habsgirl

Promises, promises

2010-01-15T17:22:00.004-05:00

I keep saying "I'm going to blog," but my life is boring and I've already lived it once. So, in a half-assed attempt to keep myself blogging (something I've said before too), I'm sort-of half-ganking an idea from Sprite. She is doing the Winter Words reading challenge, and I'm just going to borrow the concept, but not fully participate. (It seems to be kid-organized, and they really don't need to be exposed to some of the stuff on my list. Plus, less accountability is sorta bad, sorta good.)

So, my word is SNOWMAN

Dying to Sin, Stephen Booth
Baltimore (or Portland)Noir, Laura Lippman (Kevin Sampsell) ed.
The Year Of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (currently reading)
Republican Gomorrah, Max Blumenthal (next on the list, due back to the library the same day as Wolf Hall)
Blood's A Rover, James Ellroy
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (already finished)

The list consists of stuff I've been dying to read but haven't gotten to (or got for Christmas - sadly, Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City just wouldn't fit), plus a few library selections. (It will most likely be Baltimore Noir, because I don't have a clue where my copy of Portland Noir is at the moment, but if it turns up, I'll read PDX first because I'm more familiar with the city, and I can keep Baltimore for my trip to Maryland Sheep and Wool in May.) So, we'll see how this goes. We'll see if I can get off my lazy but and post more often. A commentary on the Petrushevskaya should follow shortly.

How bored must I be...

2009-05-08T14:30:00.002-04:00

... if I'm actually resorting to blogging? Well, "bored" may not be the proper word, but I'm blogging, so there you go.

What's happened since the last time I blogged? Well, I knit lots of stuff (mostly posted on my Ravelry account - habsgirl - although I've been lazy lately). Lots of socks and toys - socks for the fam and toys for my future niece/nephew, due near the end of the month. Clothing is waiting until the kidlet is born - no sense in knitting a cute widdle dress if it turns out to be a linebacker of a boy. (Not that I would knit a dress if it's a mere slip of a boy, either.) The Necco Wafer Hoodie from Twist Collective is on the list of probable knits, in navy with the stripes being gender-determinant. (Well, that and I need to dig up my leftovers from Kyoto - lime and white would work for either, but no pink for a boy.)

I still miss Carolina horribly, especially at bedtime. However, we do have a new cat - Schrodinger, an one-year-old orange and white male tabby from the Lanark Animal Welfare Shelter. Dad and I went out at the end of January, and he was the one who caught my heart (by scrambling onto my back when I was bent over.) His shelter name was "Yappers" and he is a talker. He and Rehnquist get on amazingly well - a tiny bit of hissing the first day, and now they play-fight all the time, at least when Schro isn't trying to bathe the 'Quist. ('Quist sleeps so deeply that Schro can usually get a fair amount done before 'Quist wakes up.) I think there's a photo or two in my Photobucket account (cat folder, user name habsgirl - it's so much easier when everything is under the same username).

Why no links? Well, I'm at work and figure this is pushing things far enough. Yes, you read that right - I'm gainfully employed... at my LYS (local yarn shop for the non-knitting reader(s)). It's part time, but gets me out of the house and earning some money. Plus, I manage not to spend the entire check here! (Mind you, I priced out a sweater earlier, and it's not the first time.) Spring and summer are slower times, and I'm taking advantage of a lull to type this up. It's funny how much I notice my ADD cropping up - knit a little bit (currently on a toddler sweater for a shop sample), then let's stock a shelf or two, no, let's surf the internet, ooh I want a cup of tea....

Otherwise, life progresses as normal. Maybe I'll actually start to be a less-negligent blogger. Or there's always Twitter. (Theory: short posts less effort to bore people with.)

Memes (with bonus commentary)

2009-02-19T01:12:00.004-05:00

Yeah, it's been radio silence around here. I know I've said this before when posting a meme, but genuine content will most likely follow in a semi-timely manner. I saw this at Sprite's blog, and couldn't resist.

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I used Cliff/Coles Notes twice in high school: "Oliver Twist", because we didn't read the whole book (whoever thought reading Chapters 1,3,5,9,... skip the section where Oliver is rescued and figure out who these new people are on the fly should be forced to read nothing but bad Harlequin romances) and "Vanity Fair", because I read 30 pages a night to get through that bloody thing, and I couldn't remember what happened at the beginning by the time I got to the end. My answer for the set question was the last one - every other list I was missing something ("The Name of the Rose"; "Moby Dick" and "Great Expectations"; "War and Peace", "Silas Marner" and "To The Lighthouse").

And now for the book laundry list (bold for read, italics for want to read):

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (I quit somewhere in the middle of the last book)
3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (Read the first two, never got around to the third, although I liked the first two)
10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (Only the 4 I read in school - I have issues with just reading plays.)
15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (I own it, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever read it.)
18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch by George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (I read them one year during finals.)
34) Emma by Jane Austen
35) Persuasion by Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
41) Animal Farm by George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
50) Atonement by Ian McEwan
51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
52) Dune by Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac (tried it - not if you paid me.)
67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (I'm counting it anyway.)
72) Dracula by Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses by James Joyce
76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal by Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession by AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web by EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94) Watership Down by Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (loved it - another book read during finals, and it was really hard to put down)
98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Forty-six read, with eleven (I think) marked for future reading. That's not necessarily a complete list - for example, if I ever get over my Dickens block, I'd add Bleak House (loved the BBC/PBS series), and some of these books I'd never heard of. I read relatively diversely, but figure any reading is better than no reading. (I read the "Twilight" series and they really suck, but the basic plotline is better than the V.C. Andrews books I gobbled up as a teen, so I'm not in any great position to criticize those who read them.)

More later....

Rest in Peace

2008-12-19T10:52:00.003-05:00

Carolina
September 29, 1992-December 19, 2008

I miss you, baby girl.

Meme-licious

2008-09-08T01:22:00.003-04:00

(Too much Project Runway - Blayne seems to be infectious. Send help if I start talking in the third person.)

Since I'm doing the Rubbernecker swap at Ravelry, I figured I should (a) get off my ass and post something and (b) try to post something that might give a glimpse of insight. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I decided to the Flickr meme that's been floating around forever.

The rules:

Using fd’s Flickr Toys,

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker).

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

Here's the mosaic:

1. Sarah Carbon, 2. there's nothing better than summer, 3. Noel Coward, 4. llibreria - bookstore - Amsterdam - HDR, 5. RocknRolla at TIFF08, 6. freedom by mr r.banks esq, 7. Montmartre, 8. Hello cake, 9. polanski' s dark shadow, 10. Stepping Into The Unknown, 11. Why Choose When You Can Have Both ?, 12. anna

Note: The actor shown in the celebrity crush photo is not actually the person I'm crushing on. I like to be difficult, so it's a photo that came up during a search for that actor (male). Sadly, it took three actors to find a photo that I liked that fit my criteria. I later looked at 4 pages of Flickr photos of actor #1 and couldn't find anything that didn't have the relevant actor in it. (Actually there is one shot that had there been a still of the relevant still, I so would have used it. Mind you, I think it might contravene some Flickr policy about nudity, so phooey.) Oh, and don't think that figuring out actor #3 will be any clue to #1 (or #2 - I'm fickle and strangely wide-ranging.)

And, since I said I'd post these months ago, Rehnquist indulging in a favored - only by him, mind you - hobby:

More meme-y stuff

2008-05-09T15:25:00.003-04:00

Not a lot of creativity in my brain lately. Therefore, memes.

What it is: the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Oliver Twist is only half-bolded because I only read about half the book. Someone in my high school English department decide it was a good idea to read it in the following manner: Chapter 1, chapter 3, chapter 5, chapter 9, continue hopscotching until Oliver gets rescued and goes to the country (I think), skip the entire happy bit, pick up again when Oliver returns to London and continue hopscotching until the end. This is NOT a recommended method of reading any book. (Dickens still gives me shudders. We were supposed to read A Tale of Two Cities two years later, and I'm glad it got skipped entirely.)

As for the books I read for school, Oliver Twist, 1984 and The Grapes of Wrath were all assigned high school texts; Brave New World was one of two choices for a compare-and-contrast essay with 1984 (Fahrenheit 451 being the other choice, which I read later); The Scarlet Letter and Lolita were both read for independent study components in high school (Lolita got picked because I was on a conference and had to get a book during my lunch hour that would fit the "We want a creative writing course, and we will get it even if it means subverting every attempt the teacher makes to deviate from our plan" plan - the essay ended up on perverted behavior in literature); and The Prince and Crime and Punishment were assigned college texts.

The best laid plans of mice and men...

2008-05-05T01:20:00.002-04:00

I mean to post and then I don't. And when I get around to it? A meme and a recently finished object. (Actual Knitting Content.) I saw this TV meme at sprite's and was curious to see how I'd do (bold for series watched in entirety, italics for shows where you've seen episodes):

50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48. Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
46. Sex & The City

45. Farscape
44. Cracker
43. Star Trek
42. Only Fools and Horses
41. Band of Brothers

40. Life on Mars (but I'm working on it)
39. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. Star Trek: The Next Generation
36. Father Ted

35. Alias
34. Frasier
33. CSI: Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood

30. Dexter
29. ER
28. Fawlty Towers
27. Six Feet Under
26. Red Dwarf

25. Futurama
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office UK
22. The Shield (also working on this)
21. Angel

20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park
16. Doctor Who

15. Heroes
14. Firefly
13. Battlestar Galactica
12. Family Guy
11. Seinfeld

10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends
06. 24

05. Lost
04. The West Wing
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
01. The Simpsons

Results? Fourteen shows watched in their entirety and 23 that I've watched at least an episode of (most are more - only Band of Brothers and The Sopranos are that low - I hated The Sopranos and tend not to watch war stuff.) (A) I watch a lot of TV (a lot of what I watch isn't on the list) and (B) there's a lot of good TV not on this list. Although I am glad CSI: Miami didn't make the list - I do not get why it is the most-watched show in the world. Scary, huh?

As for knitting, meet Palmer:

The pattern is Otto by Ysolda Teague, and well worth the $6 I paid for it. (Although my lack of embroidery skills has left him with a funny looking nose, poor thing.)

He joins Sophie and Elijah (who I really want to rename, but nothing's fitting yet):

So much cute.

Sock Madness

2008-04-03T01:30:00.004-04:00

Yes, actual knitting content! I signed up for Sock Madness II because I wanted the patterns. My competitive nature surfaced, and I have been knitting furiously. Round one was Zombie Socks:

(Koigu KPPPM in some number purple - details in Ravelry or on request.) I liked these - relatively easy knit, I like the fit, the yarn worked well, etc.

Round Two? Different story. I present Reversai:

Opal Cotton in 1972. These, I don't like. Some of the reasons are my fault - the yarn is a bad color choice, because it totally obscures the patterning and my gauge is most likely too loose (originally I was using Koigu, but it pooled horribly, and the shop I was at has a limited [but lovely!] selection, and this was the best of the current options). The reversible nature of the pattern doesn't thrill me, mostly because a heel, sole and toe done in garter in the round killed my wrists. It's also a round toe, which I don't like because I have a mostly straight-across set of toes. But, they're done, and if they don't fit Mom, they might just fit Dad.

So, the next couple of days will be knitting free (thankfully, I've got a crochet project on the go which can fill in the gap). Reading has started for the Once Upon a Time challenge (I needed to finish up Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen and then the new Linda Fairstein came into the local library, so I knocked that off in a couple of days). I'm currently reading Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, so there should be a review in a few days.

ETA - for the sake of posterity, here are the sources of the quotes in the previous post:
1. Enchanted
2. Funny Face
3. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (not a terribly quotable movie, since all the dialogue is sung)
4. Heathers
5. Serenity
6. Amelie
7. Beauty and the Beast (Disney version - I also like the Cocteau version)
8. Eastern Promises
9. How to Marry a Millionaire
10. The Doom Generation

Another day, still no knitting

2008-03-27T22:30:00.003-04:00

Well, I covered "Read a little" yesterday, so today is "watch a little." It's the movie meme that's going around.

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them on your blog for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. Looking them up is cheating, please don’t.

(Two of these are not in the original language, but I'm not in the mood to parse the films for the correct dialogue. Silly IMDb only seems to do the quotes in English.)

1. I've always treated her like a queen, but lately, I'm starting to feel a little on the side to her.

2. Gentlemen: may I take this opportunity to tell you that you look like a mess of worms?

3. You think you're in love, but love is something different.

4. If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being. You'd be a game-show host.

5. The leg is good. It'll bleed plenty and we avoid any necessary organs.

6. At least you'll never be a vegetable - even artichokes have hearts.

7. It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting *ideas*, and *thinking*...

8. I can't become king if someone else already sits on the throne.

9. Look at Roosevelt, look at Churchill, look at old fella what's his name in The African Queen.

10. You want a Dorito?

Once Upon a Time...

2008-03-26T02:02:00.004-04:00

...a voracious reader discovered knitting. Knitting really ate into her reading time, because it's difficult to hold a book open without growing a third hand. However, this reader has decided it's time to perk up her reading a bit. Well, her book reading, since her blog reading turned up an post by Sprite about a readalong that caught her fancy.

Now, fantasy is not a genre this reader reads a lot of, or at least she doesn't think she does. (Mind you, a tendency to associate fantasy with a lot of many book epics that make finding science-y science fiction harder may play into this belief about fantasy.) However, being in need of a challenge, she decided to take on one of the quests. There were three options:

Quest the First

Read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time II criteria. They might all be fantasy, or folklore, or fairy tales, or mythology…or your five books might be a combination from the four genres.

Quest the Second

Read at least one book from each of the four categories. In this quest you will be reading 4 books total: one fantasy, one folklore, one fairy tale, and one mythology. This proved to be one of the more difficult quests last year merely because of the need to classify each read and determine which books fit into which category. I am not a stickler, fear not, but I was fascinated watching how folks worked to find books for each category.

Quest the Third

Fulfill the requirements for Quest the First or Quest the Second AND top it off with a June reading of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Love the story, love the films, love the idea of that magical night of the year and so this is my chance to promote the reading of this farcical love story.

After reviewing the options on her shelves, the reader decided on Quest the Second, with an option on Quest the Third (the reader finds plays difficult to read). Now, categorizing the books had the reader rather stumped, so she's categorized as best she can, but if someone else thinks she's so far off base as to be crazy, she's also willing to listen to suggestions. The reader also listed far more books than she plans to read, since she's a rather fickle reader. The options are:

Fantasy
New Moon and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (most likely counted as one because I think they're a little easy for me to read to be counted separately. I reserve the right to change my mind, especially considering these are library books and the wait for New Moon is currently around 80 days.)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (I read this in my freshman year of college, which was very long ago)

Gentlemen of The Road by Michael Chabon

Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas

Fairy Tales (the category that I found most problematic, and tends to wander darker paths than might be expected)

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Never read it as a child, and I think it's time to correct that.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft (I think I read this in my high school Lovecraft phase). See, darker paths.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker

Folklore

Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg (I also have The Romance of Tristan by Beroul, but I read that and not the von Strassburg when I was in high school.)

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott

Mythology

The Mabinogion

The Iliad (Fitzgerald's poetic translation). I have issues with reading poetry, so I may skip this and the next one.

The Odyssey (Fitzgerald's poetic translation).

Options considered but ruled out (because I've read them recently) but highly recommended if you decide to join in: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (along with others like The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake - Handmaid's better); Jasper Fforde's oeuvre; Summerland by Michael Chabon and the Harry Potter series.

Reviews of some sort shall be posted as the books are read.

Rising from the dead....

2008-03-26T01:45:00.002-04:00

Clearly, I haven't felt like blogging in a very long while.

Mom: She's fine. She spent about six weeks with both wrists encased in plaster. She also "slightly cracked" her orbital bone, which meant numerous trips to specialists to make sure nothing needed to be done except to let it heal on her own. It was not a fun six weeks - the first four weeks, she couldn't do anything (well, she figured out how to get cherries and potato chips from the bowl to her mouth pretty damned quick.) This meant that I now REALLY know that (a) I am not cut out for the caring professions and (b) nurses/nurse's aides work damned hard for their money. Although they don't have to deal with non-handicapped stalls. She went to her high school reunion in Missouri in October, and clearly she felt that this was not enough excitement for the year, so she totalled the "new" (it was about a year old) car. She's not sure what happened, but she ended up with bumps, bruises, a possibly suspended licence (obstructive sleep apnea may have played into the accident) and an insurance payout that will cover the new car. Whenever she and Dad get around to buying it. It has been blissfully quiet on that front.

However, there's another front which is not nearly as quiet:

Meet the new cat in the family, Rehnquist, aka Pipsqueak. He's a little grey yarn-stealing bundle of energy. Seriously - he dragged a pretty-much-full cone of Zephyr downstairs, and any yarn not secured in a drawer of some sort now resides on my closet floor, behind a wide band of double stick tape. Much as he can be a royal pain when he's in full hyper mode, he can be really sweet (which may be the only thing that saves his bacon some days).

Knitting? Lots, mostly socks. I am on Ravelry (habsgirl, of course) and most of my finished objects can be seen there. There are some that still need to be photographed. I'm doing Sock Madness again, because I'm insane and I am a free sock pattern ho. As for my summer goals, Twisted Flower - yes, Morrigan - no, lingering projects 50% (Wittering yes, although I settled for wire core clothesline; mystery project no - in fact it's now in my bed, because I pulled it out of the closet last night and Rehnquist tried to run off with it). Considering my summer, not so bad.

I'll try to be a better blogger, but I'm going with the whole "Blogging without Obligation" thing.

Done

2007-07-21T05:57:00.000-04:00

Started approximately 12:45 am.

Finished 5:54 am.

I was correct about the only plot point I had really thought about, which made me happy.

More later (both about the book, which I won't spoil for others, and life, which is progressing much more normally).

My Life as Catastrophe

2007-05-27T15:15:00.000-04:00

Life at casa Habsgirl is best described as "in total disarray." Why, you may ask. Let me explain.

Last Wednesday, deconstruction began in our kitchen/downstairs bathroom renovation. Mom and I emptied the two rooms of everything, meaning it moved into the dining room/living room/computer room/my bedroom, making the house cramped and difficult to move about in. The kitchen is sealed off but it is accessible through a zippered plastic panel. This becomes important.

Last Thursday, I let my parents' cat out - he's allowed to go out, but he's very set in his ways, and going out the front door is NOT part of his routine. Less so? Coming in the front door. This leads to me making numerous trips outside to see if he is on the back porch or otherwise accessible. A little before 11 pm, I head down for yet another cat search. My mother is not on the couch. She is staggering through the pitch-black kitchen saying "I fell." Oooh, baby, did she ever. She decided to go out and get the cat. He was on the back porch, and she grabbed him. He panicked and took off, dragging her behind, off the porch and onto the concrete patio. Her glasses are toast, she's bleeding on the side of her head, her wrists hurt, her knees hurt. I get her onto the couch, call 911, get the ambulance on its way, go up and wake Dad, let the paramedics in, move furniture out of the way and wait. She gets to the hospital, Dad and I sit in the waiting room (I grabbed knitting on the way out the door, so progress on the Chinese Leftover socks was made) and wait. She broke both wrists, badly enough that she needs an orthopedic surgeon to set them, and they can't get a consult in the middle of the night. They dope her up on Demerol and we go home and attempt to sleep. (The cat eventually came in and has been living under my bed.)

Next day, Dad goes to the hospital, and I stay home to deal with construction/ordering new glasses/figuring out who we need to call (little brother is on vacation, complicating this). In a stroke of luck, the orthopedic surgeon is at our little hospital to do a bunch of knee 'scopes. He determines that she doesn't need pins or stuff, and the setting can be done here. Fine, dandy, she's now got a lovely set of plaster casts. Once the wrists are done, they start looking at the rest of her. They want a facial x-ray because she's got one hell of a shiner on the left eye. But they can't x-ray her here because of the casts - they can't position her so that she's comfortable and they can see what they need to see. So, they load her up into the ambulance and take her into the city for a CT scan, and Dad and I follow in the car (9 pm). We spend two hours in the waiting room waiting to be called to do paperwork. I finish the second Baudelaire and switch back to the Chinese Takeout sock, and nearly finish it - I was just about to start a sewn bindoff when they call us back into the observation area. (Her records were all complete - which makes sense since this is the same hospital where she gets mammograms - so our waiting to be called to do paperwork was for naught.) She's broken her orbital bone, and needs to see an ophthalmologist at 10 am Saturday at another hospital. She will stay in the ER overnight, rather than shipping her back out to our town and then taking her back in for the ophthalmologist appointment. We're told that we will be the ones driving her to her appointment. Which surprises me, because she doesn't look like moving is a great idea. But fine - if she can't travel by car in the morning, something will get figured out.

