Cattywampus

Of things in progress

I have not one, not two, not three, not even four, I have 5 sweaters in progress.  I am really trying to focus, I am, and I'm going to try to get at least two of them done for the 'transitional period' coming up in spring - tho if the weather stays like this that transitional period will be over by the end of march and it will be summer by mid-may, but we can hope for an extended spring.  The silly thing about having so many sweaters in progress is that they are all at about the same stage - about half way done - if would just FOCUS I would have two actual sweaters by know instead of 5 half done ones.

Usually, once I tip the halfway point I get a bit more determined, so hopefully I will have a few that will at least look like SOMETHING in a few weeks.

We have decided to put our house on the market and look for something a bit more long term - which sounds odd, but we are currently in a condo in a large, old row home where we live and we want to go to our own row home in a quieter, more neighborhoody part of the city.  We would like a bit more space, some storage, an outside area to call our own and in a perfect world - parking.  We shall see.  

In the meantime, however, what that means is that we have to make our current place look like no one lives there.  So we have rented a storage unit, and a uhaul for next weekend, and we will be spending the upcoming week packing up half of our belongings to get put away for the duration.  I know that in this market it's necessary, but it doesn't make me happy.  I am looking at it by thinking that we are just getting a head start on our packing, it's work we would have done anyway - right?  Right.  

I am finding it tricky to find places to stash a lot of my knitting paraphernalia, but it's working out.  And in the process I'm sorting and culling, so that's good too.  

See how hard I am trying to convince myself that this isn't a giant pain in the butt???  It's work, but I am very good at spin, especially when it's my own brain I'm trying to convince - I know my own motivation and trigger points very well, and besides that - the short time table, 1 week from today, means that it will all be over a week.  And if I don't think about the HOURS I will be spending inbetween now and then making all of that happen, it seems completely reasonable.  

I am also continuing to learn about my camera.  I have slowed a bit, I feel like I have the basic functions down, and I'm starting the class in just under a month, so I'm just getting used to using it and playing with the settings.

A few weeks ago we took Pixie to the park and I spent some time trying capture her in sharp focus against a blurry background.  It didn't quite work, but her head is in focus at least.

See how fuzzy she is?  She is a double coated dog, not in the normal sort of way, but in the wire-haired way, which means that her coat needs to be stripped when it starts falling out - which means, in case you aren't familiar with all of this - that you have to pull it out.  It's not as hard and awful as it seems, for the most part she doesn't mind, but she's definitely not a fan of the process.  We do it once a year, but I understand for show dogs it's done every few months.

Again, this is me playing with the camera, the focus is on her head, so it blurs out the further away you get - I was learning how to move the focal point.

Remember, how fuzzy she is, and now look at this next picture. 

Doesn't she just look hysterically naked?  And teeny-tiny, the fur adds 10 pounds to her at least, and when it comes off, you can see the itty-bitty 17 lb ball of cuteness that she is underneath.

And one more picture for the road. 

I was trying to understand the f-stop/shutterspeed relationship and get that whole burry waterfall effect happening, which I did, but in the process I overexposed the flowers.  Still, I'm learning.  

It's a lot easier to accept a screw up in a photograph than in knitting, I have to say.  Bad photo?  *shrug* Just hit delete, adjust something, maybe reference the book to see what you're doing wrong and try again.

Bad sweater?  *cry* *wail* *swear that you did everything right and there's no logical reason the sweater is 5 inches longer than it should be* *try various ways of making the sweater shorter, up to and including half felting it in the process* *cry again* *jam the sweater in the bottom of a drawer and forget the whole thing ever happened*

Yep.  I figure if you can learn how to knit, and actually knit a garment that fits you, that means that learning almost anything else is fairly easy in comparison.  Not that I can necessarily be GOOD at photography, but since I'm just trying not to suck, I think I can befairly confident at my level of success.  

And now for something completely different...

A pattern release!  Woohoo!  I didn't actually plan on doing this, but when I finished this shawl I LOVED it, and thought - wow, I definitely want to make this again, I should write out what I did - and then I figured, maybe there are other people who don't want to use their leftover sock yarn to make a crazy colored blanket with 300 ends to weave in, if I write it up I should just publish it!

And here I am, publishing it.

Look at the madness that was this shawl just off the needles.

And one more shot for the cuteness factor.

And here, after a dye job and a bit of blocking, is the money shot.

