Knitting the Blues

WordlessY WednesdayThe One Where I Show Glimpses of Learning From My Past

This post has been in progress since the first of the month and I always find a reason not to post it. Today, I don't have anything for Wordless Wednesday so bring on Wordy Wednesday. I just might have a Wordless Wednesday post later on today. Or maybe I'll save it for next week. Or Eye Candy Friday. Or for No Reason Thursday.....

I don't always consider myself a fully realized, mature adult. I mean, in some ways I am so there, life has done whatever it does to grow me up in some ways, like it or not. On the other hand, the universe often sends me messages to which something in my personality responds while stomping my feet, "You can't tell me what to do! You're NOT the BOSS of me!" like a stubborn toddler.

Stop laughing.

There is the time I climbed Mt. Washington. The time I hemorrhaged for days because I was too busy to slow down. Almost dying has a way of slowing you down. There was that time that I saw the cutest little sweatshirt at a craft fair, it had a heart shaped doily on it with ribbon roses and ribbon bows and I wanted it so bad for my girls, but the price? Out of my range. This was pre-internet and something I thought I would be able to buy at a local craft store was not to be found. Anywhere. I get a little tenacious in the face of these setbacks and I managed, by searching the ads in the back of magazines and making a lot of phone calls over days, to find them and make my vision a reality. I will drive anywhere, spend what I need to (okay, within some reason), pressure family, endure pain, start, stop, restart..... I don't stop. My husband no longer questions trips far and wide or my tunnel vision when it comes to something I've decided I am doing or need to have.

So what does this have to do with any sign of maturing? I suppose on the one hand there is a comment Laurie left for me on facebook recently, "Experience is defined as recognizing the same mistake when you make it again." In many cases I am even a little closer in that I often recognize those same mistakes as I am plowing my way right into them. Oh wait, what is that thing they say about trying the same thing over and over expecting different results? Hmm...

That brings me to NaKniSweMo. I really want this sweater. I mean, WAAAANNNNNTTTT! that sweater! I envision it as being the perfect 'grab on the way out the door' sweater that I'll throw on over everything. I've already written its story in my head. I'm not even kidding, in my daydreams this sweater was knitted with this yarn (a little heavy, but exactly what I was going for), washed and blocked into a slightly fulled and soft fabric, adorned with the perfect button, worn on every errand, apple picking, visiting the vendors at the sheep and wool festivals, snow-shoeing, apres-ski, spinning around on a snow dotted mountain peak, it's spring in Austria and the grass is coming up and the birds, the sweater and I are breaking out in song......... always maintaining a casual, cozy chic that only the best sweaters can manage, all the while being my constant cold weather companion and over the years becoming slightly pilled and worn, earning elbow patches and when it finally gives up the ghost would be much mourned. Except that it would never die because I envisioned this sweater in Peace Fleece from my stash, which would never wear out. In my dream, sentimentality would have my daughters fighting over it after I am gone (and of course only one of them has short enough arms and would totally win it).

So I swatched the Peace Fleece.

This is where my vision started losing its dreamy glow. Knitting this yarn is not easy for my hands. There wasn't a smooth motion of needle sliding in and stitch sliding off, it was a struggle.  I inserted mental earplugs to the niggling little voice telling me that this might not be a good idea, ignored the pain brought on by the hard work and kept knitting away. The pre-washed swatch was stiff, but I have experience with Peace Fleece and know what a good bath does to the fabric. And it did. OH! My dream was starting to brighten again!

Meanwhile, I decided to swatch for another sweater with another yarn. I have really wanted this sweater and while my daydreams for it aren't as full blown and technicolor-ed in my mind, it is one that will fit nicely into my life. With the first row everything was easier. The action of knitting was smooth and comfortable. I was far off of the gauge, but it blocked out to nearly the gauge and a beautiful fabric.

The Woolen Rabbit Grace
Rene by Knitspot

You know what happens next, right?

Color not even close
Memories of Indigo Ripple Skirt
Yikes!

I spent nearly two hours to get that much knitting done, playing my vision and dream over and over as all of my joints from the shoulders down started to hurt and the going was s-l-o-w. I kept seeing myself in this sweater, knowing it would be worth all of the knitting time, planning that I would knit both sweaters at the same time so I could give myself a break from the hard knitting and since it was a lot of stockinette stitch, it would get easier, right? The love I would have for it would outweigh any issues in the creation, right? The ribbing, it was hard. I started to feel tingling in my fingers and was stopping to massage my forearms often. And with every difficult stitch I started to think wisely. I started to mentally shop my stash for another yarn that might be appropriate. I started to mentally shop yarn stores for even more yarns. Throughout it all the brightness of the recurring dream was dimming and with regret I set the knitting aside. I haven't removed the needles and pulled it out yet. That will be the final sign of maturity and I haven't quite gotten there. Yet. In my mind I am still the opposite of gotten there.

2012. Oh, COME ON! You totally write musical romantic comedies for your knitted items! I'm not the only one, that is for sure!

There's A Whole Lot of Blue in This PostEven For Me

My annual summer pedicure photo is long overdue.  I know, I KNOW!  Those photos look the same every.single.year.  Some variation of blue toenails with water and/or sand.  Here it is anyway.

