stuff together, and every time I turn around Molly is putting something down the chute again. I finally got them to go outside, and Molly fell in the driveway, ripped her pants, and cut her knee and was bleeding and crying. This is when I start to think someone is actually out to get me. We get it cleaned up, put a band aid on it, and as I'm driving away at 10 past bed time, Sean says "I'm hungry". gah! Srsly? No.

We get home and I start putting people to bed. There's a massive amount of stuff to do, house is seriously trashed. I let the sink water out from earlier, and all of the sudden I'm standing in a puddle of water. The joint under the sink came apart. Oh come ON. WTF world? I don't even HAVE any clean towels left in the house at this point. Everything under the sink is wet. I had to clean it up with clothes and put them back in the laundry pile, which is threatening to block the path from my kitchen to the bedrooms.

Last thing I did was have a very big drink and go put the needles back in that had came out of the shawl I was knitting. Srsly.

I blame daylight savings time.

Unbloggable

2009-03-09T18:38:00.008-04:00

I know- I know- I've been really quiet.

There was a week when I had some kind of plague. And days before and after when someone else in my household had it.

But mostly, it's because almost all of the stuff that I've been working on is Unbloggable. When you design patterns for potential publication anywhere they don't want you to tell anyone about it, especially not in print or on the internet. Which makes for some seriously boring blogging.

So I will just entertain you for now with what my kids have affectionately dubbed Mount Yarn.

I've been dyeing.

A lot.

Let me also introduce 2 new colorways. This one is Molly (because it is the perfect pink).

And this is Ruby Slippers.

Which is really hard to photograph.

These are both shown here on a new base yarn I've discovered: Panda Feet. It's 80% superwash merino and 20% bamboo. I'm wearing some socks right now in Molly and I *love* them. This is such a luxurious feeling yarn. Look for lots of it in the store in the next week or so. It's probably 60% of Mount Yarn. (the rest being old standbys).

Happy Birthday Sean

2009-02-14T12:32:00.004-05:00

I can hardly believe you're 6 years old.

You have the sunniest disposition of anyone I've ever met in my life, and you make everyone brighter who is lucky enough to know you.

You're awesome. And I love you.

Love and Seamonsters

2009-02-04T12:35:00.005-05:00

One of the answers to what is on my needles right now is this:

These are gloves (yes, gloves. Not fingerless gloves, not mittens, gloves), that I've been working on for a while.

The seed of the idea for these fell from a woman who attended our knit night a few times a few years ago. She had some stranded gloves made with handpainted yarn that were just gorgeous. I decided then that I was going to make some gloves.

I poked around looking at glove patterns. It didn't take me long to figure out I was going to have to make my own, because if I'm going to put that much time into something, I want them to be exactly how I want them.

I wanted them to be long(ish). I wanted them to be true fair isle, and I wanted the main colors to be purple. I wanted them to be subltle and colorful and beautiful.
If I had not ripped these back at all the first glove would be done already. I think I did the ribbing 4 times. I keep changing stitch count, colors, the thumb gusset was wrong. But, I loooove them more deeply than I've possibly ever loved another one of my knits.

BTW they're still not right. I don't like the colors in the center of the star. So I will most likely rip that back, but not until I figure out what to do.

Also, it's really hard to take a picture of your own hand.

They should probably be finished right about the time when the snow is melting.

One more thing to share, now that my swap partner has recieved her package, I can share. We were supposed to make something under the Care of Magical Creatures theme. I've wanted to try out this guy for a while, so here it is.

I made it out of 4 hanks of embroidery floss. If I were to make him again I would probably use something thinner/split the floss, and use a smaller hook (don't ask me what hook I used, I can't remember.)

The pattern is Seeungeheuer and can be found here, but it's in German. It comes with a chart, and I can offer the following for anyone who wants to try to make them.

Stabchen and St = American dc

halbes Stabchen and hSt = hdc

FM = sc

"Bogen aus LM entsprechund der Zahl" translates to "chain according to the number"

The words along the side of the tail translate to "continue to the head"

Also one more tip - start at the neck, work the body to the tail, then go back up to the head.

Socks Socks Everywhere

2009-01-30T12:42:00.007-05:00

A couple of people have told me that my recent blog post doesn't count, because it had no pictures, so, here are some pictures for you, stop yer whining. In this episode we will be traveling back to November.