Bright and early Saturday morning, we reappear at the ER, bearing clothes. She's sitting up and looking more with it than she has been. So I get to dress her (a taste of days to come), we load her into the car and drive to the other hospital. Which has a lot of bumpy spots that don't seem well-designed for a hospital, but there you go. We go up to the eye clinic, get sent back downstairs to the registration area, back up to the eye clinic, she gets checked out and her eye appears to be fine. The only problem may be one that pre-dates the injury. The ophthmologist says she should see an opto-plastic surgeon (do not quote me on that spelling) for the broken orbital bone, and he'll make those arrangements. As Dad says, this is probably a good area to get such an injury, since they probably see a lot of these resulting from pucks to the face.

Then we head back to town and she checks into the hospital proper. I feed her lunch, and we leave her for a nap. Now, the routine consists of heading back to the hospital for meal times, so we can feed her and visit. She'll be fine - they're keeping her in the hospital so that the plastic surgeon consult can be scheduled and home care can be arranged. For the next 6-8 weeks, she won't be able to do anything for herself (and probably some time after that). I told her that there were less dramatic ways of making me get a driver's license, and she pointed out that I hadn't done it yet. So my knitting and blogging time is most likely going to be severely curtailed for a while, since I am no longer a lady of leisure. I've got to run the house, make sure Dad eats, and a whole bunch of stuff I kinda suck at. Fun, fun, fun.

The moral of the story - if the cat isn't ready to come in, don't make him! He'll become infamous in hospitals throughout the area. (And socialized medicine has its perks.)

And a meme, because I thought it was hilariously wrong based on my experiences:

habsgirl --

[adjective]:

Sexually stunning

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Randomness again.

2007-05-23T23:21:00.000-04:00

I held off on posting the finished Mad Batik socks (from the Sock Madness tournament), so my Bloomin' Feet socks would get the viewing they so richly deserved!

I'm not terribly thrilled with these, because the fit is ... off. You'll note that the toe on the pink sock is much wider across than the black/gray one. The gauge on the foot portion is different on each, due to differing techniques - a learn-as-you-go kind of thing. I knit the black/grey sock first toe up. I knit the foot portion "normally" which led to overly-tight stranding. The pink sock was knit cuff down and the fair isle portions were knit inside out. Tricky to maneuver, but much looser stranding for me. I should have knit the heels/toes/ribbed cuffs on smaller needles, because they're loose and floppy. They will make nice house socks come winter, though.

And, just because, a meme from sprite's blog:

Just start your iPod, iTunes, or whatever music player you use, and write down the first ten tracks that come up. No cheating and skipping around until you get the cool songs.

1. Scattered, Green Day (from Nimrod)

2. L'hiver Approche, Les Cowboys Fringants (from Break syndical)

3. Employee of the Month, John Doe (from Dim Stars, Bright Sky)

4. Can't Decide, Orange 9mm (from Driver Not Included)

5. Sacrifice, Orange 9mm (from Driver Not Included)

6. Nature Springs, The Good, The Bad and The Queen (from The Good, The Bad and The Queen)

7. Eat, Eat, Eat, Bowser & Blue (from Humor for Boomers)

8. When I Fall, Barenaked Ladies (from Born on a Pirate Ship)

9. When We Two Parted, Afghan Whigs (from Gentlemen)

10. The Stars Above, Sianspheric (from Somnium)

Nearly 2500 songs on my iPod and it manages to pull two songs from the same album. (And not even my favorite Orange 9mm album - I prefer Tragic.) Go figure. A fairly representative range of music, although no classical (not that there's much there) and no big band/Gershwin. It did skip the embarrassing stuff, though. (I own all of Jacques Villeneuve's oeuvre, but that's because I'm a racing geek, not because it's good. Hilarious? Yes.)

Finally bloomed!

2007-05-16T16:20:00.000-04:00

Canada Post finally coughed up the second half of my Bloomin' Feet package!

OzKnitter sent a gorgeous pair of lace socks (based on Nancy Bush's Friday Harbour pattern) in a gorgeous hand=dyed merino-cashmere blend. The socks are amazing and were her first experience with lace socks. My feet never had it so good. There is also rose-scented soap leaves and a rose-scented anti-moth block, currently residing in my closet. (Can you guess that my favorite flower is the rose?) Thank you so much, OzKnitter for being such a great knitter and Amanda/clothesknit for organizing Bloomin' Feet. (Boo to the post office for taking so damned long!)

I've been making the post office work this week, though. Today also brought the rest of my Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab order (I ordered a bottle of the limited edition Poisson d'Avril and an imp pack, and the Poisson was missing from the first shipment - although that is not indicative of their customer service, and it was rectified as quickly as possible.!) It will be the last shipment for a long while, since the postal rate increase has now made shipping costs insane.

Monday, I picked up my yarn from Allison at Simply Sock Yarn Co:

That's Panda Cotton in Fuschia for Mom and Lorna's Laces for me in Pewter (will be Mad Weave socks) and Pale Pink (will be Twisted Flower socks). A tiny sample of Meilenweit Cotton Stretch yarn came along for the ride, and knit up really nicely into a teensy square. If (a)shipping ever becomes reasonable again or (b) my local LYS stocks it (and in solid colors!), I might pick some up.

OK, time to post this before my internet conks out. (New modem is on its way, as is an upgrade in the service.)

Summer Goals

2007-05-16T16:00:00.000-04:00

Nothing like a contest to get me thinking. (Because who couldn't use a new pattern for a spiffy tank? Straight from the designer herself? Don't forget to drop my name if you choose to enter!) Hmmm, summer goals?

1) Knit Morrigan. Mind you, I either need to finish Sarcelle or buy a new 3.25mm needle to start it. (I think we all know I'll be buying a new needle.)

2) Knit Twisted Flower socks.

3) Finish up some of those languishing projects. The mystery project just needs to be blocked, photographed, written up and submitted. Wittering? Only missing the cording through the brim edge, another round or two of starching and the installation of the band. I'm just lazy. Ergo, motivation!

Those are the only goals I can think of. Other socks will be knit because they're always fabulous band practice/car knitting, with the exception of Twisted Flower (maybe - must try before writing it off). Sarcelle will progress, because it's knitting group knitting (another reason to buy another 3.25mm needle - I finish Sarcelle, I have to scavenge for another project using yarn from the store, and I think that option also requires a 3.25mm needle.)

Baby stuff!

2007-05-10T17:27:00.000-04:00

No socks, just baby stuff. I have a friend who is due for a week, and I gave her her baby gifts today:

That's the Vine Lace Baby Hat that Knitting Daily just released. It's knit in the Coton Microfibres that I used for the Dauphin top and modeled by my brother's Cabbage Patch Doll, Lionel. It's an incredibly quick knit - I knit it Sunday evening while watching "Snakes on a Plane" and "Without a Trace."

This is the Little Lambs blanket from Vogue Knitting On the Go - Baby Blankets. It doesn't appear in the sidebar, because it was knit in 2001, and has been waiting for a baby ever since. The color is totally off in the picture - it's really a lovely creamy color. Here's a closeup of the sheep:

Oh so cute.

Nothing else of importance to report.

Hark! I see a blossom!

2007-05-09T01:41:00.000-04:00

Tim Tams have arrived! Socks, however, not so much. (I blame Canada Post. They're...erratic.) The Tim Tams were mailed separately, because of something in the other package that might have damaged them. Thanks, OzKnitter!

Knitting progress? I have a couple of finished objects to be shown at a later date (gifts) and Dauphin is currently blocking in the dining room:

The Chinese Leftover socks are awaiting a heel turn, the Sarcelle has been lying fallow (skipped knitting group last week because Mom had an eye appointment) and I've started the Mad For Fair Isle Batik Style socks from Sock Madness, but they're currently inside out to try and ease my stranding issues, so they look like a black/grey and pink blob. Pictures eventually.

Current and Future Projects

2007-04-29T17:46:00.000-04:00

I meant to post earlier, but I forgot to take pictures of my current projects when I took my recent acquisition pictures, and the weather didn't cooperate until today. (The window in the computer room is blocked with stuff since we moved the treadmill in, so my photos will be done outside. If the neighbors didn't already think I was strange, this would do it.)

In the sidebar order, first up is Sarcelle.

This is the Seasilk I bought in October (my guess is that the color is Nova Scotia, but since they don't label stuff, I could be wrong). I tried to create my own design, but it just wasn't working. Blogsurfing one night turned up this pattern (again - I'd seen it before and thought "Pretty"), and it tempted me. It's working well - complex enough to keep me interested, simple enough to do at sit and knit (it's my yarn store knitting, since I try to use yarn I've bought there) and I think it will end up being gorgeous. I'm doing fewer repeats, since the Seasilk is heavier than the yarn used in the pattern, and am assiduously weighing after each stage, so I can try to calculate where I'll need to stop the straight section. Progress is going to slow down a bit, since it will be solely yarn store knitting at this point (I had been finishing sections at home so I could weigh the yarn.)

Next, Dauphin:

This is from Phildar Ete 2004, a simple short-sleeved summer sweater (why she calls the color Smurf blue is beyond me, unless North America got darker Smurfs). This should be a quick knit, since I started last Saturday and have finished the back in a week and started the front. I thought about knitting the body in the round, but the stitch pattern might have been distorted with the spiral effect. I don't love seaming (witness the poor abandoned Bias Fair Isle!), but I'll deal.

Last, and sort of least, the Chinese Leftover Socks:

This is the two sides of a plain-vanilla toe-up knit from Tofutsies in "One Foot in Front of the Other. I'm not terribly fond of knitting with this yarn - it's loosely plied, and my technique tends to lead to ply blob creation. Couple that with the pooling, and it's not something I would buy again. I do like the fabric it makes (although I wouldn't mind knitting it tighter if bamboo needles came below 2mm.)

As for recent acquisitions, let's start with books:

The Vogue Knitting was bought so I could ~~make fun of~~ examine the onesie pattern by Annie Modesitt, since there weren't any pictures on the web that I could find. Now I know why. That said, the other baby patterns are very cute, and it was worth buying for those. "Knitting Without Tears" and "Knitted Toys" were bought at a book sale for a pittance - I don't think I would have paid retail for "KWT" because I don't find it as mindblowing as others, but that's me. "More Sensational Knitted Socks" and "Lace Style" are from my LYS, and "No Sheep For You" is from the local big-box book store. That I needed to buy because I bought this on eBay:

Fourteen balls of Rowan Calmer in Chiffon. If you (a) "know" me, either IRL or virtually and (b) have seen Morrigan, you'd know that that sweater was SCREAMING my name. The Chiffon color (lavender) was chosen mostly because that and Laurel were available at a steep discount from Janette's Rare Yarns, and I liked the Chiffon better than the slightly odd green that is Laurel (at least in most of the pictures I found on the web.) So, after I finish Dauphin, I will copy out the relevant charts and get cracking on Morrigan.
I've already done a little practice:
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That's Shedir in Tinkerbell. I started it in a fit of reading non-comprehension. Teri at Stitch-n-Snitch was my Bloomin' Feet recipient, and her father was diagnosed with cancer. Moron that I can be, I read it as her mother, and started the Shedir pretty much immediately. Tinkerbell is not a terribly manly color. So, I finished Shedir, and made an attempt at a different hat in a more masculine/less feminine color:

(The grey on the left - the orange is just because I have a strange fondness for neon orange, and it was on sale.) It didn't work, so I tossed the idea, since Teri made several lovely hats for her dad. I couldn't post pictures of Shedir until now, since it would have been a total giveaway as to the identity of who I was knitting for.

That's enough rambling, don't you think?

Surfacing again

2007-04-24T01:43:00.000-04:00

This has not been a stellar year so far for blogging. I blame it on Saturn's retrograde period. (As good as an excuse as any.)

This post will be finished objects. I promise to follow with current knitting and recent acquisitions in the very near future. (Oy, the acquisitions. Must. Stop. Shopping.)

First up, Day Two of Round Three of Sock Madness:

I was definitely out by 1 pm Thursday, and I was probably out earlier than that, but I wasn't sure who my opponent was on Flickr. I was OK with it, because I really didn't like those socks. The pattern was too wide for my feet, and the gauge given was far too loose for the Socks that Rock. I'm not a fan of cuffed socks - I find them too bulky. I might have been happier had I used the STR and the specified needles rather than the specified gauge (which goes against everything I've been taught about gauge), but I don't think I would have been happy. The yarn will wait for another pattern. Other lessons I've learned from Sock Madness is that (a) I'm a control freak (I kept thinking, "But why? I would do it [this way]." and (b) I like a VERY tightly knit sock. That said, I loved the fourth round pattern, and will be knitting it at some point in the future.

Now, some pretty pictures of the Bloomin' Feet socks:

Look - spring blossoms! (Especially incredible considering we had snow two days before that picture was taken.) My package was mailed off today, and should get there next week. I hope the recipient likes it!

Random family knitting. The now seasonally-inappropriate (knock on wood) Esther Williams Hat:

The pattern called for crochet trim, but I seem to have a very short head, and the trim would impede my vision. I have two fresh balls of Mission Falls in Raspberry to knit another one for my mother, who has a hard time finding hats that cover her forehead as she likes.

I'm back to knitting socks for Mom, since she's been neglected this year. At the end of March, my LYS finally received the long-anticipated shipment of Koigu (it was due in originally "end of October, early November). Two skeins had to come home with me:

Since I pilfered the STR that I had intended to use for Pomatomus socks for Mom, and in hopes that the Koigu would not stripe like the Lorna's Laces I used for mine, I wound up the Koigu and knit away:

Oh well. They not only striped, the stripe reversed direction on the foot. They're still cute, though.

Round 3, Day 1

2007-04-05T00:03:00.000-04:00

Ecch. I like the yarn (Socks that Rock Lightweight) and I LOVE the color (Lapis). The pattern? Don't ask. These will be completed, then ripped out to be reknit in a more appropriate pattern/a pattern more to my taste.

Real update soon.

Round 2 complete!

2007-03-25T01:42:00.000-04:00

(OK, I finished late Friday night as opposed to now, but I was lazy.)

That's a completed pair of Madtini socks. These kicked my ass. The cuff and leg pattern slip stitches over other stitches, and I've discovered that that kind of technique tightens my gauge significantly. Like one stitch per inch. So the cuffs are on the tight side and I had to consciously loosen up on the foot. The yarn was not the best choice for this pattern - I think a wool might cause less tension for me. I did make a note on my pattern to knit the cuff stitch and then knit the stockinette section for gauge if I knit them again.

I did advance to the next round, which makes me happy (I think.) My division seems to be either the speedy knitters or those who don't sleep, as it's been the first one done both times. We'll see how the next round goes. It calls for variegated yarn, so I think I'll pull out the Mars Quake Lisa Souza and knit Mom some socks.

Sock Madness - Round 2, Day 1

2007-03-23T00:13:00.000-04:00

Here's my progress as of now:

Just finished turning the heel, and came to post/check that my reading of the pattern is correct. (Which it better be, because nobody's asked questions about it yet. I'm 99% sure I'm right.)

Later - gotta knit some more!

A Finishing Machine...

2007-03-21T23:35:00.000-04:00

I finished up my Bloomin' Feet socks!

Well, mostly finished. The crappy photo is mostly there to prove that there are two complete socks. That strand of yarn floating around? Last end to be woven in. After some momentary panic when cropping the picture - Ohmigod, the socks don't match! War! Panic! Mushrooms! - a bit of experimenting determined that they are the same size, but one had been on my foot and the other hadn't, meaning one was slightly wider and shorter. A good wash will fix that. So, when I can find a blooming spring plant (or, if necessary, abscond with an African violet), proper photos will be taken. The weather just needs to make up its mind first.

You might notice a new entry in the Finished Items column - the Esther Williams Hat (scroll down to the third entry). I printed this out a long time ago, and finally knit it. It's a speedy knit - I cast on yesterday afternoon while websurfing, took it to band practice, and finished it up this evening. No photos yet - I'm waiting for daylight. I'm going to skip the crochet trim, because I seem to have an abnormally shaped head and it's already just past my eyebrows. The crochet trim would probably block my vision!

So, what's up next? Round 2 of Sock Madness. The new pattern calls for a sport weight yarn. I finally found one that I loved - Angora Valley Fibers Monarch, especially the Field of Dreams. Problem? I found it on Saturday. There isn't a snowball's chance in Hades that it could have made it here in time. (One of my Zip DVDs took a week to get here from Calgary.) So, it was either stash dive or buy some Briggs and Little. Exfoliating as the B&L would have been, I turned up something I hope will work in the stash:

That would be some ... well-aged Esprit Print from Elann in Summer Sky. You may have seen it in such projects as my first-ever socks (the ones that were two different sizes) or my fishnet stockings. I got gauge, and if I run short, I'll just have obnoxiously mis-matched toes (I'll probably use the leftover Fourth of July I used for my Broadripples.) A couple of other people are looking at using it, so I won't be the only one in trouble if it doesn't work. The pattern is to be released tomorrow evening, so I'll find out then how this goes.

And, I succumbed to the siren song of Elann last week. Usually, I wait until late afternoon, at which point, the colors I want of a given yarn are long gone. Not so much with this:

Seven skeins of Rowan Pure Wool in Ultra Marine. It will become Cambridge, a RYC pattern currently available free from the Victoria and Albert Museum website. I've been wearing one of my Ribby Shells as a vest and really liking it. So, more vests in my future!

Socks are Bloomin'

2007-03-17T16:26:00.000-04:00

I have been busily knitting away on my Bloomin' Feet socks, once my wrists recovered from the first round of Sock Madness. The yarn is doing what handpainted yarn tends to do - confound expectations:

The spiraling stripe changed direction on the sock leg! How interesting. I think it's neat-o, and I hope the recipient will feel the same way. The striping is less obvious on the side view:

I changed up the cuff pattern, or so I thought. The Nautilus pattern calls for several rows of stockinette, which curls over. I decided to continue upwards in a 4x2 rib for 10 rows. Which curled over. Odd, but I really like the effect, so it's staying.

As for the striping? It got even weirder on the second sock:

I've just started the leg, so how that's going to end is still a mystery. I hope to finish it up either tomorrow or early next week. The second round of Sock Madness should be starting at the end of the week, so I want my schedule freed up. I'll probably knit a hat after the BF socks are done, just for a change of pace. I've also got a mystery lace project that needs a bit of tinking before it can progress.

Owwwww.

2007-03-11T20:03:00.000-04:00

My wrists hurt. Yet another reason I wouldn't want to knit for pay. But I did finish the first pair of socks for Sock Madness:

(Yeah, I know there's holes at the ankles. I prefer the Sherman heel for short-row heels, because it's much easier to compensate. But, I had to use the heel in the pattern. I did my best, but it wasn't quite enough.)

Now, off to shower (what? - it's not like I went anywhere!) and watch "Rent." And rest my wrists. Back to Bloomin' Feet later in the week.

Sock Madness Starts Here

2007-03-11T01:56:00.000-05:00

Day One's progress:

I may do another repeat or so before going to sleep. Emphasis on the "may." I did finish the first Bloomin' Feet sock, but will wait until daylight to take pictures.

Sock Madness - Round One Prep

2007-03-08T20:07:00.000-05:00

I have my yarn ready for the first round sock:

That's Lang JaWoll Cotton in a deep slate grey and Elann Essential 4-ply in bright pink. I've had the Elann for several years, and I picked the Lang up at my LYS last week to pair with it for the bi-colored socks. The designer recommends a variegated and a solid, but the LYS doesn't offer much in the way of variegateds, and mostly stocks 100g skeins, which is way more than I need. The Lang was an orphan skein the sale area - for $5, I got yarn that I think will work and didn't have to feel bad about causing dyelot havoc for others (one of the reasons the store went to 100g putups - one skein, one pair of socks.) I think I've seen the sock (Googling on the weekend turned up one that was easy for the early rounds, and bicolored. I tried Googling again yesterday, but couldn't find the link again.) but won't spoil it for others. I'll probably use the other pink skein (since I bought two with plans to knit socks for me out of them) and try one of the mosaic patterns out of Sensational Knitted Socks.

I hope to finish the first Bloomin' Feet sock tonight or tomorrow, and will cast on the second after I finish the first round Sock Madness socks. (The joys of scheduling!)

A Wee Tiny FO

2007-03-06T15:26:00.000-05:00

Last night, I signed up for Emily's Wee Tiny Sock Swap (scroll down for details). Knowing that I have Sock Madness starting on Saturday, I decided to be proactive. An hour and a half later (first episode of season 2 of Project Catwalk and the first half hour of the first episode of season 2 of Life on Mars, to be precise), I had this:

My Wee Tiny Sock! I used my leftover SweetGeorgia Handpainted in Kissed knit on my incredibly bent bamboo 0s (the metal ones are in my Bloomin' Feet socks at the moment). The only change I made to the pattern was to graft the toe shut, because I'm a showoff like that. So, I'll get my match this weekend, and mail it off next Friday. I feel so accomplished.

