Still Life With Yarn

Crash

2011-12-07T15:03:00.008-05:00

Here I was, all ready to start blogging regularly again, and my computer crashed. Crashed hard. Crashed so hard that I almost stumped the nice Geeks on Call guy who helped recover most of the data on my hard drive. Have all my knitting patterns, all my pictures, but none of my emails (I think) and not my calendar. I still need to work on those to see if I can find that data.

As a result, new computer.

Thanksgiving was the usual. That weekend we went to Charlottesville so the T boys could compete in the Virginia State Cyclocross Championships. All of them did respectably well, given their competition (e.g. the 19 year old phenom in Sr. Jr.'s race, and the fact that he's now on the younger end of his competitive age range). We didn't realize that the Virginia/Virginia State game was that same weekend, so we avoided going downtown Saturday evening.

The holidays are approaching and I'm feeling really grinchy. I have no idea what to get anyone. The boys want video games that I won't let them play, or gadgets that they probably shouldn't have. Mr. T is terrible to shop for. He doesn't like stuff that one would normally think of getting for guys. All he wants is bike stuff, and I can't get him that. I default to getting him sweaters, but he really does not need anymore of those. And no, I'm not knitting him one. I knit him a hat and he barely tolerates wearing it, so I'm not putting all that energy into a sweater that will not be appreciated.

Mr. T's firm party is next week, and I have to make the annual trek to find a dress to wear. "Wear something you wore before," he says, and then wonders why I laugh.

I've been knitting and spinning, but not that much (time of year...) I'm working on spinning enough yarn for a sweater. Hopefully I can do this. The first skein is done and finished. The singles for the second skein are done, but not plied up. I need to finish the bobbin of other stuff that I'm spinning on my other wheel before I can do the plying. In the meantime, I've started spinning the singles for the third skein. The challenge is to try to spin the skeins so they match in gauge.

These may look familiar to you. They may remind you of the yarn I used to knit Mr. T's hat. It's from the same dyer, All Spun Up. I'm mulling over patterns and modifications to patterns, but I really have to wait until all the yarn is spun up and I know what gauge it will knit to before I make any decisions.

I'm also spinning these adorable Cupcake Fiber Co. sock batts:

I've finished two socks, and started their mates. (I do not know why the text has turned blue.)

That blue sock is the most recent installment of the Cookie A sock club. I'm trying to finish it up before December's package comes. Got a reprieve today, since it seems the pattern for December won't sent out until the 20th. Whew!

Finally, Pipit. I haven't knit it in a few days, but I'm having fun with it. You start at the center back and knit down to the wrist. Then you pick up stitches and knit toward the other wrist. Pick up some more stitches and knit a bit of a front neckline, then knit around and down. Hopefully I can have some pictures to show you soon.

Still Life!

2011-11-16T13:35:00.019-05:00

Yes, I'm still alive! I don't quite know what happened or why I haven't posted before now. I've certainly thought about it a lot, but never quite mustered the momentum to sit down and write. I will do it now, and hopefully it will make it easier for me to start posting regularly again.

I think part of the silence was that our summer was very nice. Who knew that a summer without a bar mitzvah, an international trip, deaths, broken bones, and family issues could be so nice? About halfway through the summer I noticed that I was in a good mood compared to the summer before. What a revelation! I did a lot of knitting, spinning, and running this summer.

It was just an ordinary summer. Sr. Jr. spent 2 weeks at cycling camp down in Charlottesville, which he LOVED. Two weeks with a bunch of kids who loved cycling as much as he did and professional and semi-professional riders and coaches. He was in heaven.

We spent July 4th weekend with my father and his wife, along with my brother, his girlfriend, and their dog to celebrate my father's 75th birthday. Again -- we had a surprisingly nice time. Travel to and from the Hamptons was shockingly unpainful. Everyone was pretty mellow and had fun.

We went back to Hilton Head again for our summer vacation. We rent a house pretty much on the beach and ride bikes, go for long walks, play golf, go fishing, spin, knit, relax.

The school year has started off well. Sr. Jr. seems to be adapting to his first year of high school very well. First quarter report cards are going to be mailed out tomorrow, but so far he knows he has straight As (although there's one grade he doesn't know about yet). He's not working too hard at it, either. Friends of mine who've had kids go through this high school have complained about how much homework their kids had and how hard they worked, but Sr. Jr. seems to manage it all just fine.

Jr. Jr. is in his last year of elementary school. When he starts middle school next year, I'm going to feel really old. On the other hand, I'm ready to be done with our elementary school, for many reasons. Mostly, I'm ready for Jr. Jr. to mature a little bit more. He's funny and smart and cute, but a little bit on the immature side. I think that changing schools and having more expected of him will help.

The big family news is that Sr. Jr. will be joining a junior elite bike racing team after the new year. Up until now, he's been riding with Mr. T's team, which is more like a club than a team. It's a great group of people, and they support each other very well, but each rider is really on his own as far as development and racing goes.

The new team is just for juniors, with a coach who puts all her efforts into developing junior cyclists into strong riders. She plans their training and their racing with an eye to getting them into big races and Nationals, and eventually to be noticed by professional teams.

I don't know how any of this will pan out for Sr. Jr., but he's talented and committed. I think just being on a team with other kids will be good for him.

But now we've reached the time of year when there's so much going on that I don't get enough time to knit or spin and get a little cranky. Hopefully it won't last too long.

(Jr. Jr. just got home, so I'm going to fast forward, and get to the pretty pictures)

Things I've knit and spin since my last, long-forgotten post:

Stripe Study shawl:

Variance Cowl (with handspun yarn):

Orange Pekoe socks (Cookie A sock club):

Calendula Socks (for Camp Loopy):

GUSH socks (yeah, bad pic):

Fat Cat Knits Esther (spinning):

Squoosh Polwarth (spinning)

Fat Cat Knits Spinach Souffle (spinning)

A shawl I named "Cranky Bones" because I was sick of knitting it (pattern name was Boneyard Shawl; knit for Camp Loopy)

Collins --

Southern Cross batt (Red Plum):

All Spun Up merino/alpaca fiber (love this -- currently spinning more of this for a sweater):

I took that yarn and knit a hat for Mr. T (Windschief), which has been deemed slightly too unboring for him and is modeled here by Sr. Jr.:

I finally finished Drifting! I'm not sure if I like it, and I still don't have any pictures of it on me:

Grave Clothes (Two if By Hand fiber, wish I'd spun it differently)

And last, but not least -- Space Invaders (fiber from Bee Mice Elf):

Sooo, that's what I've been up to for the last 5 months.

Coming soon (really, I promise) -- what I'm working on NOW :)

Rushing Through

2011-06-29T15:39:00.008-04:00

Been very busy lately. End of school, visits from in laws, etc. Leaving to go visit my family in a bit. Tomorrow is a party for my friend Marie, who's back from Germany for a quick visit.

Survived the end of school, barely. I can't believe Sr. Jr. will be in high school next year. And Jr. Jr. will be in 5th grade, almost out of elementary school! Yikes.

We missed Sr. Jr.'s promotion ceremony or whatever it was because he was off competing at Junior US Cycling Nationals! I think it was a real eye-opener for him. He only started road racing this year as a way to stay in shape for cyclocross season. But he did so well that he qualified for Nationals. Even though the competition took place the last week of school, all the academics were completed by then, so how could we say no?

He did great. He came in pretty middle of the pack over all, but was competing against kids with a lot more experience than he had. He's still a Cat 5 racer, and some of these kids were Cat 4 and Cat 3 racers. Some had been to Nationals before, so the whole experience wasn't new and intimidating to them. Among the other Cat 5 racers, he did pretty well.

Historically, Sr. Jr. has been known to get discouraged and give up on things if he isn't doing as well as he'd like. So I was a little worried that he would come home from Nats discouraged and ready to quit. But that hasn't happened. He wants to do more races, upgrade to Cat 4, keep training, and go back next year. I'm very proud of him for this; it's a sign of maturity. I hope it is, anyway.

And he appears to have grown another inch in the 5 days he was gone.

The crafty stuff has been hit or miss lately. Little bits get done, here and there. Socks get finished, but they don't necessarily match:

On the left: Cookie A sock club pattern "Orange Pekoe" in Hazel Knits Artisan sock "Oh My Darling." Love this pattern.

On the right: Yarnissima Mystery Sock KAL pattern "GUSH," in Wollmeise Twin, Lila Ludmilla. Also a great pattern.

I haven't even cast on for the second socks yet.

There was not a lot of spinning, just finished up one skein, that will hopefully be used for a Spin/Knitalong, if I have enough yardage:

Sanguine Gryphon Fiber Club installment 2, merino/cashmere/nylon, 2 ply.

I've been plugging away on the Camp Loopy shawl. Soooo sick of garter stitch. There are supposed to be 12 wedges of dark green, but I was running out of yarn, so I did the 12th wedge in the lighter color with the thin stripe of green. I think this will look neat, too.

Between knit-free trips and weeks with kids at home, I don't expect to get too much done other than bits here and there. Ah summertime.

Overload

2011-06-15T14:09:00.013-04:00

Ah, the end of the year. School functions and parties and finals and surprise visitors and Nationals and trips and and and brain explosions.

Last week was Jr. Jr.'s school's Colonial Day, which is a huge production that the kids and teachers work on for months. They turn the back yard of the school into a little Colonial Williamsburg, with the kids as the re-enactors. It's really cute. The kids learn so much more about colonial life from this approach than they would just by reading a textbook. The exhibits focus on all (non-political) aspects of colonial life, including agriculture, industry, schooling, music, and dance. The kids learn the Virginia Reel and a minuet, and then the parents get to dance with them too. I loved dancing with both my boys -- I think that was my favorite part of the event.

Jr. Jr. was part of the school display, and acted the part of the dunce:

He played with some Colonial games:

And I got an awesome picture of him NOT making any silly faces:

Back when Sr. Jr. did Colonial Day, they discussed how the colonists spun their own wool and cotton, but all they had was one broken spinning wheel. This year, they had actual spinning demonstrators there, and they were a huge hit. Every time I went by them, they were surrounded by kids who were fascinated by the wool and the wheel. The demonstrators gave them bits of wool and had them twist it up to show how twist makes the fiber stronger, and even let them treadle the wheels. It was great to see.

Parties and busy times over the weekend, but I did finally manage to ply up the yarn I'd been spinning:

Multicolored skein is FatCatKnits merino in Leafeater. Mini purple skein is BeeMiceElf merino in Thistle. The purple will be the heel and toe, the multi for the main body of the socks.

But I have to finish other socks before I can start those...

Like the Yarnissima mystery sock, for example. The third clue came out this morning so I quickly knit it up so I could see if my jiggering to make it fit would work (spoiler: it did):

I also abandoned the last Cookie A sock, the one I showed in my last post. I wasn't enjoying knitting it, I wasn't thrilled with the design, and the June installment showed up and wowed me, so I cast on for that:

And just in case all that wasn't enough knitting to do, I got sucked into Camp Loopy, a little knitalong/contest thing being run by The Loopy Ewe. The first project is supposed to be a two colored shawl or scarf, and I've wanted to knit a Stripe Study shawl for a while anyway, so...

Great! You think. She must be looking forward to having a lot of knitting time. Ha! I say. My mother-in-law arrives tomorrow for a long weekend visit. She'll have my sister-in-law and nephew with her. All of them stay here Thursday night, then my SIL and nephew head out to my father-in-law's for the rest of the weekend. Mr. T and the boys are going to spend all day Saturday at the US Open, so I was looking forward to having the whole day to knit and spin and enjoy some quiet, but now, not so much. (Did I mention that Friday's my birthday?)

Next week, Mr. T and Sr. Jr. head off to Augusta so that Sr. Jr. can compete in the Junior cycling national championships. I'm so excited for him! I'm bummed that I won't be there to see it, and I'm hoping that Mr. T gives me frequent updates (hint hint).

Not long after that, we head to New York for my father's 75th birthday. I'm tired just typing all this out!

Mood Indigo

2011-06-08T10:27:00.008-04:00

First there was the Time of Green. Then there was my Blue Period. Now, Mood Indigo. I seem to be moving around the rainbow.

One of our cats had surgery last week for bladder stones. Her recovery period hasn't been entirely smooth, so I've been preoccupied with her and haven't had as much time to knit or spin lately.

But I have been working, ever so slowly, on a bunch of (purplish) projects. This month's Cookie A sock club project hasn't been going very quickly. I knit up a bunch of it on the called-for needles but it was too tight, so I ripped it all out and started over on slightly larger ones. It's still a slow knit, however, and so this is all I've got in the week before the next pattern comes out:

It's about 3/4 of one leg. I already received the yarn for the next installment, so I need to get moving.

In the meantime, I started another sock, this one a mystery pattern from Yarnissima, who has some amazing sock designs. The first clue was for the toe:

Cute, huh? And very purple. It's Wollmeise in Lila Ludmilla. Yes, it's the same color as shown in the pattern. I swear on all that is fibery that I didn't set out to do the pattern in this color. I went down to my stash closet with two requirements -- that the yarn be Twin (with nylon) as opposed to 100% (no nylon) and that it be a solid or semi-solid color. This was the first skein I pulled out of the Wollmeise bags that fit both requirements.

The second clue was just published today, so I'll start on that soon.

And look at my spinning --

Purples and greens and yellows, oh my! The little purple bobbin on the side is the 1 ounce bit of purple that will be the heel and toe skein. I plied that up this morning after the photo shoot, but I don't know when I'll have the concentrated time needed to ply up that big bobbin.

And moving right along... now that I finished Mary Jane, I cast on for a new sweater. The pattern is Drifting, by Cecily Glowik-MacDonald, a light little cardi to throw on in summer if I need a little warmth:

Not pure purple, but definitely a purplish-red, no?

(The next color in the Cookie A club is orange. Bright orange. I do not foresee myself having an Orange Thing.)

It's a busy time of year, so the knitting and spinning will continue to slow down. We've got baseball playoffs, Colonial Day, end-of-year parties, visits from family, visits to family, etc. Sr. Jr. has Nationals coming up, too! I'm so excited for him, and sorry that I can't be there with them.

So I'll just pick up what I can and try to have fun things to show.

Summer

2011-05-29T10:42:00.008-04:00

"They" always call Memorial Day the "unofficial start of summer." I know there are a lot of places where school's out by Memorial Day, so for those kids, it really is their summer break. My kids have another month of school before they're out, however. The pool opens for weekends, but during the week they're trapped in school. By this point in the year they're not doing too much learning, either. Standardized testing ends and the remainder of the year is for easygoing review, fun projects, parties, and other end of the year stuff. They pack it full of stuff for parents to attend, too, just when we're frantically trying to get in all the appointments, errands, and other things we need or want to accomplish before the kids are out of school.

I suppose we'll hit the pool tomorrow, grill tomorrow night, and wonder where this whole year went. It's almost time for me to start crying about how I have a son going to high school next year.

Just in time for summer, I finished up Mary Jane, and had a chance to get Mr. T to take some pictures. I really like how this turned out. I modified the pattern a bit, eliminating the puff sleeves and elongating them until they hit just below the elbows. I also eliminated the line of yarnovers at the raglan increase lines, because I didn't want holes there. I raised the neckline about an inch and a half or so, put in a little waist shaping (which I don't think anyone can see, honestly), and cast on 4 stitches at each underarm for a little more movement in that area.

And now I have to put it away for a few months, damn it!

Specs: Pattern: Mary Jane, by Sarah Moore, available through Twist Collective. The yarn is Squoosh Fiberarts' Merino Cashmere Sport, in Oil Slick. For the locals, I hear that Fibre Space is now carrying Squoosh yarns. And I have a GC... hmmm... Anyway -- I think I used just over 4 skeins of yarn for this, including swatches. I knew it would grow, being a superwash yarn, so I accounted for that in my swatching, making sure to wash my swatches to get an accurate gauge. In the end, however, I threw the wet sweater in the dryer for a few minutes on low heat to keep it from growing too much. When it was mostly dry but still slightly damp, I laid it flat, patted it gently to shape, and let it dry. Perfect.

It's been busy here, so there really hasn't been any new knitting or spinning to share. I was hoping that there would be some time for that this weekend, but so far, no.

What I have been doing is summerizing -- getting the handknits washed and packed away for the summer. This is what my bathroom looks like right now:

You can't see it in that last pic, but there's a sweater soaking in a bin in the tub, too.

Yes, this is what I do with my holiday weekends, sigh.

Doo Dah Dipity

2011-05-27T10:39:00.007-04:00

(For some reason, that stupid car commercial with the rapping hamsters cracks me up.)

Serendipity: desirable discoveries made by accident.

Serendipity 3: restaurant in NYC that serves amazing ice cream concoctions. My parents used to take us there as a treat when we were kids. I still remember my shock when I heard my mother describe their frozen hot chocolate as "orgasmic." (A friend of mine once said of my mother, "Beneath her conservative exterior is a very uptight woman," so that will give you some idea of why I was so shocked, besides the fact that I was a teenager and this was my mother...)

I've been spinning up a new braid, slowly. There hasn't been that much time this week to do anything. But this one's very pretty. It's called Leafeater, a very pretty mixture of purples, greens, and grellows. It's merino and it's from FatCatKnits, whose braids I am rapidly becoming addicted to.

The standard bobbin shot. In this picture, you can see more of the colors in the braid:

I'm hoping to spin a nice stripey chain ply for socks.

Then I got my other spinner back from its tune-up, so I grabbed something to test it out and see if it was still doing the things that were annoying me (it is, not as bad, but it is). I went to my Collections Club from last month, because the one ounce braids are perfect for this kind of thing. There was a black and blue mixture that I liked, but I want to take care with it, so I passed on that one. Kelly green? Nah. Don't want that. The third one was a nice purple called "Thistle." I started spinning it.

I spun and spun and then realized that it's a very nice match for the Leafeater:

It matches the darkest purples perfectly. At first I thought I could ply them together, but I only have one ounce of the Thistle, compared to the 4 of Leafeater. So for now, I'm going to have one little purple skein to use for heels & toes with the Leafeater.

Doo. Dah. 'Dipity.

Look -- strawberry harvest:

The bunnies and chipmunks have been spending way too much time near my veggie/strawberry garden. They're cute and all, but they need to stay away from my goodies!

Mary Jane is finished, but I haven't had a chance to get anyone to take pictures for me, so that will come next. I've started a new sweater, Drifting, a summery cardi, but I don't have any good pics of that yet, either. So that's what's coming soon.

Hopefully, Memorial Day weekend will be relaxing for me, with time to knit and spin :)

Fine

2011-05-17T13:58:00.006-04:00

"How are you?"

"Fine."

"How are things going?"

"Fine."

Fine. I'm fine. Except when I'm not. I'm fine when I'm at Maryland Sheep and Wool, hanging out with friends. I'm fine when I'm with the family (mostly). I'm not fine when I'm at baseball games. I won't be fine at Colonial Day. Because those are times I spent with Mary. It's hard to be out there and not think of all the times we chatted our way through baseball games. It will be hard to go to Colonial Day and remember how we danced with our boys together, while her husband took video of us. I'm kind of glad that we won't be going to Sr. Jr.'s middle school graduation this year, because it would be very, very hard to watch her son go through this without her.

I think I will start to be fine after this season ends. But right now, it's memories and a whole whack of baseball games and bike races and errands and all sorts of stuff that's keeping me busy.

And not knitting so much. I'm finishing the sleeves on Mary Jane. I started and then frogged the new Cookie A club pattern, because I decided it needed a bigger needle. While I've cast on for that, I've only knit one row. Lame. There just hasn't been too much time.

I did ply up some yarn that I spun a little while back, and then I also spun up some quick singles, just to feel like I was accomplishing something.

This is the Spin A Long yarn from the CTA rav group:

It's Falkland wool from Fat Cat Knits, in the Henry colorway. I spun it up in one long single and chain plied it on itself for a nice, bouncy three ply yarn. It's extremely squishable. I love the Falkland from this dyer, but this particular skein doesn't please me too much. The single broke a couple of times while I was plying it, which is a real pain in the butt. But it's done and it's pretty.

This next skein is a combination of three different mini braids from the dyer Bee Mice Elf, coincidentally, also Falkland wool:

I took the three mini braids and spun them into one long single and chain-plied it up, intending to cut the finished hank into three smaller skeins, one of each colorway. I haven't done that yet, because it looks too cute as it is.

Then yesterday I took one of the Bullseye Bumps that I got at Maryland Sheep and Wool and spin a skein of rustic looking singles. It's a self-striping batt, with dark grey, lilac, silver, a darker lilac toned grey, a dark blue and a slightly lighter blue. I love how it turned out! Can't wait to find a good pattern for it.