Birthday socks for Rob. The yarn is Berocco Comfort Sock. They were going to be Christmas socks, but then one day when I already finished with the first sock, I was wearing some olive/grey socks I asked him if he liked the color (for future reference), and he said "I don't really like grey socks".

Doh!

I was unable to mask my reaction to this statement, so I gave it away and went ahead and showed him the sock of yarn that I'd specifically picked because I thought it was plain enough for him to wear, but interesting enough that I might actually knit it. He then proceded to backpedal beautifully, trying to convince me that he didn't know he could wear grey socks to work (uhhhh). And that *these* grey socks are VERY different from the other grey socks. I'm not totally convinced, but, he does wear them. I finished them on his birthday, just before Thanksgiving.

Tiny socks for the Reducio Sock Swap on Ravelry. Basically it's a Harry Potter swap, on a small scale. These are the only swaps I'm willing to commit to, because I'm so convinced I will knit fancy socks for someone recieve socks made from DK acrylic and 6 sizes too big (this has happened to people).

But reducio sock swap is awesome and fun and you get to play with things and you know if you never got a tiny sock? Wouldn't be the end of the world. The teeny one here is a stitch marker. It's knit on 0000 needles.

Horrible picture of Christmas socks for my mom, in a pattern of my own devising. They are binary cables, one says Left, and one says Right (my mom is a math teacher). Yarn is Patons Kroy.

This is where I began my love affair with Cat Bordhi and her new sock architecture.

I'd started first with the Coriolis sock, but I hadn't really given in. I made those socks top down, basically I just took her idea of the increases and put them in a regular sock. And then, you know, lost it. Still bitter about that.

But I'd decided to make the kids socks for Christmas, and kid sized socks seemed like a good way to try out her patterns all the way. Molly's, of course, had to be pink. These are Lion Brand Sock Ease, and they follow the Cedar architecture master pattern. I did that because I still wasn't convinced on the whole toe up thing, and that was one of the only patterns that is top down in her book. They look really freaking weird when they're not on her feet, but they fit fine, and she loves them, and I was all enamored of the heel stitches not ever being on a flap. It's wild. (BTW, I really like the yarn)

Next I had just 1 50g ball of Panda Silk to use for Caitie's socks, so toe up seemed like the answer. You'll have to imagine a picture of Caitie's socks here, because they are going to have to be secret for now. But they're really really cool and I love them, and Cat Bordhi was totally right about the math for figuring out where to start the heel (which has never worked out for me before and always ticks me off with toe up socks)

Sean said he wanted slippers instead of socks.

He chose some Patons Classic Merino (blue, naturally), and I made these slippers with the Upstream master pattern. He kept looking at me like I had a second head when I was making them, and once or twice came up to me and told me that um, Mommy, I think, you might, possibly, be making those a little too big.

Actually several of my knitting friends thought I might be a little wrong about the size of that sock too. And they were making me start to doubt myself. I was really not at all sure they would shrink enough.

Now he tells people I made them out of magic shrinking yarn. They're awesome.

This time I didn't have the size of DPNs that I wanted, so I did these with 2 circs.

I can't say that I'm TOTALLY convered to 2 circs, but I can definitely see the appeal in some cases.

(Insert bright flashy light and things disappearing and other things appearing)

Here's another reducio sock swap sock, Also Cat Bordhi-ized (Riverbed)

I didn't even need to open the book for the heel this time.

BTW, if you're thinking about this book, DO EET! It's on sale at Knitpicks right now.

One last sock-ish thing. These are Yoga socks, that I made to use on our new Wii Fit. I left out the 1x1 ribbing, didn't seem necessary.

The yarn is Karabella Aurora 8, which is really yummy, and I got it from a christmas swap, which is even better. (Thanks Gonzopants!)

Katie asked me what's on my needles.

I'd like to point out (for those of you reading in a blog reader) that Ravelry has this cool thing that lets you pull tickers from your raverly account and put them on your blog. If you're reading from my actually blog page, they're over there -------> (well and up some)

Or, you can just wait for me to get around to blogging about it, but you know how that goes...

So..

2009-01-27T17:25:00.003-05:00

I know. I have been a Very Bad Blogger (TM).

The problem is, the longer you go without blogging, the more behind you are, and the more pressure there is to make up for all of the time you didn't do it. And the more things you've done and the more pictures you have to edit. At some point it just becomes a death spiral and you have to give in.

