Just right?

Monkeys take 3: Socks that Rock lightweight in "Foo Foo", size 2.25/US 1 needles.
I don't know if they'll work but at least it fits over my foot (so far). We'll see what happens after the heel.

A big huge thank you to Karen for the yarn! THANK YOU!!!

ix-nay on the url-hay

So I came down with a lovely bout of gastroenteritis on Thursday. I slept through much of Friday, and sat around Saturday getting really tired of drinking water. It's all for the best that I didn't have my heart set on going to Black Sheep, since this weekend I ended up not doing anything but sit/lie around trying not to move much.

It's ok, I felt mostly better by Sunday but let's just say that me and the stomach have a truce. I dearly hope I didn't infect anyone else. Stomach flu is about my very least favorite malady. I HATE feeling nauseated.

I did, however, manage to rearrange some of the stash this weekend, and it's really for the best I didn't buy any yarn. I don't have so much of it that I've forgotten things (e.g. there weren't any outright surprises) but the amount is way over what I could knit in a year and it's embarassing.

Anyway, it's Monday, back to reality day. Bleh.

I started a new lace stole this weekend. This one in Zephyr wool/silk and it's pretty nice to work with grabby yarn again. It's the Arabesque Stole from Marianne Kinzel's 2nd Book of Modern Lace Knitting, for those of you playing along at home.

And yeah, I think I finally found the right combo of needles and sock yarn for the monkey socks. Ha, thrilling conclusion indeed. I will resurrect the camera from the pile tonight, 'k?

(Title quotation from Wayne's World 2. Wow, I really don't remember much from that movie.)

Sacreligious

I'm thinking I'm not going to go to the Black Sheep Gathering this weekend.

I've got my copouts reaons.

1. I don't spin. The emphasis of this show is really much more on fleece and fiber than finished yarn.
   
2. It's a 2 hour drive to Eugene. That means four hours in the car on a beautiful sunny summer weekend.
   
3. I don't need any more damn yarn. The temptation levels will likely be quite high.
   

I would really like to see (and probably purchase) products of the small yarn producers that surely will be there, but (see above).

Maybe instead I'll visit Farmhouse Knit Shop out in Beaverton. I've been wanting to see that place for a while. Or maybe I'll go to Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks, I haven't been there for probably a year and they carry a bunch of undyed yarn, too. Or maybe for reason #3, I should probably just stay home and knit.

---------------------
I bought a new shirt this weekend and you know the first day you try out wearing a new shirt? Especially a style you're not used to wearing? So all day is long progression of "do I look bad? do I look bad? do I look bad? No are you sure?" That's today. Unfortunately it seemed to shrink in the wash just enough to make the buttons gap over the boobs. Sigh. Good thing I wore that black bra today.

Alice's Adventures in Gaugeland

Or, Goldilocks and the 3 Monkey Socks

--------------
Big Alice cast on for the Monkey Socks and worked up the cuff and a repeat.

First, she cast on in Lorna's Laces (2 mm/US 0 needles)

This monkey is TOO SMALL!

Next she cast on in some hand-dyed Henry's Attic Monty 2/9 Fingering weight (ha, fingering! LIARS. It's closer to sport weight after the dyeing was over) (2.75mm/US 2 needles)
This monkey is TOO LARGE!




Tune in tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion to our story!

I gotcher eye candy right here

Fridays are for going all Wizard of Oz:



These beauties are along my walk to the gym (yeah, one of my requirements for a gym is that it's close enough to get to that I can't easily make excuses not to go, based on distance to travel).

Happy Friday (oh thank goodness) and I hope you all enjoy your weekend.

bah

(Warning, bummer of a post. Don't cry for me Argentina, I'm just bitching to hear myself type.)


-

• I think I'm getting sick. There's some stupid sore spot in my throat and I'm sniffling. Bah.
  
  
• Stupid blogger which I'm currently using on Firefox is broken enough that the Save Now button at the bottom of this page grows wider and wider the farther I type, until it's about half the size of the window and butts up against the "Draft autosaved" part. I won't even go into it on Safari. Let's just say it's rolling the dice whether I can upload pictures or publish a post.
  And it annoys me to NO END that it's painfully hard to hand-edit the html (I have to download it, modify it, upload it again, then hope for the best) for my sidebars.
  (I know, you're all, "here's a nickel, kid, go buy yourself a real hosting solution").
  
  
• I've been writing documentation for 2 weeks now and I am terminally bored. I seriously can't seem to concentrate on it for more than 10 minutes. This is bad. On the plus side, after 2 weeks of distracted work, it's almost done.
  
  
• Shit keeps breaking. Why is everything an endless series of work-arounds?
  
  
• The commuter socks are almost done. So is the pile of silk lace (just needs some ends woven in). I don't know what to do next.
  
  
• Pile of silk lace needs a photo shoot and I don't have any model besides me (K the love monkey refuses. Too bad). I don't think this is going to go well.
  K will be photographer and we'll see if we can find some new (or at least not fugly) backdrop that hasn't been done to death by Knitty/thousands of bloggers/Debbie Bliss. I think we'll try the Rose Garden first. With backup by the Japanese Garden and then the Chinese Garden. There's a lot of gardens around here. Problem is that the stole itself is green. Green backdrop won't do a lot for it. Big problem is that I don't have any clothes that I think would look good with it. I need a little black dress. Point 1: I am not little, Point 2: nobody seems to sell simple black dresses anymore. Or at least the kind that don't gap out funny if you've got boobage.
  
  
• I ate a donut this morning at work because I was feeling kind of bad and I used that as an excuse. Now I despise myself.
  
  
• I tried clothes shopping again this week, since one place was having a big sale. Hahahhahahahaha. Why do I persist in this exercise in futility? It just embarasses me and makes me ultra aware of just how fat I am.
  
  
• Tired of doing 10+ miles a week walking and the equivalent of running 20 miles a week and it does nothing at all for my size. I do feel better and healthier, but it matters not a wit to my weight. I'm mindnumbingly jealous of anyone who can blithely eat that donut and never have it affect them.
  K drives to work everyday, he doesn't exercise, he gets about 15 minutes of movement out of every day, yet he weighs less than I. The next person who tells me obesity is a failure of my willpower gets their lunch pizza & a coke shoved where the sun don't shine.
  
  
• I have really, really, really got to get the rest of those plants potted up.
  
  
• Grump, I need a new gym book. Something with a good plot, so I can get distracted and tempt myself to go to the gym so that I'll read it. A good plot, not a dumb one, and not stupid characters. Some skimming is ok. Pynchon: not so good gym reading. Terry Brooks: excellent gym reading.
  Action works pretty well, but I've not been able to find a new book using my patented method of "casually peruse library shelves for covers with explosions on them." The sci fi and fantasy shelves just look overwrought lately (I did just finish The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker and that was pretty entertaining).
  

+ (written despite the protests of the super-ego)

• It is drizzly today. This is not stupid. This means I will not need to water today. yay.
  
  
• It's Friday. Two days of documentation-free bliss await.
  
  
• I did have a leftover Cold-Eeze (sugar-free, ha) left in my carrier bag. Kill that cold with zinc, baby.
  