The color is a little off there, it is more accurate here

The reason I ADORE faroese shawls is because you can tie them behind your back and go about your daily business without the ends dangling and getting in the way.

If you look closely you can see me holding the ends of the knot.

I am calling this, quite creatively, the Leftovers Faroese Shawl, and you can download the pattern for free on Rav if you are interested.

I am really, really happy with the finished product and absurdly happy to have found such a practical use for my leftover sock yarn.  I easily have enough to make another one in pinks and reds, but I may delay a bit before casting on for another one.

Untitled.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."  (Eleanor Roosevelt) 

He was a buddy

and a playmate.

He knew he was darn cute and used it to his every advantage.

He loved rolling in sun warmed grass

and thought snow was an insult to his very existence on the planet.

He was infinitely patient

and the best knitting accessory I ever had.

He was comfort embodied in a fuzzy little form.  

He was the best (and most persistent) cuddler I have ever known, kitchen floor cleaner extraordinare, he would put up with anything if he got a belly rub out of it, he was insistent when he wanted something, annoying when he thought he should get something he wasn't allowed to have, he loved both of us unconditionally, he won the hearts of the nurses and our vet, he was a dear little soul and we did everything we could and kept him with us as long as we could, but it was time. 

I am glad he is no longer suffering.  I am imagining him frolicking with his doggie friends who have gone before him.  I like to think that my grandmother has found 'the smooth one' (Pixie is the fuzzy one) and has welcomed him home.

He will be missed.

Trying a new thing

Over the weekend I took a photography class.  Nothing major, just a 'how do I?' class for my point & shoot.  Since our vacation last summer I'd been wanting to learn a little more about photography, and I'd also had a sneaking suspicion that my camera kind of sucked.

After a short tutorial on how to use the various buttons and features on the camera our instructor walked us down to city hall, which is a fairly impressive space in the city.  There is a courtyard in the center of the building that is a fairly major thoroughfare to get from one part of the city to another, so there is a lot of foot traffic.

It was a really dreary day, completely overcast, but after a bit I started to enjoy the play of texture rather than looking for a lot of color.

As it turns out, I don't suck at photography.  Not that I'm amazing or anything, but I don't totally suck.

Translation:  I need a new camera.  Even once I understood more about the exposure, ISO and whatnot, they still look grainy if you make them big.

This one is my favorite:

I want to know where this dapper gentleman in his yellow hat is going on Saturday afternoon.  And I want to learn how to take a picture that makes the viewer want to know the same thing.  

So, the rest of the weekend I obsessed over camera reviews and finally settled on a introductory DSLR and now I am waiting for it to come.  My mother is coming to visit this weekend and we have some fun things planned, I am anxious to get to play with the camera and understand it a bit before we go out on the town together.  

I also finally learned out to take pictures of the dogs.  

Seriously.  Can you stand the cuteness?  I couldn't get Pixie to sit still long enough, I think I'll have to ply her with food.

An appeal to your hearts

This is copied from my friend Jenny's blog, she and her hubby are good people and they need help rescuing this sweet puppy.  Please consider donating after you read her story, every little bit helps!

Please help me save Peanut Butter the puppy

This past Sunday, my husband and I went to the SPCA intent on adopting or fostering an adult dog.  Then we saw Peanut Butter, heard her story and that was it.

Peanut Butter is a 6 month old puppy who was pulled from the Frankford River by the Philadelphia Police Department on January 10^th.  She was taken to the SPCA and has been there ever since, with no one claiming her.  When we saw her Sunday, we bonded instantly and fell in love with her.  She was limping, holding her back leg up, but the shelter wasn’t sure when and how that happened.  They thought it might be a sprain and Peanut Butter was due for x-rays on the leg on Monday.  So we took her home Sunday as a “foster”.  We returned on Monday night, and that’s when we received the devastating news that Peanut Butter has a broken leg.

The surgery is expensive, between $3,000 - $4,000 dollars.  The SPCA cannot afford to fix the leg, and if we turn Peanut Butter back in….well the shelter was evasive, but I’m guessing Peanut Butter wouldn’t last too long.  We can come up with some of the money but not all, and this is the part that I need your help with.  I know times are hard but we are asking for donations towards the surgery.  Every little bit helps.  This is really not my thing, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.  We have set up a facebook page and a fundraising page on there as well.

(Seriously, how cute is she???)

