Cattywampus

Happy New Year!

I finished my house socks.  These are in Schaeffer Lola, worsted weight, 42 st around, plain jane socks, warm and COZY! 

I love thick, comfy, cozy socks!

We took a trip to Bayonne on Monday to visit with dh's godmother, we had a lovely visit as always, and we went out to this FABULOUS italian restaurant that makes this veal...oh it's so tender you can cut it with a fork.  In theory, I'm against veal...but it's SO FREAKING GOOD.  And the cannoli....ooh the cannoli!

Yesterday we ran some errands and dh finally got his eyes checked, turns out he's seeing BETTER than his current prescription, and this one is 3 years old.  Go figure.  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and so on.  So we picked out new glasses anyway b/c three years is long enough with the same frames.  That was pretty fun. 

And I got a new pair of jeans from Lucky, the salesman talked me into buying a size smaller than I had originally intended b/c of the amount of spandex in the jeans.  He SWORE that they would be too big and I would be unhappy if I stayed with that size, so I tried on a size smaller and they did fit.  He did this bizarre tug and measure thing with the waist band and told me they were perfect.  I just washed them and have them on now and I'm not so sure about said perfection.  Sigh.  I am currently a few pounds heavier b/c of unwanted holiday weight, but still.  I guess there's nothing to do but wait and see.  If what he says is true they should be super comfy in about 2 hours.

ANYWAY.  I'm totally being non-sequiter girl right now and you probably really don't care about my adventures in jeans.

Look at the pups:

This picture makes me think of that song that has been in movies and I don't know the name and I can't remember any of the words other than 'cuz your my best friend...', it's a cheesy song and usually goes with an 80s style montage.  At any rate, they are bestest of friends and so darn cute!

I am making good progress on Amused, the collar is done and one sleeve is in progress.  I hope to have an FO to show you this weekend

Out of the depths

I finished my one knitted Christmas present on Christmas day - which would have been fantastic if they didn't have to be mailed...

STR Scottish Highlands, a plain toe up sock with a traveling slip stitch pattern.

I like the way they turned out.  They were easy to knit, but the traveling stitch kept it interesting.

Remember this?

It's the bee stole, or half of it anyway, that I test knit for Anne of Knitspot.

Well.  It's been about 18 months since I knit this half of it and it's definitely my oldest UFO.  I tried to get back into it over the summer during my vacation but I hadn't properly marked my place in the pattern and I screwed it up so I pulled it back to where it was right and put it away. 

I am trying to work through some to do lists this week and there are quite a few lingering things on the list, one of them is the bee stole.

I am going to try to work on it for an hour or two each day, my theory is that if I can get about halfway done with this half I will find the motivation to finish it when life returns to normal.

The only thing is, I'm not really enjoying it.  I don't know why.  I love knitting Anne's patterns.  It's beautiful, it will be a gorgeous stole when it's finished, either for me or as a gift.  Why am I so reluctant to pick it up each day?  hmf.

My list:
1.  Put away Christmas decorations
2. Rearrange pans in kitchen cabinets to make it a more useful arrangement
3. Make serious progress on bee stole
4. Finish BFF Christmas socks & mail (DONE)
5. Finish my version of Amused.
6. Make faux Thanksgiving dinner
7. Finish moving recipes from my old files to my new computer
8. Make bag for secret pal
9. Attempt to machine quilt the quilt for our godson
10. Sort through box of unknown stuff left from moving

There are more...but that's all I'm willing to put in writing.  Honestly I'll be happy if I finish half of those things, but what's a to-do list for if not overextending oneself?

Dudes. I got a Chumby!

I have to admit, until yesterday I had absolutely no idea what a chumby was.  

It's this funky little portable web thingy that is uber cute and has little charms and streams all sorts of random things, whatever you want - but random stuff.  

Here is a virtual shot of my chumby 

This shows you what I have on my Chumby, it changes every 30 seconds or so - just in case you think it's horribly boring, watch for a bit.  Mine is purple and white though, you can see it below.  There aren't any knitting apps though.  Hmf.  I would love to put my ravelry queue on here too!  Anybody else have a chumby? 

It's interactive, so each screen shot displays for 15 seconds and up, depending on what you set it for, but if you want to do anything, you touch the screen - say you want to browse through the You Tube videos, and then you choose one to watch, it plays immediately.  Same thing with the NYTimes articles, you browse through and tap the one you want to read and it takes you to the full article.  Pretty handy.  After your last tap on the screen it goes back to it's scheduled rotation until you interact with it again. 