  
• I can choose anything I damn well want to knit.
  
  
• Clothing stores and designers can go to hell, I'll sew my own damn skirts.
  
  
• The peas are producing frantically. It's like eating the vegetable world's equivalent of candy. They don't even make it to the kitchen, I eat the pods straight off the vines.
  
  
• Probably it's warm enough now to plant some cucumbers and beans. No more lows in the 40s until September.
  
  
• It seems that I've finally gotten the hang of basil. It hasn't died yet, it's sprouting nicely, yet the leaves are a full basil flavor. Yay. Now I just need to prevent myself rushing out and buying a bunch more basil plants. Then again, I could put them around some tomatoes... hmmm.
  
  
• We had a hummus dinner night last night (hummus with pitas, tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, and onions). That helps counteract some of the donut guilt, doesn't it?
  
  
• I am drinking lots of water, yes mother.
  
  
• Farmer's market is tomorrow! More strawberries! Maybe some early cherries! Woo!
  
  
• I'm going to the Pearl Bakery today to buy some real live artisan bread which we will eat gustily with D'Affinois brie and a tasty cheddar tonight. Screw the donut.
  

Silk Garden Beanie

I've heard the Noro story: either you lust after it with white-hot desire or you loathe it with the force of thousand suns (ok, maybe it's just dislike, no suns involved). It's like sushi. Very few people are indifferent to sushi. We call it a binary food, in my little personal idiom. So Noro is kind of a binary yarn.

I admit I'm in the former camp. I know all about the veggie matter. The thick and thinness. The knots. I know that I can't tug hard at the beginning of a new line of Silk Garden without risking that the yarn will break entirely. It all doesn't seem to matter. I am helpless before the colors and textures.


Pattern: Silk Garden Beanie from And She Knits Too!

Finished: September 2006. It took longer than it should have because I only worked on it in natural light. It was the changing colors that kept me interested, so I figured why bother working on it when I couldn't see the colors. That's me, easily amused.

Needles: 4.0mm/US 6 Brittany birch DPNs.

If I did it again, I'd work it tighter. I'm a loose knitter and the hat's not very snug at all. The finished fabric just feels a little loose. It doesn't work so well in the wind but otherwise it's remarkably warm for a hat that feels so thin.

I finished this hat a while ago with a trial skein of Silk Garden. The pattern creator remarked that it's an excellent for evaluating the color changes in a colorway you're not so sure about -- I agree. It was my way of avoiding going nuts with a WEBS sale: buy one skein to try it out instead of 20 because I was greedy for the Noro. It worked pretty well, since I got the Silk Garden lust out of my system and avoided the other 19 skeins. It's not my usual colors at all but i still love the hat.

I've completely spaced the colorway - it was discontinued last year anyway. The purple isn't quite so bright in real life, and there's blue and greens you can't really see in these pics. I look at these images and think, what a fugly colorscheme. The pics don't do it justice at all.

Does this hat make me look eeeeeevil?
I like the hat a lot and wear it frequently in the winter. It scrunches up nicely in a pocket and it's great for the drizzley weather that shows up here on a regular basis. It's probably the knitted-item-I-made that I wear the most.

Dye me a river (of yarn)

Meh meh. Meh Tuesday.
I never seem to get anything done. How the hell do you people with kids accomplish so much? Do you never sleep?

All I've got is a cat and I still have more unfulfilled plans than finished projects.

I spent hours yesterday writing up the full pattern for Silk Lace Chaos. The charts were already done, but I needed to do a longhand version plus all the little extras like the cast-on and bind-off and how many times to repeat the chart, all of thatstuff. I can't believe it took so long to do, and I still need to format it all pretty, double check the written directions against the chart, fill in some of the questionable stuff (what exactly size crochet hook did I use?), then proofread the lot. I'm anal about the details. I suppose that's a plus sometimes but it takes forever to finish anything.

----------------
Shiny beads for distraction:
They aren't all involved in the same project, I just liked how they looked together.

I've got the yarn lust bad lately. I keep looking at pictures of yarn. Stash sets on flikr. Blog posts. All those gorgeous colors and textures are getting to me. It must be time to re-org the stash again. Hopefully I just need some wool fume exposure. I do adore me some silk, but lace just keeps going on and on and on.

I'm still in with the Knit From Your Stash, yes I am. The only yarn I've bought since I started in January was a gift for someone else. (full disclosure: I started after the birthday splurge, the picture I posted a couple days ago). I should feel good about this but really right now I just want to roll nekkid in as many colors of cashmere as I can get my hands on (I own only a small amount of cashmere). Sadly, the stash hasn't really decreased in size much - lace and socks make only a tiny dent.

Maybe if I do some more dyeing I'll stop coveting other stashes. Yeah, that might get the color stuff out of my system for at least a little while. Perhaps a day of cotton dyeing, making a huge ol' mess in the backyard with the spraybottles and the sunprint paint and rubber bands. Oooh I could try some yarn handpainting! Up until now I've only been kettle dyeing. All I'd need to do is setup a steamer.

Damn damn damn it's only Tuesday. 3 whole days until the weekend. Grump.

Crying for strawberries and other embarassing public outbursts

Pic of the yarn I dyed last week. I really really really want to cast on with it for some Monkeys right now, but Silk Lace Chaos must come first. I'm afraid that Silk Lace Chaos is going to be a real PITA to block - the sides are wavy, on purpose.

The Yarn Harlot's talk was good, although the crowd was a bit rowdy (yo, I don't get out much. Knitters in herds make me a little nervous (definitely a pride of knitters)). I got there about 1.5 hours ahead of time and got a seat (yay!). You can see photographic evidence of my presence on the Yarn Harlot's post - I'm in the background on the left in the picture of Chris.

One odd thing. I brought my commuter sock to work on, for the hours of waiting and the time in the signing line afterwards. (Yes I also talked with people. Go away). As I'm standing there the woman next to me, who's been talking to a group behind us, comments loudly to the group "I enjoy circulars for socks so much. I don't even know why anyone would ever bother with DPNs." Did I mention the commuter sock was on DPNs?

I wasn't really annoyed or angered at her outburst, as kind of taken aback. Because:

a) I had been working a DPNed sock right in front of her for the last 20 minutes. Maybe she thought I was ignorant of circs?

b) Different strokes for different folks, you know? Straights are not my needles o' choice but I don't go around implying that people who use them are stupid. My mom detests bamboo needles. I love them for socks and lace. We all get along ok and on the plus side we never steal each other's needles.

I use the DPNs because I prefer them and I find 2 circs awkward. I also feel like some uber competent knitter when using them because nothing impresses the people on the train like 5 needles, heh. Magic loop was ok with me but I don't have all the sock needle sizes I need for that - these socks in particular are on 2.25 mm needles, a hard to find size in a long-cable circ.

But she never even bothered asking me why I was using double pointed needles. Maybe she didn't see me?

Like I said, it didn't anger me as much as confuse me.