As an aside - Project Catwalk is the Brit version of Project Runway. This season is hosted by Kelly Osborne, who isn't nearly as good as Elizabeth Hurley was in the first season. But Ben Di Lisi (in the Tim Gunn role) and Julien Macdonald (in the Michael Kors role) are back, so all is well in my world.

Sorry for the absence

2007-03-05T18:16:00.000-05:00

I was knocked out by a particularly virulent something-or-other. I spent the better part of a week in bed, half-watching wedding shows while attempting to hack up a lung. I didn't even leave the house for a week and a half. I am back to relatively human form.

No knitting occurred while I was ill. (I also didn't sleep much or eat much.) However, I have started my Bloomin' Feet Socks:

This is the third attempt at these socks. The first time, I just grabbed 2.5mm dpns and cast on 64 stitches and started a pretty leaf pattern out of BWII. The socks were a good quarter inch too big on my feet, and my feet are wider than the recipient. Rip. I knit a tiny swatch on 2mms, letting me know I get 10 spi on those needles. Hmm. I pull out Sensational Knitted Socks, but nothing sends me. I pull out my binder o'patterns, volume 2 and poke through. I pull out my Badcaul pattern and start in, back on the 2.5mms - it's fewer stitches! It will be fine! The cables ended up totally lost. Rip again. Pull out Nautilus and cast on on 2 mm needles, rejiggering for the tighter gauge. Finally! Success.

I've also got some more sock patterns coming. A friend went to Stitches West and picked up a couple for me: Thelonious and Twisted Flower socks by the amazing Cookie A. Add to that the upcoming Sock Madness, and it's just all socks all the time around here. I foresee a summer of hats.

Yet another post about socks.

2007-02-16T17:06:00.000-05:00

Another pair of socks completed:

Simply Lovely Lace Socks from last spring's IK. (I bought this spring's IK, but that' a topic for a different time.) I like these socks, although I will wait until it's a little warmer to wear them. They're an easy knit, not entirely mindless but not really complex. I did lengthen the leg by about 1.5 inches, and switched to an eye of partridge heel, which I find much denser than straight slip-stitch heels. Here's a closeup of the pattern stitch:

And I signed up for Sock Madness, so there will be even more sock posts in my future. I don't expect to win - I'm really just in it for the patterns. I will do my best in the competition, but I really see myself as a mid-major - depending on matchup and game day performance, I may surprise myself and go far, or just make it through a round or two. Plus, I hope to bust some of my stash - which isn't huge in comparison to many, but could still use a little editing.

Lazy Monday

2007-02-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

I have made some knitting progress - I'm onto the second Simply Lovely Lace Sock, after numerous problems (botched the heel flap the first time through, got halfway through the foot and discovered I erred in the sk2p way up on the cuff, tried laddering back and ended up ripping and reknitting). I just don't feel like taking a picture. However, to encourage me in creating a habit of blogging on Mondays, I present a meme I found somewhere - My Life as a Movie!

1. You're given a list of scenes, from opening credits to end credits, each of which must have a song.
2. Open iTunes and set it to shuffle (or find your MP3 player).
3. Hit play and see what pops up for each scene.
4. Make up a title and pick a cast.

Title: In the Bleak Midwinter

Cast:
Me - Jennifer Jason Leigh. My original instinct was Molly Parker, but the bleakness of the plot led me to switch to Jennifer. She does it so well.

Leading Male - Wentworth Miller. Looks like he'd be dumb as a box of rocks, but isn't. There's much to be said for that quality.

Opening Credits: In Bloom, Nirvana

Waking Up: 'S Wonderful, Audrey Hepburn and Bing Crosby
Oddly enough, it's the last song in "Funny Face."

First Day At School: Bad Boyfriend, Garbage
Oh, that's promising. It could be worse - it could be the next song!

Falling In Love: Violent Pornography, System of a Down
What the hell kind of movie am I living? Who knew that "Bad Boyfriend" could be an improvement in this category?

Fight Song: A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles
Clearly, I go to some sort of hooker school. And I don't mean crochet.

Breaking Up: Zoot Suit Riot, Cherry Poppin' Daddies
And I cause a riot. This has to be an alternate universe me. (This would have been way more fun as the Prom song.)

Prom: I Feel Fine, The Beatles

Life: Come As You Are, Nirvana
Now this, I can get behind.

Mental Breakdown: Flow, Ebb and Die, Sianspheric
Not promising, but there's still a bunch of movie to go. Very techno-y, so quite appropriate for a mental breakdown, I think.

Driving: Mambo Swing, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
I play golf to a dance beat?

Flashback: Bab's Uvula Who?, Green Day
Clearly a flashback of the mental breakdown stage

Wedding: Street Exhibit, MGM Studio Orchestra
From the American in Paris soundtrack. Can't go wrong with Gershwin.

Birth of Child: Way Down in the Hole, The Blind Boys of Alabama.
So I guess labor's going to be long.

Final Battle: Spank Thru, Nirvana

Death Scene: Wake Up, Dead Man, U2

Funeral Song: Heresy, Nine Inch Nails

End Credit: Driving Nowhere, Helmet

Yay! Yarn!

2007-02-08T00:30:00.000-05:00

My Lisa Souza yarn arrived today! (OK, yesterday if you're being picky, but I don't count the day change until I go to sleep.) Marky Mark finally came through. (The postman's name is Mark, and I've corrupted it to Marky Mark. He bears no resemblance to the original Marky Mark.

That's Sock!Merino in Mars Quake (for Mom), Violet's Pink Ribbon (for me) and Shade Garden (for my Bloomin' Feet pal.) The Mars Quake is more red than I had expected, but Mom likes it, so that's OK. I think the Shade Garden is perfect for my pal, so now I just need to find a pattern.

In other news, I made cookies - Gingerbread Palmiers from the December Martha Stewart Living. Properly made, they look like this:

Mine? Not so much:

Not a recipe I will do again.

Random sock-related news

2007-02-05T01:42:00.000-05:00

1 - I have purchased yarn for Bloomin' Feet. It is winging its way to me - Lisa Souza Sock!Merino. There's a skein of Shade Garden for my pal, a skein of Violet's Pink Ribbon for me and a skein of Mars Quake for Mom. Looking locally turned up nothing I thought my pal would like.

2 - That's not to say my local shopping was unsuccessful. I did pick up a skein of Tofutsies in "One Foot In Front of the Other" for Mom:

I'd be happier if they'd make some in solid colors, which I prefer to self-striping. (Yet hand-painted makes me happy - something about the randomness.)

3 - I finally finished the Broadripples for me:

The second picture is more accurate colorwise. I say finally because I kept breaking the casein needles I was using, and broke the second needle (which left me with too few to work with) on a Friday, and I waited until knitting group on Thursday to replace them with nice sturdy Aeros. (Don't mention Magic Loop or 2 circulars. I've done both and they drive me nuts. They work for some, but I'm a DPN girl.)

4- I started another pair of socks, of course. Simply Lovely Lace socks by Karen Baumer, from last spring's Interweave Knits:

These are made out of the same Koigu as the Spring Leaves socks I knit last year. I'm currently decreasing out the gusset stitches.

I need to start working on some non-sock projects. I'm thinking that the Phildar sweater I bought yarn for off eBay would be a good choice. I am using my Sea Silk for a stole, but that will not be seen as I'm considering submitting it for publication. (That and I cast on way too many stitches, and need to restart it.) It does make a good knitting group project, leaving the Phildar sweater for alternate home knitting.

Edited to answer Helen's question: Bias is still lying around my house in pieces. My middle name would be Procrastination if I ever got around to changing it!

More Finished Stuff

2007-01-23T02:44:00.000-05:00

I've been spending my time knitting, not writing, clearly. Still no pictures of the Slayer socks (but they did accompany Mom to the sleep clinic.) So, here are the Sleepy Toasty Toes socks:

Just a cute little pair of anklets, whisper light and toasty warm. And currently covered in flannel-sheet pills. I was really concerned about how much yarn I had, since my little digital scale told me I had 50 grams or so. The remaining ball weighs about 27 grams, so I could knit another pair in the future. Thank you very much for the yarn, Rachel!

Then, I knit up the Whiskers and Paw Prints socks by Theresa Walunas. When you have kitty-cat colored yarn (Koigu KPPPM P313), knit kitty-cat socks! (Clicking on the photo will take you to a larger version, which better shows the detail.)

These were an easy knit for me, and would be an excellent introduction to lace. These are currently my mother's socks (with a possibility of defaulting to me if there's any laundry shrinkage.) When I managed to find more kitty-cat colored yarn, I will knit another pair for whoever doesn't have ownership of these. (I also bought the Here There be Dragons sock pattern.)

I also finished up the knitting tote and knit a little bag to hold wallet/cell phone/lip gloss/assorted other things that were always getting lost in my knitting bag (note use of baseboard for approximate scale):

The tote was based on the Southwestern Style Bag in Paton's "Fabulous Felting" booklet - I just ignored all the beads/bobbles/color changes and knit 10 round stripes (the total number of rounds for the sides was 110, which worked out perfectly.) The base and I-cords for the straps were done in the Chestnut Brown. The little bag was knit from the Sophie pattern from Magknits, but modified to be a buttonhole bag. I cast of 21 stitches on the long sides on row 46, and cast them back on on row 47, and then bound off all stitches when the pattern directed me to bind off most of them. The Classic Wool felted easily, although I think there is probably room for it to shrink some more.

As for new projects, I've wound my Seasilk, but am missing the pattern that came with it (which I wanted for a rough starting stitch count). I'm knitting a pair of Broadripples with the Fourth of July Esprit Print I bought from Elann eons ago (I'm slightly disappointed, because the red on the ball mysteriously becomes hot pink as soon as it leaves the ball - so much for my Canadiens-colored socks!) and the Desperation socks progress slowly, because I want to leave them for knitting group knitting.

In addition, I'm looking for the right yarn for my Bloomin' Feet socks. I've spotted several online options, but am sort of hoping to find something locally. Mostly because ordering will end up being "One for pal, two for me, one for mom - good grief, look at that total!" Couple that with my recent perfume find/addiction, and it does add up. Especially when you order sweater kits in blue just because. (I ordered it from my LYS, but this was the first link I found that gave the alternate colors.)

2006 Summary

2007-01-09T01:25:00.000-05:00

Time to sum up the year in knitting. I completed 30 items, with 4 others nearly completed.

Sweaters - 3 completed (Calla, Maggie and the Phildar Cardi) and one nearly complete (Bias)
Socks - 14 pairs completed (Olive Leaf, Cascade Walking Away, Pomatomus, Rio, Spring Leaves, Monaco, SageRipple, Nautilus, Toasty Toes, Ottawa, Mom, Pinkcaul, Anna, Slayer)
Scarves/Shawls/Ruanas - 3 completed (Deceased Muppet, Birch and Ruana Thingie) and one nearly completed (Mystery Project - all it needs is blocking.)
Hats - 7 completed (3 hats for Dulaan, 3 chemo caps and Klein Bottle) and one nearly completed (Wittering, waiting for me to find suitable cord to run through the brim, and an additional starching. I found proper millinery petersham even.)
Miscellaneous - 3 completed (Womb, Catnip Toy, Kitty Pi)and one nearly completed (Murmansk). I think I'm missing another cat toy, but no big whoop.

What does this say about me as a knitter? Clearly, I like socks. Which is true - they're very portable, nearly instant gratification and you can buy really nice yarn without a whole lot of sticker shock. Most of my major knitting is for me - all four sweaters are mine, and nearly half the socks. I will knit for others when the mood strikes - all the completed hats were for others (Wittering is mine), and the Womb, Kitty Pi and Ruana Thingies were done for friends for varying forms of payment (cash for Ruana, yarn for the other two).

Plans for this year? More socks, finishing the unfinished. I've got yarn for a Phildar summer sweater. Several shawls are on the horizon - I've got Seasilk to wind for one, and I think I'm going to see if a friend will loan me the IK with the Forest Path stole in it, because I need a challenge. Plus, there's always new temptations at every turn.

Hey, I finished some stuff!

2007-01-04T02:15:00.000-05:00

And started more.

First up in the completed objects is the Anna socks, which have been done for a long while, just not posted:

The picture is crappy because it was taken in the "Autumn of no damned sun." I did the shaping alterations that most are doing for Anna - downsizing my needle once past the bulge of the gastrocnemius. I should have gone down again at the ankle, but that's life. Again, like everybody else, the socks twist - design defect. I like them, and I really liked the Lisa Souza yarn.

Next up is the Phildar cardi:

This has a few fit issues - it's prone to feeling like it's going to slide right off my shoulders. Part of that may be overly tight armscye seams, and part of it may be very little in the way of actual shoulders. It is warm and cozy and slightly oversized. I picked up the button at a booth of vintage buttons at the needlework show, and I'm really happy with it. It's not really functional - I sewed the front closed, because it tended to pull and not show off the button. I just pull the sweater on, so it's not an issue. I was right to buy the two balls of grey, because I used almost all of it, and would have run short of the blue otherwise.

Final completed photo is the Klein Bottle Hat Dad wanted for Christmas:

The picture was taken when I went to one of the two Christmas parades I played in. (note Inishmore being worn as well. Layering is good for Christmas parades!) I used the pattern as a basic framework, subbing in Mission Falls and knitting it at roughly twice the gauge of the pattern - the pattern called for 11 stitches over 4 inches, I knit at 24 stitches over 4 inches. Dad liked the hat, so all is well.

Now, for incomplete photos of completed objects. (Like you didn't already know that I'm a lazy photographer!)
Mom's Christmas socks, a/k/a/ Slayer socks:

This is the SweetGeorgia Yarn in Slayer that I ordered back in July. They're of my own design - because Slayer yarn automatically led to tombstones on top (picot caston) and stakes all the way down (Eiffel Tower stitch). I did the entire sock in reverse stockinette after the picots, which got tricky when I had to inside out the sock to graft it closed. (Shoot me, I'm a perfectionist.) The picture color is off a little - the colors are darker. I need to get Mom to model them properly. One of these days....

The very first finished object of 2007! Sleepy Toasty Toes:

This is the foot of the first Sleepy Toasty Toes, a pair of anklets knit out of the lovely handpainted yarn Rachel included in my Toasty Toes package. They are going to be sleeping socks - if my feet are cold, I can't sleep. I decided to knit anklets because I was concerned about how much yarn I had. I was going by weight, and I had about 50 grams. Turns out, the concerns were needless, because I've got a large amount left. I just finished them, and haven't taken a picture yet.

Now, for the new items on the needles. First up is my new knitting tote:

That's the start of the bag and the photo of the original, which I'm using for the construction. Too much faffing about with beads and multiple colors for my taste. There were some issues with the turquoise, which Patons calls "Too Teal." Too damned cutesy, and led to the person at the other branch of my LYS sending actual teal yarn instead of what I wanted. Now, I just picked it up last Thursday, planning to work on the bag through sit and knit. However, the wrong yarn left me in a bind. I hadn't brought another project, mostly because I didn't have one at the time. So, I had to buy something to work on. Ergo, the Desperation socks:

Austermann Step yarn in color 06. I liked it on the shelf more than I liked it knitted up. Nothing was really sending me anyway, so I don't think I would have been much happier with anything else. They'll stay in my knitting bag as a backup project until they're finished.

New Year's Resolution

2007-01-03T02:25:00.001-05:00

In the year 2007 I resolve to:
Sleep my way to the top.

Get your resolution here.

Top of what, I don't know.

Recentish acquisitions

2006-12-18T01:36:00.000-05:00

Recentish because all the yarn was acquired in October.

First up, does anybody else remember the cat bed I knit for a friend? Looked like this:

Well, it turned into this:

Two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in "Cool." I asked the cat bed recipient to buy what appealed to her, and it turned out great. Eventually, it will be socks. (Shocking, huh?) She also sent a Lantern Moon needle holder thingie, which is handy for the set of sock needles I've lost the envelope for.

At the end of October was what passes for a knitting festival. There were a few more yarn vendors than last year, but it's still dominated by sewing. It's more than slightly odd that I paid an entrance fee to buy stuff from stores I could visit at any time for free. That said, I seriously doubt I could have picked this up in the store:

That is one of two skeins of Handmaiden Sea Silk, in what I'm guessing is Nova Scotia (greens and blues - if they're going to name colors, they need to label stuff.) Intended for a stole, once Christmas knitting is finished.
I also bought something now available in Ottawa full time:

There be Koigu - the lavender selected by Mom, the brown by me (which is shocking, since I am not a neutral kinda girl.) Eventually, there will be two locations selling Koigu in Ottawa, but that's when the shipment finally arrives (it was supposed to be late October/early November.) There are two skeins of each, destined to be socks of some ilk.

I'm debating more acquisitions, but nothing has gotten past that stage. I need to do some swatching for the Eleanora socks pattern (I want red, and I need to see if either SweetGeorgia or Lisa Souza will work with the pattern.) In my seemingly nevere-ending search for stuff from the yarn store to knit with (shoot me, I like unstocked stuff), I'm thinking about the Southwest Style Bag, except in just brown and turquoise stripes. I have an urge to knit with brown and turquoise, and own nothing in that combo. I'm also contemplating buying the Forest Path Stole pattern, since my LYS now stocks Misti Alpaca.

Finished/unfinished objects in the next post.

It's Alive!

2006-12-15T02:16:00.000-05:00

Mostly. The weather still sucks, but finally has headed towards cold and sunny - a vast improvement on grey and rainy.

Knitting - no photos, because they're not ready. The Anna socks and Phildar cardi are done, as is the Klein Bottle hat my dad requested for Christmas. One sock is done for my mother (a royal pain in the ass to work on, because she tends to wander into my room if she needs to, so the sock took several weeks because it got one band practice, one hour at sit and knit and whatever middle-of-the-night hours I felt like working on it) and the modified Murmansk suspenders are underway (no intarsia foofing - just straight charcoal). Much yarn has been acquired, and plans are being made.

To answer Helen's question about Bias, it's going to be shipped to Seattle for finishing after Christmas. It will benefit from professional attention. (Read - someone has a serger, and it's not me.)

Wedding pictures:
There aren't a lot, and what I have is of me (hey, nobody was paying the photographer to take pictures of me!)
Me testing the acoustics in the morning:

Oddly enough, the picture of me playing during the ceremony is very similar, just from farther away, since they were signing the register on the other side of the aisle. And (bonus of bonuses) I finished playing at the same time as they were finished signing!

Me and my favoritest cousin, A:

A better picture of the Trashy Diva Obi dress in Wine, slightly wrinkled because this was taken the Thursday after the wedding, and the dress had been in a bag since Saturday night:

The dress worked really well, and paired nicely with my grey Birch. Of course, I looked at the sight the other day, and they now have the dress in cobalt and hunter, both of which I would have chosen over the wine. Phooey!

Horridly remiss in posting....

2006-11-06T15:02:00.000-05:00

...that's what I've been. Lethargy has struck with a vengeance (or at least as much as a vengeance as lethargy can!) and I haven't done much of anything.

My Toasty Toes package arrived here from Germany on Wednesday (see - lethargy). Rachel sent me a gorgeous pair of Wyvern socks in Lisa Souza Sock! (South Pacific colorway), a skein of gorgeous handpainted yarn (I'm guessing it's her own work, but I could be wrong) in blues, purples and greens, much yummy chocolate (all gone) and gummy bears, and a box of tropical fruit tea.

Here's a closeup of the yarn:

And a goofy picture of the socks (if you can't take good photos, take goofy ones!) - Socks on a Cat:

Thank you very very very very much Rachel for all of the goodies. Once I finish this post, I'm going to go make a cup of tea. (The family joke is that my plasma is about 50% tea on a slow day.) And thank you Amanda for running a fabulous swap!

Drive-by posting

2006-10-23T18:55:00.000-04:00

Just a quickie (I've got band practice and I need to go futz with the VCR before I go!)

Sweater and socks progressing nicely.

Toasty Toes package mailed last week, so it's in Canada Post's hands now.

Brother got married and I didn't have a nervous breakdown. People are now praying for me to find a man (roll eyes here.)

More later.