I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet.  I think it might take it to work.  It also streams music, pandora & such, and the speakers are decent.  I could hook it up to the ipod as well.  It streams an endless amount of widgets, it has user developed widgets too, so there are more popping up every day.  It definitely needs knitting widgets.  ;-)

Merry Christmas!

It is Chrismas Eve!  I love Christmas Eve almost as much as Christmas.

Tonight we are having my dad & stepmom over for dinner tonight.  On Christmas Eve I make an italian meal to honor my husband's mother.  I am making marinara sauce today and tonight we will have that with braciole, pasta, and some broccoli rabe on the side.  Yum!

They are supposed to be here at 5, so I need to start making the sauce around 2, so really, it's almost time to start!  Okay not really, but soon!

I am almost done with my Christmas stuff...I have been waiting for one gift to arrive, it was shipped last wednesday and I am becoming less hopeful every day, but it may show up today.  After it does (or doesn't) I need to finish wrapping.

Tomorrow we will go to my grandmother's retirement community for a midday meal, and we will do a bit of visiting next week, but it's actually a really calm, mostly stay at home Christmas for us.  Given that it's our first Christmas in this house and we've traveled most Christmases while we were living in NC, that's just fine with us.

I have received some very excellent gifts already, the one I think you will be most interested in seeing is this really gorgeous project bag from my friend Heather.

And it came with a project in it!

Habu merino and steel/wool yarn to make a scarf.  It looks VERY cool.  This will definitely be my next bus knitting project when I am done with the current pair of socks.  The pattern is for a kusha kusha scarf, if you want to check it out.

BUT not for a while, because I am OFF WORK until Jan 5.  If only I could actually unplug, but I can't.  Our classes start on Jan 5, I can't leave the students to fend for themselves and just show up on the 5th, so I will be answering my email througout.  I am going to try to unplug tomorrow through sunday though, they should all be occupied and not thinking about academic things.  I hope.

I have all sorts of plans for the time off, but I will go into that in another post.

DH spent some serious time yesterday and some today as well making us a computer to hook up to the tv so we can do all of our tv watching on hulu and through netflix.  We are disconnecting the cable!  We are stickin' it to the man!  Or at least we're going to try it and see how it works out.

I have no idea what any of this is other than it's expensive and it makes the computer 'go'. 

I have made significant progress on my Amused top.

I think the cable works down the center.  I didn't do any increases for the hips, so the ribbing is a little snug, but I'm hoping that will loosen up in blocking.  If not I can always take it out and redo it in a larger needle size.  My experience in ribbing though leads me to always go to a smaller needle size even when you think you shouldn't, otherwise it can get all floppy on you. 

The pattern says to do the sleeves next, but I want to do the collar to see how that balances out the bottom, so I'm going pick up those stitches next.  I really like the way this is turning out so far, but I have used LOTS of yarn.  I have used 8 balls already.  I had gotten used to using thinner yarn, I forgot how fast you go through aran weight on something like this!

If I don't post again today - MERRY CHRISTMAS to you and yours and if you don't celebrate Christmas then I hope you have a fantastic day doing something you enjoy!

Running up to Christmas

I finished the quilt top for our godson this week, I am hoping to have it quilted and finished to give to him at his christening in february. 

I have to say, this new typepad format makes it difficult to do word formatting, I can't seem to unbold this.  Very annoying, and causes more aggravation than it's worth to attempt to fix it.



I took these pics on a cloudy day, it is much prettier in real light.  Boo hiss on winter lighting issues.



I am in the midst of holiday parties, 4 at work, one in our building, of course multiple family visits and get togethers and so on.  I enjoy the preparation for the most part, I have made cookies and pies, chex mix and candies, wrapped presents and purchased all purpose work gifts for the Pollyanna, gotten wine for our parties and I still need to get paper plates and napkins and carry pies to work tomorrow.



I enjoy the get togethers of friends and family, but the work ones - oy vey.  I get so worn out trying to have meaningful conversation with people who I don't know and will not see again for a month or two, to make vapid conversation, have the same conversation over and over (and over) again.  I find this painful and trying.  As much as I enjoy the music and the spirit and the food and celebrating good times with friends, I find the parties that involve people I don't see very often quite trying.