In other news (happy, happy news!) I finally bound off the silk lace chaos. I did it about 4 times before I found the beading/bind-off series that came closest to the cast-on/beading. I like it so much if I did it again (ha) I'd probably do a provisional cast-on and then knit the other one exactly the same. The beading after the cast-on is weirdly distorted, like I was keeping the tension too high. The beading before the bind-off is fine. Enh, once it's blocked, they'll both be all stretched out. If I hadn't needed to work a bit on Sunday it'd be blocking right now. woot woot!

The farmer's market is finally starting to carry more stuff than cabbage, overwintered apples, and mushrooms. The first weekend in June was also the first weekend of the strawberries. I arranged my market goodies all pretty just for you.

Oh my FSM they are so so good. I've missed fresh berries so much I started crying as I approached the market. Thank goodness for sunglasses. Those ones in the picture are my favorite variety, Hood. They're not as pretty as commercial strawberries -- a bit misshapen, on the smaller side, and a brighter color when ripe. They're also incredibly sweet and juicy. They're too delicate to ship anywhere, so they're not commercially available. Moan. I am salivating just thinking about them.

And cherries, cherries shouldn't be too far behind. The tayberries in back are starting to turn pinkish. Raspberries and blueberries will start coming in a couple weeks. Oh, I can't wait.

Friday, with some harlotry

I got nothing today. Yarn pr0n it is.

Last birthday's splurge, cashmere-silk laceweight. I circled it for 30 minutes (and several weeks) before I lost my willpower. It's unbelievably soft and I swear it glows faintly. I think the color as marked on the label is 'periwinkle.'


I'll be at the Yarn Harlot's talk at Powell's tonight.
If you're present and feel so inclined as to say hello, I'll be the one in the red shirt, zits (it's not a skin condition, it's an accessory!), and long thick french braid. (Heh, red shirt. You know that means I'm the first to go when the aliens arrive).

Low kinetic energy

Wow do I feel awful today.

Actually no, I'll be honest, I just feel really tired. There's absolutely no reason either, as I had a full 8+ hours of sleep disturbed only by 11 pounds of fur who prefers to sleep on TOP of people (or parks herself right in the middle of the bed). It's been a little colder lately so she's snuggling up more.

I drug myself out of bed and to the gym because I've slacked for 3 days in a row now. I just haven't had the willpower to get up before 7:30 am all week long (I know. WOE IS ME. I think I mentioned before: I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON). The body didn't want to move, it was creaky and sweaty and annoying but I pushed through 1/2 hour of it. After, I've just been dragging all day. Sucks to be me. I had a leftover spinach & mushroom calzone and two cookies for lunch. My FSM but the cookies were good. I enjoyed every crumb. The calzone was pretty good too. That's a big winner of a recipe. Yes, I know the cookies negated most of the gym benefits, but I really needed some instant gratification. Sigh. I'm all about the excuses this week.

At work I finally emerged from cut 'n' paste purgatory yesterday and so today I'm at loose ends, having been in zombie mode for days now. So I'm working on docs. Purgatory part 2. But at least the brain can slowly re-engage.

Last night I finally sat down and worked the heel on the socks, so I've got something to knit on the train again. I thought I took good notes on the first but I had to decode some of my shorthand and it took longer than it should of.
Enh, whatever.

The colors in this yarn were good for the grey, rain-soaked, low-light days of winter and spring where the soft blues and greens and yellows would sparkle up from the muted brown background, but now that it's a lot brighter outside they just look dull. Since I'm not up to starting a new pair of socks I better finish up these ones. (For new socks it's still an Adventure in Too Many?/Too Few? Stitches Land. I usually have to cast on at least twice. Not feeling like that right now)

And then what? When the silk lace stole is done, which has consumed 95% of time and energy for months now, what'll I do? I always get like this near the end of a project. It's fun making new stuff and anticipation and all that crap, but sometimes I really just want something that's tried, true, and STARTED. Where I don't need to guess or worry about how it's coming out. It's nice to be machine-like and just follow the damn directions.

Our contestants:

In the north corner we have the Raglan of Doubt, which has been sitting forlorn for months now. It'll probably need 3 or 4 more tries before I get the yoke quite right. But hey, if I start it now, I might actually finish it in time for next winter.

To the south there is Neglected Slip Stitch Trial Sweater, where I stopped when I got stuck trying to sort out the increases to the sleeves while still maintaining the slip stitch pattern. And it's just a trial sweater for a bigger version so I can get better at seaming. I shudder to think how long that's been sitting -- a year now? Yeah, that's about right. I should really finish this up. Both back and front are done, I'm just stuck at the sleeves.

Need we mention the west corner? Where another neglected child's sweater lies in disgrace. It's a top-down raglan-ish (the increases are staggered and not noticeable) and when I divided the stitches for the sleeves and started on the sleeves the whole prior row loosened up unacceptably. I threw it in a bag and buried it for months. Uh, since last fall. Oh I'm good at this procrastination thing. Did I mention it's an aran weight cotton? Yeah, I've learned from that. No more cottons above worsted, thanks.

That sweater isn't that fun to work on but I want the yarn out of my stash (it's like penance for being so dumb as to buy it. Bah. It was on sale and I liked the colors). The whole top part is done. All the increases - finit. I can't guarantee I'm going to get any more neices so I should really finish this while one of them might still fit into it.

East, we have? Um. Oh yes, the pomatomuses, looking surly because they've been sitting for so long. There's about 1/2 inch left on the toe of the 2nd sock. Those'll be quick to finish.

Meanwhile there are a couple skeins of blush pink alpaca silk that call sweetly to me for a lace scarf. Multiple books full of children's sweaters I want to do. An elaborate lace stole in Marianne Kinzel's second book that I've been dreaming about for a year now (in bottle green or basil? I cannot decide) The incredibly soft, lovely deep red, cobweb laceweight that I won from Wen the KFYS Yarn Fairy. It's tired of being admired daily and wants to be used, but no design I find seems suited to it. I might go this one alone and make up another lace stole.

The problem with lace is that FOs don't make much of an appreciative dent in the stash.

I guess I've plenty to choose from. I'm also eyeing a wrap sweater which might actually cause me to break my moratorium of not knitting sweaters for myself.

I'll post pictures later if I can overcome my lethargy long enough. Because what the world needs more of are images of my abandoned knitting projects.

Arise, arouse, a rose!*

So I mentioned there was this Rose Festival thing going on right now. I look outside and I sense a theme.






* From the same movie character: 'ad loc, ad hoc and quid quo pro, so little time so much to know!'

I'm grumpy this morning for no particular reason but less so since I won the parking lottery today! Today being one of those mornings that I thought, to hell with it, I'm driving to work, I can't cope with public transit today. I drove up in the parking garage (which actually had spaces left! Win #1!) and there before me, right near the elevator, was a free space, gently glowing with miraculous light. Amazing, that never happens. I'm always stuck way up on the roof, like some kind of Ben Franklin "early to rise" punishment (thank goodness for flexible hours. I am not a morning person).