Insert your own creative title here

2006-10-02T02:57:00.000-04:00

First off, I finally decided on a dress, and ordered it a week ago Friday, so it should be here (knock on wood) early this week - maybe even today. I ended up choosing the wine Obi dress. One, it's really going to be too cold for the 50s dress (it's pretty much socks and sweaters weather now, and it's not going to warm up in the next three weeks); two, I already own dresses very similar to the 50s dress, and I decided to buy something different. Plus, the wedding colors are burgundy, brown and hunter green (I think), so I should coordinate. My favorite cousin is coming up for the wedding (it's been odd - first she was coming with her sister and her mother, then it was just my aunt and uncle, then nobody was coming, and now we're back to the original three), which is really good. Especially since I was at the shower today, and it wasn't particularly fun sitting around listening to all the bride's friends discuss children. I felt much better when I started cleaning up in the games portion - 2nd place (or 3rd if you count the tie for first as covering first and second) in the word scramble, 1st in who knows the groom best (the bride did beat me, but they ruled she couldn't have the prizes since there was a table full of gifts) and the prize for identifying when the groom became a Christian. (Considering only my mother and I knew him back then, and her memory's worse than mine, it was easy - I only remember because it was my freshman year of college!) The questions for who knows the groom best were kind of hard - there was one question (favorite race car driver and series) where the answer contained the proviso that the bride should get credit if she named anybody other than Danica Patrick. She didn't. (I guessed either Raikonnen or Villeneuve, and it turned out to be Allmendinger.)

Enough rambling - on to knitting. I finished up what are now called the Pinkcaul socks:

(Yes, I know the toe is cut off - you try taking a photo sitting like that! It's a rapid-increase variation on the figure eight cast on - increase every row instead of every other row.) Very warm and cozy socks. And very very pink!

Now, for what's on the needles. This is a somewhat early photo of the Phildar cardi, along with the original:

I'm now about 25 centimeters into it, but it just has more blue, with decreases on the side "seams" - I converted into one big piece instead of knitting a back and two fronts. The white markers denote the side. The ribbing worked out nicely - there's a k on either side of the marker, and I decreased into that column. I've got another 15 centimeters or so to go before I split for the armscyes. I thought about picking up the sleeves and avoiding all seaming, but I really like the look of the decreases used, so I'll knit them in the round and then seam them in.

Now, for the Socktober portion of our program. I have three projects in mind to complete/work on this month:

1 - Anna socks from Rowan 40. I swatched, which was particularly important since the Lisa Souza yarn knits up on smaller needles. It's a very stretch stitch pattern:

That's the 48-stitch swatch on my foot (along with a ribbon I had handy.) The swatch goes about halfway up my calf (no photo available - I refuse to publish the forest currently masquerading as my legs.) I tried the sock on after I finished the ribbing, because I had a hard time believing it was going to fit over my gastrocnemius muscle. It did, miracles of miracles.

2 - Write up the pattern for my Toasty Toes socks. I've been meaning to do this, but I've been slacking. (Hell, witness the mystery design that still needs endweaving, photography and writing up for submission.) I need better pictures of those as well, and then I'll box them up and mail them out.

3 - Start design work on Mom's Christmas present. I know what stitch pattern I want to use, but I need to figure out spacing and some other logistical things - I want to do a princess foot since the stitch pattern is worked in reverse stockinette, but that means the figure-eight toe has to be in reverse stockinette, as does the heel. OK, they don't HAVE to be, but I want them to be. Which means I need to figure out how to do both. (There's a reason this is "Start design" not "finish design"!)

Well, at least I knit last week

2006-09-18T14:56:00.000-04:00

I also frogged. A lot. But more on that later.

I finished off the Ottawa socks for mom:

Nothing exciting - just garden-variety toe-up stockinette socks. They pretty much match, even though the ball had a knot I had to deal with in the second sock.
After the Ottawa socks came off the needles, I started a new pair. And finished them in less than a week.

I used some of the Esprit I bought from Elann earlier this summer (in Pecan) and pulled out my handy-dandy Sensational Knitted Socks. First, I cast on 64 stitches and did the Corded Rib pattern. Well, that was too many stitches, and I didn't really like how the Corded Rib was coming out. So, the sock got frogged, I cast on 56 stitches and switched to Elongated Corded Rib. Add an eye-of-partridge heel, and voila - socks. Here's a closeup of the stitch pattern:

I started my next pair of socks last night, but they've already been frogged twice. I balled up my SweetGeorgia Kissed yarn:

pulled out my Badcaul pattern and set to work. I started on 2.25 mm needles. Way too small. Next up, 2.5mm. Now, the sock would have fit (I think), but there was a new and irritating problem:
>
That's not a pooling pattern I can get behind. I still seemed to be way off on gauge, so up to 2.75s I go. I hope to get this working, because I really like the way the cables were turning out.

A couple of weeks ago, this followed me home from the LYS:

And yarn is now winging its way to me to knit up the Anna socks. I bought 8 oz of Lisa Souza Sock!Merino yarn in Sapphire. That should be enough to knit the Annas and knit a pair of socks for Mom too. For less than the Rowan would have cost me. Plus, her service (so far, and it's now out of her hands) has been SPECTACULAR. I placed my order at midnight my time on Thursday, and had a response in about 15 minutes. And the yarn shipped out on Saturday. Yay!

Which is good, because the Phildar peek-a-boo cable sweater is no more. Moth damage resulted in a frogging of the yarn. It is now laying about the dining room waiting for a good wash and sun-dry (it's not particularly sunny right now, so that's why I'm waiting.) It's really my own fault - I left it abandoned in a cupboard for a year. I will be knitting a different sweater, because I can't bear to reknit the original. It will now be a single-closure 2x2 ribbed cardigan. Since I don't have enough of the blue, I picked up a couple of balls of grey to use as contrast. I'll post a picture of the sweater when I'm underway.

Now, if you've managed to get this far, I need some help. I need to buy a dress for my brother's wedding in mid-October. I've narrowed it down to three, but can't decide between them. So tell me what I should buy!

Dress #1 - I love the color of this dress, but I'm not sure about the hemline.
Dress#2 - similar to #1 but with a better hemline. However, the color is ... questionable. (See, if they made #2 in the color of #1, this poll wouldn't exist, because I'd have bought it already.)
Dress #3 - I really like this dress, but it is October we're talking about. I think either of my shawls would go with this, or I could knock something out quickly (maybe ChicKnit's Cece).

So, tell me what you think. Feel free to leave comments, and vote in the poll. (And if you know of something that would look fabulous on me, tell me!)

Blogger Beta Sucks.

2006-09-05T02:23:00.000-04:00

Do not get suckered into changing your template. I am now stuck with Blogger's comments function instead of Haloscan. Do not be tempted. Avoid at all costs.

Where does the time go?

2006-09-04T19:10:00.000-04:00

Yet another Monday.

What's up with my knitting? I finished off the first of the Ottawa socks:

That's my foot modeling the sock, but the pair are for my mother. I may end up ripping back and reknitting the cuff at the last brown section if they end up being too binding, but that's a future issue.

I also finished the sides of the second sleeve for my Phildar sweater:

That's actually the first sleeve, but I forgot to take a picture and they look the same. I had abandoned the poor sleeve after the first of the shoulder decreases but wisely noted exactly where I had left off, which made restarting easy. I plan to work on the center strips tonight while watching "Prison Break" and "Deadwood." That would be the first season of "Deadwood" - it's going to run on History Television starting tonight. "Project Runway" also starts tonight (finally), but I'll either watch my tape or catch the 1 am rerun.

For Helen, a picture of the finished neck of Bias on the blocking board - the front is on the left, the back on the right.

One of these days, I'll weave in those ends and sew the sucker up.

Finally, a peek at my sock drawer:

I had left it open after pulling out my Monaco socks to see if the Kitchener bindoff is loose enough to get over my mother's ankle. The blue and white peeking out of the top left corner are the fishnet stockings I knit last year from the pattern at the Victoria and Albert Museum's site in Elann's Esprit Print. (I posted at the knittyboard about them in response to somebody's enquiry, and someone else said you couldn't knit them in sportweight. I let it go, but it irked me, because I clearly did.) The light purple socks that are front and center are the Waving Lace socks from IK in Jawoll. The purplish socks in the bottom left corner are Pomatomus in Lorna's Laces Black Purl (a prize from Amanda). The pink socks on the right side are my Nautilus in Cobalt Bloom Socks that Rock. The blue socks in the lower right corner are Walking Away socks in Elann Essential sock yarn in one of the blues (North Sea or something like that, I think.) Buried under those socks are the commercial socks that I own, some basic gym socks and a bunch of cotton socks in various colors. It's summer, so they're all just lying there waiting for cooler weather. Photos of all but the Waving Lace socks are in the Flickr album associated with the badge on the sidebar if you want to see what they look like not heaped in a drawer!

Finished!

2006-08-28T16:19:00.000-04:00

I finished up my Toasty Toes socks yesterday, while watching the Champ Car race that wasn't. Clearly, Mother Nature is not happy with Legault's decision to drop real racing for NASCRAP. (I always knew she was smart!) I haven't watched the race yet, since I got up too late to catch the 10 am restart. I'll watch it later tonight, probably.

Back to the socks. They worked out perfectly - exactly the length they needed to be. The colors pooled differently on the feet:

The top shot is out in the backyard, hanging off of one of the sculptures. Of course, the socks hide the sculpture. The bottom shot was taken last night in the computer room. I would have tried taking another today, but that brilliant idea hit after I traipsed around the backyard barefoot looking for interesting places to photograph the socks. Oops. (I do plan to give them a wash and a bit of a block, but still.) In the end, I'm very happy with how these socks turned out, and may eventually knit a pair for me.

So, what's next on the agenda? More socks, of course:

That's Regia's Canadian Fashion Colours in "Ottawa." (Why that color makes them think of Ottawa, I'll never know. They should really be all grey and navy and bureaucratic - it is the capital, after all!) All I've done so far is the toe, because I'm still debating whether to knit the socks with a 3x1 rib on the foot and leg, just the leg with a stockinette foot or just stockinette all the way. The rib would make it less boring, but the other sock is going to have extra ends, due to a knot in the ball. I'll make the decision at practice tonight. (Socks are band practice knitting.)

I also finished the neck of Bias Fair Isle, so I need to start seaming again. Bleh. I need to pull my Phildar cabled sweater out of storage and get back to work on it (yarn store knitting.) Since this poor sweater has been ignored for more than a year and y'all may have forgotten/never seen it, here's a link to an eBay auction for the magazine - it's the first one shown, except I'm knitting it in a denim blue Zara. The back is done, one sleeve is mostly done (I need to rip out the seaming and re-braid the center cable) and the second sleeve is partially done. I love this sweater, but it comes in the usual category of "Why the hell do I like sweaters that involve massive amounts of seaming when I hate finishing?"

Is it Monday already?

2006-08-21T17:29:00.000-04:00

Time flies.

Toasty Toes: The sock is finally progressing. The picture I posted last week? Well, I ripped that out. I started doing the pattern as written (a photo of the Keyboard Biologist's Chinese Lace Scarf can be seen here), but I didn't like it in the sock. The ladders framing the k3tog/s1 k2tog psso column were too open, and that half of the stitch pattern was dominating the sock. So out that came. I recalculated the numbers using only the center pattern and purl stitches to separate and started over. The result?

Much better, as evidenced that I'm nearing the toe. Yay me!

Other knitting? Not too much. I did a little work on Bias Fair Isle:

That's just about half the neck done (although I need to rip out the last row, because the stitch count isn't working properly and I need to figure out where it went wrong.) It went with me to sit and knit, because we're supposed to use yarns bought at the store during it. This frustrates me no end, because they don't sell what I want to buy. I need to block the swatch for Rosita to see if I can get gauge (currently I seem to be short on stitches and long on rows. Grr.) It's not a great choice, since lace and talking can be a recipe for disaster, but it's the best I can do. I've got lots of interesting stuff on the horizon, but the yarn has come from alternative sources.

I'm cheesed off at Canada Post, since last week's movie shipment has yet to arrive after 5 days. I'm guessing that this is my biannual "Oops We Lost Them Again" shipment. Sigh. You'd think my usual choices would be enough to get a sign in the post office saying "DO NOT STEAL THIS PERSON'S MOVIES. THEY'RE WEIRD AND FREQUENTLY SUBTITLED. STAY FAR AWAY." Guess not. At least something yummy arrived in the mail:

Mmmmmm...Stringer Bell. Add to that the fact that "Prison Break" starts up tonight (Mmmmm...Wentworth Miller), and I'll be back to my TV junkie ways in no time.

Ugh.

2006-08-14T17:44:00.000-04:00

My life sucks.

On to knitting - a ray of sunshine. The Nautilus socks are finished:

As is the Kitty Pi bed #2:

Toasty Toes: Well, I've started the socks:

That's the first cuff. Take two, because the first cast on was too loose and looked really funny. It's going to be a rolled stockinette top, much like Nautilus. I'm going to use the Chinese Lace pattern from BW II as the lace pattern, and I just couldn't see starting the sock with either a picot edge or a ribbed edge. Next week should be a picture that doesn't look like a heap of yarn. I'm really liking the yarn - it looks to be really fluffy, but compresses down when knit. The plies are loose, so I'll have to be a little careful to avoid splitting the yarn, but it's not a big deal.

Last free Monday

2006-08-07T15:27:00.000-04:00

Band practice starts up again next week. It will be interesting to see how many people come back. I will be spending my last free night watching movies - Lord of War and Twist.

On to knitting related stuff!

Toasty Toes: The yarn is here (see last post), and I think I know what pattern I'm going to use, which is one of my own creation. (I'm one of these people who waits for the yarn to tell me what it wants to be.) I need to swatch up the design ideas to see if they will work, what kind of gauge I get, and all that jazz.

Other knitting: The Nautilus socks are progressing nicely. I'm on the leg of sock two, so they should be done in the next few days:

The striping didn't match up, so the socks are more fraternal than identical twins, but that's fine.
I've also been working on a Kitty Pi bed for a friend (I knit cat bed, she sends sock yarn I can't buy easily.)

Of course, I forgot how much yarn this takes, and ran out. I'll pick up another ball of the multi-blue and finish it at knitting circle on Thursday. Then, I'll felt it up and it will look more like this:

(Frog not included.) This is one I knit up a couple of years ago and sent off to a charity drive - I knit two and sent one in the name of Ceci, who was my secret pal.

46 degrees Celsius = 115 degrees Fahrenheit

2006-08-02T17:02:00.000-04:00

That was yesterday's temperature with the humidity level factored it. You are just sticky and gross without air conditioning. The only way I could get to sleep was to drench my pajama pants with water - it cooled me off enough. (I frequently resort to sleeping on a wet towel, but that required getting up and wetting a towel. I used a spray bottle to soak the pajamas, so I didn't have to get up.)

A few finished objects:

Three stripey chemo caps. The vertical and diagonal striped caps were knit starting with a tubular cast-on and following the provided pattern. The stripes were done with a fair-isle stranding technique. The horizontal striped cap was knit from the top down, starting with Emily Ocker's cast-on and ending with a Kitchener bind off. I'll submit them tomorrow. I thought about using up the last ball of red to knit a plain one, but I really don't feel like another damned cap right now. (I've also finished the first Nautilus sock, but the title of the post tells you why I haven't started #2.)

Yesterday, my sweetgeorgia yarns arrived. Here's the Superwash Sock in Marina that will become my Toasty Toes socks (scrolling over the following pictures will give you close-ups):

This is the Superwash Sock in Slayer that will be Mom's Christmas socks (the close-up is more color accurate):

Finally, the extra-yummy Handpainted Sock in Kissed for me!:

Why Handpainted for me and Superwash for the others? I know my mom won't handwash socks (I wear socks less, and can deal with the occasional need to work up a sink full of suds). I also figured that easy-care was the better choice for my Toasty Toes pal - better safe than shrunken Barbie socks!

Quick Monday Update

2006-07-31T14:59:00.000-04:00

Toasty Toes: Paid for yarn. Yarn shipped. Yarn is now sitting in Montreal. (Earlier today, it was still sitting in BC. This is an improvement.) With some luck, it should be here tomorrow.

Other things: Working on third chemo cap. Am ecstatic to have completed the main part of the hat. I'm currently striping the crown, but that may get ripped out if I decide I don't like it. The deadline was originally today, but has been extended to the end of August (I think.) It's not a big deal if I'm wrong, since I wasn't really doing this for the $100 gift certificate prize. (Not that I'd decline it if I won....)

Wittering hasn't moved. I did buy the hatband ribbon (cotton/viscose petersham) while purchasing lacing tape for re-engineering a skirt. I keep breaking the zipper on the skirt, so it will be replaced with two rows of lacing tape, so it can be laced up (much more flexible sizing-wise than a zipper). The Nautilus socks are progressing slowly, since the chemo caps have been getting the bulk of the attention - the socks are past the heel.

Sleepy. Must take nap. Went to sleep at 6 am, woken at 9ish - didn't look at watch - by loud obnoxious construction/destruction noises across the street. Dozed until 11. Need sleep badly.

Actual completion!

2006-07-23T16:50:00.000-04:00

Yes, after weeks of languishing, I finally sewed the sleeves onto Maggie:

My sweater is semi-significantly altered - the pattern was pieces seamed into a cardigan, and I converted it to an in-the-round pullover, and the sleeves are about 8 rows longer than the originals. In addition, I knit a size smaller than Rowan indicated that I should - and I think they put the model in a size larger than she should have been, because her sweater's about to fall off or pop a boob, and mine isn't. If I were to go back, I would deepen the neckline fairly significantly. I liked the depth of the original, and it would also drop the empire "seam" (switch from cables to garter) to below my boobs instead of straight across the center. Mind you, it's not that important, since I could have gone back and done it if it really bothered me.

Wittering is nearly complete:

All but one end is woven (the last one is saved to close up the hem casing). I looked on Thursday for the cord I want to run through the brim, but the only appropriate cord at Canadian Tire was attached to an umbrella clothes dryer. That would be a bit pricey to finish a hat. I also need to pick up some starch to crispen the brim.

So, now that those are done, it was time to pick up some new projects. There's the chemo cap that kicked my butt, which will be seen in a later post. (The original idea didn't work, and it took about four different tries to get something that worked.) There are more of those to knit, as well, since I envision a collection of three. Of course, there's a new pair of socks on the needles:

Anna Bell's Nautilus pattern, knit in Cobalt Bloom "Socks that Rock" (lightweight, I believe, since I bought it from their site when there was only one weight option.) I need to knit the short-row heel tonight or tomorrow so they're ready to go to band on Tuesday, in case the idiot deigns to show up. Which he didn't for the two practices before our last concert. He did show up at the concert, not having seen most of the music in a long time, if at all. Sigh.

In other news, I had a pendant that I used to wear all the time. I dearly loved this little $10 Philadelphia Science Museum impulse buy (it was tied to astrological sign, and the only one they had was Aries - it was fate). A longish while ago, the stone dropped from its setting. After about ten years, the adhesive had finally given up the ghost. It got stored for safekeeping, and I kept thinking that it needed to be fixed, but that's as far as it got. I have a friend from band who is a jeweler. Tuesday, I took my pendant with me to see if he had some ideas on fixing it. I also took another stone that I wanted set similarly. He agreed to do the work, and off they went. I figured I'd see them again in a few weeks, and wasn't in a rush. I got them back on Thursday. The original red-orange agate:

and the new bloodstone (one of March's birthstones):

Yay for new jewelry!

Monday update mark III

2006-07-18T02:23:00.000-04:00

Toasty Toes update - I ordered yarn: sweetgeorgia yarn in Marina. (I also ordered Slayer for Mom and Kissed for me.) I'm not entirely sure about the colors of Marina (I like them, but I want to see them up close and personal, since the scarf in the gallery is much darker than the yarn photo), but if they don't quite work for this project, I've got some stuff in stash that will work. Time will tell.

Other updates - I finished knitting Wittering (a sewn bind-off of 500+ stitches takes for-freaking-ever). I need to block, weave, starch and thread something through the hem casing. I wound my Cobalt Bloom STR, in preparation for starting Nautilus. (I seriously doubt that the evil one will be at practice this week, since he can only afford to come in once a week, and it's concert week. However, better safe than in jail on homicide charges.) I am rapidly working my way through Carnivale Season 2 (six episodes down, six to go). It's overly hot and humid here - you shower, and an hour later you're sticky and gross again. Endless fun.

Wittering away.

2006-07-15T01:50:00.000-04:00

A few finished projects to show off:

SageRipples for Mom. Pretty much exactly to pattern directions. Much nicer color than in the picture. (Our ugly carpet isn't the greatest backdrop, but that's where the sunshine was.)

Monacos for me. My usual figure-8/Turkish cast-on, with a bottom up heel flap as in Schurch's sock book (I think it's Sensational Knitted Socks, but don't feel like looking) and a Kitchener bind off. I don't love the heel flap, although I like that I accidentally did an eye of partridge heel stitch instead of the standard slip-stitch - I think it's denser. I do really like the Kitchener bind off (1x1 rib, slip all knit stitches to one needle, all purl stitches to another, and Kitchener/graft all stitches) because it makes a very stretchy edge, and gives me extra practice.