It is in these moments, when I feel oh so incredibly anti-social and just want shut to myself in my house for 4 or 5 days straight, that I realize I am really and truly an introvert.  That and my sense of humor is more sarcastic than the general population, I am always checking myself so as not to accidentally offend, that takes energy too.

ANYWAY. 

I'm still typing in bold and I can't make it stop. 

My very first sock that I finished two years ago exactly had a hole in it!  ACK!!!  So I attempted to darn it.  I picked up the stitches on either side of the hole



And then I kitchenered it together and duplicate stitched over the rows directly above and below it.  And now it's not pretty, but there isn't a hole!  (for now)





Secret Pal Questions:

Part A:

Are you doing any holiday knitting? 

Yes, I am making my BFF a pair of socks.

Part B:

Have you finished?

Um...yeah...

But she knows they're going to be coming in between Christmas and NY, so it's all good.

And we're not going to talk about this stitch on the edge of the heel either.  I don't know why it's there, my stitch counts are right, I'm just going to sew it in and no one will be any the wiser.  (dont' tell my friend 'kay?)

Hey, the bold stopped!

Christmas is FUN!

I caught this picture just before sunset on saturday.  I love the way the brick on the top building looks like it's glowing from the inside.

This weekend involved lots of Christmas preparations, I wrapped!  I made chex mix!  I made cookies!  And we even sat down and did the Christmas cards.

I have groups of packages ready to go, now I just have to actually get to the post office to mail those and pick up some stamps to mail the cards. 

Things are progressing...it's remarkable, really, I usually put off the cards until it's too late.  I just have a few last minute presents to pick up and I will be READY!  HOORAY!

We're not talking about the socks that are supposed to be a Christmas gift so don't ask.

I started Amused from the newest Knitty last week.  I had serious issues choosing a project to work on over the last month or so, but I saw this one and I just HAD to start it.  HADTO.

Pixie is holding one of the ball bands in her mouth.  She thinks the strangest things are toys.  She picked up a stray leaf in the house the other day and was carrying it around for a while, but this is cuter by far.

Below is my progress.  I just separated the sleeves.  I can tell you already that I am knitting a size S instead of the XS b/c my gauge is tighter than the pattern calls for.  I don't know what it is, but I have a very hard time getting any yarn to work up to 4 st/in, I just knit too tightly.  

I also did one less repeat than called for before separating the sleeves and just cast on the extra sleeves into the body at the join under the arm.  I measured some of my sweaters and another repeat would have been another inch, making it WAY too deep in the armhole area.  I tried it on, my theory seems to have worked.

There is also a whole bunching thing that is going on in the original picture where the cable ends.  This is presumably because the cable is tighter than the same amount of stitches in non-cabled format.  My idea is to run one cable down the front after the two cables are joined.  What do you think?  Weird?  Logical?  

So far, I am pleased.

I also received the order I placed with the gift cert I got from my mother from Colorsong Yarn.

On top is Handmaiden Lace Silk in Smoke and on the bottom is Fleece Artist Trail sock in Twilight.  SO PRETTY.

 

Oh Philly How I Love Thee, Let me count the ways

You have beer bars with fantastic beer

You have theaters galore

You have Steven Starr

You have dog parks

and whole foods

and dog friendly coffee shops

and neighborhood hardware stores where you can't get lost and they actually help you find things

and of course

You have people who break into cars in the middle of torrential downpours with sideways rain to steal ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Some new wips and an FO

These are some socks I am knitting for my BFF.  She baffled at the whole hand knitted sock thing, as only a muggle can do, so last year I knitted her a pair of socks in worsted weight just so she could see how lovely they really are.  Sometime over the summer I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she said 'I will take more socks for any and every holiday that you are willing to make them for me' - now THAT is the sign of someone who appreciates my knitting.  For that, I will make a Christmas gift.  The ONLY Christmas gift I am making this year.  

STR lightweight in Scottish Highlands.  Isn't the striping funky?  No pattern, just a traveling slipstitch to keep the knitter from being bored out of her mind.  

Doesn't duke look cute with decorative ears?  Unfortunately he didn't think so.

This the very beginning of the Stora Dinum shawl.  You cast on 400+ stitches and start from the bottom up.  holy crap that's a lot of stitches to start with.  And of course when I was sick and not so much with the paying attention I knit 6 rows wrong.  Six!  That's 2700 useless stitches.  Ish.  UGH.  All fixed now and lesson learned but I am no less irritated about it.  I've never been good at getting un-irritated with things.  The yarn is Henry's Attic Kona fingering that I dyed first peach and then overdyed with red b/c I didn't like the peach.  I'm not sure I like this color, but the point is to have warm shoulders, so I'm not terribly obsessed with the color.  I may try overdyeing again when I'm done.  We'll see.  That won't be for a year or two yet at this rate.