Anyway, (the royal) we here are all stream o' consciousness today, if it's not apparent already. We are too scatterbrained to be interesting. We are tempted to blame it on this work project which involves cutting and pasting hundreds of words into a stupid user interface. We might also blame it on the dyeing fumes (aside: we have discovered the whole "blooming" thing that people talk about when they talk about coned yarn. Wooo boy, it's twice the diameter it was before dyeing. Which means that the tied bits were tied a teency bit too tightly and there are some lighter blotchy patches. I could overdye it but I kind of like the effect. I tried taking a picture because I was so pleased with the rich dark greens (I used a crapload of dye. it worked), but the camera's color balance is all off and I'm too lazy to photoshop it. Think deep hunter green shading around to teal, with lighter bits of yellow here and there. I am in LURVE). Hopefully that's not it since although we adore those deep greens, the yellow bits won't work and we wanted something just as rich but a bit more teal-y. So back again to the dyepot. Uh, in my copious free time.

I think we'll do Dan Dan Mien for dinner tonight, noodles with ground pork, bean sprouts, scallions, and shiitake mushrooms. The local farmer's market had shiitakes and I couldn't resist. I like buying vegetables and fruits I'm not overly familiar with, because it's fun and I feel all grown-up and I like shaking things up a little. I draw the line at rutabagas though. Oh crap, we've got asparagus to eat too. Hmmm. It'll have to be thursday. I go a little nuts sometimes with all those fresh veggies.

The commuter sock has been sitting alone, crying for attention. It's at the heel split point and I haven't sat down and set it all up. Some things don't work well on public transit.

I have yet to see a single person ride the bungie-cord-tower-o-death ride.

Update on the knitting front

What I've been working on:


It looks like a big pile of silken lace chaos before I pinned it all out to get an idea of the length. Hey, look, I can't call it a bucket o' boiled ass as Rabbitch so eloquently named unblocked lace. The silk will get all huffy and tangle up to get back at me. For something so slippery it sure knots up itself easily. And I already have to keep a jar of hand cream handy so invisible hangnails don't catch on the stuff.

Jen's working with seasilk and her Print o' the Wave pattern looks frigging gorgeous, much better than this folly. Ah well, it's not over until it's blocked, yes? Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

One more repeat and then the edging and then blocking and I am DONE, baby!

Yohoho and pass the rum

There's a damn pirate ship floating up my river. The news article says that one of the ships was used in the PotC movies. Think they sailed that sucker all the way up from L.A. and up the Columbia? That must've been fun. Sadly, it was more likely a big semi up I-5 and a launch from Vancouver (WA).

Dang, they're shooting off cannon now. Maybe they'll pick off some of the cars on the bridge. That'd be diverting.

Arrr mateys, this be the start of the Rose Festival, the biggest civic event of the year 'round these parts. Not only that, but it's the 100th year (yo, you East Coasters. Don't be haters. Nothing around here besides the old fort at Vancouver is older than 150 years, so 100 years is nothing to sneeze at).

They set up this big "waterfront village" (e.g. temporary portable carnival) along the waterfront, including a perennial favorite that kind of looks like bungee jumping in reverse. There are these 2 tall pillars (8 stories tall? I'm estimating) and I think how it works is that they strap you down and attach you to bungee cords under tension and then let you go, so you go flinging high up into the air, between the pillars. I think like a slingshot, except the stone (person) is stuck to the cords.

What? No, no way, I've never tried it. I treasure my stomach and its current contents, thanks. But I can see the two pillars from here and it's always a antidote to work boredom to glance out the window and see some random person flung into the air. Woohoo! Entertainment for a week!

Coffee... Jello?

Coffee Jello, as part of the More Fun With Coffee series, as part of the extensive Gallery of Regrettable Food.

I ripped off the links from the Knitting Curmudgeon; it was so good I had to share.

Nothing, everything; wastes of time

I'm sorry I haven't been around, I just... nothing I've been doing seems all that interesting. I mowed the lawn (K the love monkey edged. I HATE edging. Note: we have a manual edger). I planted a lot. Weeded. Composted. Mulched. Hey, we've got little proto tayberries! yay! My neglect hasn't killed them yet. Peas are blooming and tiny pea pods have sprung out. Got some basil, some new thyme (got some thyme on my hands. heh) and new tarragon. Grilled stuff.

See, I'm all stream of consciousness lately and none of it's interesting. Oh, yes, Saturday night was FABULOUS, there's this great tiki bar on NE Broadway and about 28th and DAMN do they know how to make a good Mai Tai. It's within (long) staggering distance too so neither of us had to be designated driver.

A digression: have I mentioned my love of fruity drinks? RUM. YUM. Sadly very few places make good tiki cocktails. I have no bartending experience, none, but I make better drinks than every place I've ever had them, save this tiki bar (Thatch is the name) and Luau in Seattle, which changed ownership and I don't know if they're any good any more. I think the secret is fresh juice, and places upscale enough to use fresh juice don't serve things like mai tais.

Anyway, love Thatch, and especially because DAMN it's nice to see a real live Tiki bar done up right, bamboo, mood lighting, carved Pacific Island statues, appropriate music and all. And not some huge cavernous place aimed at tourists (although those locations can have a charming chic all their own, but too often they have substandard food and try to rely on their Disneyish looks alone. Hello Casa Bonita. I am looking at you! Love your waterfall, but the canned velveeta's got to go). K had a fun ol' hangover the next day but I must have the Liver of Steel because I felt fine.

Oh yes, went with coworkers to see Spiderman 3 the other day. I really don't want to comment, except that I love this commentary the very best of anything I've read about that movie (HAR MATEY! THERE BE SPOILERS AT THAT LINK!). Funky emo hair indeed.

I'm still terribly behind with email/whatever. You'd think 3 days at home would be enough to catch up. Look, at least I got off a birthday present for my Mom (June 1st. I got her the leaf lace shawl from Fibertrends. I haven't knitted it myself but I thought it was pretty and Fibertrends patterns have been good to me so far.) I have two damn repeats and an edging left on the silk stole despite knitting like mad all weekend (finished all of Death and the Dancing Footman and Nemesis). I stretched it out Saturday morning and it's 50 inches. Did another 8 inches this weekend. I want 70. Pfah. I need this to be done.

Thanks for all the comments, I do read them all and love you for them, and I so apoligize for not answering anything lately. See, I haven't even bothered to download any pictures lately. My head's just full of goo and I can't get it together. I'm not even sick so I don't have that excuse. It's just when I am home and I feel such wonderful relief at being able to sit quietly with a glass of lemonade and just stare at nothing or knit (nothing that requires any thought, just the stupid silk lace. I've memorized the pattern (I suppose that's a good sign, seeing as it's my own)), that I kind of give up on coping with everything and go with the lemonade. Reason #2395 for why I would make a terrible parent.

I hope you all had a great weekend, and a meaningful Memorial Day. I better get back to work.

Feh

I despise Mondays.

Contest Winner!

Thanks all so much for entering the contest. I had a great time reading all your comments. I know I said I'd post this Saturday but I'm a lame-o and yesterday we spent ripping up the parking strip for its makeover and I completely flaked out. Today my gluteal muscles hurt. I'm not used to this (see what a lazy ass gardener I am?)

Mr. Random Number Generator chose TJ as the winner! Congratulations! Please send me your address and I'll get your yarn in the mail to you this week.

P.S. I am super behind on email (like, a month or so) and I'm trying to catch up. Please forgive me.

P.P.S My neice turned 1 year old today. 1! Year! Old! I feel like an old geezer.

