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.  

An attempt at forward motion

Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments about Duke, it has been hard, and continues to be, but there is nothing to do but move forward, accept and adjust as well as help Pixie adjust to being an only dog.  From everything I have read, that simply invovles keeping our routines, helping her to adjust to her new role as 'lead dog' by doing some training with her, and doing the things she likes to do - longer walks, going to the park, etc.  We can do that.

My knitting seems to have come to a screeching halt, I don't know if it's the stress or the warm winter, but I just don't seem to be moving forward on anything.  I start things, I knit a bit, I put it down, knit something else, etc, etc.  

The only thing I've finished so far this year is the Swirl Jacket.  I am not entirely convinced about this style, even though it does seem to be in right now.

I do like it from the front, it's the back that I'm uncertain about.

I have, however, managed to purchase a significant amount of yarn.  That leads me to believe it's the stress, because I am a stress shopper.  It appears that I have a thing for this particular shade of blue right now.  It's in, so I'm seeing it everywhere, and I do like it, but this might be a bit excessive.

I bought yarn to make Color Affection, I am loving these kind of shawls and there really is something about stress and garter stitch, isn't there?  

I also did a fair amount of research and bought a DSLR (Canon EOS Rebel T2i).  After learning that it really was my camera that sucked, I decided there was no point in dragging out any further and I have been learning how to use this one.  I am slowly but surely going through the companion book I purchased, completing the assignments, and wow am I really glad I got this book.  Without it I would still be fumbling around in the dark!

The pictures above are the last hold out from my old camera, though I will admit that it's still easier to take pictures on my phone and upload them.  I have to find a better photo managment software, I'm using picasa but I'm really not sold on it - does anyone have any recommendations?

This is my favorite photo so far, the reflection of row homes in a puddle - finding a bit of beauty in a very unexpected place.

Baby Quilt Hooray!/Christmas Quilt Meh.

A dear friend is pregnant and expecting a little boy, so I have whipped up the first baby quilt EVER that I am actually going to gift BEFORE the baby is born.  

I had this darling paisly frog pattern, so I couldn't resist highlighting it in the quilt.

I also couldn't resist buying a little frog to go with it.

I am really, really pleased with my quilting on this one, it came out even and I think it does add quilt a bit to the overall look of the quilt.  

I finished this quilt feeling like I was getting the hang of it and ready to try something bigger.

Up next was this Christmas quilt...I did many things wrong here.  Many things.  

1. I chose the wrong color thread.  I used red because it seemed right, but looking at it now I can see that a softer color would have been better, perhaps a beige that wouldn't clash horribly with any of the colors in the quilt.

2. I chose the wrong pattern to quilt on.  Spirals in the designs like this take too much away from the design of the quilt itself.  

3. I centered the design incorrectly.  I should have left the sashing unquilted instead of trying to include that in the main pattern, including it made all my circles off center because I couldn't judge where the center of each circle needed to be very accurately.

4. I quilted too close together.  I think the color would have been okay if it weren't as dense.  I quilted further apart on the border and I do like that better.  Also it would have taken WAY less than the 8 or 10 hours than it took me if I had quilted less densely.

(this picture looked really weird, no matter which way I rotated it, apparently I held the camera in mid air at about 45 degrees)

There are a few other things too, but I'll spare you from the minutae.  

I am not crazy, I know this quilt is FINE in reality, it is perfectly functional, no one will notice the fabric puckering on the back, no one else will look at it with such a critical eye as I do...but still.  

Lessons learned, hopefully I'll have a shorter list with the next one!

In the Completely Unrelated news category, we saw the Philadelphia Orchestra perform Beethoven's 9th a few weeks ago.  Absolutely AMAZING.  We had great seats too...they were cheaper because of the positioning, you can't see the whole stage, but you could look right down on the orchestra!  If you have a chance I heartily recommend seeing them, also they just had to declare bankruptcy, so they could use the support!

At the orchestra I knitted on the only little bit of knitting I have to show at the moment.   This sock, which I ended up ripping out because my gauge had changed so much from the first one that it was striping differently and I couldn't have that!  

I really am knitting sweaters and lace and other things...there's just nothing much to show, a slightly longer sweater front...a 4 inch piece of lace...

Lots to tell you, a book review, a recipe to share, but this post is long enough already, also, it's my birthday and I'm supposed to be getting ready to go out for dinner right now!  :-)

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 list of sorts

I'm a bit manic right now because of some things going on at home & at work (all good, no worries, but I'm running in circles), so I'm going to fall back to the list format.

1.  Look Mom, I sewed!  I haven't had my sewing mojo for quite some time, it seems that when fall term starts and the students come in waves that I just lose all my energy for sewing, spring and nice weather bring it back.  Go figure.  It has happened 3 years in a row now, so at least I can be comfortable that there is a cycle and if I don't feel like sewing, it's okay, I will again soon.

I made a cover for my nookcolor!

I adore that fabric.  I bought the pattern on etsy from birdful stitches and I would recommend it, easy to follow and a lovely finished product.

The only thing I did differently was to use an elastic hairband in place of the fabric loop to hold it closed. 