One of my new year's resolutions was to start blogging again. I was going to start earlier in the month, but hey, I got it in in January, so that's something. And I have so very much going on/planned right now to tell you about.

SO, can we all just agree to move on from here as if there wasn't a giant gaping time warp in the blog? And I may, periodically, jump back in time and and blog about something that happened months ago.

It'll be just like LOST.

Well since you asked...

2008-10-31T19:53:00.004-04:00

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T14:39:00.003-04:00

Lost

2008-10-15T09:24:00.005-04:00

I made this beautiful sock. It my favorite sock. I loved it.

It was my first Better than Black sock yarn. It was sooo soft, wool and silk. It was a really cool Cat Bordhi pattern (Coriolis). It was knit on size 0 needles. It fit perfectly.

Then I made a second one, and when I got to the toe of the second one I went to find the first one to make them the same length and it is gone.

It's gone. I can't find it anywhere. I've trashed my house dumping things out, looking under furniture, looking through baskets of yarn and WIPS. It's not there.

I made several humiliating phone calls to movie theaters and Target stores asking if anyone found a lost sock. Nope.

I can't believe how upset I am about this sock. I was so excited to wear them. We still have no furnace and I was putting all my furnace energy into making my feet warm with those socks and now I'm left with 90% of a useless sock.

The only silver lining I can find is that Sean can always make me laugh. In all of his infinite, 5-year-old wisdom, he suggested "Mommy- you should go on knitting dot com, and type 'Mommy lost her sock' " Apparently that's what you do when you lose something.

So, well this isn't knitting.com. But -

Mommy lost her sock.

Obsessions

2008-10-07T17:31:00.006-04:00

So I know I took basically the whole month of September off. Mostly it was because I didn't think anyone was that interested in reading me whining on and on about our (gas) furnace, and how it exlodes a little bit when it's on (at least, it did last spring before we freaked out and turned it off), and how it's getting cold now and I'm freaking out about the furnace, and specifically the lack of funds in our bank accounts to pay for a new one. Anyone who knows me in real life knows that is pretty much all I talk about now. I'm sure it's starting to get pretty annoying, actually.

And there's my other obsession with dyeing yarn

and my obsession with making new colors and and how I can turn every conversation into a conversation about colors I have made or want to make.

And really this is all related to my trying to make enough money to pay for the furnace. (See it all comes back to the furnace). But also it's really easy to become obssessed with colors of yarn, I found out.

This is all my way of saying that Sheepy Time Yarns are now available in the store.

I've had a great deal of fun learning about dyes and colors and how to get the effect that I want. I've been dyeing for myself and for custom orders for years, but now my obsession has really gone over the edge.

More information about Sheepy Time yarns can be found here.

I hope you like them as much as I do.

Testing

2008-10-06T07:56:00.001-04:00

Hello.... ? Hello....?

*tap tap tap*

This thing on?

(Anyone still reading this thing? More regular posting, coming soon.)

Step Off

2008-08-31T12:42:00.003-04:00

Some questions have come up on one of my forums about how to get rid of that ugly little step you get when you bind off after knitting in the round.

There's a really simple solution that takes just a few seconds. It's hard to explain in words but in pictures it's pretty easy.

Here you are at the end of binding off, with 1 stitch left on the needle. Since knitting in the round is really making a spiral, you're left with 1 side a row higher than the other.

Instead of breaking the yarn and then pulling the tail of the yarn through the loop of the last stitch (an extra step that adds more yarn for no reason), simply lift the needle and pull the tail of the yarn out, so it's really only half a stitch.
Now you're left with this ugly step.

Thread the tail of your yarn onto a needle, and then pass the needle under the v that is formed from the *first* stitch in the bind off.

Close up picture after the yarn is pulled through.
Now put your needle back down into the center of the *last* stitch of the bind off. This is the same stitch you pulled the yarn out of above. Now you've made that into a whole stitch again, but it also goes under the first stitch.
So now it makes a pretty, continuous chain. You can't even tell where the round ends.
And, no more step. Voila!

Photo Finish!

2008-08-26T13:17:00.007-04:00

It was closer than a Michael Phelp's race

But I did manage to finish.

This afghan was started Wednesday night and finished Saturday morning at Panera with some other members of Team Indiana.