Random is as Random does

• My friend and all-around super-heroine Connie-Lynne linked to this neato Fantasy Map of L.A. Transit done in London Underground style. It's fantasy, those public transit lines don't actually exist, but it must've been fun to build it. I think it's cool and I'm not going to try to explain why.
  
  
• Woo, Mr. Random Number Generator picks a contest winner tomorrow. Not too late to enter if you haven't already!
  
  
• K the love monkey and I resurrected the grill from the garage last weekend. He's been eyeing it all week, now that it's clean and spider and slug-free. What shall we grill? Any good ideas?
  
  
• Still chugging on the silk lace. chug chug chug bead chug chug chug chug. This is boring as hell, isn't it? Well, I'm entertained. I've also made it through 2 more audiobooks. Thanks for the recommendations, I'm working through them. If you have anymore, bring 'em on. just... I don't do romances, 'k?
  

Did I mention the roses? She is blooming. This picture is indicative of the weather which it has not been like all week, and is expected for tomorrow (teeth of gnashing). Just ONE of these weeks it'd be nice to have it bright, sunny, and warm on SATURDAY and not on MONDAY.

wildflowers

Feeling voluble today, but it's all crap spewing out. blah blah blah blah blah.
Work is busy, things are broken, and I'm trying to fix the problems in an old, old FrankenProject that I haven't looked at for months and involves pieces of all kinds of mouldy old junk. So I better whip out the pictures and get back to it.

Wildflowers on the parking strip


Camo kitty
We didn't intend to get a cat that blended so well with the couch. She just showed up on the doorstep and wouldn't leave.

My little obsessions (besides yarn)

I think I mentioned before that I'm a lazy gardener. Some of the spring bulbs didn't get planted until January. Um. Not a high success rate there.

This is kind of painful for me to admit. I love gardens, love plants, love fresh vegetables and flowers and picking things off the vine. But I seem to be more interested in HAVING a garden than DOING a garden. It's embarassing. I procrastinate the garden work until it's almost too late. Or it is too late. I don't know why I do this, so I must conclude that I just don't really like the act of gardening.

This is awful. I really WANT to be a good gardener. I so admire people who love working with plants, people with beautiful gardens that they've planned and created and nurtured themselves. I think it's partly the perfectionism (DAMN YOU INNER PERFECTIONIST) because somehow I feel I must get it EXACTLY RIGHT the first time. And really, you just can't ever tell with plants, or at least you can't ever tell with my level of expertise.

But I really, really, really need to get off my derrière and do something about the parking strip, the bit between the sidewalk and the street. The previous owners had laid down plastic with bark chips over the top. Really fabulous. We ripped up the plastic and planted a wildflower mix. It looked fantastic through about mid-July, then it just looked dead.


I've got some serious problems to work around, though:

1. There are 2 blue spruces at either end of the strip. They're 20 feet high and look at least 25 years old, and while they're a bad idea for a near-the-street tree, I am loathe to cut them down. So there are a lot of tree roots. I can't mound up dirt very high nor work dirt very deeply or I'll kill the trees.
   
   
2. Our soil is heavy clay. Yeah, tons o' fun.
   
   
3. The climate here is October->May rain rain rain rain rain ICE STORM rain rain rain and June->September: no rain. Usually there's less than 3" all summer long. It's tough finding any plants that can survive the winter floods (clay soil, I'm looking at you) and the summer drought. I do not want to have to water the parking strip, ever.
   
   
4. Weeding a parking strip is not fun. Don't want to have to do this often. Maybe twice a year, and that's pushing it.
   
   
5. Our neighbors have 2 boys, 7 and 9. Do you KNOW how many softballs, baseballs, golf clubs, basketballs, and random detritus I find? Delicate plants are out.
   

Armed with my Sunset Western Gardening Book and a landscaping book specifically for Pacific Northwest, I've got to come up with a plan and implement it. I need stuff that's borderline (heck, over the border and in the country) invasive, tough, and mostly looks good all year. It's probably impossible.

Here's the shortlist of plants (not like the long list is all that long):
russian sage
purple coneflower (echinacea purpurea)
rosemary
wooly thyme (groundcover)
ornamental strawberries (groundcover: supposed to take any kind of soil and grow everywhere. My kind of plant)
sedum
bulbs for the spring: daffodils, tulips, crocus, iris. If they fit the scheme.

Other possibilities in consideration:
hen and chicks (sempervivum)
regular sage
lavender
euphorbia
yarrow
rock roses

Yeah, we're going all mediterranean. Rosemaries are one of my favorites and they're tough plants. Sedum's been growing on me. I adore echincaceas but I rarely see them around here (in Seattle they're all over the place. go figure)

Bah. Too much work ahead. I haven't even drawn up the paths yet. SO LAZY. I'd rather sit back with a mojito.
Echinacea uber alles!

Contest!

Hey! I haven't ever given anything away. That's a travesty. Time for a contest!

To enter the contest, leave a comment on this post and tell me what you most like about knitting RIGHT NOW (or crochet, or whatever fiber art is possessing you at the moment). It could be a new technique, a nifty pattern, a particular fiber, a finished object - or something less tangible, if you like. The feel and texture of yarn, the rhythm of knitting, the knitblog community. Whatever. Tell me what you like. You can tell me multiple things but I'll enter everyone just once.

Vanna, show them what they might win:


380 yards of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock, medium weight (~7 st/inch in stockinette), in colorway Rooster Rock. The picture is pretty close to actual colors. It's all intact except I removed the ballband (which I still have and will send along)

I'll pick an entry at random in a week, on Saturday 5/19.

WOOO! Happy Friday!

Picture pages

Ha, you want pictures? I give pictures!

My new (not so new any more, actually) knitting/traveling bag, socks included for scale.
I'm not really a purse kind of person. They just seem to get in the way and I'm prone to leaving them places. On the other hand, it sucks to have bulging pockets when you're visiting places. This fits a sock-in-progress, book, camera, cellphone, sunglasses, and keys & wallet handily. It's also rugged, zippered, mostly impervious to rain, and has dragonflies on it. Love love love it.

The ferns are happy to see warmer temperatures.

Going home, waiting for the train. This is from more than a month ago and the blossoms are all gone now

Mr. & Mrs. Mallard are also glad it's Spring and they've started up the municipal fountains again.

I love the shapes of maple leaves (I suspect this is part of a greater star/sparkly thing fixation) This is a Japanese maple, a bit before twilight, on my walk home through downtown

Same tree, but closer. The leaves are always red, all through the spring and summer and fall

I work an hour a day on the pile o' lace. It never seems to look any bigger. I know this is a well documented effect but... BLEH. Plus it is by far the ugliest lace I've ever worked, when non-stretched. It just looks a pile of slippery chaos until I pin it out. Did I mention that the cat is fascinated by the silk thread? And managed to hook a claw into the stole last night and pull out a loop way near the bottom? It's OK, happy ending: it was only a single stitch and once I stopped hyperventilating I redistributed the pulled-out slack. I think I need a snood for my lace.