And today I started spinning another Fat Cat Knits braid for a spin along in her Rav group. Hopefully I'll get Mary Jane finished soon, too. Knitting and spinning time is looking pretty scarce, however, so no promises.

Respite

2011-05-09T14:47:00.012-04:00

The past few months have been tough. A lot of stuff going on, not a lot of down time. Even weekends and school vacations haven't been relaxing. The weather sucked, too. Where was my Spring? Where was the sun? It was getting pretty depressing.

So this weekend was a big aaaaaah. The sun came out. The temps were lovely, in the low 70s. My garden is growing.

Look at how cute those strawberries are! The one little strawberry plant I put in last year has spread like mad, and we're going to have a ton of strawberries. Well, if the little critters don't eat them before we can get to them, that is. There's a chipmunk who hangs out in the garden and scampers away from me every morning when I go out to water. He's cute, but the little bugger better stay away from my fresh food!

On Saturday I took off and went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Last year, it was 95 degrees and unbearable for the Festival. We gave up shopping pretty quickly and just sat in the shade, chatting and knitting. This year, the weather was so beautiful that we didn't give up. While I bought some stuff from Sanguine Gryphon's booth (yay! I hope she gets to come back again), and Loop!, I really didn't buy much. I was happier hanging out with old knitting friends and new ones, too.

I got these cool Bullseye Batts from Loop!:

You spin them from the center out, and they make stripy yarn. I can't wait to give them a try.

I also got some of Sanguine Gryphon's new lace yarn, Mithril. It reminds me very much of Wollmeise lace, construction-wise, but in Gryphon's beautiful colorways.

So pretty. I have slightly too many things on the needles right now, otherwise, I'd be casting on to test out this yarn right away.

I did finish some socks. Not matching socks, mind you, but socks nonetheless.

Finished the first sock with my handspun. I love how this feels on my foot! I started the second sock and got through the heel turn over the weekend, so now it's smooth sailing until the end. Will work on it tomorrow at knitting group.

I finished the long-coming first sock in Yarntini's Don stripe:

I wanted to get this one finished not so I could start the second sock, but so I could free up the needles to start the second installment of Cookie A's sock club. The cuff of that is finished, but I'll wait until I have more knit to show pictures.

In spinning news, I have two bobbins of singles ready to be chain plied, but I haven't had the necessary block of time to sit down and do that. I'm NOT starting another new spinning project until all that plying is finished. I don't know when I'll be able to do that -- Wednesday maybe, or Thursday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After a nice day wandering around the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and a lovely dinner with the family, I didn't expect too much for Mother's Day itself. I couldn't decide whether to celebrate by spending time with the family, or by sending them all away so I could have time to myself. Ultimately, the wonderful weather did me in, and I made them take me to the National Botanic Gardens downtown. I thought for sure that two young boys would hate every moment walking through gardens and greenhouses, but they had fun!

We started out in the Rose garden out front and wandered around outside for a bit.

The roses were amazing. We then spent quite a bit of time in the main pavilion. We saw some incredible orchids:

And a mother duck and her ducklings (say it with me: awwwwwwww)

And a happy mom (no makeup, hair up, but happy mom):

And if ever there was a year to appreciate being here with my two boys, this is it.

Adrift

2011-04-29T09:54:00.006-04:00

For the second time this year, we've lost a friend. For the second time this year, that friend was mother to two sons, like me. This time it was a good friend, someone I was close with. I look at my boys, whom I love desperately, and want to hold on tight, smother them with love, so that if the worst happens, they'll be able to hold onto that. They, however, are at an age when that kind of motherly love is eeew, ick, geez Mom, leave me alone. Yeah, yeah, you love me, blah blah blah, get away you crazy old woman. Sigh.

So I took that yarn that I just finished spinning and started a shawl. No pattern, just whatever I want, whenever I want to put it in there.

So far there's an eyelet row, some seed stitch, and some double seed stitch. I don't know what I'll add next. I'm just going to knit until I run out of yarn.

I've been working on the handspun socks, too --

These feel amazing on my feet, so thick and soft. They're my waiting room knitting at the moment, so they're not going too quickly.

I've finished most of the knitting on Mary Jane. The body is done and the neckline finishing is done. I just need to knit the sleeves. I think I'm going to go with 3/4 length sleeves. When I tried the sweater on, it seemed too warm for short sleeves.

Current spinning is really just palate cleansing spinning, nothing major. I sent one of the spinners back for some tinkering. I'd hoped that with the two spinners, I could work on more than one spinning project at a time, but now I'm back to waiting. With spinning, as with knitting, there are so many projects that I want to do that it's hard to limit myself to one.

I have not cast on for Simplicity yet because I want to finish Mary Jane first.

Today, however, I work in the garden. Jr. Jr. is home sick, and I need to get my veggie plants in the ground. The strawberry plant I put in last year has spread and already has little berries growing:

My camera did NOT want to focus on those little pre-berries.

Off to weed and plant and take care of the sick kiddo.

Forest/Trees

2011-04-22T12:28:00.006-04:00

You know the old saying "You couldn't see the forest for the trees." The gist of it is that you get so focused on the little details that you miss the bigger picture.

Like when we get upset when Sr. Jr. seems to have issues handing in his homework, and we forget that he's a good kid, not getting in trouble and still managing to do well in school.

Like when I get cranky about not getting enough spinning and knitting time, when I've got just about the best life possible -- I get to stay home with my kids, we don't struggle with money, everyone's healthy, doing well in school, and enjoying all that childhood has to offer. (Well, I could really do without Mr. T's current state of work overload...)

Spinning is a real forest/trees exercise for me. When I spin, I'm so focused on the little bit of single I'm drafting, or the little span of yarn that I'm plying, that it's hard to step back and visualize what the finished yarn will look like and if it will turn out well.

It started this time with a braid called -- appropriately enough -- "Woodsy." It's a handpainted braid of variegated BFL from the dyer FatCatKnits:

I was a little concerned that all those reds and greens would look a little Christmassy. While I was spinning it, I was so focused on the single -- is it even? Am I being consistent? How is this going to ply up? Will it be clear or muddy?

I finished the two bobbins of singles and started plying. The questions started up again. Do I like how those two colors are barber poling together? Is it muddy? Is my plying even?

I held my breath as I wound the finished yarn into a skein. Just off the bobbin it looked wonderful! I plopped it into a bath for some finishing and hung it to dry.

All those trees, and finally a vision of the forest:

I love it! It's very slinky and pretty damn even. I need to find a good pattern to show it off.

I've been spinning more than knitting, but I'm almost done with the body of my Mary Jane sweater. I have one more patterning row, and then the ribbing. Then I'll do the neck treatment, see how much yarn I have left, assess how much patience I have left, and decide how long to make the sleeves.

I swatched for the next sweater I want to knit, but I haven't cast on yet, because I don't want the new sweater to push Mary Jane off to the side so she doesn't get finished.

Blue! My color trending continues. As you can see, I opted for the more dramatic multi over the safer semi-solid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had a lovely first night of Passover. Normally, since my family is so small and far-flung, and Mr. T's family isn't Jewish, we have seders for just the four of us. It's not nearly as fun as when I was a kid and all the cousins got together. But this year we had first night with friends. The evening was hosted by the Susan for whom I knit those Fiddlehead Mittens earlier this year. Her older son is one of Jr. Jr.'s best buddies. There were two other families there with more of Jr. Jr.'s friends, and a family from another school who we'd never met before. They were very nice, and had two girls slightly younger than Jr. Jr. I think there were 10 kids total, including poor Sr. Jr. who was by far the oldest "kid" there. Although he had no one to socialize with, he made the best of it as the littler kids attacked him and climbed all over him.

Everyone brought things, so the burden didn't fall too heavily on the hosts, and it was a really nice time.

A Nook of my Own

2011-04-14T12:56:00.006-04:00

I don't rate a whole room yet ;p

I don't have a dedicated crafting area in the house. Mr. T will tell you that the whole house is a dedicated crafting area, but I really felt like I needed a little area of my own. Most of my knitting is done on the couch in the family room, and that's fine. But I was spinning at the dining room table, and winding yarn on the breakfast bar of the kitchen counter. I wanted to free those areas of clutter and create a place where those activities could have a home.

So, a little re-jiggering and furniture moving, a new table and lamp, and here we are. This is a bump-out area in our bedroom, with a nice big window overlooking a gorgeous plum tree and some evergreens. There's just enough room for the table and another, smaller bedside table, perfect for spinning and winding yarn. All I need now is some pretty stuff on the wall and something like a little iHome or something so I can play music while I spin.

And yes, that's a new addition to my spinning collection on that table. It's a Hansen Mini-Spinner and I am totally in love with it. It's so well-crafted. Such a pleasure to spin with. I spun up an entire strip of my braid yesterday before I even knew it. It's so portable that I'm already planning to bring it with me when we go to Hilton Head this summer. Spinning by the pool!

No spinning today, unfortunately, since I spent the morning doing stuff around the house and waiting for a repairman. Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow.

And that blue thing on my table? The handspun squooshy sock.

Here she is, all moody and dramatic. She came with me to Westover Woolies on Tuesday, and she'll come with me to piano lessons today.

I'm closing in on the end of the Mary Jane sweater, so naturally I'm thinking of what to knit next. Even though I already have one laceweight sweater on the needles, I think I'm going to start another one. I need something lightweight that I can throw on during the summer, at a cold restaurant or on the beach... who knows? At first I was leaning toward the Featherweight Cardigan, but now I think I'm going to knit Simplicity. Color? Don't know. Part of me wants to use something dark and dramatic, but the sensible part of me thinks I should stick with something that will go with everything, given that it will be a utilitarian sweater.

Sr. Jr. says, "Don't go away!"

Something Blue

2011-04-11T15:11:00.006-04:00

Something old, something new, something borrowed...

Yesterday was our anniversary. 17 years. Time flies doesn't it? 17 years seems so long to me. I left for college shortly after I turned 17, so I've been married to Mr. T about as long as I lived full-time with my parents. We've been together for almost 21 years now. That's almost half my life! It seems unreal that we've been together that long. How did this happen? How did I get here? (This is not my beautiful house...)

I have no complaints. Well, very few. Well, no dealbreakers, anyway. Happy anniversary, love :)

What my life lacks at the moment (ok, always) is balance. Some aspect of my life is always suffering for the sake of something else. If I do A and B, then C suffers, and if I try to catch up on C, then A suffers. And so on. So I always feel like I'm failing in some aspect of what I want/need to do. I feel guilty about things I'm not accomplishing. This isn't a temporary thing, like when getting sick throws me off schedule. It's an ongoing issue. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to get all the parts moving at the same time, all the balls balanced effortlessly in the air.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've clearly entered my blue period. Knitting with blue, spinning blue. But no blue skies. Just how much rain and grey can Washington have, anyway?

Cute, huh? I like it, but I haven't been knitting on it as much as I could. I've been spinning more.

I had this:

which turned into this:

which I'm now knitting up into socks:

The fiber is an 70-20-10 MCN blend, the first installment of The Sanguine Gryphon fiber club. It was nice to spin, even with all the spinner trouble I have while doing it. I'm amazed the yarn came out as well as it did, given that I spent more of my energy fighting the spinner than I did making sure the yarn was turning out ok. It's very soft and squishy.

I wanted to get the socks started so I could knit on them tomorrow at our Westover Wooly meetup (Tracey - when school's out, you should join us! Sharon - I don't know if your schedule would permit, but you should see if you could come by, too.) It's very nice to have knitters and spinners to hang with in real life, too. I love meeting up with Rav folks when we can, but a regular get-together is nice to have.

I've been working on a little project for meeeeee, and it's almost done. Pictures to come.

In parental news, Sr. Jr. got a Gold Medal for his performance on the National Latin Exam. He was one of only two kids in Latin 1 in his school to get a GM. And Jr. Jr. got straight As yet again. Very proud!

Monochrome (but not Green)

2011-04-05T14:59:00.005-04:00

I don't know how it has happened that I've managed to keep my projects all in one color range. I'm not usually the type of person who cares about matchiness, nor am I the type of person to obsess over a particular color to the extent that I will only wear or work with it. I thought the green thing was a happenstance.

Perhaps I was wrong.

After finishing the green sweater and the pair of green socks, I cast on for another sweater. I even posted a teaser last time -- blue! I like blue. I don't love blue. Other than my jeans, I don't even wear too much blue. So a blue sweater might be a good thing. Fill a hole in the wardrobe. So I took the beautiful blue Squoosh yarn and cast on:

I'm a good four inches farther along now than when I took these photos. The pattern is Mary Jane, from Twist Collective. The yarn is Squoosh's Merino Cashmere Sport, in Oil Slick. This is another nice and quick pattern, although I'm making some modifications as I go (e.g., NO puff sleeves, please). The pattern calls for short sleeves, but I think how long my sleeves end up will be determined by 1) how much yarn I have; and 2) how ready I am to move on to another pattern.

Until recently, I didn't really see the point of short sleeved sweaters. If I'm cold enough to wear a sweater, then I'm cold enough to want sleeves. But I'm trying to be open-minded and try new things. Be fashion-forward, as they say. (If you knew me in real life, you'd laugh at the idea of me being fashion-anything.)

And after my frustrated spinning interlude last weekend, the interlude that produced the cute pink and green singles, I've gone back to the spinning project I was working on:

(One with flash, one without.) The return of the blue Bugga fiber. I love this fiber. And look, it's blue! I'm spinning three bobbins of singles, which I will then ply together, hopefully getting a nice, squooshy three-ply yarn that I can use for socks. I didn't do anything organized or scientific to get this ready or to spin it. I just took the length of fiber and divided it as evenly as I could into three pieces. I split each piece in half and then grab off chunks and spin as is, or sometimes, depending on my mood, I split those chunks in half again. There's no color progression that I'm trying to maintain or follow, so randomness is ok.

The fiber reminds me of a sky-study. It has bright blues for spring skies, deep dark summer blues, white for clouds and greys to grey-purples for rainy and stormy skies.

The spinner is still irking me. When I finish the third bobbin and get this plied up, the spinner is going back to the manufacturer for a check-up.

Soon the newest installment of the Cookie A sock club should arrive, and I'll laugh if it's blue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can't believe it's April already. Spring is really sneaking up on me.

(blossom from my plum tree)

Soon I'll blink and the school year will be over. They're going faster and faster as the boys get older. I'm sure there will be a lot of angst and depression this summer as Sr. Jr. gets ready for high school. I'm not ready to have him be so close to leaving the house! I suspect he's anxious about what high school holds in store for him. The gang from middle school is splitting up and there will be a whole new bunch of kids for him to meet and get to know. Some of them will be friends from elementary school, some will be entirely new.

He's definitely pulling away, adolescent-style. It makes me sad, even though I know it's necessary.

Ugh, if I'm this bad now, imagine how I'll be four years from now, when I'm crying about how my baby is going off to college?

One, Two, Many, Lots

2011-03-28T10:48:00.008-04:00

I have many things to show today.

Slipped Hours: done, blocked, dried, photograped:

Phew! It fits. I like it, too.

Specs: Pattern is Slipped Hours, by Gudrun Johnson. Yarn is Wollmeise Twin, color, Silberdistel. I used about 2.75 skeins. The main body of the sweater was knit on US 3s, the rolled neckline was knit on US 4s. I made a couple of modifications: I knit the hem in stockinette rather than reverse stockinette, eliminated the faux side-seam, added a little bit of waist shaping, and changed the neckline from a cowl to a short rolled neck. All in all, this was a great pattern and it knit up quickly.

Continuing in the theme of green, I finished the first intallment of Cookie A's sock club. I knit the first pattern, the Rippled Leaf socks, in the club yarn, a lovely skein of Caper Sock from String Theory.

And no photo shoot is complete without my little attention ho:

This was another fun pattern to knit, especially after so many months of knitting nothing but toe-up short-row heel plain old stripey socks. I can't remember the last time I knit socks from the top down, with a flap heel! The Caper sock is lovely -- very soft, but strong. I have a couple more skeins of this down in the stash. I'd like to knit the second sock club pattern, too, but April's installment is coming up soon, so I'll hold off.

I've been spinning too. I finished the first bobbin of the Bugga fiber and started the second, and that's where things went all pear-shaped. My spinner was acting up, rebelling, being a total pain in the ass. Spinning on it was Not Fun. I kept making all sorts of adjustments to try to get it back in line, but it was refusing. So even though I hate doing this, I took the bobbin in progress off the spinner.

I was pissed. I was really pissed. I was going to show that spinner a thing or two. I grabbed a clean bobbin, grabbed some random fiber, and started spinning. I wasn't spinning for accuracy; I wasn't spinning with a plan. I didn't care if the singles were even or what. I just cranked up the spinner to 11 and practically threw the fiber onto the bobbin. It was very cathartic. After a while, I looked at what I had on the bobbin and went, "Huh. I kind of like that."

I KNOW. It's green. That's kind of why I chose it. I figured I was so overloaded on green that if I was going to waste some fiber, green was the color to waste. But I liked! This was part of Bee Mice Elf's Fiber Collections, where you get 6 different 1-oz braids. Three are multicolored braids, and three are semi-solids to complement the multis. So the most I could waste was an ounce anyway.

So I spun some more.

Pink, blue, green... I feel like I mugged the Easter bunny. The blue fiber is the Bugga fiber that I was spinning when things went to crap.

But as I said, I liked! And then I looked over at those cute little Herdy mugs that I got last weekend. Looked back at my little fiber collection braids. Back at the Herdy mugs...

How cute is that? Total serendipity.

But wait! There's more!

Now that Slipped Hours is done, I started a new sweater.

It's not green! Paradigm shift. More to come...

Almost Done

2011-03-21T13:20:00.006-04:00

I seem to have lost last week. I didn't blog because I didn't have too much to show you. The weekend before was knit and spin free, unfortunately. So I worked my little fingers off during the week to try to get some stuff done.

I finished the main knitting on Slipped Hours, but couldn't decide how to handle the neck/collar. The pattern calls for a cowl, but I didn't like the way it looked. One of the finished projects that I like has a split collar, so that the collar lies flat instead of looking floppy. I took the sweater-in-progress with me to a Rav meet-up yesterday, where the consensus was that a plain old rolled neck would be best.

So that's what I did:

This was me, trying on the sweater before blocking, just to see if it would fit and if I would hate a snug sweater. I was pleasantly surprised. The sweater fits nicely, even before having a growth spurt when it hits the water. I like it a lot! I think if I had to knit it again, I'd start the slipped-stitch pattern an inch or two earlier. We'll see how it looks after blocking, but I think I'd like it better if the patterning started more definitively below my boobline.

Here's a blocking shot:

Believe it or not, this took less than three skeins of Wollmeise. Closer to 2.5, as a matter of fact.

I've also been spinning again, finally. I missed it and it's nice to be spinning again. My last spinning project was finished before Thanksgiving, and then with our guests, the early Chanukah, the holidays overall, the Venusian Spotted Death Fever Cold from January... I just never managed to get anything back on the wheel.

The color in the top photo is more accurate, but I like the close-up, too. The fiber is from The Sanguine Gryphon, the Bugga blend, so it's 70% merino, 20% cashmere, and 10% nylon. It's sooooo soft. I'm spinning a three ply yarn, hopefully for knitting socks.

We had quite a lot of fun at our Rav meet-up yesterday. We started out hanging out at Fibre Space, which was packed. It was really nice to see a yarn store so busy. I love that store. It has a nice selection of indie dyers, very nice staff, and a comfy knitting place. I didn't buy any yarn, but I did get...

Herdy mugs! (And a keychain, too) How cute are these? I've seen these around, but they haven't been available too widely in the US. But Fibre Space has them, so I couldn't resist.

So now I need to figure out which sweater to knit next... and with what yarn...

Cuffs

2011-03-08T12:54:00.006-05:00

So yesterday I knit two cuffs. One cuff was for a sock:

And one cuff was for a sleeve:

Cuffs are beginnings, right? So what about the stuff from last week? Oh, that! Finished some of that.

A sock:

And some close up:

Sock #1 of Pattern #1 of the first installment of Cookie A's sock club. The yarn is String Theory's Caper sock yarn, very soft and lovely. The pattern was perfect. There wasn't a moment of confusion or an error or anything amiss. The sock feels great on my foot.

The next installment of her club isn't until April, so I'm debating whether to take another skein of Caper from my stash to knit the other pattern to keep me busy until the next package arrives. We'll see. My sock queue is long.

And the cuff? Well, I finished the first sleeve for Slipped Hours and attached it to the body of the sweater:

For a fingering weight sweater, this is going very quickly! I'm sure I'll bog down a bit once I get the second sleeve finished and attached, because then each round will be really long. But it will get smaller as it goes up and the sleeve shaping progresses.

Green... so much green... I think I pull out the green every year at this time, looking for something to spur Spring's arrival. At our Westover Woolies meetup this morning, almost all of use were knitting with green in some form or another.