It's 4 strands of acrylic yarn, knit on size 35 needles. I hated it all Wednesday night, and most of Thursday, but then I got the swing of it late in the day and didn't mind quite as much the ginormous needles.

Also finished Saturday was this dragon. The soaker has been done for ages but that dragon was causing me problems.

By far my biggest Olympic challenge was doing all the pattern sizing for the Skirt Pattern up to girl's sizing.

There are some interesting problems with going from baby/toddler shaping to going to little girl shaping (mostly, that babies waists aren't that much smaller than their hips. It's a whole different ballgame when you're talking about size 12 girls.

I thought I was home free on Saturday when I just had the legs of the pants to do and a wee bit of math. But then I tripped and knit the cuff of the shorts in the main color and had to rip that out. And I tripped on the math a bit too, and had to go back and re-adjust.

I was having my husband type numbers on the laptop for me while I knit the last leg cuff, but we finished both right around 11:35 am on Sunday (the deadline being 11:59 am my time). Which was good because I had to get dressed and leave the house by noon. But anyway, I did it! 14 finished objects, and 1 pattern graded. I couldn't be happier.

While we were frantically trying to get out of the house I realized I have nothing left to knit. I have really only 2 WIPs, and neither are suitable for taking places. I cant' recall ever having so few projects.

Sean has been asking me to make him socks with the leftover Blackwatch yarn ever since I finished mine, so I started those. Apparently my children have concluded that the knitting of socks is an act of great love, so I think there's a bit of competition in there to make sure no one else has more socks. When these get done everyone will be even and then maybe I better just stop making socks for anyone.

Meanwhile... I'll leave you with this little hint of what else I've been working on the past few weeks...

Olympic Knits

2008-08-22T16:33:00.001-04:00

So I'd originally thought I'd follow the Yarn Harlot's suggestion for the summer Olympics and do a crochet project. I'm not nearly as much of a crocheter, but I thought it would be a challenge. And when I saw the Midsummer's Dream Camisole in Interweave Crochet a while back I thought I'd found my project.

But I also knew I had more half finished things than I was comfortable with. So I figured I could crochet and do some Works in Progress too. So I tagged my projects for Crochet and WIP Wrestling events on Ravelry. It wasn't until I realized I had 14 projects that I also signed myself up for Team Hopelessly Overcommitted.

Here's what I've done so far (in no particular order).

This one barely even counts. It needed sewing up and the ribbons sewn on, and it has been in that state for about a year. I have no excuse.

(Yarn is some kind of cotton, not dishcloth cotton, but the ballband is long gone.)

Here's another one that was really close to being done: a blanket for Project Linus that needed 2 rounds of border and a millions end woven in. But at least I did have to work on it for a few hours to call it done.

(Double stranded acrylic, double crocheted on an N-hook.)

I did the second Lorna's Laces sock, start to finish.
Molly's socks. These were part way through the first sock, so that was mostly a real project. She likes )

(Yarn is Katia Irina - very cool and sparkly, very splitty.)

Finished these 2 custom order Sheepy Pants shorts

Mosaic Moons BFL in rainbow. LOVE this yarn.
And this pair with hand-dyed yarn from Noes to Toes Knits on Hyena Cart, colorway "Aggie".

And this pair of longies that were down to the bottom of the top braid. Yarn is Noro Kureyon and Lamb's Pride.

These came out great, I'm so pleased with the color matching on the legs. A little extra work, but worth it.

This American Girl doll dress is a WIP from 2006. Really.

I ran out of yarn, couldn't really figure out what I thought of the skirt, which was weird, and finally decided to rip it out and start over. Basically the only thing I didn't do over was a few inches of bodice.
Speaking of running out of yarn....

I'd run out of yarn on these half way through the soaker part a while ago. Got some more but never got around to finishing this one. This was a pretty easy finisher, just 4-5 inches of soaker.

This skirt finally got a soaker too.

And on the subject of skirts...

Caitie's skirt design is done. I'm still working on the Designer Discus event, writing up the rest of the pattern. I'm taking the laptop to a coffee shop tomorrow morning and hope to get most of it done there.

All this means I have 11 projects done, and 3 left. It also means I am completely current on the blog now (yay!)

One project left is already knit and needs the (rather elaborate) embellishment finished. One is a huge afghan on huge needles which I started on Wednesday and is 3/4 done. And one is a custom order pair of Large shorts, which I started a few days ago and have barely gotten past the ribbing. Plus grading the rest of the skirt pattern.