RSIs suck

I about gave myself a repetitive stress injury on Saturday by knitting for 6 hours, 4 of them consecutively (yeah, stupid, I know. I was on a ROLL though). Sunday my wrist was a sad little wrist, not actually hurting but oh so ready to release its vindictive wrath. I babied it, iced it on and off, and avoided the needles all day. Monday it was back to its chipper self, thank goodness.

I did manage to get a big swatch of silk beaded lace done, although sadly I need more more more. I really like this beading, it's seductively fun, despite the interruption in the knitting rhythm. And OOH SHINY BEADS (you can tell I didn't go for matte, did I? You can tell I'm sort of a satin hi-gloss kind of person? Funny how that doesn't extend at all to my warddrobe, except that I like red and orange.) It's nice, it feel less like a folly and more real as it gets bigger. The weight feels like nothing (I've used maybe 1/4 the 100g skein). 100 g, 1000+ yards. YAR! I'm using silk lace, hand-dyed by Blue Moon Fiber arts, in an old color named Falcon's Eye. Sadly it doesn't seem to available off their website. It's an fantastic sage green that runs the value gamut from pale to saturated. I wish I were as subtle as this color is.

It's absolutely lovely gorgeous today (and was yesterday too). This of course has to happen on Monday and friggin' Tuesday. It'll be raining by the weekend. But no, I'm not bitter.

Last night I got home, poured a glass of strawberry lemonade and broke out the chocolate, made myself comfortable on the patio and then knit until I couldn't see any more. I've even got the mosquito bite to prove it (WTF why are there mosquitos in MAY?). I know that as summer gets closer and closer these days happen more often, and I'll start taking them for granted in another month, but right now I'm getting serious cabin fever from the sunshine and warmth. Today I be baring my knees to the universe. Hello universe, this is knees.

When the going gets tough, the tough post links

I just saw LOLTrek last night and about bust a gut laughing.
"I trade wheat for sheep." HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Yeah, strange sense of humor, we got that here.

I also like the real-life Google placemarker (watch the movie, it makes more sense) and the Japanese men carrying an arrow cursor.

All these links courtesy of K the love monkey, who is Cool and In The Know when it comes to interesting sites. Me, I just know the guy who did Pop vs. Soda.

Nothing to read here

Wisteria: charming plant or house-eater?


Don't hate me because I'm beautiful


Next on the news: when azaleas explode


I was a crow who hoarded shiny bits of chewing gum wrapper in a previous life

Weekend!! Wrappup! (now with 200% more parentheses)

Want to know what fun excitement I got up to this weekend? FUN FUN FUN!!

I went to see a documentary about a font. Oh yes, a font. Not just any typeface, mind you, but Helvetica himself (I assign maleness to Helvetica. It just seems like a he to me.)

It was actually quite interesting and unexpectedly funny. The movie is lots of interviews with graphic designers, interspersed with shots of public graphic design and the ubiquity and history of Helvetica. I'd recommend it if you're even vaguely interested in graphic design. The way a typeface can manipulate and suggest and connote fascinates me.

The rest of the weekend? There is an (GRRR, SLOWLY) ever-growing pile of silk lace, yes, with beads. I worry constantly that it's striping in an ugly way. I am too far and too close to deadline to rip back. K the love monkey says the striping makes it more interesting. I live in dread.

How big is it? I've made it through all of Murder on the Orient Express and have started Island of Dr. Moreau. On tape, since I have yet to master lace charts + knitting + reading at the same time. My literature choices? Um, they consist of "whatever looks good on the Recorded Books shelves in the library." I was never fond of mysteries much, but I figured I should break out of my current sci-fi/fantasy rut and old stuff is always fun because everything wasn't clichéed yet. The Agatha Christie was great, I'm going to have to borrow more of her stuff. The H.G. Wells is appropriately creeping me out and he's always good for a great plot and climax. It's weird, because I can't watch suspenseful horror movies at all. Not. At. All.

Also! I made myself go out and mow the lawn on Saturday. Not just me either, by Sunday we had a RARE 3-adjacent neighbors mowed-lawn extravaganza! Except I was lazy and didn't edge ours, so we're the only ones with messy edges, somewhat spoiling the effect.

I hate taking care of grass. I like to walk on it, but that's about it. I dream of ripping the sucker out and putting in drought-tolerant, low-upkeep perennials, and I'd have done so if I weren't lazy and the neighbor kids didn't weren't avid ballplayers. Our front yard is center outfield. My parents, on the other hand, would kill for this lawn. They live in New Mexico, where they continue to mostly deny they live in the middle of a desert. They finally exchanged their front, sloped lawn for a "kitty litter lawn" (rock & cacti) a few years ago. The back lawn they carefully water and complain bitterly about the water bills, and that Kentucky bluegrass slowly roasts from the lack of humidity. Me, I'm just so glad when the lawn here dies down for the summer. And it really does die, we tried to keep it alive by watering it 3x a week last summer so it'd look nice for the visitors, but it still died, just in a awful pimpley patchy way.

Where is K in all of this, the darling husband? K has been working, in the vernacular of our peculiar profession, a Death March for the last few months. I'm getting mighty damn tired of the 60+ hour workweeks. He didn't get any day off this last week, worked the whole weekend. Grump.

Haloscan comments

I finally got Haloscan commenting to work. (tip: you have to upgrade your template. I guessed this, but I thought I'd have to restore all the links--turns out it transfers over. I do have to restore the formatting, though. Bah). However, it's 86ed all the old comments, I'm very sorry. I've got an archive of everything but I have to figure a way around the generic template so that haloscan works only from this day forward, so I can restore the old commentary. Hmph.

(Probably easier just to get around to switching to Wordpress and import the sucker.)
There you go. I need to go to bed.

And now for something completely different

This is my current commuter project. The one I ripped out the entire foot the other day. I took 8 more stitches off the gusset and it's now pleasantly tighter.

The pattern's my own, just a combination of a ribbing and a Barbara Walker pattern (it's easy, just a right twist every other row). Looks like little knots but it doesn't feel like it. I didn't feel much like doing a regular rib. There's calf shaping at the top, via an extra purl in each of those purl troughs.

The yarn's Trekking XXL that I bought from Weaving Works in Seattle more than a year ago. It's marled yarn, a mixture of mostly browns and greys with other subtle flashes of color, and it reminds me of beachcombing on the Oregon coast, with all the surprises of jaspar and agate in among the granite. I love marled yarn. Nobody seems to make it except handspinners, Trekking, Mellenweit, and Noro. Oh, I think there was a Cascade cotton that got discontinued last year? It's almost enough to suck me into handspinning. ALMOST. Not going there.

So Angry

I read today that the Texas state legislature has voted against instituting a statewide vaccination of teenage girls against certain strains of cervical cancer, using the vaccine Gardasil which has proved effective against several varieties of the virus.

I'm not going to comment on that. When it comes to a politically mandated vaccination, there's often more sides to the argument than just public health. I don't necessarily agree, but I don't know enough to have a studied opinion. However, it's this quotation that has me shaking I'm so angry. All excerpts are from the New York Times article.

"There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease," said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston...