Watch for me to flip out and scream "NO MORE GREEN!!!" in a couple of weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jr. Jr.'s basketball team cruised into the second round of the playoffs this weekend with a rousing first-round victory. Unfortunately, they couldn't keep the momentum going and lost in the second round. Tears all around. Nonetheless, they had a great season. They were so much better than they were last year, with excellent teamwork and admirable sportsmanship. And most of them will reassemble this weekend on the baseball diamond! Not even a weekend off.

I'm a little upset about some stuff that's happening with the local schools. Crowding has been a growing issue in our county for a number of years, but the School Board has for the most part punted on the issue every time it's come up. They've tinkered a bit, moved a planning unit or two from one school to another, rearranged some programs, but they haven't taken any steps to address the big picture. For years, many of us have been telling them that the increase in school population isn't a blip or an outlier, but a trend. We look around our neighborhoods, see all the young families moving in with preschoolers, see all the infill development and realize that we're nearly bursting at the seams with young kids.

Now the school board realizes that it has a problem. Almost every school in the county, elementary, middle, and high included, will be over capacity in a couple of years. Many of these schools were recently renovated as well. The county cannot afford to build new schools. I'm not even sure if they have the land to build new schools. I don't even think they have any buildings (like community centers, for example) that could effectively be re-purposed as schools.

Up until now this hasn't been too much of an issue. We get trailers, we turn the computer lab mobile with laptops, we double up on PE. Class sizes have increased slightly, but not too alarmingly.

However, I found out recently that the fifth graders at Jr. Jr.'s school no longer take weekly trips to the library to get new reading material. I think that there just isn't time to schedule weekly library time for all the classes at the school. So instead of coming up with a solution that allows all the kids to get library time -- for example, by having the fourth and fifth grades alternate weeks -- they've just eliminated it for the fifth grade. (We won't even go into how the school didn't tell the parents that this was happening...)

One of the primary missions of elementary schools is to get kids reading and foster in them a love of reading. Eliminating library time undermines this goal, to put it mildly, and makes me wonder what will be taken away from the kids next.

Fields of Green

2011-03-02T09:59:00.004-05:00

I haven't posted until now because there's only so much green stockinette I can show you. Boring.

But switching to bigger yarn (sock weight!) on bigger needles (size 3!!) made for some quicker knitting.

This is Slipped Hours finished up to the armhole bindoffs. Amazingly, this is about 1 1/5 skeins of yarn. Now I'm instructed to set aside the body and knit the sleeves. Then I attach the sleeves to the body and finish it off.

The design calls for sleeves that just cover the elbows, so that shouldn't take too long. But I'm not sure I like that length. Do I want actual long sleeves? Three-quarter length sleeves? Sleeves as written? I haven't quite decided. If you have opinions, please comment and let me know.

Given that I'm waffling on sleeve design, I turned to my Ripple Leaf socks to distract me. This pattern is one of the two in the first installment of Cookie A's sock club. At this point I've knit the whole leg and I'm partway through the heel flap, so the sock should be done soon.

I spent so much time knitting plain old stripey socks recently that it's nice to knit a patterned sock again! As luck would have it, I cast on using needles slightly larger than those called for in the pattern. I think I'm using 2.5 mm needles instead of 2.25 mm needles. This turns out to have been a lucky break, because the pattern is not very stretchy, and somewhat difficult to get over my heel/ankle area. Once it's on, it fits perfectly, but the fabric doesn't have too much give. If I'd knit it on the called-for needles, I don't think I could get them on. But I certainly couldn't knit the next size up, which would end up being too big on me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can't believe it's March already. This year has flown by. It's incomprehensible to me that I will have a son in High School next year. His baby years are still so vivid to me! I remember holding him, nursing him, singing to him and playing with him. I remember him sitting in my lap, with one of those word books open in front of us. He would grab my pointer finger and jab at the words, giggling and soaking up language like a sponge. And now he grunts and snarls and tells dirty jokes. I can't fathom sending him off to college in only four more years. I just got him!

Spring also means the transition from basketball to baseball and biking. This weekend Jr. Jr's basketball playoffs continue. His team won their first playoff game in a rout. Their next opponent will be tougher. I think they lost to this team by one point when they played them a few weeks ago. If they win, they go to the finals on Saturday, to play the only team that beat them handily this year. They've improved so much since last year! However, I'm most proud of them for their sportsmanship, team play, and demeanor during games. They play clean, they don't get angry or emotional, and they really play like a team. Such a good group of kids :)

It Ain't Easy Being Green: Variations on a Theme

2011-02-20T19:21:00.006-05:00

My January finish-fest left me with very little on the needles, so I've slowly been building up my WIP stash.

I started out by casting on for a new version of Paper Crane, this one converted to a pullover:

Looks like my hands could use some moisturizer. More lace, more tiny needles. This one IS going faster than the last because I'm knitting it in the round. The knitting is going smoothly and happily, but I thought I ought to have something else to knit, something that's not laceweight on size 2 needles.

So what do I do? I cast on for another sweater:

This is Wollmeise sock, on size 3 needles. Vastly different that Wollmeise lace on 2s. Not. It's even green. (The colorway is Silberdistel, which I love.) The pattern, by the way, is called Slipped Hours. I'm a little afraid of this one, because I generally don't like my sweaters too fitted. But I like how this looks on the people who've knit it. I should try to lose weight before this is done.

Sooooo, two sweaters, both green, both on small needles. Variation! I need variation! As luck would have it, I joined Cookie A's sock club, and the first installment arrived last week. This is a fantastic club. Cookie is an amazing sock designer, one of my favorites. The club consists of 2 patterns and 2 recipes, plus a skein of yarn in each installment. I think I read originally that one of the sock patterns would be easier than the other, Cookie's socks normally being fairly complicated. I don't think this is the case with this installment. Both patterns are gorgeous.

So, hey! Complicated sock versus lots of stockinette... yeah, that's the ticket. I cast on.

Yup. Green. Size 1 needles.

After this, I'll probably go on a worsted and bulky weight tear.

Personal History + a Recipe

2011-02-14T14:18:00.005-05:00

This weekend I attended a friend's bat mitzvah. I knew that C had converted years ago, and she's a very active member of our temple. So I was thrilled to be able to share the day with her and her family. What I didn't know, as I walked into the temple this weekend, was that she was one of a group of 16 adult congregation members who were being bar/bat mitzvahed this weekend.

Now I am not a religious person at all. But I was really moved by this group of men and women and the histories that led them to the bimah this weekend. Some, like C, had converted, either when they got married or just on their own. A couple of people had been raised Jewish, but decided not to have a bar or bat mitzvah at the traditional age of 13. Now, as adults, they were returning to that part of their life. One woman talked about how World War II prevented her from having her bat mitzvah, and dedicated her accomplishment to all the Jewish boys and girls who perished in the Holocaust. One woman was raised in a Conservative tradition, which at the time didn't allow girls to be bat mitzvahed.

Some of the group were learning Hebrew and studying Torah along with their children. Others were doing it as an example to their children. But all of them were there because they chose to be there. They pursued this goal, studying and learning while raising children, working full-time, and doing all the rest of the things that we do in our busy lives.

Most bar and bat mitzvahs are fun. But it was so much different when the person on the bimah is there because they chose to be there, as opposed to because mom and dad are making them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A little bit of knitting :) Paper Crane II moves along, slowly but steadily:

Hopefully this one won't take me 6 months. Because I'm making this one a pullover, I am knitting the bottom portion in the round. So far I think this makes it go faster.

My waiting room sock progresses as well:

(Yarntini MCN sock, "Don Stripe" from the Mad Men collection)

I need to cast on for another sweater, just for a change of pace from all the tiny yarns on tiny needles. I have not identified what that will be yet. I honestly haven't had that much time to focus lately.

So Happy Monday, Happy Valentine's Day, and Congratulations to Jess, Kippi's lovely daughter, who is getting married today! May she and her love have a long and happy life together, filled with love and laughter.

A little Valentine's treat for you all -- a recipe I cooked up this weekend when I was drafted into making scones for Jr. Jr.'s class Valentine's Tea.

Kid-friendly Chocolate Chip Scones

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

4 cups of all-purpose flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
8 tbs (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup of chocolate chips

Whisk the dry ingredients together. With your fingers, crumble the brown sugar into the flour mixture to distribute it evenly.

Cut in the flour until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add chocolate chips and mix. Pour in milk and vanilla, mix until the dough just comes together. My dough was wetter than my normal scone dough, but this is fine.

Drop roughly 1/4 cup of dough per scone onto parchment-lined cookie sheets and bake for about 8 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets for about 2 minutes, then move to a rack.

Not a single scone was left after the kids got at them, seconds and all.

Watching History

2011-02-11T16:32:00.006-05:00

I've been glued to television coverage of the revolution in Egypt this week. It's amazing watching people come together, rise up, and, with nothing more than their voices and their will, topple a dictator. Who knows what will come next. I hope that it's some form of self-determination, rather than another oppressor. I will watch, and hope for the best.

Life is good here:

How can it not be?

I finished my second Annis. This one's for me:

You get good bang for your buck with this pattern -- it's fast, it's enjoyable, it looks great. I've shied away from using multi-color yarns in lace before, because often the colors obscure the lace. I picked this color (Agatha dark, Wollmeise) because I thought it would be tonal enough to provide some color interest without looking like barf. I think it worked. I hope so, anyway.

I love the scarf/shawl hybrid because they're lacy enough to provide interest without being so lacy that I feel conspicuous wearing them. I'd go ahead and knit another Annis, but I'm sick of nupps for the moment. I have other patterns like this to try out, so look for one coming up.

Now that the Annis is done, I've picked up the second Paper Crane. Because I'm making this one a pullover, I can just go ahead and knit that bottom section in the round. I think it will go much faster... as fast as a laceweight sweater on size 2 needles can go, anyway. I've got three-quarters of an inch so far. I'm rocking and rolling, aren't I?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the things that has been brewing here in our little corner of the world for a few years has to do with crowding in the schools. Back when Sr. Jr. was in 1st grade, there was a big fight over re-drawing the boundaries in the schools. Our elementary school was overcrowded, and it seemed like rejiggering the boundaries might solve that. No one wanted that, there was a big stink, and ultimately nothing much was done.

A couple of blocks away from us was a building that used to be an elementary school. Now it's being used to house the teacher day-care facilities, the teen pregnancy program, and a couple of other things. The plan was to rebuild and renovate that building, and some of us suggested turning it back into an elementary school. We argued that it was clear that the school-age population was growing and the county would need to deal with it. The county didn't agree. "It's just a blip," they said. "A momentary bulge in the school-age population." We looked around us, at all the young families moving in and having babies, twins, even, and wondered what county officials were smoking. The county seemed to have no clue, no matter what people tried to tell them.

Now, all these years and several additional overcrowding fights later, the county has come to realize that it has a wee problem. Now, almost ALL the schools in the county are at or above capacity, with, again, almost ALL of them projected to be significantly overcrowded in another year or two. Our elementary school will be at nearly 150% of capacity soon, even after cramming classrooms in wherever they could, creating a mobile computer lab, adding trailers (oh, excuse me, relocatables), and more. *

The PTA has announced that the only thing we can do for our school at this point is add another trailer, but because of space constraints, the trailer that will be added for the 2011-12 school year will have to be on the blacktop. Yes -- on the playground. Sooooo, where will the kids play? How will the poor kids in the blacktop trailer be able to concentrate with the noise of kids playing right outside? This is ridiculous.

The problem is that it's now almost too late to do anything about this. Changing school boundaries won't make a difference, because there's nowhere to move the kids to -- all the schools are overfull. It's a bit late to think about new construction. Many of the county buildings that used to be schools are really too old, small, and out-of-date to be repurposed.

And what about the middle and high schools? All of the high schools were just renovated (some are still under construction!), and they're already over capacity.

Long-range planning and thinking -- Arlington does not have it.

* Most distressing were the comments on a local online article about this situation. Many people were blaming the crowding situation on illegal immigration. Arlington has traditionally been immigrant-friendly, but lately they've sold off some low-income properties to developers, reducing the availability of low-income housing. In fact, census figures show that in all of Northern Virginia, Arlington is the only county that saw a decrease in its non-caucasian population.

667

2011-02-04T14:23:00.006-05:00

The downside of my January finishing spree is that I was left with no projects to work on. Yeah, I cast on for a pair of plain old socks, but plain old socks just don't really satisfy that knitting urge. I had several different sweaters on my to-do list, so I broke out the needles and the yarns and started swatching. Failed to get gauge, or even close to it. Broke out some different yarns and swatched some more. Failed again. The sweaters that I want to knit are similar to Paper Crane in that they are knit in two different directions, which means that both row and stitch gauge are pretty important. No fudging allowed, at least not without some actual math taking place. I'm not averse to doing the math. I like math. I'm teaching my older son math (intensified algebra even), since his teacher isn't quite doing it. But I really wanted to be able to dive into a new project without having to do too much mental gymnastics first.

So I decided to play around with my the laceweight yarn that I had left over from Paper Crane. I knit some swatches with it doubled, to see what kind of gauge and fabric I got. I like. When my swatches are dry, I'll post the results.

This made me remember that I wanted to knit another Paper Crane, but in a pullover version. Yes, I know this just confirms my crazy. But I like the laceweight sweater. It's perfect for those transitional times in Fall and Spring when a full-on sweater is too heavy, but a long-sleeved t-shirt isn't nice enough. So I broke out another skein of laceweight (color: Spinaci) and cast on:

Then I took some pictures of the Annis shawl I made for my friend, now that it's dry and the sun is out:

It's so pretty! And it was a pretty fast and easy project. My grab-it-and-go scarf tore, and I need a new scarf. So...

I cast on one for myself. It's a crappy picture, I know. The yarn is Wollmeise, again, and the colorway is Agatha, the dark version, which is a mix of black, dark blue, and dark red.

Between the shawl and the sweater, I spent the day casting on 667 stitches.

I am crazy.

The Grande Finale (of January, not the Blog)

2011-01-31T12:54:00.006-05:00

So... knitting first or navel gazing first? I think I'll do the knitting first, so that people who click over here from Ravelry don't have to indulge my neuroses.

January has been a great month for churning out the finished objects. Many of them were already in progress on January 1st, but not all. So far this year I've finished off 2 sweaters (Paper Crane and Dark and Stormy), one pair of colorwork mittens (Fiddleheads), two pairs of socks (Event Horizon and Ember, below), and one lace shawl, Annis, also below. That's an impressive list, even if I do say so myself!

The Ember socks are the final pair I knit for the stripey sock KAL on Ravelry. The yarn is, once again, Playful by Twisted Fiber Art, one of my favorites:

The stripes on the socks don't match, but I don't care. Interestingly, one foot has four of the dark stripes, and the other one has three, but by serendipity, both socks reached the point where I needed to start the heel right at the point in the orange stripe that matched the heel and toe yarn I had. I love this yarn so much -- the colors are amazing. Even colors I don't normally like, like orange, manage to fascinate me in Twisted yarn. The base makes a really warm and cushy sock that knits up quickly enough to be satisfying without making an overly thick sock.

My final FO of the month is another gift. A friend of mine is having her bat mitzvah in a couple of weeks. She's already hosted her daughter's bat mitzvah, and has another three years before her son's. Even though she converted years ago, now is the time she gets to fulfill that goal.

I thought back to the gifts I got when I was bat mitzvah'd and the gifts that Sr. Jr. got this summer and realized that a grown woman does not need pen and pencil sets, iTunes gift cards, luggage, contributions to her college fund, or shiney satin stuffed animals. All her hard work and dedication deserves something special, something just for her.

I knew exactly which yarn to use -- Wollmeise's Hortensie, a blue/purple colorway like Hydrangeas. C has dark red hair and gorgeous blue eyes, so this yarn will look fabulous on her.

I looked about for an appropriate pattern. I needed something pretty, but not too lacy. I settled on Annis, from Knitty last spring. I cast on 363 stitches and hoped that I could finish it in time.

6 days later...

The pattern was very nice to knit, notwithstanding the initial 363 stitch row! I want to knit one for myself now, too.

And now I really don't have anything on the needles. No socks, no sweaters. I have one shawl I'm knitting with my handspun, but I'm not sure if I like that pattern. I may rip it and turn it into an Annis.

I also plan to knit another Paper Crane, but in a pullover version. So yes, I'm just confirming how crazy I am by knitting another laceweight sweater on teeny tiny needles.

________________________________________

Ok, the navel-gazing section.

I never thought parenting would be easy, but I also never expected how much I would second-guess myself and how much I would wonder whether I were doing the right thing. I suppose I should have, given that I do that in the rest of my life, but I didn't.

An older colleague of mine once said that she laughed at all the women who thought that being home with their kids when they were two years old was so important, because in her experience, it wasn't until the kids hit puberty/middle school that the kids really needed more hands-on parenting. This is absolutely true.

I constantly wonder: am I too hard on them? Am I not hard enough? Too involved? Not involved enough? Too indulgent? Not indulgent enough? Do I model the lessons I want to teach them? (Well, clearly not when it comes to cleaning their rooms. But I hope that I do in terms of what kind of person I am, and how I treat other people.)

How do I motivate them to want to do their best?

Sr. Jr., at 13, is at that age where all of these questions start popping up. He's so bright, but he coasts through school. He doesn't have to put too much effort into his schoolwork, which sometimes gets him in trouble. I think he gets surprised if he gets a bad grade, even if he hasn't studied. He wants to rush through things, do math in his head, skip steps. Then he gets discouraged and down on himself. He hides things from us, so that instead of having us help him get back on track, he just gets himself in deeper.

He also thinks that it's middle school, and grades don't really matter that much. But several of the classes he's taking are high school level classes and his grades will go on his high school transcript.

This is how he got a C in math first quarter. If he had come to us early on in the quarter, he probably could have ended up with a B or even an A. Most of the mistakes he made on tests were stupid mistakes made because he was rushing or being sloppy. Instead, it was a fight to wrestle him back on track. But he did get back on track, and his second quarter grade was much better.

But -- and here's the important thing -- in order to get into the IB program that he wanted to do, he had to have all As and Bs, even in quarter grades. It doesn't matter one bit to them that the one quarter he got a C was an isolated event. It was enough to disqualify him.

This is not a tragedy. Our home high school is one of the best in the country. His teachers have recommended an all-intensified class schedule for him. He will be fine. I think he would have liked the IB program. It suited his interests.

And in the end, I think (I hope) that he's learned a lesson about the importance of really doing his best in school.

After years of refusing to do anything even vaguely academic during the summer, he's decided he wants to do a summer enrichment program at UVA this summer. So maybe, just maybe, we're moving forward.

I'm shocked I don't have more grey hair than I already do. (And yes, I recognize that we could be experiencing much more difficult parenting issues! I'm very thankful that we're not.)

January is for Finishing

2011-01-23T09:11:00.006-05:00

So far this January, I've finished socks, sweaters, mittens... I'm getting a false sense of productivity here! I have to keep reminding myself that I'm merely finishing up projects that have been on my needles for a long time... as in the sweater below, since June. I am not some superhuman knitting machine who keeps spitting out sweaters in a couple of days, nice as that would be.

And don't you, dear reader or two, get used to seeing so many FO's! After this one, and another pair of socks that I'm hoping to finish in the next few days, it might be a while. In fact, I have very few projects on the needles right now, and I need to rectify that quickly.

So here's the next finished object of 2011 -- the long-awaited Paper Crane:

Modeled in the 20 degree temperatures by a woman with a bad cold.

Specs: Pattern: Paper Crane. Yarn: Wollmeise Lace-Garn, Merlot colorway. Needles, a teeny tiny size 2.75 mm.

The pattern is fantastic, really well written and easy to follow. The yarn, of course, is fabulous. Despite all my whining about knitting so many stitches on such small needles, it really was a pleasure to knit. The fabric that the lace makes on that size needle is drapey and silky without being too loosey goosey. There are a number of patterns out there that call for knitting laceweight yarn on big needles, similar to the size you'd use if you were knitting a shawl and wanted a lot of stretch and openness, in order to provide extra drape, but I find that 1) I don't like my sweater fabrics so loose, and 2) this fabric is plenty drapey.

I'm planning to make a pullover version of this. It should be really easy to modify the pattern to do that, too. I'll have to make it a little bigger, because this version has negative ease, but I think it will look fabulous. So all I need to do now is pick a skein of lace to use and get going.

Look for it to be done in another 7 months or so. (Of course, I knit three other sweaters, a large number of socks, some lace, some mittens, and some handspun projects while I knit this, so it's not like I'm a total slacker.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tomorrow is Jr. Jr.'s 10th birthday! It's so hard to believe that my little guy is that old. That dessert by the way, is his coveted chocolate waffle from Silverado. He wants an iPod for his birthday. It's hard to fathom that in 8 years or so, I'll have an empty house.