It is most excellent, I do not have to take it out of the cover to do anything with it, and did I mention how happy the bright, flowered fabric makes me???

2.  It is theoretically possible that I will finish this Christmas quilt before next Christmas, but nobody hold their breath.

3. Pixie is fuzzy and cute.  Wait, that wasn't one of my things.  Sorry.

4.  Deep fried oreos with homemade cookies and cream icecream.  Judge if you'd like, but I finished every bit and I would order it again.

5.  Thanks to a recommendation from Jodi, whom I trust in this matter implicitly because she lives in a much colder, snowier and windier place than I do, I purchased a pair of Sorel snow boots.  Because I finally have practical snow boots, it will not snow another inch this year, and actually that's okay with me.

And they're cute too, toasty warm with cute shoes, what more could a girl ask for?

Hints of Spring

I hope you have been enjoying the same amazing spring weather that we got towards the end of the week this week.  I left work early on Friday and took the puppies for a nice long walk.

We stopped in the Old Pine Street Church cemetary, I love it there, it's so peaceful and not at all sad - except in that far away kind of way - because I think the most recent grave I've ever seen in there is from the early 20th century.  

That pillar on the left is for this esteemed gentleman:

I saw that and thought, oh of course, the civil war, and then 'oh wait, that's says revolutionary!', which - duh - it's Philadelphia, there's revolutionary war signage and history all over this city, but wow, that's old - for this country, I mean.  That's nothing compared to native americans or in europe, but for europeans turned american on american soil.

I imagine this churchyard in the 1750s, it must have been in the middle of a field, or at least in the middle of small lane of houses with pasture all around.  What odd imagery compared to the massive city that surrounds me in this place today.

But from this view you can almost imagine it, can't you?

A very nice pre-spring day for a walk about town and a nice rest in this peaceful place.

Duke concurs.  You can see his little 3 toed foot on the left.  He isn't favoring it at all anymore, and you really can't tell when you look at him unless you focus on his foot - at least now that the fur has grown back, it seemed like it was glow in the dark when his little foot was still naked.

The chemo treatment was started Saturday, we have 4 weeks of that and then another course after that depending on what the tests show at that point.  Sweet puppy, he's bearing it all quite well.  He still seems a bit tired, but his personality is back to normal, hopefully he won't have any adverse reactions from the chemo.

Book Review!

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

I know this book has gotten a lot of hype and I have to say I think it deserved every bit. 

This book was fast paced, in the way that people say action movies are fast paced, an absolute page turner. 

Somehow the author has you invested in the ethically questionable main character within the first 2 paragraphs and from there on it's just a rollercoaster. Enjoy!

Aftermath

Well, here it is, almost time to go back to work and I am a little bitter about how I spent my time over the break.  I will try to restrain my rant because I know you really don't want to hear it, but I was SOOOOO looking forward to some downtime, some time to play in my own house, some time to knit lace, or cables, or colorwork, some time to watch endless Doctor Who or go through closets or take to the town and go shopping, or in a much shorter phrase, some time to do whatever the heck I wanted.

But you know what I've been doing instead?   Being sick.  We had a lovely visit in Florida with DH's relatives and we flew back on Christmas day, about an hour after we got off the plane I started feeling that feeling.  That slightly woozy, swollen gland, sort of OMG I hope I'm not getting sick feeling.  But sure enough, I was.  And DH came down with it about 12 hours after me, so I"m blaming someone on the plane down to Florida.  And not bad enough that I had to get a cold, OH NO, by Thursday it had turned into an upper respiratory infection and my doctor was ON VACATION and the person filling in for her didn't HAVE TIME to deal with her patients who were calling in.  So off to a walk-in clinic I went to get some antibiotics, and here it is, Sunday, over a week since I came down with this, and I am JUST beginning to feel better.  

So probably the first day I will feel even close to my normal self is tomorrow.  My first day back at work.

Bitter?  Nah.  Not me.

Alright, that was just a big ball of negativity and that's not a great way to start the new year, so I'll try again.

Here we are on the other side of Christmas and New Year's and DESPITE all of that I did have a really great holiday, wonderful time spent with family, and some fun goodies on top of it all.

Two of my favorite are these two books, SUCH gorgeous eye candy.

I can flip through these books almost endlessly.  I honestly don't know if I'll ever knit any of those cabled sweaters, they are so gorgeous, but I have yet to complete a sweater that has more than one cable on it, maybe I will work my way up to one of those.  The socks are just soooo pretty, those I can make, because as Cookie says, you can knit anything if you know it's only on a sock.  Maybe I should try the cables on the socks!  hmmmmmm, there's an idea...

I also received this lovely handspun yarn from my mother, she picked it up at a farmer's market near her.  I think there are 200ish yards here, does anyone have any suggestions on how best to use it?  It is a bit thick and thin, I was thinking maybe a scarf of some kind?

There has been a small amount of knitting, I finally finished the body of the elemental boatneck sweater.

I just need to do the sleeves, but I'm in no hurry to finish it, it's a lightweight linen sweater and I won't be able to wear it until april or may, I think, so I will work on a few sweaters that have more immediate wearability first.