Duke is performing the all important duty of book-holder-downer making sure there is pattern-reading-prevention as well as being the world's cuddliest living hot water bottle all at the same time here.  Isn't he talented?

Behold, one year and 2 months worth of 42" husband sweater!  I told him to pose - so he does 'alas poor Yorick'.  I was unsure, so I am quite pleased that it fits so well, he even wore it to work last week, so he's not just telling me he likes it.  :-)  That's always a good thing.

EZ's hybrid, in cascade 220 quattro - with enough left to make him some 'gloves with little hats' to keep him cozy in this suddenly freezing and blustery weather we are having.  Look for those around Christmas though, I have to put this yarn down for a few weeks.

Fuzzy close up below.

Fun things

Lookie what came in the mail today!

My first package from my already fabulous secret pal!

This is a sock kit from Robyn's Nest, a fun online yarn shop in CA - so, my pal could be in canada...or she could be throwing me off the trail by sending me stuff FROM canada when she's really in Des Moines or somewhere equally not another country.  Mysteries abound!

This is Sweet Surrender Spark Sock Yarn in the Cotton Candy colorway.  This is a little bright for me, but I think it will make perfect socks for my 4 yo Goddaughter, just the right kind of colors for little girls!

There are also two sets of stitch markers, a size two needle, some candy (see that lollipop?  I haven't had one of those in YEARS.  I used to get them at the local small town store/post office when I was a kid for 10 cents each, I remember the jar and the way they smelled and everything, I hope they are as good as I remember!), some cute little erasers and a cd with two patterns on it. 

One of the patterns, sweet dreams socks, is a really lovely cable & lace sock pattern that I like a lot.  I definitely will use that in something soon.

Thank you Secret Pal, what a great package of goodies!! 

The monday after

My mother was visiting this past weekend.  We had SO much fun.  Friday night we had dinner at Beneluxx and she sampled many varieties of belgian and/or craft beers.  Anybody's first venture into that kind of beer is eye opening, it's a whole different experience than the coors/miller/bud world a lot of people stay in.

Saturday we hit the yarn shops in town so she could pick out her Christmas present.  After much time on ravelry she decided she wanted to knit a laceweight pi shawl, so we went in search of said materials.  She decided on a lovely deep blue zephyr wool/silk laceweight and I also got her all the necessary needles.  Turns out there's a lot of needles involved in the pi shawl from beginning to end.  I, unfortunately, neglected to take a picture of her goods.  Oops.

As far as my gift, I got this GORGEOUS lisa souza dk tighttwist in elektra.  Enough to make a sweater.  I saw lisa's booth at stitches and fell in love with this colorway.  I put it on my christmas list but I guess I didn't expect it b/c I was so surprised.  It's SO PRETTY!!!  

As always, the true blue/purple isn't represented properly, but it's really lovely.  She also gave me a gift cert to Colorsong yarn so I can pick out  my own fleece artist/hand maiden.  WHAT FUN!  

The thing about doing some Christmas early is that now I'm ready for it to really be the holiday season and it's just not!  

I bought a skein of Schaeffer Lola to make some heavy house socks with, it got cold!  

 

Saturday she also bought me a go knit bag, not because I needed one (I have my own sock bags that I've made, so I couldn't ever justify buying myself one), but because I WANTED one.  Aren't mothers just the best.  :-)   

Saturday night we went to Amada and splurged on the Chef's tasting dinner.  OMG.  It was AMAZING and totally worth the splurge.  When we left I thought I might never be able to eat again.  Some restaurants have great reputations and you go and end up eating something that wasn't any better than you can get at 3 or 4 much cheaper restaurants that are just as good if not better and are less of a hassle to boot.  This was worth every penny, their reputation is much deserved.  Now all I can think about is what kind of excuse I can come up with for our next visit.  Valentine's Day?  My birthday?  

She wanted to learn how to make project bags, so sunday we had a mini-class on those and we got busy - look at our results!  Duke is guarding them.

Sunday night we made meatballs & sauce, what's better than that??  By last night I felt like this...

And I still do.  What a fabulous weekend we had!  I wish it hadn't ended so abruptly with this work thing this morning.