In Sr. Jr. news, we handed in our application for transfer to the I-B program at the other high school. I continue to really feel the difference between the two schools. I know he'll be fine no matter where he goes, because both schools are excellent. I'm anxious to find out whether he gets in or not!

Through the Haze of Yuck, FOs

2011-01-18T09:55:00.006-05:00

Mr. T caught a cold. He shared. Yay. I don't get colds very often, maybe once every five years or so. I hate colds. I wouldn't mind being sick if I could sleep through the night. I get very whiny and self-pitying when I have a cold. At least it's a long weekend, so I don't have to worry about getting up early and getting the kids off to school. Between the cold and the loss of a friend who died way too young, I've been a bit off my best. The loss of my friend makes me want to hold my kids tight and tell them how much I love them, but I don't want to get them sick.

On to more pleasant stuff.

I finished Dark and Stormy a little while back. Twice as a matter of fact, since I re-blocked it to make it smaller. It's still a little longer than I'd like, but I'll just wear it with skinny pants and boots to balance the line. I threw it on this morning for a quickie photo shoot before Mr. T had to run off to de-ice his car and try to get to work. As you can see, I didn't even fix my turtleneck:

While the sweater is a smidge big, it's very warm and comfortable. Cozy. Great for snuggling up in on a cold day.

Paper Crane is almost done, too. I sewed up the seams that make that funky shape turn into a sweater -- the ones right over the bust. All I need to do is sew up the sleeves and set them in. I've been too out of it with my cold to think about doing that, but look for it soon.

About the only thing I have been able to do it plain old stockinette socks. Soooo, I finished yet another pair of stripey socks for the knit along:

They're my stripey socks of '80s awesomeness. I love them. The yarn is Continuum, a cashmere blend sock yarn from String Theory Colorworks, in the Event Horizon colorway. I love this yarn and this dyer. She has really interesting stripey colorways like this one, as well as some more plain stripeys. She's amazing to work with, too. Highly recommend the yarn.

So now I'm going to go back to my couch to continue to hack and wheeze and work on more plain stockinette socks until I feel better enough to move on to something else.

Taking My Own Advice

2011-01-09T12:51:00.007-05:00

In the past couple of days, two people have mentioned to me that sweaters they've made from superwash merino/cashmere blends have grown on them after a wearing or two. I told them that I'd heard that a quick trip through the dryer could help -- wash the sweater, spin out as much water as you can, and dry the sweater on low to medium heat until it's damp, but not dry. Then block as needed and dry flat.

After I washed and blocked my Dark and Stormy for the first time, I was concerned that it would be too big. I even noted in my last post that it had grown more in the wash than my swatch had led me to believe. So it was with trepidation this morning that I took the now-dry sweater, sewed the buttons on, and slipped it on.

Suspicions confirmed. Sweater too big. Longer than I wanted and much bigger in the shoulder/upper arm area. Sigh.

So I took my own advice. I plopped it back in the bath, squished out as much water as I could, then put it in a large mesh bag. Rinse/spin cycle in the wash. About 15 minutes in the dryer on low heat. When I checked it, it was still pretty wet, so I let it go another 8 minutes on medium heat. A quick prayer to the yarn goddesses, then I took the sweater out and laid it on the blocking mats.

I know you can't really tell from the picture, but much better. It's two inches smaller around and a good three inches shorter, looking no worse for it's adventure.

Collar:

And a closer-up shot of the buttons, which I got in DC at Looped Yarn Works:

So I still have to be patient while this dries -- again -- to see how it fits.

As this was drying, I've been working on more stripey socks and, yes, Paper Crane. I'm determined to get that one done, since I'm so close. Look for that to be finished and blocking by the end of the week.

Then I get to cast on for something new!

In non-knitting life, January has been very good to Jr. Jr. He was in the school's Geography Bee on Friday, as one of 5 fourth graders competing against 5 fifth graders for the school championship. It was a nail-biter. He was up against the younger brother of the boy who beat Sr. Jr. a few years ago and who went on to the state bee, as well.

This year for the first time, the bee was being held as an assembly, with all of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders watching. Very nerve-wracking! He looked so nervous up there that I thought he was going to throw up. Mr. T and I kept trying to catch his eye to give him our support, but he didn't look our way.

After getting the first two questions wrong, he ran the table -- and won! I couldn't believe it. I was just hoping he'd get one or two questions right. Now he gets to take a written test to see if goes on to the state bee in Richmond.

Then Saturday morning his basketball team had their first game of the season. After going down 14-2 in the first quarter, the team came back to win, 26-25. I was really impressed with how much Jr. Jr. had improved since last year. The whole team looked great.

I am very, very saddened by the shootings in Arizona this weekend. I've looked at some of the YouTube postings by the alleged shooter, and he certainly appears mentally ill. I don't know if he was influenced by some of the inflammatory and violent political rhetoric that has been proliferating in the last couple of years, but I fervently hope that the people who spout that kind of rhetoric will re-evaluate their tactics. They may claim that they're speaking metaphorically and that they don't condone violence, but their words say otherwise. And they need to realize that those words and images may reinforce and inflame the anger among people who can't control themselves or who are easily led.

Like the Sheriff in Arizona said, and I'm paraphrasing, speech may be free, but it has consequences.

Out with the Old

2011-01-05T14:09:00.006-05:00

Hello, 2011! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, 2010. That was not a good year. Not the worst ever, but just a long exercise in frustration. I hope that 2011 is much better for everyone.

Since I started a whole whack of projects in the last couple of months of 2010, I'm slowly but surely finishing them up.

S's Fiddleheads, all done. They take a long time to dry, since they're essentially three layers of wool. But my goal was to have them ready to give to her when we see each other at the Geography Bee on Friday, and I met that goal. We won't talk about the previous goals that I missed. I met this one, and it's the first one of 2011. I hope that's a good omen.

And look!

Dark and Stormy! With actual, full-length sleeves. In order to conserve yarn, I reduced the width of the front button band to 2 inches from 3. I'm doubly glad I did that since the sweater grew slightly more than anticipated in the wash. It's about an inch bigger around than I planned for, but since this is supposed to be roomy for layering, I think it will be ok. If not, I think I can get it a little smaller. I just blocked it this morning, so no live shots for a few days.

I have about a quarter of a skein left, and I did unravel my swatches and use them for the sleeve cuffs.

The pattern was an absolute joy to knit. The yarn was wonderful to knit with. If the sweater looks bad on me, I'll be very unhappy.

Some close-ups:

(The T-pins mark where the buttons will go.)

Today I am wearing new contact lenses. I haven't worn contacts regularly for a long time, because I have just enough of an astigmatism to make it difficult for me to find contacts that correct my distance vision but are comfortable to read with. My eye doctor has some new candidates that we're trying out.

After picking Jr. Jr. up from the bus stop and walking home with him, I asked him if he noticed anything different about me today. Here's how his thought process went, and I swear, these are direct quotes:

"You got a haircut? No... You took a shower? [well, yes, but that's not different] ... You put on makeup?... You're taller!... New pants?... New shirt?... You're more beautiful?"

What a suck up.

O Yarn Goddess, I Beseech Thee

2010-12-29T10:44:00.009-05:00

Normally I am very paranoid when I estimate how much yarn to buy for a sweater. I hate the thought of running out and I like to account for the possibility of extensive swatching. I usually get at least one more skein of yarn than I think I will need, just in case.

This is Dark and Stormy, done except for the sleeves. I reduced the front button band to 2 inches from 3 inches.

This is all the yarn I have left. The two little balls in front were my swatches. So, to summarize: about one and a half skeins to do two full-length sleeves. Shit.

Erica (Ms. Squoosh) very kindly offered to dye up an additional skein for me, but I'd be concerned that one skein dyed at a different time than all the others would end up looking too different in the final sweater. So I'm just going to weigh my total yarn, divide it in two, and knit down as far as I can go. Short-sleeved and three-quarter sleeved sweaters are fashionable right now anyway. Sigh.

I really love this sweater, too, despite this:

strange pooching in the shoulder area. I'm hoping this comes out in the blocking. I can tug at the collar when I'm wearing it and it disappears, but nothing is final until the sweater is blocked, of course.

I have been doing little else this break, knitting or spinning-wise. The kids are home, Mr. T is at work. We're hanging out, playing, getting stuff done. Sr. Jr. and I both needed new glasses, so we went for our vision appointments yesterday. Both boys have projects to do for school that are due after break and require supervision, of course. You know, the stuff of everyday life.

I started mitten liner #2 for Susan, and I need to get back to it.

Jr. Jr. and her son are both in the school's big Geography Bee next week, which would be a perfect time to give them to her. So now I have a deadline.

I really, really want to start spinning this:

I'm sorry for the not so great pictures, but SOMEONE apparently didn't catch the SUBTLE HINTS that I wanted a light box for the holidays. This braid is so gorgeous in person that I wish I could accurately capture the colors for you.

Christmas was very nice and low-key here. I think Jr. Jr's favorite present was his now-traditional bottle of apple juice. We had "Jewish Sweet and Sour Brisket" for dinner and Jr. Jr. even asked for seconds! So much for the hour long, layer your flavors Cook's Illustrated Recipe; he likes the one I found on the Internet that uses ketchup and and has only 5 ingredients. But it was tasty, so who am I to complain? Less work for me.

I'll leave you with a picture of my boys, playing nicely together. We had to capture the moment, since it happens so rarely, LOL. They were playing with Jr. Jr.'s math dice:

Have a Happy New Year!

Partied Out, with Reading Report

2010-12-20T14:47:00.006-05:00

Oy. It's been a long string of holiday events and parties. Every day, sometimes more than one per day, for a bit now. I'm tired. I'm ready to stay home and cocoon. And knit and spin and read and bake and try new recipes, of course. I'm ready for Winter Break.

Hasn't been a whole lot of knitting going on. I did start the lining for the second Fiddlehead mitten for S. I will get those to her after break. I failed at finishing them by the Winter Concert. Oh well. Other than that, it's been a row here, a row there of nothing much.

But! I did finish plying that enormous bobbin of singles that I finished spinning before Thanksgiving. I lost a little of it in some plying mishaps, but I still managed to get a nice long skein. I first started plying it on my Ashford, which has a jumbo flyer unit on it that can handle a lot of fiber. But it was acting wonky and frustrating me, so after just a little bit, I broke the single and moved back to my wheel of choice. Shortly after I started plying on that wheel, the single broke and I couldn't fix it. After that, however, things went along swimmingly.

I ended up with about 417/8 yards, chain plied. It's a little bit overplied, but hopefully not enough to have an effect on the project I will knit from it.

I chose a simple shawl, the Lacy/LazyKaty shawl (Rav link), and I wound the yarn into a ball:

I really want to start knitting this right now. Now! But I can't. I'm trying very hard to be good and finish up the mittens before I start working on this. We'll see how that goes. I also want to start another spinning project, but that may have to wait until after Christmas.

I have been reading, some good, some okay, some eh. I tore through Tana French's three books, mysteries/psychological mysteries set in Ireland over the last 20 years or so, encompassing some bad economic times, better economic times, and back again. The first one, In the Woods, was my least favorite, but still good. The narrator/main character of the book is kind of dumb and self-deluded, which made it a little frustrating. The rest of the book was great, but not liking the main character detracted a little from the experience. I would still recommend it. Her other two books were much more enjoyable. I found myself searching Amazon to see if she'd written any more, but no. I'll just have to wait for the next one.

I also read Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen. I enjoyed this book, too, however, I didn't think it was the Great American Novel that all the reviewers seemed to think it was.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu, was also well-reviewed. It definitely had a clever and interesting basic idea. Its focus on language and story reminded me a bit of some of Jasper Fforde's work in the Thursday Next books, but this book was more serious than those, dealing with a son's search for his father, literally and metaphorically. Unfortunately, there are long stretches of the book where I read it thinking "Is anything going to happen?" Then something would happen, leading to more long stretches wondering whether something else would happen. In the end, I'm glad I read it, but maybe a better editor could have tightened it up a bit.

----------------------------------------------------------------

We celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas, which can sometimes tax the imagination. This year's been particularly tough, between the early start of Chanukah (right after all the work I put into hosting Thanksgiving) and the kids getting to a point where the things they want cost more money and begin to bump up against our ideas of how much stuff kids their age should really get. If they had their way, they'd get multiple new video game systems and games, and Jr. Jr. would be getting an iPod Touch. Sorry, boys.

I don't feel like there are any real "wow" gifts for them, but at least they're getting some fun stuff. And in the meantime, we'll have our traditional Christmas morning Belgian waffles, and Sr. Jr. and I will try a bunch of new recipes. The guys are planning a Star Wars marathon, too. So it will all be good :)

Holiday Rush

2010-12-15T11:02:00.006-05:00

Ah, yes. The days of half hour lines at the post office, the mad rush to the mall to buy outfits to wear to holiday parties, not to mention gifts, etc., the seemingly never-ending round of school concerts and parties...

Tonight is the elementary school Winter concert. I can predict, with my psychic powers, the entire evening: the orchestra playing Hot Cross Buns and Jingle Bell Rock. The chorus singing a selection of different holiday songs from different traditions. My husband ridiculing the school's chorus teacher. Sweating away in the multipurpose room. The mad rush to the sweets table when the concert is over. Jr. Jr. is playing trombone and gets to play the glockenspiel as everyone enters and takes their seats. Good times.

Tomorrow is Mr. T's firm party, and also the neighbor's annual Christmas party. We rush from one to the other. This year the firm party is at the firm, so I can dress a little more casually and not be overdressed for the neighbor's party. One of my least pleasant chores every year is trying to find a dress for the stinking holiday party.

I sound a lot more Scroogey than I am. These things are all fun and I have wonderful memories of past concerts and parties.

But wow is it cold here right now! It was 20 degrees at bus stop time this morning. I was decked out in handknits, which helped immensely. Handknit knee highs rock. I highly recommend them. The only part of my body that was cold was my face. Poor Mr. T is getting extremely cranky because he hasn't ridden in a while. It needs to warm up a bit or he's going to go all Redrum on us.

Knitting still goes in bits and pieces, and there's no spinning at all at the moment. I finished the second mitten for my friend, but I haven't started the liner yet:

I was half hoping to have this done by tonight to give to her, but it'll wait a few more days.

I finished up one of my String Theory stripey socks at my FILs this weekend. (That went really nicely. I think they appreciated the help, and appreciated spending the afternoon with us. We'll go back again right after New Year's to help take things down and get the tree out of the house.) I started the second, but didn't get too far:

Then I decided I needed to have another stripey sock on the needles as well, so I cast on another pair of Twisted Fiber Arts socks, this time in the Ember colorway:

But the most fun I'm having right now is with Dark and Stormy. I'm still loving the sweater, the yarn, and the knitting. I'm almost to the point where I can stop knitting downward and do the ribbing:

Sorry for the flash picture, but the others came out too dark. I tried it on and I think it's going to be perfect when it's done. It's nice and warm, too.

I keep planning to get that big bobbin of singles plied up, but then I end up not having the time. Errands pop up, Jr. Jr. gets sick, and the day goes by. I really want to have a good chunk of time to do that, and chunks of time are rare these days.

One week until winter break! I'm looking forward to sleeping in, working out, cooking with Sr. Jr., and relaxing with the whole family.

In the Valley

2010-12-06T11:12:00.004-05:00

Here we are in the brief and perhaps non-existent valley in between the holidays. Technically it's not really "between the holidays" for us, since we're in the middle of Chanukah right now. But so far it's been very laid back after all the frantic preparations for Thanksgiving and before all the holiday parties and end-of-the year activities.

We went to two very lovely Chanukah parties this weekend, where we hung out with friends, drank amazing vodka from Siberia, and discovered that Jr. Jr. likes brisket, as long as it's not mine. The bicycle menorah is a big hit. The present-giving has been a bit haphazard, since I didn't have too much time to shop, but that's ok.

This weekend we will go to my father-in-law's house to put up his Christmas tree. His lung cancer has advanced far enough that he's in too much pain and is too fatigued to be able to do it himself. We want them to be able to celebrate the holiday and have all their familiar and loved ornaments to see and reminisce about. We'll go back on January 1st or 2nd to clean it all up, which works out well, since his birthday is January 3rd.

No! I haven't finished Paper Crane yet. Stop nagging me. Anyway, it's a very light sweater, which wouldn't be too useful now that we're in the Winter chill. That's right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And, no, I haven't cast on the second Fiddlehead mitten for my friend S. It's cold out, and I know she could use the mittens. Stop making me feel guilty! I'll do it this week, I promise. I will! Maybe.

None of this has nothing to do with Dark and Stormy. Really. I swear. Just because I can't stop knitting on that, doesn't mean that I don't still love Paper Crane. I mean it.

I've gotten past the part where I separated the sleeves from the body and I'm down at the waist shaping. The pattern only calls for one round of decreases for a very subtle bit of shaping at the waist, but I'm going to add another round, just to give it a little more shape.

I love how this is turning out so far. Simple, yet interesting. The knitting holds my interest, but I don't have to concentrate too hard. The yarn is such a pleasure to knit with.

In the midst of this Dark and Stormy love-fest, I did manage to finish up another pair of stripey socks. I can't haul Dark and Stormy with me to piano lessons and to hang out at Temple while I wait for Jr. Jr., so socks come along with me:

(You can get much better sock pictures if you have someone else to take the pictures!) The yarn is Gothsocks Laudanum, her MCN blend, in Faery Folk. Soft and warm.

I'm hoping to finish one more pair of socks before the end of the year. Should I go all out and say that I'll finish the second Fiddlehead and Dark and Stormy, too? What about spinning? I still have that bobbin of singles to ply up. I'm not going to make any promises to myself, because there's a lot going on in these next few weeks.

Wandering Eye

2010-11-30T15:18:00.005-05:00

Thanksgiving is over. Everyone's gone. We had as nice a time as we could have had.

This was the first time the family has all been together for Thanksgiving in a long time, since years before my mother died. Given that there are some entrenched hard feelings and champion grudge-holders in the family, I was worried. But everyone was great. The food was good (if I do say so myself) and it was very nice to have everyone together.

And, just after I've recovered from that, Chanukah starts tomorrow night. I'm sorely behind in my gift-purchasing. Some gifts have been ordered, but just haven't arrived yet. Jr. Jr. runs into the house every day after school and starts searching for the presents. He can't find any. He swears he's going to find them under our bed, but all he finds are empty boxes. Little does he know that some things are hiding in plain sight...

I didn't knit at all for several days over Thanksgiving week. I was just too busy. All my stripey socks are stalled. One pair is almost done, but I haven't finished them off. And I tried to get back to Paper Crane. Second sleeve -- it's almost done! But, oh, endless stockinette on tiny needles gets boring.

That's 72 rows of knitting. I have another 96 rows just to get to the armhole shaping and armscye. You can see my problem, right?

I needed something more interesting. I needed something less laceweight. I just bought a pair of cream-colored cords that would look really great with brown boots and a brown sweater, so...

I strayed. Forgive me, for I have been adulterous in my knitting. The culprit? Dark and Stormy. Here's the Ravelry link. Knit in one piece from the top down out of worsted weight, with cabling to keep things interesting. The yarn is Squoosh's Merino/Cashmere worsted. I love it. It's round and squooshy, with great stitch detail. I don't think this one will pill quickly, like a lot of more loosely spun and plied cashmere blends.

I still have that bobbin of singles to chain-ply. I don't know when I'll get around to that. Maybe this weekend, if I can tear myself away from Dark and Stormy.

This Post Brought to You by the Number 1

2010-11-17T16:29:00.008-05:00

One sock:

One mitten:

One very full bobbin of singles:

One part of one other sock:

...and one finished pair of socks:

(Like how I snuck that last one in there?)

This is what happens when I work on many things at once. Luckily, they're small things, but it does feel a bit scattered to me. The top sock, by the way, is Gothsocks. The mitten is a Fiddlehead mitten for my friend Susan. She just tried on that first one a few minutes ago and seemed very happy. The last pair of socks is the Yarn Chef Plum Waves pair.

I managed to get the whole 4.something ounces of fiber onto that bobbin, thank goodness! That's a very fine single, but when I looked back at my first picture from this spin, I realized that I started out a bit thicker. It's taken me at least 3 weeks to do all that spinning, so I'm not surprised that I'm a little inconsistent. I hope the finished yarn isn't too bad because of that.

I'm hoping to get that plied up this weekend, but I don't know. I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year, so there's a lot of cleaning and prep work to do. Of course, I decided that the guest room needed a little facelift before my alleged* guests arrive next week, so right now the room's a shambles. Sanity prevailed, however, and I decided not to attempt to repaint the room while I was at it.