I have less than 48 hours left. I am worried.

Q&A

2008-08-22T16:11:00.002-04:00

I know you all probably think I never read the comments since I am so bad at replying to them, but really, I do!

Critterknit (my number one commenter) asked (a long time ago):

How exactly do you harvest angora? Any chance you'll have angora yarn projects at some point?
You can either pull it out (which is easier than you'd think), or you can shave it off (which is faster). And yes! (Why do you think I let her have a rabbit?)

And also:
So how did the bunny like being shaved?
Hmm, well, not very much. But more than I expected her to, and she seemed to really like *being* shaved once it was done. It must be SO hot to wear an angora coat all the time. Speaking of which, it's almost time to do it again...

She also wanted to know where we were on the lake when I was working on the skirt pattern. That was Lake Wawasee, Indiana, a few hours north of us. Very nice place to visit :)

A couple people have asked about the American Girl doll sweater or Molly's sweater. That pattern will be written up and for sale eventually. It's not super high on my list, since it's a sleeveless shirt and it's fall. Definitely should be done by spring.

Other people have asked about the skirt pattern. The sized up version should be available in a week, or 2 at the most (I hope!).

Laurie commented that Caitie looked taller in her back to school pictures. Caitie is actually wearing her first pair of high heel shoes in that picture. Molly is still considerably taller despite being 2 years younger.

And yes, it was as cool going to Lettuce Knit as it sounds like it was :)

Mollys

2008-08-19T09:31:00.008-04:00

Here's one last entry that you should skip if you're not fond of pictures of kids on vacation...

Molly has been in love with Molly McIntire for about a year, since she discovered the books at the library. We finally found time to go to American Girl Place in Chicago and get her one last month.

The entire store experience is enchanting.

We found Molly!

Did you get the picture yet?

She didn't really get excited until Molly came out of her box.

I wish I could bottle that.

Then Molly had to go around and talk with all the other dolls.

After we got Molly (and a whole lot of other stuff), we went to have dinner at the cafe.

Molly didn't like it when they sang happy birthday, but *loved* the gluten and casein free cupcake.

Later we all took a carriage ride around Chicago.

On which Molly was not tired.

Next morning Molly and Molly got ready for breakfast. Finally time to break out the sweaters.

(By the way, the sweaters were finished in the nick of time. The doll version was still damp from blocking when we left and had to be laid out in the van to dry).

She really, really, REALLY did NOT want to go back to the American Girl Store for breakfast. We couldn't figure it out. She'd liked dinner.

Finally we realized she thought she would have to give Molly back.

Once she realized she got to keep her, it was good.

I think she had more fun at breakfast than dinner. Both were great, though.

After breakfast we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Molly told me several times that morning that she didn't want to go to the zoo, but I was sure she'd like it when we got there, so we went anyway.

She was right, she didn't want to go.

She had a little fun watching the otters, but mostly she didn't like the zoo at all.

Proof that Caitie is a monkey.

Molly wasn't *really* happy until we got to the beach.

But THAT?

That is sheer joy.

Randomness

2008-08-15T11:11:00.005-04:00

The week in between trips mostly centered around me finishing this in time for it to be worn in in Chicago.

And a little bit of working on this blue thing, which is so so so soft and yummy. (More about that later).

And also finishing up this custom order.
There was so much excess dye in these pants that it turned my hands blue every time I went to knit. You can see the exact way I hold my yarn.
So I had to rinse them out before I could do the embellishments, to make sure the blue didn't end up all over the other stuff.
This is how much dye came out the first time I dunked them. It was so blue that I saved the water.

Meanwhile I had to experiment with getting the right shade of green for a custom order dip dye.

Which I finally got.
I had so much dye left over from rinsing the pants and dipping the sack that I made this while I was waiting for the pants to dry.

Here's what I ended up with.

The seahorse is doing a nice job of filling in the weird spot where the yarn pooled on that leg.

And the back.

I'm rather proud of how these came out.

Next up... Chicago.

Finale

2008-08-14T12:39:00.006-04:00

The end of the vacation blog posting is near. And there's a little bit of knitting in it since this is a knitting blog after all.