I would like to know just what the FUCK do you think a communicable disease is, then? Somehow you must live in a little universe where women don't die from cervical cancer, contracted from their partners? Last time I checked the dictionary (5 seconds ago), communicable meant that an infection can be transmitted from one person to another. 400 women die each year in Texas from cervical cancer (ref: also the NY Times article)

I love this one, too:

"We did not want to be the first in offering young girls for the experiment to see if this vaccine is effective or not," said Representative Dennis H. Bonnen, a Republican from Angleton, who sponsored the ban in the House.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other health authorities, describe Gardasil as safe and effective when given as approved to girls ages 9 to 26 in three shots over eight months.

Why do people believe the lies and filth pouring out of these people's mouths? This isn't an experiment. The experiment's already been done. It's called clinical trials. Perhaps you have heard of them?

And this isn't about girls, either: the vaccine is only available to women less than 26 years of age, and is effective over a lifetime. So these men wish to control these women's sexual behavior for their entire lives, by holding a death sentence punishment over their heads.

Let's cut to the chase here. Some people opposing this vaccine would rather a woman dies a horrible death by cancer than have sex. With anyone. Even her husband. Who, I don't know, is of course ALWAYS FAITHFUL because no one ever gets divorces for adultery in Texas. Or gets raped. All this because of the possibility that a woman might have multiple sexual partners of her own choosing.

I cannot express in words how repellent it is to me that people would rather cause pain and suffering rather than prevent it.

Yo, Yo! (happily drunken)

Tonight we walked over to the local and had a couple pints of their new IPA and it's truly fantastic (as are most of their short runs). Too bad that they usually sell out of the seasonals within a couple days. And I am happily drunken and not pretty much caring about crap right now except the purring cat on my lap. Oops, kitty has Places to Go and Things to Do so she is gone (as have I, but I don't care. So I'm staying put. As mentioned before).

It's one of those lovely Spring nights where it's finally amazingly clear and there was a gorgeous crescent moon and Venus hovering near. The kind of moon where you can see the rest of the moon because the crescent is so brilliant. It's the sort of night where you think of how lucky you are to see this night and how much you'll treasure it, because of its perfect clear brilliancy (except cold. Because sunny==cold for most of the winter here, so it's a rare Spring day that it's both warm and clear. Usually clear means->no clouds to hold in heat, so happy 50 degree temps)

I have to rip out all of my progress, several thousand stiches (sob), on the Cheshire Cat stole, because I cannot add. 130 + 10 + 3 does not equal 133, at least in any base that I know of. SHIT. Oh well. It's official RIPPIT day, as I also pulled out the current commuter sock back to the last gusset decrease row today. It took me 6 stops to rip that all out and ball it up, and I barely finished reinserting the DPNS onto the row-o-choice by the time I had to get off the train. More colorful expletives. However, I figure if I'm going to make handknit socks for myself, they should damn well fit like I want them to. Else why bother? Also a learning note: if the foot feels too loose just after the heel, it's not going to get any better working the foot farther. Bah. Ah well, it's just the commuter project. There's a reason I don't bother to track how long it takes to complete those.

I drown'ed myself in retail therapy today at Let it Bead today (I KNOW. YES, THE NAME), because I had something for beading part of the silk lace stole (oh, the abject consumptionist embarassment) but nothing that really FIT the edges. So I spent an hour suckered in by Czech glass, aquamarine, labrodorite, and quartz. I couldn't decide (ha, what ELSE is new) and so went with several. And then was wracked by indecision in the later afternoon, thinking all of my choices were too heavy. Perhaps I will hit the other 2 fine bead shops wihtin 5 miles of my house. um, embarassment of riches? Spending too much cash on little sparkly things?

And La, I do apologize, because I know you've got the jones for Dyeing and I've got some supply for you (hey, can't let a fellow Knit-From-Your-Stasher break her commitment: less of my stash might mean more of hers but only temporarily; it's all good) but I've been superlame about packaging things up. I will try mightily to get my crap together tomorrow. After the marathon ripping today, it's the least I can do.

I'll leave you with a pic of my babies:

In another month or so, they'll be 6 feet high. Fresh snap peas are what makes life worth living.

Sucker for attention

Thank you all so much for your complements on Faina. I hadn't posted the pictures because, well, I went outside, took a billion pictures of Faina, worn and unworn, and once I uploaded them I didn't like any of them. So I tried again, with the same results. I went ahead and posted them anyway. I need a model on demand.

Thanks to La for the Knit-A-Long! I wait with heady anticipation of seeing other finished Fainas (HINT HINT).

----------------------
I knit like a madwoman on Saturday (Sunday involved GRASS and ITS EXCESSIVE LENGTH and HOW IT INVADES EVERYTHING, as well as other catch-up-on-the-yardwork stuff), as I have been doing all other free nights, since I need to be finished with a certain lace stole sample by the end of April for my first (hopefully) to-be-published pattern (does this make me a lace professional then? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA).

And here's the LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!!! part that the title warned you about. Purlescence has posted up pictures of the winners & runners-up, so if you'd like a peek at my stole swatch, you can look at part of my entry. I was idiotic enough to choose to knit this in laceweight silk. Shoot me now.

Has anyone ever messed with beads and lace? I'm thinking of beading the center of each inner motif, but I'm worried that the bead edges will be too sharp and cut the silk thread. I once made my Mom a beaded necklace using fishing line, and it later fell apart because the beads cut the line. Has anyone else ran into this problem? Is lace loose enough that it won't matter?

Also, is adding beads to this a Bad Idea (tm)? As I'm working this I'm consumed with worry that I'm making a lace Folly, in the sense of it's more interesting to design than beautiful to wear. It sure was fun coming up with the story. Alice while in Wonderland tries to recite her school poems and they come out all wrong, yet still obeying the same meter and rhyme. I wanted to make a stole that looks like you screwed it up by forgetting some decreases or increases somewhere, yet it's still following symmetrical rules. A pattern that has been transformed unexpectedly into another. I didn't realize until the end of the swatch it reminded me of cats: tails swishing, cheshire grins, cats' eyes. Ha.

Hmmm, I probably should just thread a beed onto a fake stitch and worry at it and see if it breaks. Argh, I do NOT have time for more swatches.

Faina, I just met a girl named Faina

Are you all humming West Side Story now? Then my job here is finished.

Faina's Scarf

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Royal Alpaca, color 707, Patina, which I overdyed grass green. 288 yards/100g per skein, 2 skeins. I had 22g left over - about 60 yards.

Needles: Crystal Palace bamboo circulars, 3.5 mm (US 4)

Pattern: Faina's Scarf, available from Fiber Trends. Knit as part of the Faina Scarf-along!


Mofications: None besides my modified SSKs (explained below).

Notes about the yarn:
This stuff is fantastically, rub-your-cheek-against-it soft. I admit, had a gift certificate and splurged. I'm a little embarassed about the cost but this yarn is awfully nice stuff. Wen worked a project with it and thought it was softer than the cashmere she was using for a differnt project.

The alpaca's got a gorgeous drape to it. However, there's this one incongruous thing: as soft as it is to touch, it's just a little bit scratchy on my neck. Stupid neck. Enh, not scratchy enough that I care. I did manage to fluff it up a bit during the dyeing process, perhaps that's the cause.