An emergency call to the plumber pushed to the forefront our plan to renovate the boys' bathroom. It's working, but right after Thanksgiving I need to start the process of finding a contractor, getting estimates, etc. I really don't want to have to go through this, but hopefully it won't take too long. We'd just be gutting and redoing, without moving walls or anything.

So between suddenly having to host Thanksgiving, Chanukah starting right after Thanksgiving (and I still have no gifts!), and needing to get moving on the bathroom reno, I'm a bit stressed. And I won't really be able to knit or spin to relax, either.

I can't wait for January.

* I say "alleged" because while my brother has apparently told other people he's coming here for the holiday, he hasn't actually said anything to me yet.

A Former Favorite

2010-11-10T10:52:00.006-05:00

Once upon a time, Fall was my favorite season. I loved the crisp air, the changing leaves, the holidays. I loved walking through a pile of leaves just to hear them crunch. Fall hikes were my favorite because it's not too hot, and everything's so beautiful to look at.

Lately I've come to loathe Fall. Maybe "loathe" is too strong a word. Mourn? Remember it wistfully? Pine for it? Maybe those give a better sense of my feelings.

These days, school starts, after school sports start, cyclocross season starts, and those things take up all of our time, leaving little or no time for just plain fun. Earlier this season I mentioned to Mr. T that I really missed going for hikes in the Fall and he helpfully checked his calendar and said "The only day I can give you is ____." (And then I re-injured my ankle and couldn't hike that day, anyway.) There are things around the house that I really need familial help with, but there's never any time to do them. Sigh.

The holidays seem to come quicker and quicker, too. This year is going to be really tough, because Chanukah starts something like 3 days after Thanksgiving break ends. Everyone's coming to my house for Thanksgiving this year, so I don't know when I'll get my Chanukah shopping done. This is where the Internet saves me... I can order some things to have on hand at least.

Speaking of Chanukah, I got the cutest menorah this weekend at the temple:

A bike for the bike racers! It's even got a wee little water bottle in a holder, too :)

I continue to plug away at the spinning I showed you earlier. Well, I didn't spin at all last week. It was a busy week. But I got back to it this week. I'm getting close to the end, sweating every inch, hoping it will all fit on this bobbin:

I have no idea how consistent this bobbin of singles is. I feel like it's getting thinner and thinner as I keep spinning, but I see lots of inconsistency, too. I'm aiming to have the bobbin finished sometime tomorrow, and then hopefully I'll get to do the n-ply over the weekend.

I also finally finished the first sleeve of Paper Crane, and cast on for the second:

And then I set it aside. I promised a friend that I'd make her a pair of Fiddlehead Mittens like the ones I knit for myself last year, and mitten weather is fast approaching. Fiddleheads generally go pretty quickly... with the qualifier that "quickly" is a relative term when you take into account knitting only gets done in spare bits of time.

I'm also continuing to work on stripey socks, slowly.

The school decision continues to confound. I went to a required meeting at our home school yesterday afternoon and came away unimpressed, frankly. I didn't feel like the presentation was very dynamic or that it gave me a compelling reason to send my child to the school. The school is one of the top high schools in the country, so I'm clearly missing something. But I do know from our elementary school experience that the leadership at the top isn't necessarily what makes a school great. The big factors are the quality of the faculty, the motivation of the kids, and involved parents. I know the school scores high on all of those factors. For now, we'll continue with the lottery process and see what happens. We may not even have to make a decision in the end.

I Don't Have Much

2010-11-01T12:28:00.007-04:00

Sorry to say...

I haven't really knit or spun in a while. It was a busy weekend, and now Jr. Jr.'s home sick with me. It will be a really busy week, too, so I don't know how much I'll have to show you in my next post. Bear with me.

But I do have some leftover stuff from last week to share.

First, spinning: I'm about 3/4 of the way through my current batch of spinning. I'm trying to get one long single out of this braid, and then n-ply it on itself for a 3 ply yarn with long color repeats. The braid I'm spinning was slightly more than 4 oz. Here's the 3/4 on the bobbin:

Here's a better shot of the color, although you can't see some of the reds that show up every now and then in the braid:

And this is how much fiber I have left to try to squeak onto that bobbin:

It's going to be close. I really hope I can fit it all on one.

I've still been knitting on my various stripey socks and the first sleeve of my Paper Crane, which is finally far enough along that I can show it to you:

I'd love to finish this sweater sometime this century. Of course, at the rate I've been shoving food in my mouth lately, it won't fit.

Halloween was fun and had its bit of excitement. In a change of pace from years past, Jr. Jr. was NOT something that required wearing a long black robe and a scary mask of some sort. He's been some sort of ghoul, Scream guy, what have you for the past few years now. But this year he went as "Guy Riding an Ostrich," a costume which was voted funniest in his class:

He and Mr. T went out trick or treating for a little while, until his upset tummy forced them to come home (a harbinger of what was to come this morning, clearly). Sr. Jr. helped by carving the pumpkin and handing out candy. We didn't have a huge number of trick or treaters this year.

Then things got interesting when fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars showed up at our troubled neighbor's house. This neighbor has no job, no driver's license (lost it because of drunk driving), and does nothing much but drink all day. His son lives with him off and on, as well as a skeevy roommate who appears to crash there in between stints in jail. Lovely, huh? We suspect that there's some drug dealing going on there, too. They carried the son away on a stretcher with a neckbrace on, after doing some tox tests. I hope they spent some time searching the house, too. The cops keep a close eye on the roommate and the house, but perhaps it's time for the neighbors to do some more vocal complaining.

On the school choice front, I'm still as undecided as I was before. Tracey from the comments has provided me with extremely helpful information and perspective, as have some other parents with kids in both schools. I'm torn, but I think we'll go through the application process and then Sr. Jr. can make the decision for himself.

I'm hearing reports that there are kids in his grade who are already smoking pot, which freaks me out. It freaks me out even more because I'm pretty sure I know which kids are involved. There's also been some vandalism at a local school/playground which I hear was caused by the same group of kids. I used to worry about why Sr. Jr. wasn't hanging out with the other kids after school more, but now I'm thankful that he tells me "You don't want me hanging out with them, mom, really!" I guess they're not the same cute little kids they were when they were 7 and building paper airplanes in my house.

As much as I want to wring his neck over some things, I have to admit that Sr. Jr. has a pretty good head on his shoulders. Whew!

Bleargh

2010-10-25T12:50:00.007-04:00

Well, it's not been a lovely week. Or weekend. I'm looking forward to more un-loveliness coming ahead. I'm cranky. At least one of the crank-inducers has been resolved: an unauthorized transaction on my Paypal account. I caught it right away and initiated the dispute. Called my bank, too. All's well that ends well, but it was nerve-wracking.

Before I get to the fibery stuff, a note to Tracey, who suggested I contact the school superintendent with the thoughts I expressed about pushing kids too fast in my last blog post. Thank you, Tracey! That was a good idea. I emailed him, but I haven't heard back yet. As a teacher, do you feel like your voice gets heard in these kinds of curriculum decisions? Also, you said that you have a 9th grader at that school. Is he or she in the IB program? Are you happy with the school? I'd love any input you could give me.

In my limited fiber time, I've done a little work on the Paper Crane sleeve, which I haven't photographed lately. It's not interesting enough yet to show.

I also started working on the Gothsocks that I showed last time:

I like how this yarn is knitting up. The stripes look watercolory and the cashmere makes for some soft knitting.

I'm also spinning some more. After last week's freewheeling woolen spin, I'm back to spinning thin worsted singles. I plan to n-ply this yarn for a 3 ply final yarn.

The braid comes from Cloudlover. It's a Falkland wool in the "Bonfire" colorway:

Here are a couple of views of the singles. I'm almost halfway through:

I know it's Fall and I'm attracted to these colors, but after several different projects in this color range, my next spinning project will definitely be in another color palette.

The Art of Compromise, or The Tale of Two Bobbins

2010-10-19T21:28:00.011-04:00

Sometimes spinning fiber is like raising a child. You get your raw material, and it's lovely, but you can't force it to be something it's not. You can shape it, and make it as lovely as it can be, but it has a definite personality of its own.

Enter Squoosh's October Fiber club braid, a BFL/Silk blend called Crunch:

My first glance at it had me thinking of a thinnish three-ply yarn, one long single, n-plied. So I broke off a bit of the fiber and started spinning. Blech. It did not like that. It didn't spin smoothly. There were blurps of fiber. It didn't feel nice. I did not want to spend my spinning hours fighting with the fiber. Spinning is supposed to be relaxing, after all. So when I finished that bit of fiber, I set it aside and put another bobbin on.

This time I just started out by grabbing hunks of fiber and letting it go. It finally settled down into a happy state. There were still some fiber blurps, which will require a bit more attention on my part when I do the final spin, but on the whole, the fiber was very happy being spun woolen-style, not too thick and not too thin.

In the meantime, I went ahead and n-plied the first bobbin of singles, just to see how that would finish up. Both samples got hanked up, washed and beaten up a bit.

The n-plied thin singles came out a bit crunchy, not soft. The colors seem a little harder, too:

It looks pretty in the picture (and it is in real life, too), but when I pick it up and feel it, it doesn't make me want to knit with it.

By contrast, the singles are softer. Woolen spun yarns will generally be softer than worsted spun yarns, but this was clearly the more appropriate form for this fiber. The colors also softened up and became more inviting:

Now, THIS yarn made me want to grab the needles and start knitting.

So, I will go with the flow and spin the rest of this braid to resemble the squooshy singles.

If I ever get to, that is. I was planning to spin it today, but then I forgot that I had Comcast coming in for a long install today. That pushed the spinning until tomorrow, except that somehow the install got messed up, and they're coming back tomorrow.

Thursday. I hope.

I also finished my Vintage stripey socks, here modeled by the very latest in blase-style cats:

Then I wound up some Gothsocks (OhMyGoth, Faery Folk) for the next pair:

Some of that has been knitted now, I just haven't taken any more pictures.

On a totally different note, last night was High School Information night. Sr. Jr. and I went together because he's interested in applying for the IB program at one of the local schools, and we wanted to learn some more about it. I came away generally impressed, but with some concerns (that are not limited to that school or program).

Several of the local schools are offering some of the ninth graders the opportunity to take AP World History. School officials readily admit that most 9th graders who take the class are not at all ready for that level of work. Only about 5% of the 9th graders who take the class get a 5 (the highest possible score) on the AP test. The vast majority get 1s and 2s.

So the school that houses the IB program has a summer "introduction to advance placement" class for the kids who will be enrolled in the class. There are before school help periods and Saturday morning help periods. As a result, the majority of the kids in the class in this school get 4s and 5s on the AP test.

Sounds good, right? But then the principal said that they noticed that the kids' scores on AP tests then dropped when they got to 10th grade. They realized it was because the kids didn't have as much support as they did the year before, and it was affecting their scores. So they added more support.

The intended message of the story was "Oh, what a great school, they provide so much support for the students." And they do. And it's very nice.

However, I wonder whether anyone stopped to think whether all this was really an indication that the kids aren't quite ready to take AP classes and tests that early. Because that's my takeaway from the evening.

I'm all for challenging kids and working to get the best out of them that we can. But I wonder whether the hyper-competitive environment that we live in is blurring the lines in our minds and in the minds of school administrators between challenging kids and in pushing them too fast. If so much support is required to get the kids to do well, they're not necessarily being challenged, they're being given crutches.

The hard part for me is that I'm pretty sure that Sr. Jr. will be one of the kids who is offered the opportunity to take that class. I know he's very bright, but I also know that he's not used to working hard at school. His study skills are not very evolved or sophisticated. I don't know if he would thrive or struggle in that environment. I guess we'll see.

(But yes, he came away wanting to apply to the IB program. There are 84 slots, and it's a lottery. We'll see how this goes.)

Sweater Weather

2010-10-14T10:44:00.009-04:00

Hallett's Ledge is done, blocked, dried, off the board, and in the armoire. I took advantage of the cooler weather to try to get some good shots of both it and my Pas de Valse, which I finished a while ago.

Here are some Hallett shots:

The cat was complaining that we just weren't paying enough attention to her.

Hallett's Ledge was great knitting. I had no problems with the pattern. It went quickly but held my interest.

Here's Pas de Valse:

I think both sweaters are serviceable, but I'm not in love with either of them. I feel a disturbance in my sweater force. I used to make sweaters that I loved (still love) and wear all the time. I feel like I haven't made a sweater that really makes me happy in a long time. If Paper Crane disappoints, I'll be very sad. I'd like to finish that soon, so I can get on to some other patterns in the queue, hopefully ones that I'll like.

I did also finish the first of my Vintage socks:

I love these socks and I love this yarn. I got my sock club and fiber club installments on Tuesday and I love them both. I'm not posting pictures out of respect for Kippi, who hasn't received hers yet.

So, back to Paper Crane sleeves...

Columbus Day Catch Up

2010-10-11T15:26:00.008-04:00

Busy week! Last week was a short week. The elementary school was out Thursday and Friday for conferences (Jr. Jr. gets rave reviews), and the middle school was out Friday. On Tuesday, I acted as an interviewer for the 8th grade resume project. The kids made up resumes, dressed up (somewhat), and sat through "job interviews." It was really fun. The kids are so cute. I mostly really liked the kids I got to interview.

All that was lots of fun, but it meant less knitting and spinning, of course. Mostly less spinning. I haven't even started a new spinning project since that last skein I showed you. There's always knitting, even if it's just plain stockinette socks.

Speaking of which... I'm knitting up stripey socks for the Ravelry group's contest/challenge. I finished the first of my Yarn Chef Plum Waves socks:

The yarn is very soft. I'm going to like these socks. I need to cast on the second sock. I'm working on another pair of stripeys, as well. This pair is in Twisted Fiber Art's Playful yarn. I love this yarn. I knit another pair in this yarn recently (my Lagoon socks) and I wore them the other day when the weather got cool. They felt so warm and cushy. I'm also in her sock club, impatiently awaiting the first shipment, which should get here tomorrow (stupid Monday no-mail holidays). Anyway, here's where I am in the first sock of that pair:

I finished Hallett's Ledge! It's blocking now, plus it's 90 degrees. Not heavy sweater-modeling weather. My first stop for buttons was at Fibre Space, but I wasn't thrilled with their selection. They sent me down the street to an antique store that has a ton of vintage buttons. They had a beautiful selection, but I needed 7 buttons for the sweater, and they didn't have 7 matching buttons. Finally I went to G St. Fabrics, which has a huge button assortment. The buttons I ended up getting aren't fancy, but they are the perfect brownish-grey shade to complement the sweater.

I tried the sweater on before the final block, when it measured about 2 inches smaller than the finished dimensions. Even though it was a little bit snugger than I needed, it still looked good. I can't wait for it to dry to try it on. Now, of course, I'm a little concerned that it will be too big, but if that turns out to be true, then I can just re-block it.

I recommend the pattern highly. It was not hard to knit, but interesting enough to keep from being boring. Plus I think it looks great!

And yes, true to my word, I did cast on for the Paper Crane sleeves, so back to the teeny tiny yarn on the teeny tiny needles.

In the non-knitting part of my life (yes, there is one), I'm back on the treadmill and starting to run again. It feels great. I'm doing lots of incline (walking, not running) to strengthen the ankle and slowly adding in a running component. So far no pain at all. It's such a relief.

Last but not least: today's horoscope. No kidding, this is really what my horoscope was today:

"Sometimes you feel guilty about taking off for 'me time,' and yet you really needn't. You're a creative being, and you need time to explore your ideas in your own way."

I think I'll frame that.

Homespun, Handknit

2010-10-05T09:25:00.005-04:00

It's getting chillier here, finally. This morning I broke out the first handknits of the season: a pair of socks and a vest. On Saturday morning, I sat with my hands shoved up in my sleeves at Jr. Jr's soccer game, thinking that fingerless mitts would be just right for this time of year. And I had that cushy but messy handspun at home...

These whip up very quickly. Unfortunately, fat cat decided to sit down on my yarn last night, so I couldn't finish the second one in time for this morning's bus stop trip. The pattern is Vancouver Fog, and they're just right. The handspun may look very rough, but it's cushy and warm.

I finished my next handspun project, too. I took this fiber from Squoosh:

and turned it into this:

It's better than the last spin, but the spinning is still not where I want it to be. But the more I do it, the better and more consistent it gets. It's a busy week, with stuff I need to be in school for, plus a 5-day weekend made up of conference days and Columbus Day. But I will try to sneak some more spinning in there if I can.

I also finished up the second sleeve for Hallett's Ledge. I'm using those needles now for the Vancouver Fog mitts, but when I'm done, I'll do the collar and button bands for Hallett and then I can block it and sew in the sleeves. It'll be my first sweater of the season! I hope it fits.

Then I can turn my attention back to Paper Crane and get that done, too.

I'm already pondering what to knit next...

Thick and Thin

2010-09-29T14:14:00.004-04:00

In my last post, I was contemplating which of two sweaters' sleeves I would knit next, Hallett's Ledge or Paper Crane.

I went with the instant gratification:

Between the thin spinning and the thin knitting from finishing up Paper Crane's body, I felt like I needed some big needle, quick 'n eezy instant satisfaction. Hallett's did not fail. So I may actually have this sweater ready to go by next week, depending on how my weekend goes. I guess I need to get some buttons, huh?

The thin spinning continues. I finished up the first bobbin and started the second. I'm about 3/4 of the way done with the second bobbin now:

This is actually a new picture, even though it looks like all the others. And I can hear Mr. T in the background, saying "What's with the dime? I don't get the dime." It's for scale, to show just how thick or thin the spinning is.

I really like the singles, but I'm afraid when I ply this it's going to look muddy and crappy. We'll have to see. I admit that most of my spinning and knitting is pretty reserved, colorwise. Sometimes I see some wild multicolor handspun skeins and I think "That's neat, but how would that knit up?" I spin to knit, not just for the hell of it. But often some of the wildest skeins knit up in really cool ways, so I'm trying to push some of my boundaries. We'll see how it turns out.

In middle school news, Sr. Jr. didn't make the tennis team. Now he claims he hates tennis and never wants to play again. Sigh. On the other hand, he's done more bike riding lately, and is still an avid bike racer. C'est la teenager.

I went to the open house at his middle school last night, and for the third year in a row was completely impressed. I became disillusioned with the elementary school administration pretty early on. The teachers there are great, as a general matter, but the principal and assistant principal always left me cold. Not so at the middle school. The principal there seems genuinely delighted with her job, the school, the teachers, the kids, and the parents. All of the teachers were dynamic, enthusiastic, innovative, creative and seemed really committed to what they were teaching. Now I can see why Sr. Jr. seems engaged with school this year.

I'm still slowly recovering from the ankle injury. I'm not running again, but I am getting on the treadmill more frequently and trying to increase distance at a steady pace. The ankle still gets a little sore and achy sometimes, and I try to take breaks when that happens. But I'm really sick of it. I want to get back to where I was! Argh.

Juggling

2010-09-25T12:36:00.008-04:00

My new scheme has me juggling many different projects. Sometimes it seems like I'm not making a whole lot of progress on one individual item, but the truth is that as I rotate, I am getting somewhere! Last week I showed you the finished body for my Hallett's Ledge sweater, and now I can show you the finished body for Paper Crane:

Now I can start sleeves. The original plan was to go back and do Hallett's Ledge sleeves and then Paper Crane sleeves, but now I'm not so sure. Hallett's would go a lot faster, and therefore be done sooner, but it's a heavier sweater, more suited for later in the season. However, while Paper Crane would be wearable sooner, I suspect that the sleeves will take a looooong time. I need to think this one over a little more.

I've still been knitting on my stripey Yarn Chef socks:

but I also wound up some Twisted Fiber Arts sock yarn in the Vintage colorway to up my participation in the stripey sock knitalong on Ravelry. I wound it up, started knitting, then when I looked down at my yarn cake I noticed the coolest thing --

A Star of David! I didn't do anything specific to get it that way; it's just a trick of the winder. I'm almost sad to knit the socks and have that disappear, but knit I must. And it's such a pretty colorway:

I love how she gets her stripes to bleed and fade into each other, instead of being sharp and distinct blocks of color. The Lagoon socks that I just finished were a wee bit tight, so I went up 0.25 mm in needle this time. At first, I also worked the socks with 4 more stitches, but they were too big. Just that teeny adjustment in needle size was all I needed.

Then this arrived in the mail --

Isn't this cute? This is from Twisted Limone (unfortunately, she's out of stock of these cute little stripey yarn balls right now). I'm so tempted to cast on a third pair of stripey socks. So far I'm resisting, but I don't know how long I can hold out.

