Cattywampus

Let's begin at the beginning

We moved on Octover 29th, there, was a hurricane, there was complete chaos at work, then there was a gala.

I knit a shawl for the gala:

I have to say, after the series of events, I don't think I was a charming conversationalist for the actual event, but I showed up, I drank, ate, and applauded in the appropriate places, and there it is.

Then I bought a Moroccan cookbook and decided to make non-instant couscous.  Who knew that a couscoussier was a real thing?  I'll give you a clue:  Not Me.  So I made one with a pasta pot and cheese cloth. 

And this: 

Turned into this:

And if you're inclined, I have to say it was the best couscous I've ever had outside of a Morrocan restaurant.  It wasn't hard, exactly, it was complex and it took about 2 hours, but I assume it would be less work each time I did it.  So, I'll probably do it again, and make much, much less.  Much less.  Next - Tangines!

Then I used my gorgeous new kitchen

to make yeast rolls (seriously, yum, why had I never tried these before?)

And I learned that my new oven cooks extremely unevenly.  Eh.  What're you gonna do?  I'll have to adjust.  My pecan pie was almost burnt on top and not quite done in the middle. (but it tasted fine!)

We stayed home for Thanksgiving and spent the weekend doing things around the house.  I have a love/hate relationship with Lowes at this point...but I cooked us the whole Thanksgiving meal, I couldn't NOT do it and the leftovers more than made it worth it.  

Pixie enjoys the new house quite a lot - she loves the windows.

And I love that she has something to watch all day.

While I was in the madness, I started a blanket for the new living room, I used a square shawl pattern, Manzanita, I used Palette yarn double stranded.  

I knit and knit and knit and knit in circles for a month, this was a lifesaver.  I couldn't possibly have done anything more complicated, and the color changes gave me motivation to keep going when i might otherwise have stopped.

And I am very pleased with the finished product.  In fact, I might just have to make another one for another room.

Very poor lighting in here first thing in the morning, but it matches the green on a pair of chairs (my new living room, btw), and the blues and browns match the other colors in the room nicely...and it is soooo cozy and warm.  

There it is, the last 4 weeks of my life.  It's been a whirlwind.  I have some gloves to show you too, and I am casting on a beret to match later this evening...and hopefully this is the end of the 1/month blog posts.  I really am going to try very hard to do at least one a week going forward - maybe I should do a resolution, except I never do resolutions because if you're going to make a change you should just make it.  So, there it is.  I'm going to try to make a change.

Move, mover, movee?, moving, moved.

Verbs.  My life is FILLED with verbs.

Packing. Unpacking. Moving. Scheduling. Arranging. Hanging. Fixing. Rearranging. Buying. Selling. Washing. Cleaning. Settling.

So, here in Philly we were lucky and escaped the worst of Sandy's damage, my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones, homes, livlihoods, and many other irreplaceable things.  There were power outages in the area, but we were lucky and didn't even experience that.  

During the storm, we moved.  We were scheduled to move, the movers called to confirm, and that pretty much sums it up.  The weather wasn't actually that bad during our move.  It was rainy, but not windy yet, so it wasn't great, but it could have been much, much worse.

Of course, we moved, but all the deliveries and hook ups were canceled (security, cable, mattress, furniture, roof inspecter, handyman) and the storage unit closed so the movers couldn't retreive our belongings from there, DRAT - I really, really WANT my sweaters back.  This coming weekend, instead of relaxing and settling in to our new home we will be waiting for people to come and go, putting various pieces of furniture together, and overseeing the delivery of our furniture/belongings from the storage unit.  The worst part about all of that (and this is silly, but it really is annoying) is that recycling day at our new place is on Fridays, so ALL of the boxes we are going accumulate in our living room this weekend are going to have to stay there for another whole week.  

Pixie has taken it all in stride, and we were worried, especially because Doggie Camp was closed due to the hurricane, so she was in the house for the move.  

She was one super tired puppy, she got in that bed as we were making it and she stayed.  For the first few days she didn't let either of us out of sight at all, but she's starting to settle in.  She really likes that she can see out the living room window - there is a SQUIRREL that goes in and out of tree just outside and she goes crazy.  It's nice to see her have something to entertain her when we are inside.