In the bad news category there is this.

Poor sweet puppy.  That bulge on his lower lip is a mast cell tumor which may or may not become malignant, so it needs to be removed.  We are taking him to see a surgeon tomorrow, I am not sure what exactly they will recommend, other than removal of course.  So he may be in for radiation or some chemo, it probably depends on what they find in there.  

Luckily he doesn't know there is anything wrong with him, so hopefully we caught it early enough that it's just a bump in the road.  Only time will tell.  In the meantime, any good thoughts you can send his way are greatly appreciated.  

Lost Mitten = Sad

Last week, I saw this on the sidewalk.  Obviously handknit, obviously well worn and loved, obviously lost.  

I imagined the wearer, frantically searching for it, I imagined the knitter, a bit saddened but willing to put needle to yarn again for another pair for the wearer, and I tried to think if there was anything I could do to help, but there wasn't.

So I looked like a crazy person crouching over a piece of sidewalk taking pictures for a little while, then I walked away, hoping that if I left it there the owner would come back and find it.

I'll never know if that happened, I suppose, but I can hope it did.

Weekender

To celebrate my husband's birthday I surprised him with a weekend away at Rehoboth Beach, not the day before we left, but I made the arrangements and told him about it on his birthday, happily, he was as excited as I, and on Friday off we went.

Bags packed ready to, Duke dropped his 'Lamby' (always the name of his current favorite stuffed toy) in between our bags, like he wanted that to be packed too.  Sometimes I think dogs are waaaayyyy smarter than we give them credit for.

We saw the winter ocean, I LOVE the winter ocean, walked the empty boardwalk, shopped the cute little shops on the main drag (I even got to pick out a fabulous pair of shoes that I won't see again until Christmas), bought some chocolates at a store where everything is made in house, ate too much, drank just enough (went out to the Dogfish Head Brewery, of which I sadly have no pictures), and all in all had a lovely time.  

This sign in a restaurant cracked me up.

Apparently I was having so much fun that I completely failed to take pictures!  

A really nice little break from the everyday at a sweet little b&b half a block from the ocean, glad to have gone, glad to come home, a good weekend all the way around.

Odds & Ends

I did it again, I dropped of the face of the earth.  Sorry about that, life just seems to get so overwhelmingly busy and then I just don't know where to start!

We went to Boston on a whirlwind trip, saw some good friends and drank much (too much?) good beer at a beer fest.

This, in case it's not obvious, was at the end of the night.  All were standing, so it was all good.

The next weekend I went shopping with my two best friends from college.  I have no pictures to prove it, but you'll have to trust that I purchased just a little too much and that we had a grand old time.  We do that every year and it goes so fast.  Women that I basically spent 24/7 with for 4 years straight, and now we get barely 24 hours once a year.  It hardly suffices, but there is a wonderful sense of 'home' attached to being with them.  Some bonds are not weakened by time and every year it is amazing to feel those bonds again and realize how strong they still are.

Then, I finished a baby sweater for a co-worker.  

The Provence Baby Cardi, a fast, cute little knit.  She loved it, I just hope the baby fits into it next winter when she is supposed to and not in the middle of July!

Last week was both DH's birthday and Freshman registration.  I managed one Herculean effort and made birthday cake, garlic knots, and shrimp fra diavolo one night while answering freshman emails and fixing schedules.  That is not a feat that I would happily do again, but it was worth it just the once.  Two nights in a row of Freshman registration (two 15 hour days) kills my mental skills, so the weekend was a blur of fried me going rotely (not a word - one cannot go rotely?) from one thing to the next.  One of those things was the ever fun to see Trans Siberian Orchestra.  The official beginning of the Christmas season as far as I'm concerned!

Yesterday we saw some crochet graffiti - is that what they are calling this these days?  I still really don't get this, but it's pretty cool regardless.

Sorry for the blurry, but here is a picture of the cutest little skein holder ever.

Can you see it there under his chest?  Adorable.  But why not?  It's soft and squishy, so OF COURSE he would lie down on it.  

And this is a picture of his little swollen toe.  On the left, a fat little toe all swollen with some sort of allergic reaction.  Gotta love a last minute trip to the vet, but we were worried that he had some sort of infection, and I always feel better safe than sorry.

That catches us all up to today.  

Now I am busy planning some shopping for tableware on Friday, I want to round out my fiestaware collection a bit by including a few red & green pieces that will work with a Lenox Christmas pattern I inherited from my mother-in-law.  I was going to pick up a few pieces of that, but once I realized we were talking about $100+ per serving dish, I decided I could live without it.  I just can't bring myself to spent that much on dishware I will only use a few times a year, ESPECIALLY when there is yarn to be bought.  Right?

I am off work on Wednesday to make a few dishes for Thanksgiving at my Dad's, but let's be honest, I quite hope that there is a good bit of sitting and drinking coffee and knitting and catching up on tv.

If you celebrate, I hope you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving, if don't celebrate, then have a great rest of your week!

With a bit of persistence I will have a sweater to show you this weekend - so until then...stay safe, keep warm, be with the ones you love this Thursday and always.