I am still spinning, too. I haven't for the last 2 days, but I'm almost done with the first bobbin of my Squoosh fiber:

I'm trying to spin this really fine, so it's taking a long time. I'm a bit of a spinning perfectionist, so I get bummed when I get a fiber blurp that affects the thickness of the single. Plus, I'm impatient. So I think my next spin will be a bit thicker, for more instant gratification.

I have about 2/3 of a fiber strip left to finish this bobbin, which is what I'm going to do right now. While I do that, I will try to decide which sleeves to knit first.

Spinning More

2010-09-21T13:18:00.007-04:00

As I said in my last post, I'm trying to make sure I work spinning into my daily (or near daily) activities. I'm still knitting, but I'm taking breaks and spinning, too. (And yes, all the other stuff of life, laundry, cleaning, cooking, kid stuff, etc. is still going on as usual.)

I finished spinning the Crown Mountain Farms merino I showed you last time:

It's very soft! I think I'm going to make myself some fingerless mittens for when it starts getting really cold in the house.

For my next spinning, I chose a braid from one of my favorite dyers, Squoosh:

(I really need to get a lightbox for taking pictures. Hint, hint Mr. T, Chanukah's coming)

I'm almost done with the first bobbin of the Squoosh fiber. I'm spinning it very thin. It wants to be that way.

It's very autumnal. I worry about how it will look when it's plied, but I'll just have to wait and see.

I'm following the knitting plan I laid out for myself as well. I've picked up Paper Crane again. I've knit 36 out of 79 rows of those teeny tiny stitches, so I'm working my way toward the end of the body. I've turned the heel on the first of the stripey socks I showed last time, too. No new pics of those, because they look pretty much the same as they did.

Sr. Jr. made the cut to get into the second round of tennis tryouts. They were supposed to be yesterday, which was tough for him. He was in two bike races this weekend. He raced in one men's race, and then raced in the Under 19 race the next day (he came in 2nd!). He also played tennis, so yesterday morning he was pretty tired. Luckily, tryouts didn't finish up, so he got another night to rest and recover before finishing up this afternoon. I can't wait to hear how he did!

Jr. Jr.'s soccer team won both of its games this weekend, too. He played and he played ok, but he didn't score any goals. This year kids in his grade do instrumental music. He chose the trombone. Now, I love the trombone. It can make some beautiful music, just generally not in the hands of a fourth grader. He came home yesterday after his first day able to blow some notes! It wasn't awful, until he decided to try to play "Eye of the Tiger." Good thing we have a lot of Advil on hand.

So Far, So Good

2010-09-15T13:00:00.009-04:00

It's only been a little over a week since school started, but I feel like I've been accomplishing a lot. It's not that I've sat down and worked on anything for hours on end. In fact, I've been doing things sort of here and there -- go to the post office, knit a little bit. Hit the supermarket, spin for a bit. Vacuum, then knit. And amazingly, it's working nicely. Things that I need to do are getting done, and I'm doing things that I want to do as well. I'm still craving a good BLOCK of time to sit down and work on something, but I'm sure that will come. Someday.

I finished the body for Hallett's Ledge. Here it is all unblocked and yuck looking:

Yes, I have to work around the cat. As per my plan (stated in the last post), I will now put this away for a little bit and finish up the body on Paper Crane.

I'm working away on the second bobbin of my spinning project. This bobbin doesn't seem to be going as smoothly for me, and I'm not sure why. I don't know if the fiber isn't quite as cooperative or if it's me, but I'm not as happy with how this bobbin of singles is turning out. Hopefully, when the whole thing is plied, washed, and finished up, it'll all be a wash. Here you can see the bobbin I'm working on and the one I finished already:

And the obligatory dime shot:

I might finish up this bobbin today. We'll see. It's early release and I'm not sure how much spinning I can do with two kids on a sunny afternoon.

I also finished up my Lagoon socks, using Twisted Fiber Art's Playful yarn:

I couldn't make the socks match, but I don't care. I love them anyway. They're also a teeny bit snug on me, so I think when I knit with this yarn again I might cast on a few more stitches or go up a needle size. But pictures can't do justice to how beautiful this yarn it. The color transitions are subtle and perfect. I'm very excited for her upcoming sock club, and I'm definitely going to knit another pair very soon. Maybe I'll go pick out the next skein this afternoon :)

In the meantime, I cast on another pair of stripey socks, this pair in a yarn from Yarn Chef called Minestrone. It's very soft with some subtle color shading as well:

Most of the time I knit socks as my carrying around project, or as a palate cleanser, something to knit when I don't want to work on whatever other complicated project I'm working on at the time. Stripey sock yarns are great, because I get great socks even when knitting boring old stockinette, and I don't get bored. The "oooh, colorful!" factor keeps me interested.

In my non-fibery life, things seem to be going well, too. Both boys seem to be enjoying school, and seem motivated to do well. Sr. Jr. tried out for the tennis team yesterday. He thinks he did well enough to make the next round of try-outs, so I'm anxious for him to get home to find out if he's right. We're starting to add in all the after-school activities, like piano lessons, Hebrew school, and soccer. The weather's been gorgeous. Can't complain.

So far, the only person who can complain is poor Mr. T, who's been socked in at work. There never seems to be any in between for him; he's either too busy and stressed, like he is now, or worried that he's not busy enough.

Aaaaaah

2010-09-10T13:15:00.007-04:00

School has started. That big sigh of relief you hear is me, dragging out my knitting and my spinning and RELAXING for the first time in a long time.

So far school seems to be going well. Sr. Jr. seems happy with his classes. He's particularly pleased that he could get into Latin this year. He couldn't last year because his school schedules all foreign languages for each grade in one period, so the kids can't take a second language as an elective. I can understand that not many kids would want to take two modern languages at once, but I bet there's a not insignificant population who would want to take one modern language along with Latin. Luckily, it worked out for this year.

Jr. Jr. seems ok with his. His teacher is very good, but I think the composition of the class leaves something to be desired. Only one of his good buddies is in class with him. There are two boys who tend to have behavioral issues, and I suspect that putting them together won't help. We'll see.

I put aside Paper Crane for a bit to work on Hallett's Ledge. I'm almost finished with the body of the sweater.

I'm farther along with the back now, of course. I just haven't taken any new pictures. I think when I'm done with the body, I'll pick up Paper Crane again and finish the body on that sweater. Switch back to Hallett for sleeves, and then back to Paper Crane again. It's a plan.

So far I'm having no issues with the pattern. It's all going very smoothly. I hope it fits! It looks small, but I know that the rib-like pattern will stretch out when it's blocked.

The other thing I'm doing now that I have time again is spinning. I just started a spinning project this morning. I worked at it all morning long until my hand was cramping and I needed a break.

I'm spinning some Crown Mountain Farms merino in the Thistle colorway, a colorway I like so much I unknowingly bought it two separate times, two separate years, at Maryland Sheep and Wool. Here's what it looks like pre-spinning:

Here's the bit I've spun so far this morning, about half a bobbin, with the obligatory dime shot following:

I plan to make a two ply yarn out of this. I think it will end up as a heavy laceweight or fingering weight, but we'll see.

I've been reading another great book, Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray. It's about boys (and others) at a school in the UK. There are parts that are read aloud/laugh aloud funny, and parts that are full of the pathos in any teen's life. Very, very good.

A Little Worried

2010-09-01T14:32:00.006-04:00

I've actually had a little time to knit, here and there, betwixt and between. I got a lot of knitting done Sunday evening during the Emmy awards. I made it all the way to the eyelet band in the middle of Hallett's Ledge:

Once I hit that nice little milestone, I put it aside to concentrate some more on Paper Crane. As of my last post, I had bound off for the armholes and finished the little front panels. Since then, I've knit all the way up the back, doing the armhole decreases, and finished the increases and the casting on for the fronts, as well:

All I have to do now is knit 79 more rows and the body of the sweater is done. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to wonder if this will fit me. It seems small. Very small. I know that it will grow a bit in the wash, but I'm still afraid it won't fit me. I'll be very sad if that's the case, after all this work!

Now that I've done all that, I'm going to put Paper Crane aside for a day or two to go back to Hallett's Ledge. I need a few days of worsted weight after all that laceweight.

In ankle news... I haven't been back on the treadmill since my Saturday attempt. My ankle was definitely sore and achy for a few days after even that short, gentle walk. I really don't want to overdo it and make my recovery longer, but this is driving me nuts.

The gimpiness did allow me to read a lot while we were away, and now is as good a time as any to give a reading report. First up is One Day, by David Nicholls. This novel tells the story of two people who meet up in college and have one date. Over the years, they stay friends, though they both have feelings for each other. Their friendship survives miscommunications, missed signals, life changes, and more. The book was well-written and enjoyable. I think I particularly liked it because the characters were very much my contemporaries. I liked it so much that I read another book by Nicholls called Starter for Ten, about a young man going to college and trying to prove himself and find himself. I liked this book less, perhaps because the main character wasn't that likeable to me, and I found his complete cluelessness annoying and not very believable.

After those, I read Mr. Peanut, but Adam Ross. It starts out seeming to be about a man wondering how to kill his wife, but is really an exploration of marriage and how married people can be so close and so in love, yet not really know each other at all. There are many layers to this book, stories within stories within stories, including examinations of the marriages of two policemen involved with the main character, one of whom happens to be Sam Sheppard, whose wife's murder was the subject of much tabloid reporting and also became the basis for the television show (and movie) The Fugitive. Mr. T didn't like this book, finding it overlong and full of extraneous stuff. I, on the other hand, liked it a lot. The ending really did put things in perspective, too.

After that, I picked up The Three Weissmanns of Westport, by Cathleen Schine. This book examines the fall-out from an elderly man's decision to divorce his long-time wife and take up with a younger woman. His wife, along with his two step-daughters, leave Manhattan for exile in Westport, Connecticut. I enjoyed this book quite a lot, even if I did harangue Mr. T about not divorcing me when I'm 73 years old. I did want to smack some of the people in the book, too, for being clueless, easily manipulated, or just plain mean.

I read The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman next. I almost didn't read this, because it sounded a bit chick-lit-y for me, but I was happily proved wrong. Like The Three Weissmans, it features two sisters, one more responsible and one more flighty. The book portrays life in the dot-com boom and bust period, with a dash of 9/11 thrown in, but in the context of two young women finding their way in the world and discovering what they want and who they are. I enjoyed this book a lot, more than I thought I would.

I'm still reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and enjoying it a lot. I'm almost done with it. The book is written wonderfully, about the interaction between Europeans and Japanese back at the beginning of the 19th century.

Phew.

For now, I'm dealing with ants in the kitchen and everyone getting antsy about the start of school next week.

Actual Knitting Content!

2010-08-28T12:56:00.007-04:00

It seems like it's been forever since I had any significant knitting to show. Trust me, it's not like I've had too much knitting time lately. But I have made a little visible progress, so I'm going to show it off.

I knit endless thousands of tiny stockinette stitches and finally arrived at the part of Paper Crane where I bind off for the armholes, do some shaping, and knit the wee front panels. I say "wee" because they are pretty short. Here's a close up for you:

Here's a bigger shot, so you can kind of see the construction:

Now I knit up the back to the neck, and then cast on stitches for the rest of the fronts. I know I'm nowhere near done (sleeves, anyone?), but reaching this milestone makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere. Still in love with the yarn, cat hair and all.

But it's also August. The Fall knitting mags are beginning to come out. August makes me want to knit sweaters. Yes, I know Paper Crane is a sweater, but it's laceweight. It's thin. It's not a sweater sweater. When I think of nippy air and fall leaves, I think thicker wool, more rustic... cables.

Enter Hallett's Ledge, a pattern from the newest issue of Twist Collective. A search through the basement cedar closets yielded the perfect yarn, a discontinued rustic worsted weight wool from Louet, most likely purchased from Elann.com several years ago. Perfect. Swatched and gauge was spot on. Cast on and now have this:

The bottom done through all the waist decreases. Worsted weight on size 8 needles goes much faster than laceweight on 2s!

The kids are still home, but I can at least get a little knitting done here and there. School starts September 7th. No, I'm not counting the days. Really.

This morning I got on the treadmill for the first time since I injured my ankle. I've been brace-free for the last couple of days without any pain, so I wanted to see how the ankle would handle a brief walk on the treadmill. My plan was to start with a 1 mile, moderate speed walk. If things felt good, I would slowly work my way back into things, walking faster and longer before I attempted to run again. I don't want to aggravate or reinjure the ankle and be immobile any longer than I have to be. I'm not quite sure what to conclude from my attempt. I can feel my ankle in a way that I don't feel the uninjured one. It's a bit achy. I don't know if that's the injury or if it's simply stiff from it's forced inactivity.

Whatever I do, I will take this slowly, even though my brain is screaming "Want to do more! Nao! Faster pleez!"

In a future post I will write about all the books I managed to read while I was gimpy, but I do want to recommend one I'm in the middle of right now, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell, who also wrote the marvelous Cloud Atlas. It's really wonderful. Hard to put down, which leads to later nights than I need.

Costa Rica Trip Part 2 - The Beach, now with more Monkeys!

2010-08-21T11:07:00.021-04:00

After our few days inland in the vicinity of the Arenal volcano, we headed back to the west coast for some beach time. We drove for hours on twisty, unmarked roads, stopping for amazing food, until we came to Tamarindo, where our hotel was (the Capitan Suizo, highly recommended). Tamarindo is a funky little beach town, much like any funky little beach town. Lots of surf shops and souvenir shops. Nice restaurants (Noguis was my favorite) and even a Subway, which we managed to avoid. Lots of tourists, professional beach bums, and trust-fund dropouts. The town is very walkable, either on the beach side or the town side.

The town is in a cove, so the surf is nice but not rough. From the beach at our hotel, it was a short walk around the point of the cove to get to the ocean, which was much more dramatic. Here are a bunch of different beach shots:

(this was the first shot I took as we walked on the beach from the hotel)

(this was going around the point to the ocean side)

OK, now you're all sick of beach photos.

The hotel we stayed at also serves as an animal rehab/refuge. It takes in injured animals and nurses them back to health until they can be returned to the wild. At any time, there are several monkeys and other animals roaming around. Because most of them will be returned to the wild, the guests aren't allowed to play with or touch them. But there was one little monkey who was missing one eye and had a white ring on her tail, which made her unlikely to survive on her own, so the guests were allowed to play with her. There were also some playful raccoons around. There was one employee whose sole job it was to walk around all day holding the rescued baby monkeys.

I played with the little monkey once while the boys were off having surfing lessons. She sat on my lap and wanted a tummy rub, but then decided that she wanted to play with my glasses. Cheeky monkey. Later on, she played with Sr. Jr. and the littlest raccoon ("Poco") at the same time:

One day, the medium sized raccoon climbed up in my lap, like a cat. He got a few pets, then started purring and curled up next to me for a little nap:

We were treated to great views of a roving pack of monkeys one day as we were standing in front of the hotel. There were 20 to 30 of them, moving through the trees and across the street on specially-constructed monkey bridges:

There were other cute creatures around, too, like the sugar-stealing jays:

and variegated squirrels! These were so cute. I seriously wanted to smuggle some home to start a colony here.

By dinner time on the very last day there, the sore throat that I'd been ignoring turned into a full-blown throat infection. Luckily, we were able to see a doctor and get to a pharmacy before it closed. I shudder to think what it would have been like to fly even sicker than I was. And I'm glad that it held off until the very end of the vacation.

We had an amazing time. The boys loved it, we loved it.

Costa Rica Trip - Lots of Pics - Part 1, Volcano & Rainforest

2010-08-20T13:05:00.024-04:00

We are back from Costa Rica, a destination chosen by Sr. Jr. as a bar mitzvah present. We had a truly wonderful time, even with my gimpy ankle and some rain. The country is just beautiful, with amazing birds, plants, and animals anywhere you look.

For the first part of our trip, we stayed near the Arenal volcano, at the Naraya. The hotel was amazing, beautiful accommodations, amazing grounds, and fantastic service. This was the very first picture I took upon arriving, a view of the volcano:

Every now and then, the volcano would rumble and we'd see smoke come out the top. Occasionally, we'd even see some smoking rocks land on the side of the mountain, too.

This was very cool, but a little unnerving.

The ground of the hotel were filled with amazing plants and flowers. I wish some of them would grow here! Here's a bunch of plant/flower pics:

One day, the boys went on a hike up to the waterfall and swam in the waters below. My ankle prevented me from doing that, and the pics are on Mr. T's camera, so imagine waterfalls and swimming boys here.

Another day we went for a tranquil float down the river, where we saw sloths, monkeys, amazing birds like Olive-throated Parakeets, Chestnut-Mandibled Toucans, White-Throated Magpie Jays (photos later - these birds would lurk by the restaurant at the beach to try to steal sugar packets), Passerini's Tanagers (gorgeous!), Blue and Gold Tanagers, and Orioles, among many others that I can't identify.

We also saw long-nosed bats:

Lizards, cows, and this guy:

who did not eat us (professional courtesy ;p)

So there we were, floating down a river in the middle of Costa Rica, when we got out and went up to a small snack stand to meet the van. As we were walking up from the riverside, we saw hundreds of cyclists riding by. A bike race. I can't escape it. Mr. T was enthralled.

We also did a hanging bridges tour through the rainforest. This was a lot of fun, if a bit scary up there on the swinging bridges. That was a bit hard on my ankle, but I'm glad I did it. We saw all sorts of things that we'd only seen on the Discovery Channel, like leaf-cutter ants, poison dart frogs:

and all sorts of amazing plants and views:

(this is a shot down from the bridge we were standing on)

(way up in the canopy)

Phew.

Tomorrow: at the beach in Tamarindo, with monkeys!

The Bar Mitzvah

2010-08-08T20:00:00.014-04:00

Sr. Jr.'s bar mitzvah was this weekend. He did an amazing job; I'm so proud of him. And, while it wasn't fun trying to pull all this together and get everything ready with a fractured ankle, it all got done and everything went well.

Early on, we offered him the choice of a big, traditional bar mitzvah party with lots of people, a dj, etc. OR a small family event and a trip of his choice. He chose the trip option, so the party ended up being about 25 of us in a private room at a local restaurant. It was really nice, because we all had the opportunity to talk and relax. There was no shouting over music, or breaking for "games." Despite my fears, there was no inter- or intra- family drama. We ate, we talked, it was lovely.

Then we had a low-key brunch here at the house this morning before everyone had to head home again.

Here are some family pics:

Sr. Jr. and the Rabbi at the rehearsal:

With Grandpa T that afternoon, before the bar mitzvah:

Ready to go:

Some T family members arrive at the temple:

Boys being silly:

I look so elegant with the boot, don't I?

First halfway decent picture of me EVER:

The quintessential Jr. Jr.:

With my father and his wife:

With my brother and his girlfriend:

With my aunts and uncles:

I don't have any pics with my ILs on my camera, so I'm waiting for them to be emailed to me.

And no, I haven't knit in ages, so no new knitting pics to show you.

It's Official

2010-07-26T15:14:00.005-04:00

The universe clearly hates me:

I don't know exactly what caused this. At one point I whacked my ankle on the dishwasher, but that's not unusual. It's not like it hurt after that. The next day I got on the treadmill as usual, started running, and for a long time, felt perfectly great. Ran a bit longer than I normally do, as a matter of fact. Then it started hurting. So I stopped running and kept walking, thinking I'd walk it off. When things started to feel better, I ran again. Ouch. I probably should have stopped sooner than I did, but it's not like I twisted it or felt anything go "pop" or anything. I came upstairs, plopped a bag of ice on it, took two Advil, and rested. And rested. And iced. And wore the compression sock and the little ankle brace.

But it kept hurting. It was tender to the touch on a spot right above my ankle, on bone. So today, a week later, still feeling exactly as bad as last week, I took myself off to the orthopedist. Diagnosis was a definite maybe -- "deep bone contusion and/or hairline fracture." If it's just the contusion, I should be better in a couple of weeks. If it's a fracture, it'll take longer.

So now I have this lovely boot to lurch around in, and I'm just hoping that I feel better enough to fully participate in all the stuff we plan to do in Costa Rica.

Sigh.

On a happier note, we retrieved Sr. Jr. from his week away at Adventure Links camp. He looked like he had a great time. They did a high ropes challenge, some climbing, caving, whitewater rafting and "natural water slides." At the end of every session, the counselors give out awards to all the kids based on their personalities and things they did during the session. Last year, SJ won the "firestarter" award. This year he won the "big brother" award, for taking care to befriend and translate for a boy from Korea who didn't speak English too well. Makes a mommy proud, even if he doesn't display such nice big brotherly tendencies toward his actual brother ;-) This is what the car thermometer said on the way out there:

On a sadder note, Ron McDonald, the owner of Tennis USA and Sr. Jr.'s tennis coach for the last two years, passed away suddenly last week while Sr. Jr. was away. Ron was a great coach, who really connected with Sr. Jr. I love my son, but he can be a difficult kid to coach -- stubborn, prone to know-it-all-ism, and sometimes (ok, often) moody. But Ron really took the time to think of ways to engage him and connect with him. He will be missed by us and by a lot of other families in the area.