(on and by the way, Laurie commented on yesterday's post that Caitie (10) is catching up to Molly (8). That would be because Caitie finally talked me into buying her shoes with heels. Take a look, you can see them. She's still quite a bit shorter :)

There was lots of camp stuff.
Rob and Caitie decided they had to make a bridge/dam across this stream. It was a big production.

Look how small it is here.

And now much wider it is here.
Ontario Place was a hit.
This is the blue slide, the top of which is supposed to provide a view of the nude beach on the Island. Caitie and I couldn't really see anything.

Caitie got to be in charge of her first campfire. It was a good one.
One of my favorite things about where we were was Teepee Steve.

He's a native who lives for the summer at this site right next to where we were at Glen Rouge, and does outreach education for kids. Several groups of kids came and went while we were there and when we were around they let our kids join in.

Steve took down one of his teepees and let our kids put it back up.
There were also groups of natives camping nearby who entertained us at night with really cool drumming and singing.

The fat ballsy racoons came back several times, but they didn't get anything else after the bacon.

In addition to the skirt I worked on around the campfire, I also knit the second of this pair of socks (Plymouth Sockotta, cotton blend, LOVE these)

and the first one of these (Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Blackwatch).

I also did a bit of work on a silk/bamboo blend tank that I am in love with but pretty much did not take out of the car because I did not want to hurt the pretty yarn.
So on the last day we drove from Toronto to Niagara Falls. And dude, Niagara Falls is cool.

I've been there before, but not in many years. It does not get old.

Ignore the hair. It's impossible to be near that much mist and not have huge insane hair. There are several pictures of me and this is the only one where my hair isn't sticking straight out to the sides like Pippi Longstocking.

This picture is from the Cave of the Winds, a tunnel where you can stand underneath the falls, which is a little... disturbing. And cool, at the same time.
There's also a tunnel that comes out next to the falls. It's a lot cooler than this. I was insanely paranoid about getting my camera wet. You just can't believe how much mist there is.

Here's the American falls from the Canadian side. Caitie thought that it would be a lot more dangerous to go over that side because of all the rocks.

Yeah. That would be why.

Do you see all the little yellow dots off to the right by the little skinny branch (called Bridal Veil) of the falls ? That is the Cave of the Winds, which I thought was the coolest thing there when I was there 25 years ago (oh man was it really 25?).
I still think it's the coolest thing.

We crossed over back to the states in the evening because we wanted to see the falls at night.

(Incidentally, it's really *really* hard to take pictures of moving water with lights on it in the dark. Being worried about your very expensive camera getting wet does not help.)

If you go up to the top level ("Hurricane Deck") you get ridiculously wet and blown around. I do not have any pictures of anyone doing that because, it's ridiculously wet.
This is the rocks Caitie was talking about, where I dropped my camera lens while trying desperately not to get the camera wet by keeping it in a plastic bag.
Totally worth it though.

We left Niagara falls for home around 10, planning on driving an hour or 2 to a hotel outside of tourist central and saving ourselves a little cash.

Unfortunately the only hotel we saw for several hours was $100, which we were sure we could beat, so we went on. When we got to Pennsylvania (just a little corner of it), we stopped again, but there were no rooms. We stopped at a second and third place, still no rooms. Someone told us there was something called the Roar on the Shore in Erie.

So ok, we drove on to Ohio. STILL no rooms. What the heck? We never did find out what was going on, but there were NO rooms anywhere. We had a AAA book and called dozens of hotels, all of them were full. We finally gave up at about 3 am and decided to drive straight through. Cause the kids were asleep the whole time and they were going to be up at 7am whether we stopped or not.

We stopped and slept for an hour or something or other at a truck stop before moving on. Who the heck knows when you're that tired. It sucked so bad. And I didn't get *any* knitting done in the car on the way home. Not one stitch.

We got home around 9 am as tired as I think I have ever been. It was worth it cause the trip rocked, but if I could have skipped the overnight driving, it woulda been better.

Interlude

2008-08-13T08:50:00.004-04:00

We interrupt this vacation retrospective to give you...

The First Day Of School.

(angels sing)

(It is not even 9 am and my house is already more organized than it has been in months).

We now return you to vacation blogging.

Yes, again.

2008-08-12T10:59:00.005-04:00

Did I mention that I took over 1000 pictures on this trip? That's what happens when you go on vacation with a new camera that takes really fast pictures. But there's actual knitting related stuff in this entry, at least.