Catnip toy for the cats. Knit a square-ish stockinette thing, binding off so the tails are kittycorner (this doesn't have to be precise), fold in half crosswise with purl side facing and seam both sides, seam up one other side, stuff with catnip and stuffing (far away from cat) and seam last side. Happy cat results.
So, now that the socks are done, I've been Wittering away my time:

That's the aqua yarn harvested from my Cleo and the white yarn I bought to supplement in my thoughts of doing the Picot Camisole from the Spring Interweave. I decided that the gauge was too tight to be comfortable fun knitting, and I wanted the hat because I've been stuck playing outdoor band gigs in my Dad's Montreal Jazz Festival bucket hat. Ugly, but a vast improvement on the town band hats. Imagine a trucker hat with fabric replacing the mesh. Now make it uglier. As for Wittering, I'm up to the twisted stockinette row section, and will soon be on the brim. I picked up more yarn for one for my mother (maybe, if she likes mine, but the yarn was on sale):

I also bought the latest Knitscene, and have added Molly Ringwald to the very long list of projects I'd like to knit eventually.
Otherwise, not much to report. Finished this weekend's movies ("Paycheck" - needed more Eckhart, less Affleck; "Emma" - quit halfway through because I couldn't take any more Gwhiney Paltrow; "The Core" - crappy movie, but Aaron Eckhart was hot, so it wasn't a waste of time!) and will delve into the family collection for the rest of the weekend.

Monday Update

2006-07-11T01:49:00.000-04:00

Progress on Toasty Toes - none. Still in contemplation stage. (I figure they should be done by the end of September, so it's not like I haven't got time!) That said, I think I've designed Mom's Christmas present, so something has come out of it.

Other progress - both current sock projects are past the heel. I'm on gusset decreases in SageRipple and into the cuff on Monaco. Whoopee. They're both second socks (I don't seem to have any real Second Sock Syndrome issues).

I watched "A History of Violence" tonight (last weekend's movies showed up today. Gotta love Canada Post's service after a holiday weekend.) Very good movie, and the actor who played the son was HOT! I feel much better after determining at IMDB that the guy is 28 - 'cause jailbait isn't the way to go!

Meme-y goodness

2006-07-07T01:58:00.000-04:00

As seen at Zib's and Elizabeth's, the Ethical Selector:

1. Jean-Paul Sartre (100%)
2. David Hume (82%)
3. Nietzsche (74%)
4. Kant (71%)
5. Spinoza (65%)
6. John Stuart Mill (64%)
7. Stoics (60%)
8. Jeremy Bentham (57%)
9. Thomas Hobbes (56%)
10. Cynics (55%)
11. Ayn Rand (51%)
12. Aquinas (49%)
13. Nel Noddings (45%)
14. St. Augustine (45%)
15. Aristotle (41%)
16. Epicureans (41%)
17. Prescriptivism (28%)
18. Ockham (27%)
19. Plato (22%)

Maybe it's the late hour or the descriptions, but I think Hume or Nietzsche are better descriptors for me than Sartre. Then again, I think Sartre fits in general. Who the hell knows? (Especially at 2 am!)

Now that my Mondays are temporarily free...

2006-07-04T01:04:00.000-04:00

... I'm hoping to make regular blog entries on Mondays. My Monday band practice is on hiatus until August, mostly because we don't have either a place to play or a conductor. (Our backup left the band, and provided a regular alternate space.) Add to that the fact that Amanda plans to post updates on Toasty Toes on Tuesdays, and Monday's a great day to post, don't you think?

First things first, a Toasty Toes "update." (Not necessary, since regular updates will start in mid-July, but I figure it's best to start the habit now.) There's not a whole lot happening here at casa habsgirl. I'm pondering yarn and pattern options. I've bought some pattern options: Eleanora and Nautilus, Badcaul and Giotto. I really like these patterns, and will use them for my regular sock victim and myself even if I don't use them for Toasty Toes. And I keep finding stuff I want. Must resist. (At least until I make a final decision.)

On to other socks. SageRipple continues apace:

Note the growth from the previous picture (mug present for (a) scale and (b) because I was drinking tea at the time). The first sock is now complete, and I've switched back to the Monaco socks, which are in the early part of the foot. I also ripped out the original standard bind off of the first sock, which was a little tight and done a Kitchener bind off instead. Very nice and stretchy, but a total bitch to rip back when you bugger it up.

I also finished up Womb:

It's not flawless, but I kinda like it. I will get my friend's address and send it off (along with a quick cat toy for her cat) this week.

In other parts of my life, I did a little pastry-cheffing this weekend:

A strawberry tart, with orange pastry cream and a digestive crust (digestives are a type of cookie.) Loved the pastry cream, but the crust crumbled badly. I should have done a sugar cookie crust instead - I don't make good crumb crusts.

I also bought music options for my brother's wedding. I was looking for something appropriate but quirky - I really don't want to play the same-old same-old.

A little bit of everything: 2 books of standard pieces (backups), a Leonard Bernstein book (mostly West Side Story, but some other stuff), 2 Saint-Saens pieces (the Pavane from Proserpine looks promising, even if it's from an opera about a courtesan) and Serenade for Solo Flute by Phillip Glass (which is my first choice.) Now I just need to practice some of them to make some cuts and give brother and fiancee a couple of choices.

Dear Toasty Toes knitter...

2006-06-30T02:00:00.000-04:00

Hi! Nice to meet you. I know you've read my questionnaire, and I hope that's given you some ideas. Since I'm a big proponent of "the more info available, the better," I turned up the Hurricane Sock Questionnaire, which I think might give you more food for thought. (Found at Knit Happened, edited to remove questions that weren't really all that relevant.) Feel free to leave any other questions anonymously in the comments.

1. If your pet(s) wrote a paragraph about you to describe you to us what would they say?

I love my mommy, but she ignores me for that silly string and stick thing. I'm a good girl and don't eat the string, but I frequently do my best to make it difficult to ignore me:

2. Do sock patterns normally fit you "as written" or do you usually modify them for size in any way? (other than foot length)

I've never had a problem with the patterns as written. The closest I came was with the Embossed Leaves socks I knit for my mother, and I later determined that the problem was the cast-on method more than the rest of the sock.

2a. What are your foot measurements, not just shoe size? (Measure the length of your foot from heel to toe, then the ball of your foot.)

Shoe size is a 9, heel to toe is to be added when I (a) have a measuring tape handy and (b) don't have a cat on my lap in and total foot is 9 inches and foot circumference is 8 1/2in.

3. What one city abroad would you visit and why if money was no object?

Paris. Why? Because I've always wanted to go. Wandering the museums, the designer showrooms (hey, money no object? Come to me, lovely Balenciaga cable-knit sweater), cafes, etc.

4. Do you wear socks all year round or just during the winter? Do you prefer them tall or short or regular height?

I wear socks when I leave the house in the winter, because it's Canada and it's cold! I tend to go barefoot around the house all year round, although I sometimes wear socks to bed because I can't always get to sleep if my feet are cold. I generally knit regular height socks, although my gym socks tend to be ankle length.

5. Make a wish for your favorite sock yarn that you've already used once. What would it be?

I really loved Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock. I knit my Pomatomus socks in Black Purl.

I also really liked the Koigu I used for the Embossed Leaves, and have more of the same that will eventually be socks for me. (Go figure, you can't buy Koigu in a store where I live. At the LYS one day, four of us had Koigu, all acquired from the US.)

I've got some Socks that Rock in stash (Lapis for Mom and Cobalt Bloom for me), waiting for the number of hours in the day to increase to 48.

6. What is it about sock knitting that keeps you wanting to knit more and more socks?

They're the ultimate in portable projects, and generally simple enough to knit at band practice, which can be difficult because it's lots of pick up sock, knit a few stitches, drop sock, pick up instrument. (And the Madame Dufarge and baby bootie cracks are wearing thin...)

7. Make a wish for a sock yarn that you are dying to try but haven't bought for yourself yet. (be specific,even colorway if you'd like)

I love my LYS and they have a lot of sock yarns, as long as you like Meilenweit (it used to be mostly Regia). The handpainteds are pretty rare - there are usually a few skeins of Fleece Artist about, but the colors never impress me. So the list would include Fleece Artist/Handmaiden, Cherry Tree Hill (I really like Sugar Maple, even though it's nothing like my usual choices), Vesper (although I think you need to either know someone or sacrifice a goat or something), Sundara (I like the look of the sold-out Trompe l'oeil), Claudia's Handpainted, Zen Yarn Garden, Sweet Georgia Yarns, Cabin Cove Mercantile and Lisa Souza.

8. What size needles do you knit socks for YOURSELF with the most? Are they circular or bamboo needles? What brand?

Generally 0s or 1s (2mm or 2.25mm), because I like a tightly knit sock. I've got some 1.25mm that I'm trying to match up with a yarn. Always DPNs (Magic Loop irritates me no end, and if I use two circulars, I always end up knitting all the stitches onto one circular) and generally Inox/Aero metal needles. I do have bamboo dpns (a mish-mash of Skacel and Clover, I think) that I use if the metal ones aren't working (the Monaco yarn is cotton/wool/something man-made, and the metal needles kept sliding out of the stitches!)

9. What is your favorite tv show?

Currently, Project Runway, which is rerun at 3 am. Good for an insomniac. During the regular TV season, Law and Orders of all flavors, CSI (Vegas only), Without a Trace, Gilmore Girls, House, Prison Break. The random stuff that isn't on air anymore - Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel, Oz, The Wire (OK, it's still on, but it doesn't air on a Canadian station other than the Movie Channel, so I rent it on DVD), Homicide. So lots of procedurals, and a few other things.

10. Do you want a lacey sock or a "solid fabric" sock?

I like both, and the sock pattern is going to depend on the yarn, so whatever works.

11. What color sock would you like to receive from your sock sister? (if you don't have a pref just say so otherwise give us a hint!)

As I said in the questionnaire, I tend toward blue, green, grey and pink. However, when it comes to socks, I'm more flexible. The "no" colors still apply as the main color of the sock, but accents of those don't bother me. Dig through my finished items (the Photobucket finished objects is far more complete than my Flickr account), poke through the archives, or just buy what inspires you!

More acquisitions. No really finished items.

2006-06-28T03:33:00.000-04:00

Last week, when Elann put the Esprit prints on sale, I finally buckled. Mom really likes the Esprit, and I'd made her give me a list of colors (which I lost, but that's neither here nor there.) So, the order arrived today:

From left to right, Esprit Print in Fourth of July (Habs colors are bleu, blanc et rouge), Esprit in Pink Lavender, Silver Sage, Desert Peach and Pecan. Why is there only one ball of Silver Sage, you ask? Because I started a pair of Broadripples for Mom.

They were great band practice knitting, which I needed because the moron is even more moronic than usual (Thursday's concert, he expected me to have his music ready, he left his flute upstairs when sent up to organize his music, and I had to give him my copy of the playlist, because he "couldn't find them" in the place they've been for twenty years. Then the concert started....) The Fourth of July will also be Broadripples. I didn't start those since (a) Mom's been whining about socks, (b) her first pair of Esprit socks need darning, and I haven't gotten around to it yet and (c) I'm already working on socks for me - two pairs simultaneously would be selfish.

The socks for me are the Monaco socks in the sidebar, and the first one is done (except I should really rip out the bind off and make it looser):

Toe up with a figure-8 cast on and a bottom up heel flap from Sensational Knitted Socks. Nice to change it up, but I'm not all that wowed. Probably doesn't help that the stripes don't really work nicely (plus the slip stitch pattern ended up as eye of partridge because I didn't pay attention to the instructions.) And the colors? Not particularly Monegasque to my eye, but that's Regia for you.

In addition, I'm whipping up a Womb for a friend. She lives in NYC, doesn't knit and wants a Womb. I knit, don't live in NYC and want yarn from Habu. A trade is born.

All I need to do is cram a little more stuffing in there and assemble the fallopian tubes. The yarn is Classic Elite Waterspun that I bought several years ago, double stranded. Worked out quite nicely.

For Daisy

2006-06-21T00:11:00.000-04:00

The eBay seller for the Zephyr is sarahsiegel, and she's got oodles of Zephyr available, in both lace weight (which is what I bought) and DK. It was a rapid transaction (and it snuck through customs! Yay!)
If she doesn't have the color you want (the full range can be seen at Jagger Spun's site), she seems to be quite willing to order it in. I think she'll also send samples, although I just got a printed color card.

Photos, photos, photos.

2006-06-20T02:35:00.000-04:00

As the title might indicate, this is gonna be a photo-heavy post.

First up, finished objects. Finally, some pictures of Spring Leaves socks:

And a close-up, since you can't see detail in that picture:

I changed the cast-on, the heel and the toe of the pattern. The tubular caston was too tight for my mother's foot, so I replaced it with a picot cast-on. The pattern called for a garter-edge heel (too lazy to look up the proper name), which I didn't like - I used eye of partridge instead. Finally, I hated the star toe, so I did a standard toe. Yes, I lost the carryover of the leaf into the toe, but I'm happier with the sock.

Now, the "Hats" that showed up in the finished object list. I knit 3 hats for Dulaan Project. Why? Why not? I needed a change from endless socks as the quick and portable project, and I had stash yarn that would work. The end result:

Hat 1 - A mock cable and garter stitch hat by Kathleen Day, knit with Cherry Tree Hill Possum Worsted in Bluestone. It was some of the yarn in the grab bag I bought. I'm not fond of it, and I think I might be slightly allergic to the possum. (Note - the yarn is soft and warm, it's just not me.)

Hat 2 - Marsan Watchcap by Stacy Joy Elkin, in CTH Possum Worsted in Teal.

Hat 3 - the corrugated hat/swatch from Teva Durham's Loop-d-Loop, knit in Brown Sheep Lambs Pride in Pine Green (which was one of my Secret Pal gifts from Joeli). This picture is pre-blocking, and blocking did even out the wonky seam. Nevertheless, if I were to knit more hats with this pattern, I'd do it in the round.

Maggie is almost done (one short sleeve to go), so I'll finish it and model it later. (I promise!). As a teaser, here is the yarn that I'm using:

Estelle 100% Silk in "Leaf Green," although I've been mentally calling it Laurel.

The big curly pile of yarn in my last real post is now all smooth and re-balled (and a bitch of a job that was, since it all had to be separated - ugh). Here's what it looked like while drying:

Art at its finest.

Now, onto acquisitions. I've been a busy little bee. I picked up some acrylic/merino at the LYS for their chemo cap competition:

I'm planning on a set of three hats - a fair isle pattern in red and white, a cabled one in either the blue or the red and a knit/purl texture in whichever one I don't use for the cabled. All will be tipped in the white. I need to get cracking on those too. (So many things to knit, so little time!)
I also picked up three lonely balls of the 100% silk in navy. They were sitting in the clearance section, and at $2 a ball, I just couldn't leave them there:

I think they'll become a bag of some sort, inspired by the Seashell bag in the Classic Beach book - just smaller and knit in one piece. Perhaps some pink trim (I've got some pink silk lying around here somewhere.)
I also succumbed to the lure of eBay. Someone posted on the Knittyboard about a seller selling cones of Zephyr for $34.

That's a pound of Dianthus. It will become a bunch of things, including this sweater from the Holiday 2005 Vogue Knitting:

It's a beaded lacy sweater, originally knit in a mohair yarn. I don't like mohair, but I love Zephyr.
I have also been half-heartedly trolling eBay for a specific yarn, and finally found it:

Phildar Coton Microfibres in Dauphin (Dolphin), a gorgeous blue-grey. It will become a sweater out of a much-loved Phildar mag (from which I also knit Opale and Kimono):

Add to this haul the yarn I inherited from a friend, and I'm nearly bursting at the seams:

It's some form of green boucle - I need to do some burn testing (I think there's wool there, but I wouldn't swear to it) and some gauge runs. It's either scarf or trim material. But I'm in no rush to use it.

Not dead yet

2006-06-19T02:12:00.000-04:00

Busy knitting, and dying from rapid temperature changes. Too lazy to fight with camera, so no pics. A better post will wait for another day in the near future - I promise!

Still alive. Maybe.

2006-05-18T01:45:00.000-04:00

I'd love to claim I was doing all sorts of interesting things, but I've been spending waaaaaaaaaay too much time playing Farm Hustle, an addictive little bugger. Plus, the little crocheted animals are darned cute.

As the sidebar indicates, there has been a lot of knitting going on around here. Two projects are done, but I only have one photo ready for display. (I don't like the photo editing software that came with the camera and I can't reload the stuff that came with the scanner, because I don't have the scanner. I'm experimenting with some stuff, so photos will come eventually. I've got lots of pictures, they're just huge.) So, the swatch from the last set of photos has turned into a complete tank:

It was a quick knit - about a week and a half. I used the yarn called for in the pattern, but converted it to a knit-in-the round, and 3-needle-bo'd the shoulders. I also finished Mom's Spring Leaves socks, in time to give them to her for Mother's Day. Photos will follow eventually.

As for the new items in the sidebar, the Mystery Design is one I hope to submit somewhere, so no pictures of that (and no color clues, because I used white for the bar. I try to match the progress bar to the item being knit. Geeky but true.) I've swatched Rosita on the needles the pattern calls for, but my gauge is seriously whackadoodle. Before washing, I had too few stitches per inch, but too many rows. It's drying on the sweater rack behind me, so we'll see how it develops. I need to drag the pattern and my error-ridden chart (I've fixed them on the printout, but not on the computer file - mostly just decreases pointing in the wrong direction) to sit and knit tomorrow, because I've decided it's going to be knit in the round. I was always planning to do the sleeves in the round, because the arm seams are just lumpy-ugly, but the swatch had indicated that I don't want to futz around with seaming the body either. I just want some reassurance.

Maggie's yarn was acquired as part of the "Let's take advantage of 25% off yarn at the LYS" program. Eight balls of Estelle 100% Silk in #31 (leaf green) followed me home on Saturday, along with copies of Mission Falls "Spirit" and "Homecoming" books. (Mags Kandis was at the store, so they're lovely signed copies. I was expecting to be fighting the crowds, but not so much.) Last Thursday, two balls of Estelle Young Touch Cotton in crisp white followed me home, along with the Summer Interweave. Now, why two balls of white DK weight yarn? Well, it's joining some other yarn already on hand:

That's one ball of white on top of 260g of turquoise Young Touch, recycled from:

That's Knitty's Cleo, which I knit about three years ago, and never wear. I must have been out of my mind when I chose to knit it, because I don't wear halters well (they bite into my neck - trapezius muscle, I think) and that's a lot of me on display. I finally came to my senses, ripped it out and there you go - a big pile of curly turquoise cotton. Which isn't as curly anymore, since the hanks are hanging off the shower rod drying. When they're dry, I'll separate (double-stranded knitting) and ball in preparation for knitting Picot Camisole from the Spring 2006 Interweave (scroll way down, as it's near the bottom). The white will be used for the picot trim as designated in the pattern, as well as the straps and the I-cord trim under the bust.

I have some whining about the DVD situation, but it's late and this is already long. It's not improving any day soon.

If it's not one thing,...

2006-05-02T02:46:00.000-04:00

...it's another. Last week, I went to defrag the hard drive (which I haven't done in gourds only know how long.) There wasn't enough free space to do so. In fact, the hard drive was a 20GB drive. My iPod is a 30GB. Not that I'm planning to fill it all up, but my teeny little iPod shouldn't have a bigger memory than my big ol' computer. So, new hard drive 'tis. First, I think "I can do this myself." Well, that lasted as long as it took me to get totally confused at futureshop.ca. So, we'll call in the professionals - Nerds On Site. Fine, they'll come Sunday afternoon. Sounds good - it'll take an hour, all will be well.

Well, it took ten hours. It started well - popped in a 40GB drive, hooked it up, partitioned it. Rebooted. Or not. It couldn't reboot - it was missing the file that told the drive what the hell it had on it. As Ron (the tech) put it, it was a "shower of shit." So, swap the drives around, making the 40 the main. (Which is probably a good thing, since the 20 is 4 years old, making it a doddering thing prone to croak at any time.) I find the reinstall disks, we re-set the system. He trolls the internet and finds a nifty program that recovers the old drive. It all gets copied to the new drive - turns out 90% is ancient crap - I caught snippets as they flew by and there were references to sites I haven't been to in years. Nevertheless, it's all got to copy, which takes HOURS. It finishes (at like quarter to 1 a.m.), Ron installs a spiffy set of USB 2.0 ports (which seem to be solving my iPod issues, which is great, since dad's went wonky this weekend) and finally gets to go home.