The patina color was more brown than I was expecting, so I overdyed the yarn with an emerald green mix (1/2 primary yellow, 1/2 primary blue), hoping I would get mostly vibrant green toned down a bit by the brownish base color. I used Jacquard Acid Dyes purchased from Dharma Trading Co. I'm very pleased with the final color. In the pictures you can see some subtle shading, which is what I get when I try to dye wool yarn a solid color but I like the very small variegation.

For some inexplicable reason it's very hard to capture the color as I see it. Even natural light and neutral background doesn't do it. On the other hand, the yarn looks different even to me in different lights (I LOVE colors that do that), so I shouldn't be too hard on the camera. This blocking picture isn't soooo far off:


This yarn doesn't take a lot of frogging. After 3 ripped out beginnings, my cast-on was looking a little tired. The yarn didn't seem spun particularly tightly (who'd do that to gorgeous, drapey alpaca, anyway.)

Notes about the needles:
I used the same size needle as recommended. I probably could've gone down a size (or 2) but I liked the fabric produced with the 3.5 mm. I prefer bamboo or wood for lace; they are grabbier than metal, I naturally knit lace loosely, and I like to have more purchase on all those YOs and passovers. Bamboo also gives me a bit better control over stitch shape. I use circs almost entirely because I'm a big klutz and if I can drop a needle somewhere inconvenient, I will.

Notes about the pattern:
Very nice, well written, and not too difficult. I didn't run across any errors. At first, it seems as if a many-row-repeat (was it 100?) would be hell, but this one is very predictable. Not that I was able to memorize it, but I didn't have to watch the chart for every stitch after I finished the first body repeat. It's also very clear when you've made a mistake and forgotten a yarn over, and slightly less clear but still obvious when you've done a decrease wrong (or forgotten one). The stitch count stays constant each row during the body. I found the best preventative for errors was to stop and admire frequently.

I did modify the SSKs. I ripped out the beginning several times, once because my left-facing decreases (the SSKs) looked very sloppy. Instead of:
slip-as-if-to-knit, slip-as-if-to-knit, transfer both back to the left needle then knit them together through the back loop, I did:
slip-as-if-to-purl, slip-as-if-to-knit, transfer both back to the left needle then knit them together through the back loop.
I got this idea from the book Knitting Tips and Trade Secrets, Expanded from the Editors of Threads. For some reason, this straightened out my leftware decreases. They're not perfect, but they're not sloppy-looking either.

Old SSKs

New S(p)SKs

I've never slipped every stitch of every row before for a selvedge, and I found with this lace I had to be EXTREMELY loose in slipping the first stitch or the edging was far too tight. This was especially true for the beginning and end of the scarf, where the stitch count is increasing and decreasing, respectively. I ripped out the beginning a couple times because I was not allowing enough give on the edges.

I wove the ends in because my Russian joins look like crap with plied yarn. The yarn is fuzzy enough to grip itself firmly, and the ends are hidden either along the cast-on edge, cast-off edge, or in the seed stitch border and don't show at all. I was unhappy about how crappy my cast-on looked, so I used the weaving-in-the-ends opportunity to make it look a little better. The fringe also helps hide some of it.

Fringing! This was my first fringed scarf and I actually enjoyed it, despite the fringe boredom I've heard of. I made my fringe groups 3 strands each, about 21" length before folding in half. I chose to do fewer fringes than the picture, but did 4 instead of 3 fringes across the bottom (I learned this from quilting: if you try to divide something into 2 equal parts, it's very obvious if the middle line is even slightly off. Dividing an area into 3 instead of 2 makes the lines dividing the sections much less noticeable).

I fringed every 4th stitch up the sides, and I specifically did not tighten any of the knots until I had the fringe exactly how I wanted it. Then I tied the lower knots so that I liked them, then trimmed each grouping to approximately the same length from the scarf. Can you tell I'm anal-retentive about my fringe? It's like a Rorschach blot test, except I don't know what it says about my personality that I Enjoy the Fringe.


Blocking: I don't have blocking wires, so I used the thread-crochet-cotton-up-each-side method to get a mostly-crisp edge. Blocking helped to orthogonalize the wonky stockinette stitches, although it did nothing for my decreases. Alpaca doesn't have any give like wool does, so it's easy to get messy stockinette.

Also: wet alpaca smells BAD. I don't care how royal it is. Yes, I did a full, submerged-in-water wet block.

All in all, a fun knit! It went much faster after that first body repeat, once I realized the logical progressions of the pattern. Me and my glamorous Faina! (y'all can just ignore the head. Also, when did I turn blond?)

HOWdy

I've been (mentally) away, but for no good reason. Let's just say that every time I felt like writing, it just sounded hideous and whiny and boring. Not as if I've let that stop me before, but I didn't see the point. My raging narcissism was retrenched against the crushing self-doubt and didn't emerge from the trenches until lately. It's still got a sniper trained on it, so I don't know how lucid I'm going to be.

Damn, that makes THREE fire trucks I've seen today. Sorry, quick aside there.

The sky is doing what I call a Simpsons sky, with picture perfect soft blue shading to pale green on the horizon and big puffy cumulus clouds picking up the beginning yellows of the sunset. I bet Mt. Hood looks all regal and is starting to pink up. And Mt. St. Helens probably still looks flat.

For distraction, here are my neices:

NYC neice (two months shy of 2 years)
Talking, walking, and biting the heads off of chocolate bunnies. She has the most fabulous hair. I'm envious as I didn't have such cute baby hair. Her daddy and my love monkey both had those gorgeous blonde curls as babies, too.

Utah neice (two months shy of 1 year)
Just getting her teeth in and crawling everywhere. My brother says she took her first steps on Sunday.

Yo, I know, pictures of other peoples' relatives are the most boring ever. Tough.

We saw Utah girl at Christmas and she's changed so much even since then. We're thinking of going out to see NYC girl and her 'rents in late May or June. I hear it's kind of nice that time of year and we only ever visited once, 5 years ago (for the nuptials, so not a lot of sightseeing time).

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I've just gotten so wrapped up in myself lately that I can't even seem to manage a fucking normal conversation with anyone anymore. I'm terrified of talking to people. When did THAT happen? And for this last month I've been not coping well. A cookie a day makes the depression go away (for a couple minutes). I'm not a binger nor an overeater. I've just got a raging sweettooth that I haven't had the willpower to control lately. Or I should say chocolatetooth.

And winetooth. My lovely alcohol. Although I have come to the conclusion that I get my hangovers early. I just can't marathon drink. Any more than a couple or three hours and I feel like death, although I'm fine in the morning.

Even the Red Cross rejected me. Not enough iron; I failed the hemocrit at 1% lower than the cutoff. We've rescheduled for this Saturday and I'm taking iron supplements and hopefully those little red blood cells have been reproducing. It's not unusual, I've been turned away before.

By the way, the R.C. called (I was JUST past the 2 month deadline) because their blood supply for certain types is at extremely low levels. It's not Christmas, neither has there been a national disaster nor anyone I know is dying, and I know not everyone is able to donate (K the Love Monkey himself passes out) but please consider blood donation right now if you meet the criteria. Your blood could make a real, concrete difference in someone else's life.