We made a quick stop at the Purple Purl, which is a lovely little shop. I almost fell down and spent $60 on some pretty silk/linen, but I resisted, and got out spending a little less on some pretty lilac yarn that Caitie and I want to share.

Then we took the ferry to Center Island, which the kids loved.
Terrorist Fist Jab

The ferry, in addition to being really fun if you're a 5 year old boy, gives you a great view of Toronto.
We visited Franklin's Garden, which was concluded to be "lame".

I was sworn to never show this picture to any of Caitie's friends. Since I'm pretty sure none of her friends read my blog, I think I'm safe.
There was more beach (still cold).

It was a beautiful day.

Looking back through the pictures now I can see what happened.

Rob was taking this flattering picture of my back side, when Molly wandered off. She got really very lost, and what followed was a ridiculous chase with me and a guy who worked there who had a walkie talking running around from place to place and getting bits if information. Is she wearing pink shoes? Saw her running by the petting zoo. Someone saw a girl in a pink skirt running over the bridge. Apparently several people tried to ask her if she was lost, but she just looked at them blankly and ran away. Everywhere we ran to where they just saw her, but she wasn't there anymore. And I am not a good runner. Running = difficulty breathing. Not good.

I could totally envision her getting on the ferry by herself and was fairly well freaking out by the time someone else who worked there finally caught her and held on to her until we got there.

Dinner and a beer later, I was almost back to normal. The guy who chased her down with me ended up being our waiter, and he ended up dumping a tray of drinks all over himself, which was hilarious and totally made my day. He got a very big tip.

After dinner I went back to Lettuce Knit for knit night (Rob took the kids back to High Park).

It turned out to be Megan's baby shower, so there were a TON of people there. It was a little weird to crash her shower. Apparently it's a pretty regular occurence for someone from out of town to come on knit night. Stephanie sprayed me with some kind of miracle air conditioner stuff that she said was the best thing American's ever invented. I don't know if I would go *THAT* far. I mean there was that whole lightbulb thing. But it was pretty cool.

I sat in the back off to the left and boggled that a baby would be so loved as to recieve so many gorgeous hand knits. I thought about Kinnearing Stephanie, but decided it's not possible to pull off with my big new camera, a down side I had not foreseen. I had some nice conversations with several Toronto knitters whose names I completely couldn't remember when I got back and wanted to look them up in ravelry. If anyone knows who the maker of the Elizabeth Zimmermann longies and sweater were, let me know.

Rob came back around dusk with everyone and Caitie jumped out exclaiming "I want to meet the Yarn Harlot!" Stephanie was a very good sport about it (you get the feeling that probably happens to her a lot), and we had a nice chat about fun things to do in or around Toronto. Caitie was a little star struck. (So was I, really.) We mentioned we were going to Ontario Place the next day and Stephanie gave Caitie the tip that you can see the nude beach on the Island from the top of the blue slide.

Rob blinded us all with the strobe light on my camera before we had to take off. (See very pregnant Megan behind me?)

Caitie declared after we drove away "The Yarn Harlot is weird - but in a good way." That's really high praise from a 10 year old.

And this was about 3 minutes after we got on the road back to our camp site.

Toronto Again

2008-08-11T09:58:00.008-04:00

So, if pictures of kids on vacation bore or offend you, move along. Nothing to see here.

If not:

After Caitie and I left Lettuce Knit, we met up with everyone else at High Park. If you have kids, and you visit Toronto, you should totally visit High Park because it was very fun, and free. There is an adventure playground, designed and built by kids, that was really very cool and I don't know how I ended up with no pictures of it. When I asked Sean what his favorite part of the trip was, he said High Park.

There is also a small zoo, where we saw this peacock being cocky.

And this capybara, which was very exciting when we saw the sign. Last year Caitie did a school project on the rainforest and she learned a lot about capybaras, which are the largest rodents in the world.

All I could think of was that it was a real R.O.U.S.
There was also this animal. You might think it's a mountain goat, but it's actually a Barbary sheep. Basically it's a sheep without wool. What's the point of that?

High Park also has a big hill which is apparently really fun to run down.

And really hard not to wipe out when you do.
There were several races down and back up.
Molly learned the hard way and decided to take the long way down.

And here's the best thing about running up and down a huge hill all day.
There was even knitting.

Next day we went to the beach of Lake Ontario.

(which is cold, by the way)

But the sand was fun.