Here are the links: Peanut Butter Smith's facebook page and the Fundrazr page to donate

I really appreciate your help and please spread the word.  If we are lucky and receive over and beyond our needs we are forwarding it to the Philadelphia SPCA.  They are very good people there who have a hard job where they make tough decisions.  They have been supportive and helpful to Peanut Butter and us.

Thank you again for all your support :)

 

Comfort Knitting

Sometimes I am baffled by my own actions.

I have all this gorgeous yarn, way too much of it, in fact.  I have lists of lovely, complex sweaters and shawls and socks pages and pages long that I would like to knit.

But what am I knitting?

A faeorese style shawl from scraps of sock yarn.

All blues/purples.  I was going to use random colors, but then I realized I could just use this color family and make it work.

I am going to switch color every 4 rows, alternating between blocks of stockinette and garter stitch for some texture, and I'll use some of the colors at certain intervals through the shawl - if my math of how much I have of each yarn works out in real life.

There are a few reasons for this.

1. I've been wating to do something with my sock yarn for a while but didn't want to make a blanket and this idea just poppped into my head friday afternoon.

2. When life gets complicated, sometimes a little boring knitting is just what you need to stay sane.

Which leads me to Duke, who is slowly losing his battle with the cancer.  The doc stopped the chemo, she thinks we're losing ground and says that there's no point in continuing to pour chemicals into his little body when we don't think they're making a big difference anyway. 

So, he's on his own, fighting off the cancer as best he can.  He still doesn't know he's sick, but it's just a matter of time now, and it's breaking my heart.

I'm also absurdly worried about Pixie, in the logical part of my brain I know she'll be fine, that while she doesn't know what's going on, she understands what's happening on a level that only an animal could know...on the other hand, she's NEVER been alone.  Never.  I had Duke first and they've only been separated three or four times since (11 years), when one or the other of them had to have a procedure done at the vet.  I just don't know how she'll react and if she'll be able to adjust.

There are some other things going on with us that are making my brain zoom around in frantic little circles spewing WHAT IFs in every direction my thoughts turn and I'll update you as I can, but I can't yet.

Also, there's this.

The mystery knit along I joined in the fall.  You can't see the ends because it is approximately 7' long, which is WAY too long for a scarf like this.  It just looks silly.  So I'm going to frog it and reknit it into something better.  

Oddly, after this experience, I have joined the next mystery knit along, but I am using MUCH smaller needles.

I guess between this scarf and the circle jacket I feel as though my attempts to knit beautiful, complicated things are biting me in the a$$, hence the shawl out of scrap sock yarn.

I'll leave you with a question.  If you had this:

What would you do with it?

I'm excited about jumping into the fair isle game, but there is so much yarn and SO many colors, I'm having a hard time deciding where to start!

And again.

My work ate my life.

And now it's 5 days til xmas and I am super behind in updating you on anything.  There are few reasons for this.  

1.  I haven't finished much other than stockinette socks.

2. I have been making xmas gifts and even though I don't think said giftees check my blog, I'm not posting about them just in case.

3. Really it's just that work ate my life.

Here the few things I have finished.

First, the evil hexagonal quilt of dooooooooom, which I have to admit is completely gorgeous, no matter how much I hated the process of putting it together.

And I really am getting better at quilting.

There are a few puckers in this one, but considering how skewed the quilt was in one place, I don't think it's bad at all.  Wait 'til you see the next one I'm working on!

I jumped on the band wagon and made a brambles beret, totally fun pattern.

Bad lighting, but there it is, it's a lovely medium blue color.

Saturday rainy day socks.

Fun stripey socks.

And last but certainly not least, puppies.

The mister is still doing okay, his monthly vet visits for check ups and chemo refills are adding up, but I don't see that there are any other options.  As long as he is still healthy and enjoying life, we will keep handing over the credit card.  The vet is impressed with his health, she didn't think we could hold the cancer at bay this long.  We can tell that the cancer is slowly growing, but we are at status quo until his behavior changes, so we will continue to spoil him rotten and cuddle him to pieces for as long as we can.

Pixie seems to be taking it all in stride...it's hard to tell how much she understands about his situation, but when he has a bad patch (a 20-30 min period where he gets all shakey from a histamine reaction and it is really, really obvious that he feels awful - these happen about once a week) she acts really weird, so she definitely knows that there is something going on.  Poor sweet Pixie.

I will update after Christmas when I can post the gifts that have been given, hopefully on the giftees!

I wish you all a safe and happy holiday season!!