This leaves me with the task of sorting through all the stuff and pulling the data files that I need to. Which I do admirably, with one notable exception. Dad's iPod files. Combine that with the fact that his got fucked up this weekend? I spent hours pulling the stuff that I either knew was on there or that I was pretty sure he wanted. I still feel like a total ass, mind you.

So, no photos until I upload the photo software. I still need to go get all the damned plugins for stuff. I'm having to reconstruct the bookmarks list (I might have been able to pull it from the rubble, but it was easier to just delete the lot after I pulled the easily found and necessary data files.) Which is making me clean up the bookmarks list at least. Piles of work to do. Ippy.

It's late, I'm almost finished updating my iPod (I spent a lot of time in the computer room, so I examined Mom and Dad's collection. Odd, but full of interesting stuff - a Marilyn Monroe compilation, Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park and some other stuff.) More knitting-related posting later.

Blondes, watch out!

2006-04-24T02:36:00.000-04:00

Oy with the poodles already!

2006-04-23T01:16:00.000-04:00

Many of my recent technical issues are resolving themselves.

The washing machine has been fixed, so I can soak and spin the pieces of Bias in preparation for blocking and seaming. (It also means I can wash clothes, but since I usually go about a month between laundry days, that's not particularly important.)

The digital camera has been replaced. The new camera has a higher pixel quantity (5 MP as opposed to the old 2.1MP), but the LCD is a bit slow to react. We could have paid the difference for a speedier LCD, but it's not a huge issue, since most of my pictures are posed. It also meant that the service plan also covered the plan for the new camera, plus a copy of "Pretty Hate Machine" by Nine Inch Nails, plus $6 extra to be spent at a later date. The new camera is much smaller, and my picture quality is sucking again while I get the hang of how it works. There will be some craptacular pictures later in this post.

I've got the iPod up and running. Once Apple finally called me back, I got the uploading process started, and it locked up after 188 songs (total to uploaded - 1752). It didn't screw up the iPod in any way, so I poked around HP/Compaq's site looking for the relevant drivers. None of them really looked like the right one, although there was one that was close. I downloaded that one, and e-mailed customer service to see if there were any others that I needed. I'm still waiting to hear back from them, but decided to try downloading more tonight. And it worked! I now can listen to all of my music. Yay!

My DVD rental issues are still a little bit in flux. They sent out three discs on the Saturday after Good Friday. Since AFAIK the post office doesn't work on Saturdays, nor any holiday they can get away with, I doubt the movies actually started the process of getting to my house until Tuesday. Then, three more were sent out on Thursday. All 6 movies arrived on Friday. Giving me a total of 796 minutes of movies (or a touch over 13 hours.) So I watched "Arlington Road" and "The Big Lebowski" Friday night (both are decent movies) and "Fallen" tonight (sucked.) Tomorrow night will be "Catch Me if You Can" and "Matchstick Men", leaving "The Deer Hunter" for next weekend. A manager is supposed to get back to me next week about my inquiry, leaving it vague as to whether it's about the scheduled shipping screwup, or my free movies inquiry. (They claim that every member gets at least 2 free DVDs per year, yet I've only gotten 2 over my 2 1/3 years of membership. I'm guessing that the lost DVDs play into the equation, which is reasonable but not particularly fair.)

And the Canadiens won big tonight in the opener against the Carolina Hurricanes. Which looked bad in the first minute (when the Hurricanes scored) and much better through the rest of the games (6 goals for the Canadiens.)

Now for photos. First, the Socks that Rock for me in Cobalt Bloom:

and in Lapis for Mom:

The Lapis is tentatively scheduled to be knit into Pomatomus, and the Cobalt Bloom is TBA.

Now, some actual knitting! I started swatching up the Svale for Calla:

This is on the metric size specified in the pattern, and I think it's too small (I'll give it a dunk to see if it blooms to size.) Strangely, the metric and US sizes didn't match my mental standards - I always think of US5 as 3.75mm. So I straightened a set of those as well, so they're ready to go. I plan on knitting Calla in the round because I don't feel like sewing side seams. Nyah. (Oh, and one of the other Thursday knitters bought the grey yarn I had wanted.)

And, the eternal knitting project known as Spring Leaves:

That's take three on the cuff with a picot cast-on. (At least I no longer need to refer to the chart!) All my movie and game watching has taken me to the gusset decreases. This time, I did an eye-of-partridge heel flap, which I really like. Newer pictures will follow in the next post - hopefully, they won't be as fuzzy.

And I thought I ran weird searches.

2006-04-16T21:34:00.000-04:00

Someone found my blog by googling "counted cross stitch jenson button." My guess would be the person was looking for a cross stitch pattern for Jenson Button, but ended up in a very wrong place. If I was, for some demented reason, to take up cross stitching pictures of F1 drivers, I'd do Jacques Villeneuve. Gee, that sort of came out wrong. Or maybe not. I keep seeing the Intel commercial with some guy in an airport with Villeneuve on his lap, and wishing it was me, except that it wouldn't be a computer game.

For some marginally related baby cuteness (hey, living without a camera makes a woman desperate for what passes for photo content), isn't Sebastian Montoya (Juan Pablo Montoya's munchkin) adorable?

And since Daisy asked about the LYS I checked out last week, it's the Mississippi Blacksheep Gallery - the details are about a quarter of the way down that page. No website, and they're only open Wednesday through Saturday afternoons. If you want more details, leave a comment with an e-mail address and I'll send directions. (Not that it's easy to get lost in CP....)

In knittingish news, I finished the second sleeve and the back bodice last night while watching "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." Just the front bodice to go!

(Edited on Monday to correct the days the YS is open, since I originally wrote Wed. through Friday. And I've only got half the front bodice to go!)

When it's dry, it's arid.

2006-04-15T00:27:00.000-04:00

Well, the iPod is restored to factory settings. Finding a friend running XP with high speed was not the easiest thing in the world, but I finally did it. I'm waiting for the woman at Apple to call me back and walk me through setting it up, because I so do not want to fuck it up again. Then there's the battery issue. Of course, I manage to do all this crap right before a 3-4 day weekend (I can't ever figure out who gets Monday off and who doesn't.)

Elizabeth commented after the first iPod death that these things come in threes. Well, the washing machine freaked out today. Mom's guess is that the little gizmo that tells it to stop filling has become dislodged, meaning it just keeps pumping in water. So we got to mop up a wet bathroom/laundry room floor, cleaning up mucho gross (but unused!) cat litter. Then, the other two loads of my laundry and the gross towels were hauled to the laundromat. I got fed up with the dryer, and brought most of the stuff home still damp to dry in our dryer. On the plus side, I got a fair chunk of "The Da Vinci Code" read. (The paperback was cheap enough that I didn't feel guilty about buying the book. It's been a tolerable FICTIONAL thriller so far.)

Add to this the fact that my DVD rental service screwed up royally this week, and it's been a "Universe 3, habsgirl 0" cycle. My DVD rental service generally sends out DVDs to me on Monday or Tuesday. Their website states that movies are sent out Monday through Wednesday. Well, this week, I got bupkis. (Making me feel not so bad about keeping the Enron documentary another week.) Now, had they sent an explanation, either spontaneously or in response to my Wednesday night email asking about this, all would be (relatively speaking) fine. I'd love a good reason (like "We were going to ship you the first three disks of Six Feet Under, and were waiting for the second one to come back.") but would be fine with something along the lines of "Oops, shit happens. We're sorry." No answer makes me crabby. Now, if I haven't heard anything by Tuesday, I'm going to be way past that.

To end on a positive note, on the way home from restoring the iPod, I stopped by a local yarn purveyor that I hadn't checked out previously (I'm lazy and I wasn't really sure they had yarn until a friend told me they did.) I'm impressed, and glad I didn't take my wallet, because I'm trying not to buy more yarn until I knit up some of the stuff I already have. That said, she has a lot of lovely silk and silk-blend lace-weight. Must finish sweater (I did weave another half a sleeve before the urge to hack up a hairball hit.)

Grrrrr.

2006-04-12T02:24:00.000-04:00

IPod still not working. They tell me that "It most likely is your computer. Find another computer and restore the machine to factory settings." Mind you, I've tried three different USB ports on my computer, and my Dad's Mini works just fine. This has caused me to discover that I know very few people that I feel comfortable asking to use their computer, and very few of those are running XP. So, tomorrow I go to my friend's house and restore. At which point, the iPod either (a) doesn't reset, necessitating a return or (b) it does reset, in which case I believe it's going to have to go back because the battery is crap. My first clue? It fully charged the first time in half an hour. With no use, the battery needed some charging the next day. After no use for a few days, the battery was totally drained. I am not happy. This is not any fun.

Couple that with the decision to rip out the Spring Leaves socks, and it's been a frustrating week at casa habsgirl. The socks were nearly done, but I really hate the star toe. I also think the socks are too loose, since I added 4 stitches to compensate for the tubular cast on, which I replaced with the far looser picot cast on. It sucks, but I'd rather be happy with the final product. This leaves me with the end weaving for Bias to do. I am not allowing myself to start anything else until that's finished. Why? I'll procrastinate on the ends if I have anything more fun to do. I have finished one sleeve, leaving me with one sleeve and the upper bodices to go. I won't be able to block in the dining room until Monday, because little brother (and his fiancee, I assume) will be coming out for dinner on Sunday.

To sum up - life sucks.

WAAAAAAHHHHHH!

2006-04-07T00:26:00.000-04:00

I never thought the thirty-six hour old iPod could be considered geriatric. Apple sent me a "new" one (could be used, could be refurbished) and it arrived today. I hooked it up at 4:30 pm and was as careful as could be.

Dead by 6 pm. As far as I can tell, same freaking problem.

Honestly, if you are sending out a replacement, wouldn't you check it first? I seriously doubt it's my system, since I've added stuff to Dad's mini and charged it without a single problem in the time between the death of One and the death of Two. (At this rate, I'll just number them and hope I don't hit double figures.) So, I'll be calling Apple tomorrow to see what to do next. I would have done it online, but I'm not sure what the "purchase date" would be for this.

I also did a little shopping Wednesday. We went into the LYS with a dual purpose: (1) to check on the Silk Stream I ordered for Zib (it's been ordered from Fleece Artist, and nobody knows when I'll get it) and (2) to check the sale shelves. The shop discontinued Svale, and there had been a small amount left the last time I was in. I remembered a lovely pale grey that would look lovely worked up into Calla and would be cheap. Well, when I got there, there was no more grey. However, there were 5 balls of a mossy olive green, or to be precise, "Sage". Since my size takes 5 balls, I decided to call it kismet and whipped out the gift card - $20 later, it came home with me. (Yes, no yarnography. No camera, and I can't draw.)

That was followed by the mostly fruitless search for a navy linen or cotton shirt. I saw a couple in the Lands' End catalog that I like (especially this one), but I'm cheap and was sure I could find something similar in my usual local haunts. Nope. Old Navy had nothing, Jacob had nothing and Le Chateau had a whole bunch of cute lacy white skirts, but no navy shirts. I did find a simple navy linen shirt in Eddie Bauer, but it was $80. For that price, I'll buy the one I like from Lands' End. So, the search shall continue another day. I really should know better than to go looking for something specific - it's the kiss of death for me.

R.I.P.

2006-04-03T23:03:00.000-04:00

iPod 3/28/06-3/29/06. Died of undetermined causes. Returned to Apple for autopsy and possible resuscitation.

Yes, my iPod died within 36 hours of coming home with me. Add that to the camera, and I was starting to worry about any electrical devices near me. Nothing else has died yet.

I'm busy importing the contents of my CD collection into itunes for the return of the iPod, and I'm up to the Hs right now, and will start the Ls (I'm going one cube at a time.) A long and boring process, although I'm listening to stuff I haven't listened to in years.

The Spring Leaves socks are coming along. The main pattern is the Embossed Leaves socks from the Winter 2005 Interweave Knits, using Koigu I obtained in a trade with Amanda/Clothesknit. (If I had a camera, I'd show you what it all looks like.) I've made some modifications - a picot cast-on instead of the tubular one in the pattern, because the tubular ended up too tight to get over my mother's heel; a standard slip-stitch heel flap instead of the garter stitch one used; an extra 4 stitches added (in hindsight, not really necessary once I switched the cast-on, but oh well); a pattern repeat cut out of the foot and three extra rows added in the toe. It's a nice lace pattern. I have also done a tiny bit of end weaving on Bias, but there are still oodles to weave. Yuck.

Nothing else of import to report.

Sorry about the absence.

2006-03-29T15:23:00.000-05:00

I've been doing stuff. Mostly knitting. (I'll spare you the food poisoning story. Be glad.)

The main pieces of Bias are knit. I need to weave endless ends, block, seam a shoulder, pick up and knit the neck, seam the rest of the sweater.

I also finished Mom's latest pair of socks:

Nothing particularly spectacular about them - pretty much identical (the upper cuff is off by a bit, because the first half of the yarn had a knot in it, making everything after the middle upper of the heel a titch off.) I used Kim Salazar's figure-8 toe and short-row heel instructions, then just did a 3x1 rib up the sock with about an inch of 1x1 rib for the cuff, and did the usual decrease for mom's socks (k1, p1, m1, repeat until out of stitches, binding off as I go.)

Then I finished up the Ruana Thingie:

Essentially my own pattern. The friend I knit this for gave me a poncho pattern that was similar to what she wanted, and other than square ends and a vague use of dimension, I totally ignored the pattern. I changed the yarn, the gauge, the number of stitches cast on, the stripe pattern, the border pattern, added a border to the bottom edge, changed it from two pieces seamed to one piece, etc. Would I wear it? No, but she loves it.

You may have noticed that the edge of the ruana is cut off in both pictures. I tried to remedy the issue, but my camera chose to start taking pictures like this while I was attempting to take more ruana pictures. I had it on 2 shot timer and only the first picture worked. After checking HP's website (a total blank, ha ha ha) and communicating with HP's customer service (rapid and extremely helpful), the camera is now back at Best Buy for service. We actually bought the extended warranty protection, so the repair/replacement is covered. Mind you, this means no pictures for the foreseeable future, because I have no clue when I will have camera again.

Which means I can't show you pictures of my birthday presents. (Yes, the odometer ticked over another year on Saturday.) As I said back in 2005 sometime, I bought a Battle-Scarred Puppet Angel replica, which arrived in December (hey, they SAID it was scheduled to ship in March.) Then, I ordered some Socks that Rock - a skein of Cobalt Bloom for me, and a skein of Lapis for Mom. They arrived yesterday, the same day we bought my other birthday present: a bright shiny white iPod, which I am in the process of cramming with my music collection, along with a few from Mom and Dad's (Beth Orton's first album, the original Broadway recording of "Chicago" and "Once More with Feeling", otherwise known as the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" musical episode.) I just pulled the second stack off of the storage rack, so I've got a way to go before everything is in. (If you look at the picture of the back of the ruana, you can see one of the racks peeking over my shoulder. I love IKEA.) It's so much fun to dance around the house bopping to the music. I love my parents, and they spoil me rotten.

Everybody's Knitting for the Weekend

2006-03-15T00:56:00.000-05:00

What, you didn't listen to Loverboy?

Anyhow, on to knitting. Here is the previously threatened photo of the completed-ish back of Bias, now including sleeves!

The sleeves and upper back need end-weaving and blocking (frankly, I'm hoping to block the bottom into something a little less parallelogram-y while I'm at it.) I have vague plans to pick up the stitches and start the front tomorrow night. Mind you, that's always subject to change.

I finished the first of Mom's latest pair of socks at band practice on Monday, and managed to cast on the second. Doesn't sound like an accomplishment? These are toe-up, and my preferred cast on is the figure-eight, which is tricky at best. Factor in that I had left the pattern at home, and we're talking nearly miraculous. (Truly miraculous would have been getting it on the first try, instead of the third.)

Here is a close-up of the toe on the needles, just to show how pretty my 2mm Inox needles are:

Shiny and sharp, don't you think? (I've got 1.25mms that I tentatively think will get pulled out when I knit up the Monaco yarn I bought - a cute little pair of anklets for me.)
I also swatched a bit this weekend. Maggie is calling my name as a summer knit, but I don't want to spend the $100+ the RYC yarn would run me. Aran-wise, my LYS had two tempting options: Mission Falls 1824 Cotton and Estelle Silk. The cotton is a bit cheaper than the silk, but both are nice yarns I have used in the past. I had a skein of the silk left over from a previous project, and I picked up a skein of the cotton at the LYS last week. I swatched each in garter (not pictured, 'cause they're boring) and was 99% sure the silk would win. Then I swatched the diamond cable pattern:

There went the last shred of doubt. The texture of the cotton obscures the design, and the silk is much closer to gauge (I lazed out and swatched both on 4mms - the garter swatch of cotton was done on 4.5 and was too large, so I guessed that the 4mm would be right. I don't think I was.) Oh, and ignore the bobble on the left. I knit the swatch while watching "Pride and Prejudice" and managed to really screw it up - there are a bunch of loose stitches on that. I won't be doing the bobbles anyway, because I don't like how they look, and I think the cable looks fine without them. I'll also knit the sweater as a pullover instead of a cardigan, mostly so I don't have to deal with buttons and buttonholes and button bands. Plus I'll probably do it in the pale blue.

Who am I? Fuzzy edition

2006-03-15T00:25:00.000-05:00

A Bit Of Both

You are 60% Calvin and 40% Hobbes

Calvin & Hobbes, like a scruffy yin and yang, are in perfect balance within you. Like Calvin, you're weird, a bit insecure, and can be a trouble-maker. But like Hobbes, you're down to earth and sensitive. It's a risk to say it here, after just a ten question test, but I'll bet you're smarter than most. Both Calvin and Hobbes are crafty, clever characters, and any one made from equal parts of each is a force to be reckoned with.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 64% on calvin
You scored higher than 16% on hobbes

Link: The Calvin Or Hobbes Test written by gwendolynbooks on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

You Are Scooter

Brainy and knowledgable, you are the perfect sidekick.
You're always willing to lend a helping hand.
In any big event or party, you're the one who keeps things going.
"15 seconds to showtime!"

The Muppet Personality Test

Just a Quickie

2006-03-12T01:38:00.000-05:00

A photo of the finished Pomatomus socks:

I don't adore them - I'm still not sure I like how the yarn stripes. However, they're done and very comfy, and everybody else adores them. (I am my own worst critic, so I'm wise enough to take that into account.)

Knitting progresses: I'm almost finished the back bodice of Bias (it took three tries to get the stitches picked up) and I started two new projects. The Ruana Thingie (how's that for a title?) is a modification of a Lion Brand poncho for a friend - the two rectangles sewn together with a gap to shove the head through will become two rectangles three-needle-bound off in the back, leaving the front open. It's also being done in the R2 Fuzzi Felt that's on sale at elann. I'll charge my friend some (relatively speaking) token amount for the work. (If I was working for some stranger, I'd hit them with the full price of the work.) The other new project is a basic toe-up short-row-heel sock for Mom out of the Regia Rio I bought a few weeks back. It's always handy to have a simple small project when I run into situations like this:

Little Miss has been rather clingy lately, and it's sometimes difficult to work around her. (That's the back of Bias lying in a crumpled heap in the corner. I'll take a photo when it's off the needles.)

Stuff and Nonsense

2006-03-05T02:11:00.000-05:00

The bottom panels of Bias Fair Isle are blocked and ready to proceed:

Now, there's a issue that's bothering me:

That's the two panels roughly pinned together. Not the most attractive of seams. I'm hoping a couple of factors come into play later - a) I can yank them straighter once the upper bodices are done, using them as guidelines, and b) the sweater is going to be about 4 inches larger than intended, in spite of the fact that I got gauge on the bloody thing. A sweater that is roughly 12" larger than my bust is going to have a lot of side material, and maybe that seam will all end up on the sides anyway. Only time will tell. No other progress has occurred. I took it with me on Thursday and started to pick up stitches, but didn't like how it was looking, so switched to Pomatomus's gusset. Much easier (in spite of the fact that I screwed up the pattern and had to rip a bunch to correct it.)

Speaking of Pomatomus, they're almost done - just one more pattern repeat and the toe to do. To answer Stacey's question, the yarn is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Black Purl. A very nice yarn, which I wish was available around here (along with a laundry list of other yarns.)