In knitting news, the Paper Crane is now 123 rows long. I realized that I was knitting a bit tighter, so my gauge might be too small for the bottom of the sweater. I think I can block it out, and if it's not perfect, that's ok -- the sweater is open at the bottom, so if it's a little smaller there, it won't be a big deal. I'm trying to loosen up the knitting now to get the upper part of the sweater sized properly. I don't have any new pics, so here it is 23 rows ago:

Passing Through

2010-07-20T10:23:00.008-04:00

I know I haven't posted in a while -- way too much going on and way too much to do. But right now I'm stuck on the couch with my ankle up and iced, so it seems like a good time to pop in :)

Sr. Jr.'s bar mitzvah is in a couple of weeks! I can't believe it's getting so close. Right now he's away at his outdoor adventure camp. They do rock climbing, kayaking, a high ropes challenge, and "natural waterslides." Doesn't that sound incredible? If it weren't for the whole camping outdoors thing, I'd want to do it, too!

I'm trying to do a lot of work around the house to get ready for the onslaught of relatives, but at the moment I can barely walk. Grrr. There hasn't been much knitting, as a result, but there has been some progress.

I've knit exactly 100 rows on my Paper Crane so far. 100 rows is about 9 inches. I need at least another 45 or so before the armhole, hahahaha.

I love the yarn and the color. I think the sweater will look amazing when it's done, but it will probably be 2012 before it's done.

I've finished one of the socks for my friend Marie and am on my way to the heel on the second. Unfortunately I don't have any recent photos, so here's an old one:

It kills me that entire days go by right now without any knitting. This summer sucks. Have I mentioned the mice and the raccoons? At least the cats bring us the mice to take out of the house. The raccoon seems to have made a home in our chimney. Yes, I need to call the chimney people to come get him out and recap the chimney.

But the veggie garden is growing:

The grape tomatoes are out of control. Fresh lettuce, yum...

For the second year in a row, the snap peas just didn't take. But it looks like the cucumbers will. The green beans are amazing, the broccoli is growing. I planted one lone strawberry plant, and it's doing well, but I don't think we'll get berries until next year. Next year I think I'll try to buy more plants rather than try to start everything from seed. We'll see if that makes a difference, too.

Since I'm couch-bound today, I'm going to try to get some knitting done. Then back to the grind for me.

Edited a bit later to add a small reading report: Finished/reading a couple of very good books lately. First up is A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. I'd read several of the opening chapters when they were published in The New Yorker, but was impressed with how the book continued to get better as it continued. It consists of linked stories loosely involving a group of people who were friends in high school and others in their orbit. Very, very good.

I'm currently reading One Day, by David Nicholls and enjoying it a lot. It's about two college friends who almost get together on their last night at school. They stay friends over the years. The book follows their lives and their relationship over the years. The characters are roughly my age, so I can identify with a lot of the cultural details about their lives and characters. It's about love and missed connections and enduring friendship.

Slow and Fast

2010-06-15T11:34:00.003-04:00

One and a half weeks until the end of school.

When I get the chance, I've been knitting on Paper Crane. I love the yarn. I love the color with all my heart. I even don't mind the teeny tiny stitches on teeny tiny needles. But this is going to take a really, really long time to knit, especially since I don't foresee having a whole lot of knitting time this summer.

This is 25 rows of knitting. Slightly more than 2 inches of sweater. Someday maybe I'll get a light box so I can capture the true beauty of these colors.

When I have less time, I work on the Nutkin socks I'm making for a friend. I still love these socks and this yarn. One glance at the pattern and that was all I needed - it's really easy, so I can take it with me as my waiting room knitting.

While I mourn the loss of free time that summer brings, I also look forward to a lot of its freedoms -- no more piano lessons, baseball games, tennis lessons, practices, and matches, no homework, more freedom to go and do and stay up late and sleep in. The garden grows and we get yummy fresh vegetables (hopefully). We have more time to cook and experiment in the kitchen.

This will be a tough summer, between Mr. T's trial in California and the bar mitzvah, but I'm sure the actual bar mitzvah and the trip to Costa Rica will be wonderful. I hope that Sr. Jr. has a great time on this trip and remembers it as a special time. I hope that I don't kill members of my (extended) family in the process. I hope that my family doesn't want to kill me, too!

Holding my Breath

2010-06-11T09:24:00.008-04:00

So right after I cast on for Paper Crane and knit something like five rows, I decided I wanted to clear the decks of some lingering works-in-progress. So Paper Crane went back in the bag and out came Virve's Stockings. I wanted to finish these so I could start a pair of socks for my friend Marie, who's spending a few years in Germany.

So I pulled out the socks and knit and knit and knit and knit (they're knee socks, after all), and then had a little bit of fun at the colorwork panel. Then it was back to knitting and knitting and knitting. At some point mid-gusset, I began to wonder whether I would have enough of the dark blue yarn to finish the socks. I did a contrast color toe on the first sock precisely because I was worried about this possibility. I weighed the yarn I had left. 18 grams. Would that be enough to knit all the way down the foot to the start of the toe?

Juuuuusssst made it. What you see in the picture above is not the tail I cut to weave in; that's ALL the yarn I had left. I finished by a hair.

Love them! They should be nice and warm in 6 months or so when I need them. Stats: Pattern: Virve's Stockings, from Folk Knitting in Estonia. Yarns used: Wollmeise Twin in Moses (main color), Natur, Mistelszweig, and Jeton. Modifications: Did three repeats of lace motif at top cuff instead of two, did contrast color toe, slightly modified heel flap and gusset.

With those off the needles, I pulled out a skein of Bugga that I had earmarked to use for Marie's socks, picked a pattern and started knitting.

Now, I've managed to acquire a few skeins of Bugga, but I hadn't knit with it yet. It. Is. Heavenly. It's so soft (20% cashmere), but springy and lively, with wonderful stitch definition. I'm totally smitten. I'm going to have a hard time sending these socks off to Marie, so it's a good thing that her feet are a different size than mine.

The pattern is Nutkin, which is astoundingly easy but produces a very pretty result.

I finally finished Parrot and Olivier in America the other night. I really enjoyed this book, although Mr. T put it down quickly, saying it was too much work. I thought it was really funny, but not funny in a laugh out loud Terry Pratchett kind of way. It was more of a dry, sarcastic funny. A Robertson Davies or P.G. Wodehouse kind of funny. It was a love letter to America and all its faults in the end.

I intended to start the 3rd book in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, but I haven't gotten around to it. The Summer Fiction issue of the New Yorker arrived, focusing on their picks of notable authors under 40, including some of my absolute favorites, so I expect my nose will be stuck in there for a while before I start a new book.

Summer is slowly descending upon us. Team tennis is over. Baseball is over. We can sleep in on weekends instead of getting up and rushing off to activities. I'm ready.

But I was sad about the end of our baseball season. Our scrappy little team was the third seed in the playoffs, but we lost our first game. By one run. And poor little Jr. Jr. was the last out. He's one of the most reliable players on the team, both in the field and at bat, but a few bad calls and a few ill-advised swings and he struck out. Poor kid cried and cried, because he wanted to help his team win. Nonetheless, the team had a great season. They played well, and they played well together, which is the most important thing.

Two more weeks of school left, so I need to take advantage of it, in between the end of year parties that they cram in there!

Big Needles, Small Needles. Am I Out of My Mind?

2010-06-03T11:08:00.005-04:00

Elegant Empire is done. Blocked, sewn up, buttoned, and put away until the weather is warmer.

It's a little bit big on me and the cable panels don't quite match up perfectly. I need to decide whether I hate that or not. The big part I think I can fix through blocking. This was knit on size 6 and 7 needles and went pretty quickly, when I actually had time to sit down and work on it.

So what have I chosen to work on next? Paper Crane, knit in Wollmeise laceweight on size 2 needles. In a summer where I have to get ready and host a bar mitzvah. Am I crazy? At the very least, the sweater is pretty much all stockinette, so it's not like I have to pay too much attention to what I'm doing. But... teeny tiny stitches on teeny tiny needles. My eyes hurt just from casting on:

That's Mmmmmerlot, one of my absolute favorite Wollmeise colors. I hope it still is when I finish this!

As for the reading, I'm currently in the middle of Parrot and Olivier in America and enjoying it very much. It involves a spoiled and somewhat clueless young French nobleman dispatched to America to "study" American prisons (really a task settled upon to get him out of the country at a time of unrest) and the English "servant" who serves as his secretary. It's an amusing re-think of the story of de Toqueville's travels in America.

Where is Hunter S. Thompson When You Need Him?

2010-05-26T13:49:00.005-04:00

(There is knitting in here eventually)

I was reading yet another article about Tea Party happenings last night in The New Yorker. (So they've stopped calling themselves the Tea Baggers, I see. They finally got clued into that one, and now they get all offended when people call them that, never mind that this was what they started out calling themselves. But I digress.) This article was about Andrew Breitman and mentioned various TP conventions, goings-on, etc. Anyway, in the middle of reading this article, I had a sudden realization.

What the world is really missing right now is Hunter S. Thompson's take on the Tea Party and its denizens. Mainstream media tries so hard to be fair and to attempt to deal with the movement's more rational members and rationales. Faux, of course, treats them as being on an equal footing with the Founding Fathers. Only Thompson could get inside there and get us a true portrait of all the crazy. I'm so sorry he's gone.

In a similar vein, I'm really amused by all those southern Republican politicians -- you know, the ones who are so vocal about overreaching by the federal government, the ones who wanted to refuse stimulus money, ones who so loudly proclaim their favor for "state's rights" -- crying crocodile tears over how the federal government isn't doing enough to deal with the oil spill in the gulf. I heard one talk about how the federal government had the knowledge and the resources to fix this now, whether it was through Homeland Security, the Army Corps of Engineers (let's not mention the levees in New Orleans, shall we?), or even NASA, as if there were a fix out there that is being withheld. Oh, the irony.

Knitting. Yes. I still get to do that a little.

I've finished the knitting on Elegant Empire. The pattern calls for the sweater to be blocked before the side seams and hems are sewn up. That is where I am right now:

And more of a close-up:

And since I still haven't quite settled on what to knit next, I went back to finish up Virve's Stockings. Not done yet, but I've gotten almost to the heel:

In the comments to my last post, Tracey posted a link to a great blog series on fitting sweaters to flatter your particular figure. This was a great series of posts. Unfortunately, I can't decide whether I am top heavy, curvy, or proportionate. But it did lead me to a great pattern from Twist that went into my queue, called Poplar and Elm. So, still waffling on the next pattern, but I do have ideas.

I Need a Treat

2010-05-16T17:38:00.004-04:00

Today I finally had a couple of hours of quiet time, so I kitchenered the two halves of Elegant Empire together. It was something like 115 stitches plus the cable panel. I've never kitchenered anything but plain old stockinette before, and figured I'd just wing it when I got to the cable panel. Classic overconfidence, no? In this case, it worked out just fine. You can see that the panels don't quite match up. I might have been a row off, but hey, it's not that bad, is it? I think it will look a lot better after it's all done, washed, and blocked, too.

All that kitchenering took a while and definitely made my head and my eyes hurt. I need a treat! All I need to do now to finish this thing is to do the front band, and then sew the side seams and the hems. Not too bad.

I'm still contemplating what to knit next, and I'm still undecided. Kippi provided lots of good suggestions in the comments to the last post, which was helpful and NOT helpful, because it gave me more to choose from. I have a ton of great yarn that I really want to knit up, but I don't have a pattern that's thrilling me.

And no, I don't have time to design one of my own, thankyouverymuch. It's tempting, though.

A weekend of sitting around and waiting at various events has allowed me to finish the first of my Lagoon socks and to start the toe of the second:

I love these socks. I've been knitting a bit tightly, though. I think I need to loosen it up.

In non-knitting news, we got a new treadmill! I'm very excited about this. Now I have no excuse not to exercise. I can't complain when it's too hot, too cold, too rainy, or whatever.

Book Reports

I've read a few since the last blog post mentioning books, of course. I finally got around to reading Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill. This book came out a while ago to great acclaim and good reviews, falling into that category of "post-9/11 novels" that make me wary. I find it hard to read books or see movies that center on 9/11 because it's still so raw in my mind. It's such a huge event that in some ways, putting it into fiction seems exploitative or cheap. There are some 9/11 books that work, however. Next, by James Hynes, one of my favorite authors, deals mainly with post-9/11 anxiety, the effects it has on a personal level, rather than on some larger societal level. Netherland was a bit too slow, in my opinion. It had its moments, but overall was a bit of a slog for me. I know it's supposed to be paced that way (much like a cricket match, which can go on for days), but it had stretched where I just wasn't connecting with it.

I just finished reading The Imperfectionists, a first novel by Tom Rachman. The novel is a portrait of a newspaper told from different perspectives. I really enjoyed this book, but I think I wanted more. On some level, it's a history of modern newspapering, from the days when newspapers were the whole story, to the days of budget cutting and audience-pleasing, to the days when people feel newspapers are old media, not able to keep up with the fast pace of current information dissemination. That last part -- the internet age -- isn't really examined as much as the other stages, so the novel seems to end kind of abruptly. However, it's a great book, very well-written, funny and wise and insightful. We get to see newspapering from so many angles, from the publisher to the stringer to the copy editor. I do recommend it, and I'll be looking out for more from this author.

One of my newest favorite authors, Maggie O'Farrell (The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox) has also come out with a new novel, called The Hand that First Held Mine. I'm still at the beginning, but I'm finding it hard to put down. There are two threads that are being developed, and I haven't quite gotten to where they come together, but I can't wait. O'Farrell is definitely now on the list of authors whose books I buy as soon as they come out, along with Jane Smiley, Lorrie Moore, and others.

Off to put some aloe on my sunburn :(

Procrastination

2010-05-14T10:38:00.005-04:00

This is where I am right now with Elegant Empire. The main knitting is done. I need to kitchener the two back pieces together, then pick up stitches to knit the front band. Almost done. But I know that I'll need patience, time, and concentration to do the kitchenering, and when will that happen? Uninterrupted quiet time... what a concept. I was hoping for today. Maybe after lunch. We'll see.

In the meantime, since I'm so close to finishing this sweater, I'm starting to ponder what to knit next. I do have a shawl on the needles that I can work on, and a couple of pairs of socks, but I also want to get another sweater going. Unfortunately, nothing's really leaping out at me at the moment. Maybe it's partly because I feel kind of lumpy and all the cute sweater patterns out there right now are pretty fitted. I have a couple of possibilities that I'm letting mature in my mind. We'll see.

I've also done more on the Lagoon socks, but they're just plain old stockinette, toe-up socks. Nothing that requires much concentration or expertise. However, they are very mesmerizing :)

It was serendipitous that I managed to get the heel to start right where the right color is! I'm very pleased about how that turned out. I hope I can swing that in the other Twisted Fiber Arts yarns that I have.

Sooo, all three of you out there... if you have any good sweater recommendations, let me know!

Appreciation

2010-05-11T10:45:00.005-04:00

So, in general, I had a sucky Mother's Day. Sr. Jr. was sick (yucky gunky sinus stuff PLUS strep throat, fun) and we did nothing. Aside from a quick trip to the garden center, nada. I didn't get to knit, even. I did get to pick out where we got our Saturday evening takeout, though :)

But then I found out yesterday that one of my old college roommates died. Ovarian cancer. Obviously, she was my age. She had two boys, just like me. She was diagnosed soon after her younger son was born, and was in treatment on and off for about 8 years. She was a doctor. She had a great sense of humor. She was one of the most generous people I know. It was so tough reading her blog in the last few months, as she went into the hospital, and despite the brave face she always put on, you could see how much pain she was in. This is just NOT FAIR, and my heart goes out to her family, especially her boys.

So all the Mother's Day suckiness aside, I'm alive. I'm healthy and here for my family in every way possible. And I know that they love me as much as I love them, even if they don't always make grand gestures to show me.

Here's what's blooming around here right now, to have some beauty at the end of a depressing post:

The Annual Pilgrimage and an Actual Finished Object

2010-05-04T13:29:00.013-04:00

This weekend was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Originally it looked like I wasn't going to be able to go, due to Mr. T's work/travel schedule, but a last minute rescheduling intervened. I didn't necessarily want to buy any yarn or fiber. Mostly, I wanted to go to breathe in the fiber crafty air and hang out with friends.

It was hot. Very hot. It was almost unbearable inside the buildings and even the tents. You'd think the tents would be cooler because they'd provide shade, but even with the open sides, the breeze couldn't get inside. I heard there were a number of people who got ill from the heat.

Traffic was fine for me. I guess I got there before the hideously long lines started and left when they were small, too. No problems there.

I met up with Rav-friend Tanya before 9 and we made a quick tour of some of the vendors. I found it a bit lackluster this year. Nothing seemed to scream out at me or make me go "oooh." I went to the Brooks Farm booth first, but nothing captured my eye. There was a big Miss Babs booth, but I can get that locally, so I didn't feel the need to brave the crowds to look at the yarn. In the end, I only bought 2 skeins of yarn, and one was for Sr. Jr.

It was a yarn that's new to me - Shalimar Yarns' Zoe Sock. Nice and cushy, with pretty kettle dyed colors. Sr. Jr.'s is dark blue, of course.

There were adorable animals, too, of course:

SOOOO hard not to take one of these home with me!

Tanya and I gave up on the shopping pretty early and then went to hang out and knit until the rest of the crew showed up. It was really nice to see everybody again. People came down from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, all over.

I brought my Business Time socks with me to knit while I chatted. I started these back in November and I was getting pretty sick of them. They're my "waiting room socks," the ones I knit on in doctor's waiting rooms, at Jr. Jr.'s piano lessons, etc. In other words... not very often. But I got far enough on them at the Sheep and Wool Festival that I was inspired to go ahead and finish them. So, here they are:

(Rainy Days & Woolly Dogs OhMyGoth! Sock yarn in Business Time.) They are cashmerey and soft and warm, but they were boring me. But I will love wearing them when the weather turns, many months from now.

In other yarny goodness, the following came to me via one of the Ravelry trade threads:

Tardis yarn! With cashmere, too. The lovely Helena, aka tinygiraffe, aka Midnight Sheep, offered to custom dye some yarn for me, and was kind enough NOT to laugh her head off when I sent her some inch-long bits for her to try to match. She did an amazing job capturing the color I was looking for and in realizing that it looks very Tardis-y :)

I was excited to finish up the Business Time socks because I really wanted to try out some of my Twisted Fiber Arts yarns. I have fallen in love with her colors, so it was about time to get some on the needles. Top picture is with flash, bottom is without. It's hard to capture the exact intensity of the colors:

This is the Lagoon colorway on the Playful base. I'm mesmerized by this yarn. It's so beautiful in person, so soft and cushy, too. I can't stop knitting it. So even though these are my new "waiting room" socks, I've just been knitting them non-stop since I cast on yesterday (well, non-stop in between the laundry, and the errands, etc.). Look for more socks out of this yarn in the future.

The Brainwashing Has Begun

2010-04-27T10:57:00.005-04:00

Lookee here:

That's Sr. Jr.'s knitting! On Sunday I took him over to the temple for his bar mitzvah tutoring. Normal Sunday School wasn't in session because it was Mitzvah Day, when people show up to do various volunteer projects like making sandwiches for the homeless or packaging food up for food banks. At one table, there was yarn, needles, and some 8 by 8 inch squares -- I knew where I was going. The knitters were making squares that would be joined up to make blankets to go to homeless shelters and domestic violence shelters. I sat and knitted while Jr. Jr. whined for a while. Then a little girl from one of his classes showed up, made googly eyes at him, and said she wanted to learn how to knit. All of a sudden, Jr. Jr. thought it would be a fun idea to knit. So we got him started. That didn't go very well.

When Sr. Jr. was done with his tutoring, he came to find me and decided he wanted to knit, too! So I got him going, and he did pretty well. He decided he'd like to keep doing it, to knit himself some hats and socks, and maybe make a felted kitty blanket or bed. I'm not going to discourage this.

When we got home, the kids ran straight for the stash and tried to get all grabby hands with the Wollmeise. Ha! At first I found some leftover Lamb's Pride for Sr. Jr. to use, but the fuzzy single ply wasn't easy to work with. Finally, I gave him a partial skein from the sweater I'm working on, and he went to town.

At one point, Jr. Jr. asked him to play a game, and Sr. Jr.'s response was "I'm knitting!" There were definitely some moments of frustration, and the 20 stitches he started out with have morphed into 28, but the stitches look pretty good. Neither one of us knows whether he'll keep going with this, but it's been fun to share.