A Columbus Day list

1. I went to Denver for a conference.  It was pretty there, the food was good, and we found a fabulous yarn store where I purchased too many things.  (Not THAT much, but considering I didn't need ANYTHING, it was too much)  They had Mini Mochi...I've never seen it in person before!  SO FUN.

So fun that I got two colors...  :-)

2.  I started a sweater for Scott for xmas, Rene by Anne Hanson, the v neck pullover version.  I am knitting it in Berroco Vintage because he thinks 100% wool is hot, and this way he can wash it without fear of ruining it in some way, which I think will allow him to wear it more.  I got about 7 inches done on the way to & from Denver.  Considering we're in October, I'm happy with that.

I have made him two other sweaters, but more at the beginning of my knitting and this one should look quite a bit more "ready to wear" than homemade.  He does wear the others around the house, but not out - but I don't wear the sweaters I knit 5 years ago out either...so we'll see.

3.  The Swirl is coming along.  Here it is a week or so ago.

And here it is now.  

Progress is happening, and it's AMAZING how fast those 300 stitch rows go compared to the 600+ stitch rows at the very beginning!  I am a bit concerned about yarn usage, but nothing to do but keep on knitting and keep my fingers crossed.  Also, it looks a little small, I assume extreme blocking will happen because of the laceweight in there, but still...a little nervewracking.

I am having SO much fun knitting this that I already bought yarn to make one of the other Swirls in the book (see Denver yarn shopping above).

4.  It is fall in the Poconos.

Fall is just so very pretty in the country, in the city it doesn't look like much at all.

5. Duke is still hanging in there.  Right now we seem to be at an uneasy truce with the cancer.  His lymph nodes are not getting any bigger (he is on a chemo regimen that we give at home), and he is still himself and not in any pain (as far as we can tell, he acts like normal other than a few side effects from the drugs he's on).  We've been here for 4 months, and they had given him 6 months 4 months ago, so I assumed he would be starting to decline by now.  

The vet says it is possible, but unlikely, that we can hold the cancer at bay for a year or more, it all just depends on how his particular cancer responds to the drugs.  

So, I am taking nothing for granted, watching him like a mother hen for signs of Something Very Bad happening, but so far, we're just status quo.  I am too worried to let my guard down and think that we are in the unlikely set that can fend off the cancer indefinitely, but I am accepting that for now, he's comfortable, happy, and enjoying life, so I can stop being SO very anxious until he gives us a sign that he doesn't feel well anymore.

A buddy pic:

6. Cream cheese ice cream is amazing.  Thanks to Jodi for posting it as a suggestion.  I added cinnamon and allspice and a bit of vanilla extract to make it sort of apple pie flavoried, then I served it with crumbled graham crackers on top.  YUM.

7. I have Jury Duty tomorrow.  I don't mind it AS LONG AS I don't actually get picked to serve.  In a big place like Philly it's a pretty organized and crazy system, about 400+ people show up in the morning and get taken to a court for the selection process, then whoever isn't chosen gets bumped back to the main pool of people and the whole process starts over.  So in a regular 8 hour day I might get to sit through jury selection on as many as 3 or 4 trials.  It's interesting to be part of the process, and I get a lot of knitting done, so fingers crossed I don't actually get picked, and it won't be a bad day at all.

8. Christmas is just over 2 months away.  OMG.  Commence panic and planning.

9. I have a quilt ready to go, my not enough energy to complete it.

Maybe in a week or two.  I love the way quilt tops look with light behind them, all sort of glowy and luminscent.  It helps get a good sense for the color values too.

10.  Finally, a book review:  (it's been quite a while since anything has been good enough for me to post)

Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons

This book is very good, Simmons has a lot to say about the nature of evil and human nature and how those two things play both with and against each other. It was a little long for me, one too many "the bad guy isn't really dead" scenes, but he's really an extraordinary writer. One of the few authors I've run into who actually expands my vocab (along with China Mieville), it's nice, for change, to read a book isn't written for the lowest common denominator.

If you haven't read any Simmons, I would recommend checking him out, he has other books & series if this isn't to your taste.

 

Picture Perfect

We are having picture perfect spring weather this week, highs in the 70s, clear, no humidity, cool at night, absolutely gorgeous (we're not going to talk about the 3 days of solid rain that's supposed to start this friday), so we took advantage of the weather and went out and about to explore our city a bit.

Even sticks taste better in weather like this.