I did my bit of spending at the LYS on Thursday too. No yarn came home, just other stuff:

That's an 8mm bamboo circular (because it was the only 8mm circular they had) which I need for a project for a friend; a pewter clasp by Fleece Artist and RYC Classic Beach. I bought the book because my mother likes the cover sweater and I like many of the sweaters, especially Maggie and Sea Breeze. (Not Sea Grass - that sucker is fugly.) I may make Maggie this summer, if I decided on a suitable substitute. I may try Mission Falls Cotton or Estelle 100% silk. I've got some of the silk in stash, so that can be swatched up - eventually. The clasp went to finish finish an old project:

The Sitcom Chic I finished knitting in October of 2004! I think I wore it once and it's been sitting unloved in the depths of my closet ever since. I've been thinking about buying a clasp for a while, but never thought of it when I was buying other stuff. This time I did, giving me a lovely new sweater without any work.

It got taken out for the first time when I went to see "Brokeback Mountain" on Thursday. An excellent movie, well worth seeing. However, there are two men having sex in the movie. Why do I mention that? Well, prior to the show, the manager gave his spiel about "Firewall" starting on Friday, and "Nanny McPhee" and "Brokeback" being held over. He asked if we all knew it wasn't a Western, as he'd had several people walk out at the half-hour mark. No gasps of shock at it not being a Western, so on with the show. A half-hour in, the sex starts and people clatter while exiting the theater. WTF? Maybe I'm just way too pop-culture literate (probably true), but how do you not know that that's coming? Oh well, at least it didn't take long for the people to leave, restoring peace. (Even the baby was better-mannered - just a few peeps near the end, and Mom was right on top of it. I was sort of glad the baby was there - it meant I wasn't the youngest person in the theater. It was like old folks night at the movies.)

Yarns in Their Youths

2006-02-27T02:34:00.000-05:00

Finally, some progress photos. Not of Bias, mind you - I'm still working on endless ends - last week's cold was not conducive to end weaving. It was far more conducive to knitting socks:

That's a single Pomatomus done and ready to wear. (The second one is started - I cast on and knit the cuff while watching the last episode of "Bleak House" tonight.) As I said previously the color ended up spiralling down the sock:

I really like the pattern in the sock, and I may knit it again. However, I need to work through the backlog of sock yarns, which grew again this week. Yes, another Thursday at the LYS, another batch of sock yarn followed me home. (If they'd quit putting it on sale, it would be so much easier to resist temptation!) Here's the most recent acquisitions:

Regia Brasil in Rio - your basic wool/nylon self-patterning, for Mom because "[I] haven't knit [her] any blue socks."

Regia Cotton Tip and Top in Milana, cotton/wool/nylon, also for Mom for the same reason.

Regia Cotton Tip and Top in Monaco, cotton/wool/nylon, for me, to be knit during the Grand Prix of Monaco weekend (because when given such an opportunity, I cannot pass it up.) Now that I think about it, those will have to be done quickly, since the Montreal Grand Prix is soon after. Or those could wait until the Champ Car race ...

Speaking of the Champ Car series, it seems there are new rumors of possible merger. The head cheeses of both series talked, and it didn't end in violence. It's a start. I think (as does much of the sane universe who cares) that the split needs to be mended. I don't think that the united series could take on NAPCAR at this point, but I do think it would be able to survive until such point (should it arrive) that NAPCAR's popularity wanes. No, not a big fan of NASCAR. Honestly, the races last too damn long for me (4 hours of cars driving in a circle? My patience wanes around the 2 hour mark), and I can't tell the damn cars apart. The qualifying system baffles me (why not just start the best 43 cars each week? The exemptions make my head hurt.)

While I'm pontificating, a trend in the knitting messaging system is irking me. Why does there have to be one "best" something, be it book, pattern, yarn, needle type, method, what have you? What's the best sock yarn? The one you like best. Of my limited experience, I really like the Lorna's Laces I'm currently using, even though it's probably not the best match with my pattern. That said, the elann Essential wasn't horrible - not as soft, but not horrible. People RAVE over Noro, and I find every kind I've felt horridly scratchy - the colors can't save it for me. Then again, my Mission Falls wool sweaters make me itch too. Others won't have that problem. Does that make either yarn not the best? Well, it makes Noro far from the best for me, and I put up with the itchies from the MF because I really like everything else about the yarn (care, colors, weight, knitability.)

OK, it's 3 am and time for me to sign off.

Eeek.

2006-02-21T11:08:00.000-05:00

Entertainment Weekly posted a link where you can find out what song was Number 1 on the Billboard Chart on any given day. The day of my birth? "A Horse with No Name" by America. Even worse? My 21st birthday - "Informer" by Snow. Now I sort of wish I hadn't looked.

A Million Little Ends

2006-02-21T00:36:00.000-05:00

This post will discuss my knitting. No photos, because I haven't gotten around to taking any. (I blame this damned cold. I'm miserable and drugs are only making minimal inroads. Meanwhile my nose and eyes are red and irritated and on their way to chapped city. Trust me, there will be no pictures of my face for a while.)

Bias Fair Isle is what earned this entry its title. OK, it's not a million - it's only in the ballpark of 450. Still way too many ends. I've completed both bias hems (the bottom of the body of the sweater) and both sleeves. Since the upper bodices are picked up off of the hems, I need to weave and block before I can continue. (Which is why the sleeves are finished too.) There are only a couple of extra pairs of ends (I cut off the wrong color a couple of times.) Maybe tomorrow.

I also broke down and cast on socks. I know I am a sock knitter, I just wanted to make myself work on the sweaters I have on the needles. Oh well. I actually thought about casting on the Embossed Leaves socks from Interweave (Fall or Winter - I can't remember which off the top of my head), but the needles I need for that need repair. I cracked one of them - I think it can be fixed, I just need to get the glue and go to work. However, it was a reminder that I'm better off with metal needles. So I cast on my Lorna's Laces Black Purl for a pair of Pomatomus. It's not the greatest choice for the yarn - the colors are spiraling on the sock cuff, which is interesting, but I think a shorter color repeat would be more effective. I like the effect, but it does hide the stitch pattern when not stretched. (Stretched out on a foot, things may be drastically different. I've got the cuff and two pattern repeats done.

OK, I'm going to haul my butt to my room, down some NyQuil and watch early Gilmore Girls until I fall asleep.)

Bright Lights, Big Bitchy

2006-02-19T02:03:00.000-05:00

Knitting content later. I'm fighting a cold and need to kvetch about band.

I got an e-mail today from a fellow member of one of the bands I'm in. We'll call it "Band A." Band A has a concert coming up in the next few months. This person told me to do up a poster for the concert. A tad presumptuous, but I don't mind doing them, so fine. However, I think he will be surprised when he sees my design - it's black and white, and I'm 99.9% sure he's expecting a full color poster. Why? Well, last month, he sent me a mock-up of one he did to look at/print off, because his printer is out of colored ink. I couldn't, because I don't have the program used to create the file. Why black and white? A couple of reasons. First off, I think a simple, graphic poster is far more effective. Secondly, a black and white poster can be copied onto varying colors of paper for more drama. Thirdly, I just spent $60 buying new ink for the printer, and that was only for black, cyan and yellow (I replaced magenta a month or two ago.) The expectation with a color poster is that habsgirl and family will shell out for the materials - ink and paper. I did that last year, but there was a better case to be made for the use of color (WWII commemoration, Union Jack and all that.) But, you say, there are color photocopiers out there. Of course there are. However, the band would have to pay around $1 a copy, and that would kill any profit we make from this concert.

Let's add to that the fact that the concert is going to SUCK. Big time. If you were around here, I'd suggest you stay away. Why is it going to suck? Well, the band has great gaping holes. Last practice was attended by 1 flute, 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, 1 tenor sax (who will miss the concert), 1 french horn, 5 trumpets, 1 tuba and 3 drummers. Regular attendees missing were another clarinet, another french horn and another tuba (who may be forced to quit band by her parents). We have no trombones, no baritones/euphonia, and just the one tenor sax player. It's like a choir missing the tenor section. If the rumor mill is correct (and I have it on good authority, so I believe it), the band is going to lose its excellent lead clarinetist to the other band I play in - I certainly don't blame him for wanting a change. Most of us who are coming are getting more and more disgruntled. We're two months from two different concerts, and I couldn't tell you what the hell we're playing at either. Band B has a concert in less than a month, but I could tell you pretty much what we're playing, because that's what we practice every week - there's no handing out random new songs, there's no pulling odd stuff out of the overstuffed folder, there's no playing a song one week that needs a lot of work and not seeing again for a month. In reality, I think Band A needs to reconsider its current path - I think it's veering off the rails. The problem is that I don't think the band director will take criticism very well. But that's a bridge to cross a tiny bit down the road.

I deny all Scientology references!

2006-02-13T14:53:00.000-05:00

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Habsgirl!

The Church of Scientology was founded in 1953, at Washington D.C., by habsgirl.
Habsgirl can run sixty-five kilometres an hour - that's really fast!
Early thermometers were filled with habsgirl instead of mercury.
The International Space Station weighs about 500 tons and is the same size as habsgirl!
Habsgirl is the world's largest rodent!
An average beaver can cut down habsgirl every year.
If you cut habsgirl in half and count the number of seeds inside, you will know how many children you are going to have!
California is the biggest exporter of habsgirl in the world!
The only planet that rotates on its side is habsgirl.
Habsgirl can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.

Confessions of a Popaholic

2006-02-08T02:51:00.000-05:00

Guilty confession time.

Every time I hear "Under Pressure" come on the radio, I'm always disappointed when it isn't actually "Ice Ice Baby."

Word to your mother.

Wonder Sweaters

2006-02-07T02:16:00.000-05:00

Some progress photos. Taken in near-dusk conditions in my room.

Mom's sweater:

This got a fair amount of work time this weekend. One of my rentals was a very weird 60s Japanese film, "The Pornographers." Amazing cinematography, but the film didn't do much for me. Which is pretty typical of Japanese cinema and me - I fell asleep during "Throne of Blood" and only picked up the plot because it was loosely based on "MacBeth." However, I did like "Rashomon." Go figure. (The other two movies this weekend were "Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason," which was as bubblegummy as I expected, and "Robots" which I hated and shut off after about 45 minutes.)

Bias Fair Isle:

I'm almost finished the fourth full repeat of the pattern. At some point in the next repeat (yet to be calculated because I'm being lazy) I will bind off on both sides until I run out of stitches. I've got serious doubts about the side seams on this, but time will tell. I am enjoying the process, in spite of the fact that several purl rows got tinked because I botched the stitch pattern. (And a few knit rows when I screwed them up, but those generally went wrong part way through.)

New yarn! My eBay purchases showed up today. Regia Montreal:

Regia Ottawa:

Now I want to knit socks instead of sweaters, but I must resist temptation. Must finish sweaters.

The Mysteries of Fair Isle

2006-02-02T18:50:00.000-05:00

Well, as you may have gleaned from the sidebar, I have started Bias Fair Isle. I cast on the kerchief/swatch on Tuesday night, finished knitting it last evening, wove/knotted in the ends (those of you shrieking in horror, you try weaving in ends in superwash fair isle. I want secure ends (there are 48 in that piece), thankyouverymuch), washed and blocked. Here's the end result:

It doesn't have straps at this point. I'm reserving the right to rip the sucker if I need more yarn to finish off the sweater - the ends are going to be bad enough without the slight extra hassle of unravelling the straps. Plus, I may not ever wear the kerchief - a bit twee for my style. I, as always, reserve the right to change my mind at any time. I started the sweater at sit and knit today, and it looks just like the point of the kerchief/swatch, except with numerous dangly bits on the edges. There will most likely be progress pictures as we go along.

And, as always, the LYS offered temptation. This time, I bit:

Two pairs of skeins of Lang Jawoll Color in blacks and greys, on sale for 40% off. I'm going to offer to knit Dad some socks, and if he doesn't want socks, Mom will always appreciate more, and she likes dark colors. There was also a boatload of Jawoll Cotton on sale, but the colors didn't interest me. I was also later than usual, so the ~~hordes~~ other knitters had already made great inroads into the supply. Just as well. I've got an adequate supply on hand (3 pairs of socks on hand, two on the way and 4 skeins of Koigu earmarked for a different project that may end up being socks as well.) Yes, one can never have too much yarn on hand. However, too much yarn will leave me sleeping in a yarn-lumpy bed.

Everything is Irritated

2006-02-01T01:36:00.000-05:00

Except for my new socks!

The color on the picture is way out of whack. This was lightened using the rudimentary editing tools in the photo editing software I use. I chalk it up to the lack of sunlight. It's winter here, and overcast far more than it is sunny. Next up will be Bias Fair Isle. If I want a hope of wearing it this winter, I need to get cracking. Plus, it lets me avoid Mom's sweater some more! It will get done - I'm hoping the relative complexity of Bias will give me more boring sweater incentive.

In reference to the title, I'm irritated with my DVD rental service. Two weeks ago today (as in Tuesday - I don't mentally change days until I go to sleep), they sent out "In the Mood for Love," "The Bicyle Thief," and "Inside Deep Throat." They have vanished into the maw of Canadapost, never to be seen again. I hold out hope, but I also hold out hope for the movies they sent out a year ago that never arrived. Fine, dandy, bound to happen. So, last Wednesday afternoon, I sent off an e-mail, all chatty and nice, stating that the movies hadn't made it (and last week's batch had - mailed Tuesday, delivered Wednesday.) I get the auto-reply, which states that they will reply in 24 hours. I wait. Thursday passes. Friday passes. The weekend passes. Monday passes. Monday afternoon, off goes a much more terse e-mail. Autoreply arrives. Tuesday passes. I don't hear from them by tomorrow afternoon, I'm calling and leaving a message (I think the phone automatically goes to voicemail.) I'm not happy. I'm also not happy the movies were lost, because I doubt they have more than one copy of "In the Mood" and "Bicycle Thief." I wish the site would indicate if a movie is lost, because I seriously doubt that "An American in Paris" has been out for a year. But that's a separate whine.

To answer Karen's question from the comments, I have not seen either Nine Queens (or the American remake, Criminal.) I vaguely remember it playing during PIFF (Portland International Film Festival, at which I used to volunteer), but didn't see it - either I was working or I was too pooped to go. Perhaps, when I am back to content with the DVD people (ie, I get a response), I'll add that to my list of requests. I have to admit that I tend to be lazy about subtitled movies and rent French (my French is usually good enough to follow the movie without slavish attention to the subtitles.)

To finish off on a happier note, I bought more sock yarn. After seeing Amanda's Quebec sock yarn, and realizing I had heard about this "Canadian Colors" sock yarn, but not seen it in my lovely Canadian YSs, I did a little hunting. I ended up at the usual last resort for my odder desires - eBay. Here is the color card, and I bought Montreal (for me) and Ottawa (for my mom, who's already whining for more socks.) I wonder what exactly made them think "weird blocks of slightly odd colors - Ottawa!" I've got hopes that I can knit them into something less blocky - I bought them for the names, not necessarily the colors.

Ooh, and my snarky comment about the easiness of last weekend's headscratcher at Entertainment Weekly got published. (It took me all of 5 seconds to guess it, and I know minimal stuff about the damned Mercury Prize. )

Am I really THAT predictable?

2006-01-29T03:11:00.000-05:00

Doing a little late-night blog surfing, I came across a movie suggestion site. So I gave it a whirl. Filled in the personality profile and hit the "mood assessment" section (how much of a stretch from your standard taste you're looking for, and how "serious" a film you want. Plugged in slight stretch and a bit past midway towards serious. Here's the results:

Y Tu Mama Tambien - seen it
Hable Con Ella - seen it
La Dolce Vita - want to see it, is on my movie list (but it's not currently available)
A Clockwork Orange - seen it
Trainspotting - seen it
8 1/2 - want to see it, is on movie list but not currently available
Run Lola Run - seen it
Punch Drunk Love - haven't seen it, so I put it on my movie list.

Sheesh. (After PDL, it spit out Eyes Wide Shut. Since I'm avoiding the Crazy Clam's movies, not gonna happen.)

Then I told it I wanted totally different from my taste, and total popcorn movie. It suggested "You've Got Mail" (rejected), Smokey and the Bandit (rejected) and Pretty Woman (caught it one of the eight million times it aired on TV.)

All in all, I think I'll have a lot of fun with the site. It's not as helpful as if I hit my local video store, since I'm dependent on what is sent to me. However, I think it will make for some interesting additions to the list. Which is good, since the not-currently-available movies (which I push to the bottom of the list) start at 58 (of a list that holds 100, although it is currently at 92.)

I think my brain is melting.

2006-01-27T00:55:00.000-05:00

It's a heavy congestion day here. Combine that with watching "Cheaters" (it was on and I just didn't feel like trying to find something else to watch) and brain cells are dying everywhere.

Zib expresses surprise that I have a cat. I'm assuming that's sarcasm, since little miss Carolina has appeared in the blog before. I don't ~~waste~~ spend my time photographing her unless I'm bored or she's particularly cute. She's also residing on my shit list. Sunday night/Monday morning at 5:15 am, she wanders to my bedside mewling. I'm still awake (thankfully) and look over. Someone has a mouthful of something brown. She is rapidly shooed out of my room and the door is shut and my bathrobe is shoved into the gap between the door and the floor. (Yes, I'm glad she's proud of her prey. No, I have absolutely no desire to see. Dad's great at cleaning that up.) Since no one could find any results of the hunt, it must have been merely dented. Monday night, the door was shut tight and she had to let out a full meow before she was granted admittance. I have no desire to wake up with a tiny corpse.

In far more pleasant news, I've finished the Olive Leaf socks for my mother. Here's a slightly bizarre photo of them on. (I'm not nearly flexible enough to get a good shot of my own foot.)

I'm not fond of the afterthought heel. I used it because when I tried to do a short-row heel on the first sock, I couldn't get it to work. So I thought I'd (a) try a different method and (b) put off the aggravation to a later date. Here's a close-up of the lace pattern stretched out:

I used the charts from Southern Cross Knitting, but switched it to toe-up so the leaves pointed upwards. Why? Because I wanted to.
Once I finished those off, I should have gone back to working on Mom's sweater. But I didn't:

I cast on the Cascade Walking Away socks using the pattern I won from Amanda. I'm using the North Sea Blue Essential 4-ply that I bought from Elann last January. The Lorna's Laces Black Purl that was the other part of the prize is tentatively scheduled to become a pair of Pomatomus.

I'm tired, so I'll shut up now.

Notes from the Undersnow

2006-01-23T01:53:00.000-05:00

The winter blahs continue here at casa Habsgirl. The VCR next to me is busy recording "Bleak House" on Seattle's public broadcasting station. Why? Well, (a) I forgot to shut the stupid machine off after setting it up to tape on Detroit's public broadcasting station and (b) Watertown NY PBS, which is the basic cable choice of PBS, isn't airing BH for another two weeks, and I don't want to wait that long. I really love the channel selection on digital cable, but I hate pretty much everything else about it. I hate that you can't watch one channel while taping another. I hate that if you want to watch a tape on another machine, you have to jack the volume up to maximum. Grrr. (I also hate that the VCR in the computer room has to be shut off to timer record. My VCR doesn't require that, and I've gotten spoiled.)

The blahs have carried over into knitting. I've done a little work on Mom's sweater, but it's a large ecru/vanilla tube. The sweater is still boring me, however, and I think I've figured out why. This is the fourth time I've knit something along these lines in the last year - it's the exact same pattern as the Denim pullover (2 sizes up), and essentially the same as both Ribby Shells. So, I picked the yarn and got cracking on the second of the Olive Leaf socks. Still repetitive - it's the same lace pattern as Birch, it just doesn't decrease the number of leaves. However, it's coming along nicely - I only have one more leaf pattern repeat, ribbing and afterthought heel left to go. Due to some fucking glitch in the system, all I have is the unshrunk version of the picture. Photobucket keeps getting the original picture instead of the nice cropped picture that I keep trying to upload. It's too late (time-wise) for me to futz with it, so go look at the big picture. It gives a lovely view of the pattern. (And the purple yarn that peeks out on either side is the waste yarn holding the stitches in anticipation of the heel. Why that yarn? It was floating around my room from some earlier experimentation.)

I've also been doing some swatching. Some of which won't be shown here for a while - I have a pattern idea that I plan to submit somewhere, which I need to go back to. What I can show is the following:

That's the stitch pattern from Maple Leaf Socks out of the new MenKnit.net ezine. I was thinking it might make nice socks for Mom. (Why are almost all my socks for my mother? She wears them; I don't unless I absolutely have to.) After seeing Jo's comments about the pattern, I thought I'd give it a run in a solid color. The upper leaf was done with the incorrect instructions (don't ask) and the bottom leaf was done correctly. It isn't doing much for me. It shows up nicely, but I don't like what it does to the fabric. Combine that with the fact that I prefer a tighter gauge (7spi is a little loose for this yarn IMO), means that the pattern will not get knit up in the near future.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Next up on the needles was the HipKnits silk that I received from Zib in exchange for socks. I swear those socks are working their way through the postal system.