Toronto

2008-08-07T11:10:00.013-04:00

Let's pass over the fact that it's been so long since I've posted on the blog, and just be happy that I'm finally doing it. Vacations are great but they mess me up.

So we went to Toronto in July. It was a great trip.

The kids loved taking the train

But not the noise.
We took the train in to downtown and walked around the city checking things out.
We happened to walk in to this nice outdoor art/craft show in a park. I still don't think I know what the name of it was.

What I do know is it was the location of the Great Pants Incident of 2008.

Molly accidentally stepped into that water (which was clearly marked no wading but had tons of people walking around in it anyway).

Well Molly can not have wet clothes on. Can. Not. I honestly think it might be painful for her. There was much screaming, while I tried to come up with a plan. I rolled up the wet part. Didn't matter. I took her to a place with fewer people (which was hard, the place was *crowded*). We had no extra pants, and we were a good 30 minute walk and another 30 minute train ride away from dry pants. I couldn't find any pants that I could buy. I thought about having her switch pants with Caitie, but they wouldn't fit. I thought about putting Sean's extra shorts on her, but that didn't work.

Finally it occurred to me. Cut the stupid things off.

I don't know why it took so long to think of that.

After that we had a lovely day walking around Toronto.

We saw the CN tower, which we decided not to go up in once we realized how much it was going to cost. Apparently it's spectacular, and has a glass floor. But we didn't see it so I'll have to take other people's word for it. There aren't many views that are worth $140.

There was a mad dash to our train, up some stairs, came up on the wrong side, back down, around, up just as the train doors closed. Grrr.

So we waited an hour for the next train, and finally made it back to our camp site.

We stayed at Glen Rouge, which is in Toronto (but only barely). Our site was nice, except for the crazy French Canadians who parked their popup about a foot away from our shared water and the proceeded to set up their kitchen around and in front of the water so we basically couldn't get to it, and who's kids were swinging around 25 foot long poles.

It's not that I have anything against French Canadians in general. They seem to be perfectly pleasant people in general. I only mentioned it in this case because they didn't understand me at all when I said "Could we please get to our water?" or "Could you please stop your son from trying to decapitate mine?" There was a lot of smiling and waving.

Fortunately they only stayed for 2 nights.

Caitie found great trees to climb. She is a monkey at heart.
And there were some ballsy, fat racoons that actually came up and stole a pound of bacon out of our cooler that was sitting about 3 feet away from where I was sitting.

I know racoons can open coolers and will steal your food while you're asleep, but I've never seen one so completely unafraid of us. I chased them and they HISSED at me. OK, OK... you can have the bacon.

*grumble*

On Monday we drove back in to town and Rob dropped Caitie and me off so we could go to Lettuce Knit, which was seriously one of the things about the trip I was most excited about. Lettuce Knit is a knitting landmark.

I'd tried really hard to make it there on Sunday but it was too far to walk at our speed, and we just never managed to be in the right place to catch a street car (which is totally a trolley, but if you call it a trolley in Toronto they will look at you like they have no idea what language you are speaking).

So we made it finally and I learned how hard it is to take a sock picture.

I finally enlisted Caitie to hold the sock for me.

I was so overwhelmed by yarn fumes that I forgot to take a picture inside, but dude, it's tiny.

You see the door that you can see inside? That's as far back as the store goes. It's a really big closet. But there is so much yummy yarn in there. And Megan is really very nice, even when she's hugely pregnant (which I can NOT say about myself...).
There were even words of wisdom in the bathroom from Stephanie herself.

Too cool.
After that Caitie and I took the subway to catch up with the rest of the family. If you ask her she'll tell you the subway was one of her favorite things of the whole vacation. We probably could have saved ourselves a ton of money.

More later.

Completely unrelated to skirts....

2008-06-30T16:51:00.006-04:00

What's this? Another blog post?

Why yes, yes it is...

This is a custom order I just finished that I am particularly fond of.

And this is the new thing I'm making that I'm completely enchanted with.

It's a tank top for Molly and Molly. We're going to Chicago in July to get her, and This top will be just the thing.

Gauge is 4 stitches on the big one, and 7.5 on the small one. I'm having so much fun designing them. And now I'm into the solid part, just a little waist shaping for a while, so that should be quick work.

Oh, and one last thing...

We shaved the bunny a little while ago.

Angora fiber. Yum.