The thing about living in a city this size is that "they" are always doing things you don't have time to see.  They - the city, a museum, some commission or another - so Sunday we put our walking shoes on and walked up to Franklin Square, one of the original city squares that had become rather derelict because it's more or less in the middle of an interstate exchange, a few years ago the city put money into making a family-friendly park, and holy cow did they succeed!

There's a merry-go-round, mini-golf, picnic tables all over the place, and playgrounds for kids of various ages.  Pretty impressive.  And the clincher?  A Steven Starr take out burger joint in the middle for kids of all ages.  (Steven Starr is one of our local restaurant moguls)

Between the fountain going strong, the music from the merry-go-round, and the noise of children playing coming from every direction, you couldn't even hear the traffic.  Good job Philly, a job well done!

The other thing about walking around the city in this weather is the way it smells.  Usually the city smells like exhaust, like heaven-only-knows-what, like wet bum, like subway, like all sorts of awful things, it's one of those things about living in the city that you just sort of get used to, but today after work I walked the dogs and I smelled jasmine on the breeze 3 or 4 times in as many blocks.  Secret gardens, old money with yards I can only dream about behind some of those walls, with jasmine drift up over the tops for all the world to smell.  How heavenly!

And believe or not, I have actually been knitting.  I am 1/2 of a sleeve away from being done with a sweater.  Once again, I'm about 2 weeks too late for the weather, so I'm not rushing, but soon.

I fell down on my yarn diet...I am not EXACTLY making it two out for one in this year.  Sigh.  This is what happened, there are two sweaters I want to make that I couldn't find yarn for, one of them is Laika, part of Ysolda's upcoming book that was released to people who purchased the book pre-publication, and the other is Vionnet from Twist Collective, I had very specific ideas of what I wanted each of them to be and nothing from my stash would do.  

I am not trying to make myself miserable, I am not trying to make sweaters out of yarn that doesn't match in my head, I actually can afford to buy yarn if I want to, I'm just really, really trying not to, so I dithered, I put it in my cart and took it out of my cart, I shopped for weeks, looking at all the options, and finally, I ended up with two Lisa Souza yarns.  Gorgeous, gorgeous yarn.

The first is for Laika, I would call this a Lipstick Red, it's a blue red, not an orange red, deep and lustrous.

For Vionnet...this color is called peacock and it has a lot more green in it than is showing up in the picture, it really is peacock, I can't think of another word to describe it properly, a really intense green-blue, lovely and bright.

Such gorgeousness.  I do love Lisa's colors, her color palette runs along the same tones as mine, looking at her website just makes me happy, buying her yarn makes me even happier!  

So anyway, I have knit up or sold 11 sweaters worth of yarn and I have brought 9 sweaters worth of yarn into the house.  Not exactly the balance I was going for, but I'm still ahead...at this rate I'll have my stash whittled down in 20-30 years, no problem.  

A baby quilt, two years late and more practice

Before I get into the quilting - look - daffodils!

I finished the final delayed baby quilt, pieced, quilted, and binding sewn down.  WHEW.  

Lesson learned here:  Never underestimate the value of solids.  I think solid sashing in place of that crazy stripe would have gone a long way to make this quilt more attractive.  

Eh.  Well, live & learn. 

I quilted this one myself, I am getting better, I think.

If you look at it up close my stitches are still uneven, and the shapes aren't even close to exact copies of each other.  Also, I didn't do a good enough job making the quilt sandwich because it's bunched up in some places.

It's not perfect, but I'm definitely improving, and neither the little boy nor his mother will notice, and even if they do, they won't care.

I am practicing for my next quilt, a bigger one, I have decided on an all over pattern.  It's a Christmas quilt, so I tried to see if I could do a snowman pattern that I saw online.

Not so much with the snowmen...the flowers aren't so bad, not for a Christmas quilt, but for something.  Instead I think I'm going to go with a swirl/wave pattern.  

Much better.  

After the Christmas quilt I will finish the one block wonder quilt that I started 3 years ago this summer.  I have the rows put together, so it shouldn't take long to finish it another time, it was really a pain to get this far, so I have been sort of making bargains with myself to get it finished.  This weekend I needed to get it to this stage.  In a few weeks I will come back to move it to the finished quilt top stage.  

The finished quilt top is going to be good, I think, but I doubt I will make this type of quilt again.  If I do it will certainly not be soon, I will need to forget how incredibly annoying it was before that would happen.

I feel like I should clarify that I took a few extra days off this weekend, I didn't accomplish all this in 2 days...

I will leave you with a very content dog.