I just cast on 10 stitches and knit until I ran out of yarn. Ran out of yarn? Yep, there were technical difficulties with one of the skeins, leaving me with a bunch of very short lengths. Kerrie was very quick to rectify the problem, and more yarn will be winging its way to me. It will most likely marinate in the stash until the summer. Depending on the yardage I end up with, I may knit Ella or I may knit something else entirely.

The knitting universe seems to be buzzing over the Knitting Olympics. I'm NOT doing it. Why? Well, I would have 3 options on "events":

1) Bias Fair Isle. I need to start on this soon if I hope to wear it this year - stranded aran-weight yarn is thick and warm. However, I don't think I'd have a reasonable chance of finishing it in 16 days, and I think it would be undue pressure.
2) My own design. I have the idea, and I think I could knit it up and write it out in the 16 day period. However, it would take that time away from Bias.
3) Multiple pairs of socks. It usually takes me around 2 weeks to knit a pair of socks, and that's at a fairly leisurely pace. I would have to commit to knitting 2 or 3 pairs, and I think I'd get frustrated not being able to switch around. Plus, again, I need to work on Bias.

After much ~~navel-gazing~~ contemplation, I'll just sit it out and work at my own pace.

And, just to peeve Zib:

Carolina lying among the ruins of Christmas.

BIts and Pieces of my Fractured Mind

2006-01-13T00:50:00.000-05:00

Is it March yet? I do much better in March.

A little knitting. Birch is in need of blocking and end weaving, but otherwise complete:

Yes, the picture is best described as craptacular. It's the dead of winter and I keep vampire hours. Sun is not easy to come by in these situations. I need to grab some sheets and move the dining room table to block (seriously, it's the only space large enough to block shawls in our house.)

You may also notice the appearance of "Deceased Muppet Scarf" in the sidebar. A friend bought three balls of Bernat Boa in Cardinal (plus a set of short straight 9mm needles) before discovering that she hated the yarn. She offered it to me. Since I have a friend who (for whatever reason) wants a deceased muppet scarf, I took it, grabbed a set of 5.5mm needles and knit a scarf. Pictures will most likely follow, but I don't feel like attempting any at this time. (Note - I was going to call the scarf "I Killed Elmo," but there's way too much black in it. Pity. I can't stand that irritating little muppet.) It took a couple of days, so I'm back to Mom's sweater.

I discovered a TV oddity the other day when I was up even later than usual. In the wee small hours of the morning, Spike TV (TV for manly men, which around here seems to mean endless reruns of CSI and VIP) runs infomercials for "Girls Gone Wild" and other similar productions. Well, I flicked it on at 6 am and found three white dudes rambling on about how Christianity is all about the cross (I think - it's not like I paid a whole lot of attention.) I found this a very odd choice considering the programming it followed. The web address was jsm.org, and I couldn't figure out who the hell it was blithering on my screen. Eventually, an entire name appeared - Jimmy Swaggart. Suddenly, it seem much more appropriate.

And since Ana has tagged me again, five weird/quirky things about me:

1) I don't like any meat served as a chop. Some traumatic dining event in my past has put me off chops. (And my mother's cooking is rapidly putting me off roasts too.)

2) I somewhat seriously believe that my behaviour impacts the Canadiens' play. I do know that it doesn't but I still do odd things. For example, this past weekend, they played an afternoon game against Ottawa. I slept through the first period, and they were up 4-0. If Ottawa had scored several goals, I would have done my damndest to go back to sleep.

3) According to an orthopedist I had to see after I dislocated a kneecap, I have a crooked skeleton.

4) I love evening gowns/party dresses. I have no opportunity to wear them, but I always want to buy them. Including a Badgely Mischka dress I saw at Saks. My bank account was thankful that it was a size too small for me.

5) I have always been far more fashion-aware than my wardrobe would indicate. (I'm currently wearing my pale green Rogue over a hot pink T-shirt, pink polka-dot fleece pajama pants and black cotton socks - it's damp and cold.) I was probably one of the few people in my high school who knew who Louis Vuitton and Hermes were. Mind you, that was many many years ago. Now there are two beauty salons in town that offer Vuitton bags for sale (which is wrong on so many levels - who the hell is buying those bags in this hick town?)

Lethargy

2006-01-02T02:16:00.000-05:00

Bleh. I haven't posted because I generally feel bleh. This time of year sucks the energy right out of me. Add to that a general crabbiness manifesting itself constantly - reading the Knittyboards/other lists (if I ever read another word about the Japanese Aran sweater, it will be too soon.); TV (sucks, although Project Runway does start on the 9th - better late than never); life (what the hell are the rules about girlfriends and Christmas gifts? why do I bother giving my brother a list of CDs when I just get lame excuses for why he didn't buy them? why won't my DVD rental company answer my question about where the third disk went?). Christmas is always a let-down. I order most of my gifts, and ask for the rest. And surprises? Sounds like a great idea, but my family sucks at surprising me. A Canadiens T-shirt? Not the height of creativity. A clay sheep pin? Cute, but have you noticed it's not my style (I'm very minimalist when it comes to jewelry.) I could whine on and on, but I can't be bothered - lethargy, you know.

Knitting:
I bought 3 balls of Stone Mission Falls 1824 to sub in with the Aster:

I swatched both colors up, just in case, but the Aster was clearly the winner. The Teal will become something else at some point.
I finished ripping Birch out and re-cast on. Progress is getting faster - I'm on repeat 10 (100 stitches down, 199 to go!), although the picture was taked after repeat 4 was completed:

Mom's sweater hasn't been getting a lot of love lately, because I've wanted something more complex. Simple lets my mind wander, and from now until mid-February is not the best time to be mind-wandering. I will get back to it, and just work on it while watching TV and other mind-involving activities. Plus, I found the second ball of yarn for the current pair of socks - I couldn't find it and had great fears that it had fallen into the trash. It was actually wedged under the bookshelves - or at least that's where the yarn fairies returned it to, because I swear I looked there.

Acquisitions:
Christmas brought a bunch of books, one CD (A Very Scary Solstice, Lovecraftian Solstice carols that crack me up, but other family members *cough*brother*cough* find "disturbing"), an 3-D puzzle of New York, which I have wanted for years, a ballwinder, the aforementioned sheep pin and Canadiens T-shirt and 2 gift cards for the LYS. I spent the smaller-denomination one on Barbara Walker's Second Treasury. The larger one will wait until I need yarn for something. My swift will get here when it gets here, which is (fingers crossed) soon, since I think it shipped out on Friday.

Thursday morning, my birthday present arrived 3 months early. I got a Battle-Damaged Angel Puppet Replica. But wait, you say, didn't you get that last year? Well, sort of. I got the standard Puppet Angel replica. This one is from after the werewolf attack, and has a removable nose. (Scarily enough, they're going for more than double the price I paid on eBay.) It's a rare show of geekdom from me lately. (And when they come up with the Vampire version, I'll be getting that too - in for a penny, in for a pound.)

Then, after the real mail came (parcels arrive earlier), I had more new yarn:

300 grams (give or take) of handpainted silk from Hipknits. I have no clue what the color is called or what it will eventually become. I need to see how the color repeats before I commit it to anything. I could possibly do an Ella, or maybe make up my own wrap pattern. It will ripen in stash until something strikes me as being the appropriate use.

I need a nap.

2005-12-19T15:52:00.000-05:00

I went to sleep at 6 am, and was awoken at 10 am by my mother hauling down the Christmas decorations. I have managed to get some errands done - I'm restocked on allergy pills and some supplies I need for Christmas presents have been bought. I hit two bookstores and emerged empty-handed. I have a fridge full of cookie dough (from Saturday - single batches of mice, Scandinavian Sand Cookies and gingersnaps. Both the sand cookies and the gingersnaps are new recipes for me, so we'll see how they go.

Since Ana tagged me (a couple of weeks ago), here is my favorite knitting space:

That would be my bed. I spend a lot of time in my room and there is oodles of space to spread out stuff. In addition, here's my yarn storage area:

Originally, the blue bucket holding recent purchases was my yarn storage. Then I bought the 3-drawer unit, which took a lot of the burden off the bucket. Now, the drawers are full, the bucket is full, the box is full and the bags are full. And I still want more!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

2005-12-15T18:05:00.000-05:00

a holiday I am considering a boycott of the name. The endless crap flying over whether or not you can wish someone a "Merry Christmas" is enough to piss me off. I'm wishing people "Happy Hanukkah" or "Merry Solstice" instead. The capper on this particular issue was the "Mayor's Corner" in our local paper. Now, I am more than aware that our mayor is an idiot. However, I wasn't aware that he was a xenophobic asshole until this particular item (immigrants should suck it up or leave.) I REALLY want to find him and wish him something other than "MC," solely to determine his reaction. If he's so bloody entitled to wish all and sundry "MC," then the reverse should be true as well. I don't think he'd see it that way.

Anyway, on to pictures of pretty finished items! First, the Natural Ribby shell:

Soft and oh-so-comfy if it wasn't so damned cold right now. I also washed up Dad's Christmas present hat:

I did my decreasing in a different manner from the pattern - I only glanced and decreased on the last two stitches on the dpn, instead of the first two. Does it make a huge difference? No - the decreases run along a twisted knit stitch instead o a purl stitch. Mere cosmetic twitchery. It also looks cute on:

I actually tried taking a picture earlier, but I looked like death warmed over. Therefore, I took a shower and put on makeup before taking the pictures. However, when compared to a real model, I look funny:

Why, yes, I am rather addicted to "America's Next Top Model" - cycles/seasons 1 and 2 run in endless repetition at 2 am. Fine vacuous TV for that hour. Now, Project Runway has far more substance - or at least it did last year. I don't know about this year's version because NO CANADIAN NETWORK IS RUNNING IT YET!! Idiots. That's appointment TV, and it's damn hard to avoid spoilers. (I know whereof I speak. I managed to avoid "Veronica Mars" spoilers until I had one more week to go, and then I read Entertainment Weekly's blurb which gave away the killer. Damn, damn, damn.)

I finally got around to ordering my swift, so it may or may not make it in time for unwrapping on the 25th. I do believe I'm also getting a ballwinder. I left my points card and the 15% discount card for Dad, and he came home claiming no one at the shop knew what a ballwinder was, but only the points card came back. Ahh, the lies we tell to try and create a surprise.

Amazing - three posts in a week!

2005-12-10T17:46:00.000-05:00

First up, pretty new yarn:

One skein of Handmaiden Lace Silk. I can't get a great photo of it, because I can't get the greens to show - It's a gorgeous combo of deep blues and greens. Six hundred yards will become a scarf (I think) for either me, my mother or my brother's girlfriend. Time will tell. I picked this up at Wool'n'Things anniversary sale - 20% off. I think of it as an early reward for freezing my fingers and toes off on parade today. (The flute player who was going to do the parade had a child arriving home from college today. She's been sitting next to Chris, so I told her I'd do the parade instead.)

As previously mentioned, I'm sort of in between projects. Not quite ready to start Mom's sweater, I took the makings of Birch and Bias Fair Isle with me on Thursday. I briefly started Bias, but quit because I had too many balls to keep track of. I cast on for Birch, and started the knitting at home. Something got fucked up, and the last of the cast-on row is in the freezer, awaiting ripping. (Although, I must say the ripping wasn't horrible until I got to the cast on row, and I don't find a knitted cast on easy to rip in any yarn.) So last night, I spread the balls on my bed and continued swatching Bias:

I'm pretty happy with most of the colors, except the blue and turquoise peerie row. I think both colors are too dark (a) relative to each other and (b) relative to the lavender surround. (Mind you, they're showing up better in the picture than they do IRL.) I think I'll sub in a light grey, probably with the blue, but maybe the teal/turquoise. Next time I'm in the store, I'll see which I like better. I also think my gauge is off, so I'll reswatch on larger needles and see what happens. I'm not sure what kind of growth I'll get with washing, and I bought enough for the large size, but I'm not positive the swatch/kerchief was included in the amounts. I was also hoping to carry the unused colors along, but that's not going to work, so there are going to be oodles of ends to weave along the way.

A conundrum

2005-12-09T01:09:00.000-05:00

When possible, I head to my LYS on Thursday afternoons for "Sit and Knit." Today, I picked up the latest newsletter. It mentions the sessions, and says that if you plan to attend, they request you purchase your supplies from them. They have a point, but there's a big ol' yabbut. The yarn selection can leave a lot to be desired. It's great if you have a thing for petroyarns/partial petroyarns. Other areas, not so much. The only laceweights offered are mohair. I prefer non-mohair. Wanna hand-painted yarn? Better adore Fleece Artist, because it's your only option, and it's mostly projects I'm not interested in. Sport-weight cotton? No such thing. However, there is an enormous range of fluffy crap, which seem to be highly popular, from the number of people in that section when I'm there.

If they have what I want, I buy it there. If they don't have it, I buy elsewhere. Of the 20 projects in my Flickr gallery, only 4 were bought at the LYS. (I do have several projects in stash or in the UFO pile that I bought there.) The rest were made from yarns not stocked there. I don't expect them to stock solely according to my needs, but it really doesn't cater to an "advanced knitter." What am I supposed to do if I'm knitting up my skein of HandMaiden Lace Silk (pictures this weekend) and I don't have any other projects on the the needles? Should I knit a project in a yarn I think is wrong because that's what they sell? Buy something I don't need so I can sit with my friends? Do my patterns have to come from there, too? 'Cause I haven't seen "Loop-d-Loop" there. Or "Scarf Style."

I don't know. Like the title says, it's a conundrum. How do you support a store that doesn't fit your purchasing patterns?

Actual Finished Object!

2005-12-07T15:59:00.000-05:00

Yes! Melly's socks are done and packed up, ready to be gently placed into an envelope and mailed:

Progress also has been made on Dad's Christmas present:

I went with the Marsan Watchcap, and I like it in this yarn (I loved the Chicknits Shaker Rib hat as a knit, but it didn't work in this yarn for me.) I'm just starting the decreases, so it should be done soon. The swatch for Mom's sweater is in the dryer, along with the Natural Ribby Shell, so those projects should move along quickly and soon.

Mind you, I want another project to take with me tomorrow. The sweater isn't right, because I need to do some more measurements of my Mom. I'm knitting the largest chest size of the sweater, but I think I'll need to knit shorter sleeves and body, since she's only 5'4". Maybe I'll take the Kidsilk Haze and cast on for Birch. Or not.

And a meme (I found the results intriguing.)

You Have a Choleric Temperament

You are a person of great enthusiasm - easily excited by many things.
Unsatisfied by the ordinary, you are reaching for an epic, extraordinary life.
You want the best. The best life. The best love. The best reputation.

You posses a sharp and keen intellect. Your mind is your primary weapon.
Strong willed, nothing can keep you down. Your energy can break down any wall.
You're an instantly passionate person - and this passion gives you an intoxicating power over others.

At your worst, you are a narcissist. Full of yourself and even proud of your faults.
Stubborn and opinionated, you know what you think is right. End of discussion.
A bit of a misanthrope, you often see others as weak, ignorant, and inferior.

What Temperment Are You?

Meh.

2005-12-02T01:23:00.000-05:00

It's that kind of weather. It's that kind of life.

I dug up my mosaic swatch from the Patons/Spinrite seminar:

It looks better in the picture than it does in person, but I still don't think it looks good. My guess is that there isn't enough contrast for my taste, but I don't feel like experimenting right now. I'm too busy knitting socks:

That's a completed sock (the ends are even woven in!) and one half of the leg for the second. I finished sock one late last night and cast on for two at sit and knit today. It's always fun, but it does point out my age (and relative lack thereof.) They're all "Oooh, I wouldn't order yarn online" whereas I will buy what I want where I can. That said, I am seriously contemplating this sweater in Hyacinth. Like I don't have one half-finished sweater, the yarn for three more plus shawls and socks and hats and gloves lying about. Only time will tell.

Oops.

2005-11-28T15:44:00.000-05:00

I kept meaning to post, and just not getting off of my ass and actually doing it. First up, the knitting progress.

I finished knitting up the mystery project about a week ago, and took a picture:

What the hell is it? It is one of a pair of these:

Fishnet stockings, knit flat and seamed up. The pattern came from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Since I have no clue what "Maygrove's Sylspun Hosiery" yarn looks like, I dove into the stash and came up with some leftover Esprit Print and swatched. The gauge matched, although I'm sure it is far thicker than the original. They make a lovely substitute for long underwear when forced to stand around for 45 minutes waiting for a parade float to show up. (Note - that was the second float I was supposed to ride on this year that didn't show up. I'm taking it as a sign that I'm a jinx and if you want your float to arrive, you need me to stay home.) Here's a closeup of the top, to show of the fishnet texture:

I really like these, in spite of the fact that they really used a lot of yarn - about 3 balls per stocking. I may futz around with the concept for a simpler pair of socks. (Or not.)

So, once I finished those, I whipped out the needles and started on Dad's hat for Christmas. I'm on take two and still not happy, and will start take three in the near future. So I'm working on Melly socks instead. I'm trading my love of tiny needles and fine yarn for a fix from the LOYM. I figure it's a fair trade. Once I got the numbers and did the pattern math, this is the result:

This is a few days work, and I would be farther along if I wasn't such a perfectionist. I erred early on and purled two stitches instead of slipping them with the yarn in front. Was it egregiously noticeable? Probably not, but it would have driven me nuts. The heel flap and turning were probably the only things keeping me sane while watching "Just Married." I am not a fan of either Ashton Kutcher or Brittany Murphy, yet I tortured myself with them for a Christian Kane fix. When the best part of the movie is a "Hey, I recognize that song in the background!" moment, the movie bites. My other weekend DVDs were much better - the last two discs of The Last Chapter. Admittedly, I'm generally a fan of crime dramas, but it's nice to see a Canadian program that doesn't look like it was made for $1.66.

I also (a couple of weeks ago) attended the Spinrite seminar at my LYS. Forty-five minutes were spent trying not to look revolted by the array of petro-yarn de-lites forked over to me at a scarily rapid pace - Spinrite being the parent company of Patons, Bernat and Lily (and Lily not seen in the garments.) Get the feeling I wasn't impressed. Then a hands-on demonstration of mosaic knitting. Wasn't particularly difficult to master, but my swatch wasn't particularly ... visible. The second color just vanished, but I'm not sure if it was a color issue or a gauge issue or what. Maybe at some point I'll futz some more. I came away with a stack of Patons and Bernat patterns (some of which are tolerable and others of which are - camoflage pants), a pair of 4.5 mm straight needles and 2 balls of Patons Decor in shades of pink. Isn't my enthusiasm just oozing off the screen?

Another meme - snork

2005-11-14T00:56:00.000-05:00

Your Love Quote

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

What Love Quote Suits You?

random bits

2005-11-12T12:10:00.000-05:00

A few random bits:

To answer Amanda's question from the previous entry's comments, the next few projects are littleish things. I have a mystery project from this summer that I'm trying to finish up in the next two weeks, socks to knit for Zib's daughter (as soon as the freaking internet quits eating our e-mail correspondence!), and a hat for Dad for Christmas (at his request), knit out of this:

70% merino, 30% cashmere, 100% soft and squishy. I'm either knitting the Marsan Watchcap or ChicKnits' Shaker Rib Hat. Heck, I bought 2 balls, maybe I'll knit them both! Once those are well on their way, I need to start Mom's sweater. Of course, it starts with winding up 25 balls of yarn....

And to answer Monkee's question, the rest of the sweater is still lying unknit on the shelf in the store where I left it!
I bought pretty and totally impractical new shoes today:

Being in two town bands is generally not a problem, until it comes to things like Remembrance Day. Band Director #2 was giving me the evil eye when I said I wasn't going to be at that band's performance. It's not like I was skipping out and holing up in bed with a hot man. I was simply playing with Band #1, which I have played with far longer than Band #2 has existed.

I liked my results for the following quiz:

Semicolon

You scored 30% Sociability and 82% Sophistication!

Congratulations! You are the semicolon! You are the highest expression
of punctuation; no one has more of a right to be proud. In the hands of
a master, you will purr, sneering at commas, dismissing periods as
beneath your contempt. You separate and connect at the same time, and
no one does it better. The novice will find you difficult to come to
terms with, but you need no one. You are secure in your elegance,
knowing that you, and only you, have the power to mark the skill or
incompetence of the craftsman.
You have no natural enemies; all fear you.
And never, NEVER let anyone tell you that you cannot appear in
dialogue!

How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 15% on Sociability
You scored higher than 93% on Sophistication
Link: The Which Punctuation Mark Are You Test

Which dress should I buy
	Dress #1 (Dragonfly Obi2)
	Dress #2 (Wine Obi)
	Dress #3 (Blue Floral 50s)

Free polls from Pollhost.com