We were drowinging in boxes for the first few days, but we have been pretty determined about unpacking them even if we know that the place things are being put is not the place they are going to stay.

The biggest problem we've run into so far is that our gorgeous dining room set doesn't really fit.  I mean it FITS, but it doesn't fit.

So, we're having the movers put it in the storage unit and we'll have to figure out how to sell it.  It just completely overwhelms the room.  It's sad, it's a lovely set, and it was DH's mother's set, but it just doesn't fit.  And a side effect of this is that we have multiple boxes of curio-type things that now have absolutely nowhere to live, so we'll have to make some hard decisions there too.

Slowly but surely things are getting done, and all the things that didn't happen on Monday and Tuesday are happening this weekend, and then we will be even closer to actually being moved in.

Here's a parting shot - something that you will only see when the sunrise is at it's latest point (and can I tell you that I am CRAVING that extra hour we're getting Saturday night?), but look at this loveliness - 

I took some pics with my real camera too, and whenever I find some down time I'll edit them and share them as well.  I was late to work on my first day back after the move because of this, I couldn't tear myself away, it was just SO PRETTY.

...and I'm back.

So, here it is - as Inigo says on the Prince Bride "No, there is too much, let me sum up"

We found a house we loved.  We considered.  We planned.  We plotted.  We worried.  We hemmed.  We hawed.  We bit the bullet.  We decided to rent our current place (which happened in 3 (three) days - seriously - 3 days for renting but 6 months and no sale?), and put an offer in on the house we loved.

The seller was, as they say, motivated - he is putting all his belongings in storage and traveling around the world, and he is leaving in November.  By the way, how unbelievably awesome is that??  Also, he seems a bit obsessed with electronics - which is fine with us because the house is wired for sound in most rooms, has new updated and fun lighting, and even has crazy things like motion detectors that turn on the lights in the stairwells.  I didn't even know such things existed.  And he liked nice things, so the kitchen has been recently updated and is gorgeous, and the house needs no work at all.  And there is parking AND a roofdeck.  

I am SO EXCITED.  Excited like I haven't really talked about it too much because I like it so much I'm worried that something bad is going to happen and it's going to fall through.   But, the contract is signed, the inspection is done, the appraisal is done, and we are just over 3 weeks from moving in.  (OMG I AM MOVING IN 3 WEEKS)  So I guess I can talk about it now...

We asked for a fast closing because we wanted to be in before the holidays, and he was fine with it because of the whole leaving to travel the world thing.  Doing things at such speed does involve stress though, it's stressful under any circumstance, but faster = more stressful.  Also, doing it during the very busiest time of year at work = insane me.  So, less blogging - and I was doing so good there for a while.

I do actually have knitting to show off though.  I have this before and after:

Oh I am SO much happier with the after, so very much happier.  If only it would stop being 80 every day I could wear it.

I will have another sweater to show you by the end of the weekend, huzzah!

And oooh, I cannot forget - is anyone going to Stitches East?  Because - as if I don't have enough on my plate right now - I am going!  Heck, I'm not going to cancel a planned trip to stitches with my knitting gals just because I'm moving.  I mean, yarn is light anyway, right?  If anyone is going to be there, drop me a line, it would be fun to say hello!

The City and The City

Well, that's a book title, and a book that I haven't read at that, but these two pictures made me think of it.  Over the weekend we happened upon a march on City Hall (that's really one of the things I love about this city, there are always THINGS happening), so I did a little googling and discovered that this march is an awareness march that is organized every year the day before the Philly Pride Parade.  This particular march is to raise awareness for gay & lesbian women's issues, and is organized before the Pride Parade yearly because the LGBT community is often focused on male voices (their words, not mine, taken from their website,

And I took this picture in a side street I often walk the dog down, this bit of rose bush poking over the top.  I love things that remind me of secret gardens - that there are hidden bits of beauty around every corner, even if you can't always see them.

Two very different cities, occupying the same space and time, and each wonderful for their own reasons.

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!