Speaking of the sweater I'm working on, I've finished sleeve two and cast on for the sides:

Most of the major pieces of the bar mitzvah planning are done (for now), so I feel a little more relaxed. When summer hits and the actual date is closer, I'm sure I'll be frantic, but at least I can chill for now.

Meditations on E-Book Pricing

There was an interesting article in last week's New Yorker about e-books, the Kindle, and the iPad, mostly concerning the pricing of e-books. Apparently, when Amazon first introduced the Kindle it was selling e-books to the public for less than it was paying the publishers for the books. This established a price point in consumers' minds -- e-books = $9.99. As a Kindle owner, I can say that I thought $9.99 seemed a bit high, but acceptable. In my mind, e-books were nearly pure profit for publishers. E-books eliminate the physical costs of making and selling books, including the physical costs of materials, the labor costs, the costs to warehouse, ship, and accept returns on all the books. E-books also eliminate the uncertainty over how many to publish, since they're downloaded on demand. The article confirmed for me that publishers eat a lot of costs over unsold books -- over $5 of the cost of a hardback book is to counteract chargebacks from unsold stock.

According to the article, the publishers weren't happy about Amazon's move. They, of course, want to charge more for e-books. It was really fascinating to see how much of the cost of a book went to physical materials, chargebacks, etc. It only confirmed for me that e-books should NOT be priced higher.

Publishers: you will lose customers if you raise prices. I'm an avid reader. I spend a lot of money on books. When prices are low, I buy more. I'm more willing to take a risk on a book that seems iffy to me if the price isn't too high. It's one thing to charge a lot of money for a physical book. I can re-sell the book, lend it to friends (which costs you sales), donate it to the library or to a book fair. I cannot do that with an e-book. It is mine and mine alone. I am not willing to pay a lot of money for it, knowing how much of the price is pure profit to you. I am not against you earning money on your products, not at all. But there is a point at which the cost will cause me to purchase fewer books. That will hurt you and your authors more than lowering your prices.

Think about it.

Springing

2010-04-14T12:47:00.004-04:00

Remember the little seeds I planted, pictured in my last post? Well, they're springing up like mad:

I'm sure it's just a little bit strange that I keep wandering in there, rubbing my hands together, cackling and saying, "Hahahaha! I'm fattening you up so I can EAT YOU!"

I finished the first half of Elegant Empire:

Now all I do is make another one of these, Kitchener the two back portions together, and do a button band around the front and back neck. I hope the second half will go quicker, but I doubt it, given everything that's going on.

I've got the restaurant for Sr. Jr.'s bar mitzvah lined up, which is good, a relief, all that. Today I was going to go look at invitations. Alas, Jr. Jr. woke up with a sore throat and a fever, so I'm stuck at home. Apparently, he wasn't feeling well yesterday at school, but wouldn't tell me about it because he didn't want to miss his baseball game last night. To make it worse, he refused to wear a long sleeved shirt or sweatshirt under his jersey, even though it was cold and rainy, so he was out there shivering for two hours. While I admire his dedication to his team (they're 2-0!), I do wish common sense would pay him a visit.

I have a feeling that I'll be pulling out my hair, climbing the walls, and talking to people who aren't there by the time this bar mitzvah rolls around in August. By the time we get back from our trip afterward, I will *definitely* need a vacation.

Poor Mr. T will join me in my nervous breakdown, too, I suspect. He has been given a trial date on very short notice, so is working 16 hours a day at this point. It ruins Spring, basically, and will also keep me from going to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Then he has another trial set for the Fall, smack in the middle of cyclocross season. So he's barely riding now, his Fall season is pre-screwed, and he's working like mad.

Look for some fun ranty posts from us as we get more and more stressed!

It's April Already

2010-04-06T13:36:00.005-04:00

::pokes head around corner:: Is it safe to come out now? No more snow? Are we done with the puking? I see sun. I see things blooming. It's 80 degrees. Whew. I think -- I hope -- the winter from hell is over.

We had a Spring Break which was not much of a break. We stayed here. I couldn't even get very much knitting done. But I do have things to show you, so all is not lost.

A little progress on Elegant Empire. You knit this one sideways, in two pieces. First you knit the sleeve, then you cast on stitches for the front and back and knit up one side, over the shoulder, and down the other. It's an interesting construction:

Yes, that's all I've managed to do. Sigh.

But I did start something else in the meantime. I wound up a skein of Wollmeise lace yarn because I was trading half of it with someone else for a half a skein of a different color (the skeins are so huge that you can get a nice sized shawl out of half a skein). Since I already had the yarn wound up, I went ahead and cast on for Evelyn Clark's Shetland Triangle, a pattern I've loved for a long time. It's a very easy knit, which suits me right now. I've just completed 4 repeats of the main pattern (8 are called for, but you can do more):

In real life, the color is a little more of a purpley red than the photo suggests.

I read a good book recently, too. It's The Girl With Glass Feet, by Ali Shaw. It's magical realism, but not cutesy magical realism. It's about a young woman who visits a remote island and finds her feet are turning glass, and the people who try to save her. The story moves along nicely, with interesting characters, but I really loved how the author played with the idea of glass as metaphor -- many metaphors, in fact. Some you think you know, like "heart of glass," for example. You read on, sure that you know what that means, metaphorically, making judgments of characters accordingly, until the narrator turns it around, and shows you another view. If you are turning to glass, do you need to be treated like glass? The first-time author is young (I think born in 1982, sob), but has a lot of promise.

And look:

We're getting ready to get the 2010 vegetable and herb patch up and running. We planted two different kinds of peas, sugar snap and sweet, as well as carrots, green beans, broccoli, tomatoes, and cucumbers. We'll just go ahead and plant the lettuces from seed when we transplant these. I've had good luck with lettuce growing from seed outside. We'll get some herb plants out, too. Sr. Jr. wants strawberries as well, but I don't know if we'll have room. Mmmm, memories of the fresh-from-the garden salads I had last summer are already making my mouth water...

I Need Disinfectant. Or an Exorcism.

2010-03-10T08:48:00.006-05:00

Friday was the big Wax Museum day at Jr. Jr.'s school. All the kids in the third grade picked a historical figure to research, then they dressed up in costume and pretend to be that person in a Wax Museum. Parents and other kids from the school wander through, pressing buttons on their desks. When their button is pressed, the historical figures "come to life" and present their autobiographies. It's a lot of fun. The kids put so much work into their costumes and biographies. Even the shyest kids stand up tall and talk proudly. This year, Jr. Jr. chose Arthur Ashe as his historical figure. This presented some interesting costume issues, but we simply dressed him up in tennis gear. Beyond the obvious differences, the tennis clothes of today do not look anything like the tennis clothes in the late '60s and the '70s, so Jr. Jr. ended up looking more like Andre Agassi than Arthur Ashe:

But everyone understood :)

Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. When Jr. Jr. got off the bus, he walked straight home, crawled onto the couch and said, "I have a headache. I'm cold." Sure enough, he was running a fever. I gave him some Motrin. A half an hour later, he scootched close to me, said, "My head still hurts," put his head on my shoulder and fell asleep. When he woke up, he swore he was feeling better enough to go to his last basketball game, but I wasn't buying that. He spend a good amount of the evening throwing up. He was sick all weekend.

And then, on Sunday, the impossible happened. Sr. Jr. came back from a trip to the driving range saying his throat hurt. Wha? Sr. Jr. hasn't been sick in years. That's not an exaggeration.

So both of them stayed home Monday, and Sr. Jr. is still home. Between illnesses, blizzards, and more illnesses, I feel like I haven't properly been out of my house or done anything fun or interesting in months.

But I did get some time to knit on my Business Time socks at the doctor's office, at least.

I also finished the knitting on Pas de Valse. All I need to do now is weave in the ends, do the crochet edging, and wash & block that sucker. I'm skeptical about whether this one will last long-term. We'll see. Here's the current state of it:

But I'm procrastinating on finishing this one up by starting something new, of course:

This is the sleeve for Elegant Empire, using MadTosh's formerly-Worsted-now-DK in Silver Fox. The skeins don't all look the same, so I'm trying to plan how to use them to best effect. There are two skeins that are clearly lighter, with less gray. Those will be my sleeve skeins. I will intersperse the other skeins as needed to try to transition them in so that the change will be subtle.

In the meantime, I'm trying to keep a hold on my very tenuous grip on sanity.

Hey, progress!

2010-03-03T09:58:00.006-05:00

In little fits and starts, I've actually accomplished a couple of things lately.

First, I finished sleeve one of Pas de Valse and started sleeve two:

As you can see, I had the same problem with sleeve two that I did with sleeve one - holes in the pickup/short row area:

As soon as I'm done writing this, I'm getting back to this sleeve. I really want to finish this sweater and move on. I can't decide whether I will like this or not. I'm skeptical. The yarn is very soft, and I'm worried about pilling and stretching. But it is very pretty. The next sweater will be sturdier, I promise. I know which one I'm knitting, and what yarn I'm using. It's taking all my strength not to start swatching for it now.

In addition, I finished the first of my Virve's Stockings. I love these. They come all the way up to my knees, true knee socks. I was a bit worried about whether I'd have enough of the main blue color to finish both socks, so I did a contrast color toe, using a bit of the colorwork motif from the colorwork band to tie it all together:

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the color I used for the toe does appear in the colorwork band. I've also started the second sock, but I haven't gotten too far beyond the lace cuff. Stay tuned.

And... my vote for funniest political quote of the year goes to Marion Barry, the man with more lives than a cat, from this morning's Washington Post: "They may take my committee chair. They can't take my dignity." This is true. They can't take his dignity. He hasn't had any for years, decades, even.

I'm continuing to read Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel, the author of Wolf Hall. I'm enjoying this book, although I can't really say why. It's not a book I would really recommend to people, but it's holding my interest. Mantel is a good writer, there's not doubt about that.

I'm almost finished with the book, so I need to figure out what to read next. Recommendations, anyone? I'm not sure anyone's out there, but I'd love to hear some good book recommendations. My only request is for fiction recs.

Making Do

2010-02-24T20:48:00.009-05:00

Life is slowly getting back to normal. The snow is slowly disappearing. Roads are clearing. The basement is dry. The laundry is done. The kids are back in school semi-regularly. So there's been a little more knitting, finally.

During Blizzardmania I started Virve's Stockings because I needed something fairly mindless to do. I was at a point in Pas de Valse that required time and concentration, neither of which were much available. So I picked some colors and cast on. I'm almost done with one of them. They're knee socks, so they do take a bit of knitting:

You can see from the long view that there's quite a bit of knitting there. I'm about halfway through the foot:

This is a nice pattern for mindless knitting -- a little lace at the top, a lot of stockinette, a little fair isle, then the heel, then more stockinette until you're done.

This last weekend I finally got the concentrated quiet time I needed to pick up the armhole stitches on Pas de Valse. Here's where the appeal of knitting with thinner yarn on larger needles wears thin. I picked up stitches very carefully. I had the exact number called for, but because of the loosy-goosy gauge and the short rows, I got holes. There's really no remedying this. It's not a question of my technique, or where I was picking up the stitches, it's just the nature of the knitting. I can sew over the holes to camouflage them, but that's a pain. I will do it, however, because I will not be satisfied otherwise.

Here's what it looks like in long view:

Here's the armhole with the holes:

Sigh.

In news of my other activities, I've read some good books lately. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God was first. This book combines philosophy, mathematics, and academic satire, all in one. Some books are straight out satires that you laugh your way through. Others manage to combine satire with deeper and more emotional layers. This book is definitely the latter type. Parts of it were laugh-out-loud funny (particularly the portrayal of a Harold Bloom-like figure), and some were desperately sad. In some ways, it's an extended meditation on the old Jewish saying "If I do not live for myself, who will? But if I only live for myself, who am I?" and the choices that are thrust upon us. As and English major, I loved the academic satire. The portrayal of the inter-generational and sectarian differences among Jews also resonated with me, mirroring in many ways the dynamics I grew up with. And there was some fascinating stuff that wowed the secret math geek in me.

When I finished that book, I read Hot Springs, by Geoffrey Becker. This is a melancholy book about a young woman who kidnaps the daughter she gave up for adoption five years earlier. It's harder to describe, but it's about love, fear, forgiveness, and the desire to be loved. It's a good book as well.

Somewhere in there I re-read Jane Eyre, as well. I don't think I've read this one since high school. It was nice to dive back in and remember how much I liked it the first time around. It aged well in the sense that my older self still liked it very much, much as I do with Austen (and much as I didn't do with Catcher in the Rye, which is definitely a book for rebellious adolescents).

I'm currently reading Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel. Mantel wrote Wolf Hall, which I read and enjoyed recently. (As an aside, Wolf Hall, while very good, felt unfinished, incomplete. It turns out that there's another book to come, to complete the story.) This book is very different than Wolf Hall. I'm still early enough in the book that I can't really come to any conclusions about it. It's about a psychic/spiritualist who travels England's "psychic fayre" circuit. So far, I'm enjoying the reading. I'll report back on my conclusions when I have some.

The Big Dig

2010-02-12T11:21:00.014-05:00

Wow. Those were some amazing storms we had. I grew up in a snowier place than the DC area, and I had never experienced anything like this before. We never lost power, nor did we have any tree limbs fall on the house or the cars. The worst we had was the ice dam (or "ice damn" as Mr. T referred to it elsewhere) that sent some water into the basement.

Yesterday was devoted to digging out and dealing with the ice dam. The boys and I also walked up to the supermarket to replenish some of our supplies. We stopped at the bagel store on the way home. Sr. Jr. was incredibly helpful. I'm so proud of him. He shoveled and shoveled and cleared out most of the snow, almost single-handedly. Jr. Jr. played mostly. I helped with boiling water for the ice dam, dealing with the water in the basement, and shoveling as well.

Here are some pictures from the day, both of our efforts at the house, and from my walks through the neighborhood:

Maybe someday I'll have knitting to show you again. Hahahaha! Silly me.

Blizzard, Round 3 -- The Sucker Punch

2010-02-10T11:13:00.013-05:00

This is the view from my front door right now. Whiteout conditions. The wind is howling and the snow is coming down fast. We're going nowhere for a long time. Go ahead, Arlington Public Schools, stop kidding yourselves that you might open this week. Cancel the rest of the week already. Your neighbors have.

We can't even get out and start shoveling. There would be no point. The wind would blow it all back. Moreover, the wind and the wind chills are too dangerous to go outside for any length of time now. So we sit and wait, hoping that the wind doesn't cause power outages.

That path was clear yesterday.

I cleared off the deck yesterday, fearing that the weight of the snow, plus all the new snow, would present a risk of collapse. Here's what it looks like now:

The other thing we've been dealing with is ice dams. The roofs of the house are in an M shape, with the dip in the middle where the original house and the addition meet. That dip is also right where the mudroom steps are. All the water on the roof gets shunted to that dip. We did a lot of landscaping and drainage work this summer to draw the rainwater away from the house (to keep our basement dry), but now, with the ice dams, we're in deep shit. The water is seeping down the outside of the house by the mudroom, freezing the steps into a solid block of ice. And then the water is going right into the basement, right into the cedar closets that house my stash. Luckily, all the yarn is up off the floor on shelving or in waterproof plastic, but it's still a giant pain in the ass. I pulled a lot of yarn out, we turned on fans, and then Mr. T and Sr. Jr. hacked away at the ice on the steps to try to alleviate the situation:

And you can see here, after we started chipping, that there was 2 inches of solid ice on the steps:

I threw birdseed out in the front and the back yards yesterday for the birds and squirrels, but it's all covered now.

The local states have pulled their plows and service vehicles off the street because conditions are too dangerous.

All the snow has not meant cozy days sitting in front of the fire, knitting. This is a lot of work. I did get a start on my Virve's Stockings, but I haven't gotten very far:

And tomorrow I get to try to walk to the supermarket to get more cat food!

Snowpocalypse II - Electric Boogaloo

2010-02-07T11:06:00.018-05:00

It's very rare for the DC area to get huge amounts of snow. Every 5 years or so we get dumped on. We had some big snows in 2003, then in 1996 before that, and so on. So when we got the pre-Christmas storm it was kind of fun. The storm happened on a weekend right before Winter Break. It just felt like vacation started early.

But this? This is overkill. We have over 2 feet of snow here. (The "official" totals taken at National airport are always significantly lower than the rest of the region.) The snow is so deep that poor Jr. Jr. can't really walk in it. The snow is up over my knees to my thighs. And it's heavy snow. The December snow was nice and light, easy to shovel. This is the backbreaking stuff. Since the bulk of it fell in the overnight hours, we couldn't keep up with the shoveling. Shoveling two feet of heavy snow? Not fun. I'm glad the boys are old enough to help out.

No plow has been anywhere near my neighborhood yet.

Here are some pics from the Blizzard of '10, the redundant blizzard. (Pics of knitting after the snow pics...)

I haven't been able to keep working on my Pas de Valse, which is at a point that requires time and concentration to continue. I have time, but too many distractions, so it's been put aside until who knows when. In between shoveling, making hot chocolate, taking pictures, and supervising the proper removal and storage of wet snow clothes, I did manage to finish my Dark Isle socks:

I love these socks! The pattern is, as I've mentioned before, Dark Isle socks by Laris Designs. I used Wollmeise 100% sock yarn in Schwarz (black) and Dornroschen. I made some mods to the pattern to account for the different gauge in the yarn I used, which basically meant that I cast on 72 stitches instead of 64 and added a row to each of the smaller patterns to get the right length. The original pattern called for three rows of black, three rows of contrast color, three rows of pattern, etc., and I simply did four instead. The mods worked perfectly. I added length to the motif at the top of the leg, too. I can't wait to wash these and wear them.

I then cast on for Virve's Stockings, a pattern from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting In Estonia. Here is the color combination I'm going to use:

The bulk of the sock will be in the dark blue. The white will be the background for the colorwork band, with the green and the gold making up the colorwork motifs.

Stay warm, stay dry. I have no idea when we'll be able to get out of the neighborhood!

When It Rains, It Pours

2010-01-29T11:27:00.004-05:00

Remember back during December when I said that I was looking forward to January, because the kids were going back to school and there wasn't much going on so I could get a lot of knitting done? I shouldn't have been so stupid as to dare the universe that way.

First I got sick, that horrible seasick flu I wrote about. That kept me on the couch, too nauseous and dizzy to knit, for a week. Then, just when I was beginning to feel better, poor Jr. Jr. woke up vomiting -- on his birthday, no less. He spent the first four days of this week at home. He wasn't terribly sick after that first day, but sick enough to stay home. I'm counting the minutes until I hear that Sr. Jr. is sick, too. At least the trial that Mr. T was supposed to have last week and this week was postponed. I couldn't have made it through that week of being sick if he'd been gone.

So here I am. I used what little free knitting time I had to finish up the body knitting on Pas de Valse. Last night I finished the two ends of the neck/shawl extension, and feeling rather lazy, I connected them with a 3-needle bind-off. And immediately hated the big, giant seam down the middle. So after I finally got both children off to school this morning for the first time in ages, I sat down, unpicked the bind off, and kitchenered the two halves together. Aaaah. Much better. No giant ugly seam down the middle of the back of the neck:

Now all I have to do is add the sleeves. This will be a new sleeve method for me. You pick up stitches all around the armhole, then knit your way down, going back and forth using short rows, until you've knit all the way around and can continue down in the round. Sounds great, and I can't wait to try it. Getting started, however, will require some concentrated quiet time, and who knows when that will happen.

In the meantime, I will try to finish up the Dark Isle socks.

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We're all up in arms here because a convicted pedophile has moved in up the street from us. We haven't entirely figured out what he was convicted of, but we know there was solicitation of a minor under the age of 13 over the internet, and then there was another charge involving a child under the age of 6. I counted up all the kids on my block alone, and there are over 30 kids under the age of 18. There are two bus stops near this guys house, a school with parks where ball games are played, a rec center with a part where ball games are played, a private school, regular parks, and a public library. This is Kid Central. As you can imagine, we're all up in arms about what we can do. I was just beginning to get comfortable with letting my kids wander the neighborhood a little. I send Sr. Jr. to the library by himself, and have him run up to the CVS for stuff when necessary. Jr. Jr. is still confined to our block, but he wanders up and down to play with different kids.

I no longer feel comfortable doing that, and I'm mourning the loss of my safe haven.

The guy had been living with his wife in a different part of Virginia, but came here to live with his mother after being in jail for a year, and probably losing his job. We've learned that his mother also owns a house out in the country somewhere. I would love to see him go out there, where he won't be surrounded by so many kids. I supposed that the authorities would prefer to have him here where he can be monitored, but my concern is with keeping my neighborhood and my kids safe.

Sigh.