Look! A blue ice pack!  Nice!

Yes.  I am officially on the DL.  I don't want to talk about it, but I do.  Talk: yes.  Type?  No.  Call me.

It's a blue camouflage job!

One of those toe(nail)s is not like the others.....

Another toenail bites the dust.  That toenail has no integrity left.  The number of infections and losses that toenail has sustained has me wondering why on earth it ever grows back again.  The indominable spirit of the big toe and its nail.  I didn't do too bad a job of painting it on (yes I did my own pedicure, not taking any chances with the compromised toenail), it has been bare and only just partially grown in for weeks, while the other nails had been painted so it stuck out like a sore thumb big toe.  Now when I look down at my sandled feet (and ignore the swelling of the ankle, probably shouldn't be wearing the flip-flops) I smile a little.

Knitting.  Still working on the blue shawl.  I have taken a bit of contract work, more than I should have, so things might not move as quickly as I will want them to, but I am  working on stuff and will share what I can.  I also started an afghan and I have a LOT to say about it.  Rather, a lot of knitterly drama has ensued and I'll have to share.  

It all started when I saw the pattern for picnic (ravelry link), an afghan of squares knitted in Rowan Denim.  I resisted for a short while for two reasons.  My wrists hate knitting cotton and to knit this baby in Rowan Denim is a significant financial investment (it takes something like 70ish balls of yarn, you do the math).  So I just bought the book, you know, to just look at the afghan, but not to knit it.  Then I started toying with the idea that Elann Den-M-Nit (no link-that is part of the story) could work at probably about 60% of the cost. That is a number I pulled out of thin air.  It might be 60%, it might be 75%, it might be 50%.  Whatever it is, it is a lot less than Rowan Denim, I promise.  Anyway, picnic calls for dark denim blue, medium denim blue and cream (or ecru or whatever you want to call it).  Both the Rowan and Elann yarns are (or have been) offered in three blues, dark, mid and light indigos, but when I started collecting the yarns to knit this Elann had no dark indigo available so I decided that the mid and light indigos would be different enough to work.  As I stashed them they looked a little too close in shade, but I was sure they would be fine.  That is a detail to remember later as I was swimming in DA river NILE, but I'm going to continue the drama chronilogically.

These blues will work together, right?

SO!  I had stashed enough of the blues (mid and light-DA NILE) and some of the ecru from Elann and through some ravelry trades (this really brings the discount over the Rowan closer to the 60%.  Maybe even 50%!) and found when I went to purchase the rest of the ecru from Elann that they were all sold out and not restocking it at this time.  WHAT!?  I head over to check the stashes of ravelers and find that nobody has any ecru up for sale or trade.  FUDGE!  In the interest of keeping you from being totally bored to tears, I put up an In Search Of thread on some raverly groups and somebody sold me their ecru!  Yay!  Mostly.  When it arrived I found that it was the earlier put up of the yarn and it is ever so slightly different from the more current put up, a little thicker.  Yes!  All of the wrapper information is the same, but I can tell, it isn't exactly the same.  I decided that I could live with that and that for as long as I am able I will use the slightly thicker on plain squares and the other when I am using more than one color in a square.  Excellent!  I cast on.

See?  Different, but a little the same. Huh. (Blue labels)

I chose to knit the squares into strips to reduce the amount of seaming that I will have to do.  There is probably a really good reason not to, especially with this heavy yarn, but I'm not changing my mind.  (Unless someone convinces me, but it would take a lot, I have some squares finished and all joined in a strip.)  Because there are beads involved and I haven't made a decision on those yet (another post), I chose a strip that has no beaded squares and got to work.

First square. See the pretty blue afghan?  I just realized that the photo has only 45 of the 81 squares. They didn't even finish it for the book! That worries me.

I finished the first square (ecru) and started knitting the second out of the two blues and found that my initial instinct was correct.  There is barely any contrast AT.ALL.  Crap.  I have all of this yarn and nobody on ravelry has any of the dark up for sale or trade.  Must this shit always happen to me?  Apparently, yes.

Blues?  Blue?  Blues?

Longer story shortened:  The day after I start messaging a few people on ravelry to see if they will be willing to let go of their stash a person who turned me down was on the alert when another raveler put some up for sale in a For Sale or Trade group.  She let me know immediately and I snagged it.  It wasn't all I needed, but it was a start.  I continued to beg message other people and another raveler kindly traded what she had for some stuff I had available for sale or trade.  Excellent!  I have almost enough, or maybe definitely enough, but I'm still trolling for a few insurance balls.  Breathing easy when nearing the end of a project of this size will definitely be a plus.

Blues!

So now I am on a roll, but really.  Who designs a striped square with a 4 rows by 3 rows striping sequence?  Honestly!  All of those ends to weave in.  My ingenuity kicked in and I decided that since I am knitting on a circular needle that when I reached the end of a stripe and the new stripe color was at the other side of the work that I would slide the piece across the needle and start from that side.  Yippee!  No extra ends.  I keep knitting and then get to another striped square, SAME! THING!  With the added twist of alternating colors in alternating stripes.  Seriously.  I'm working it the same way.  This is of course screwing up my slip the first stitch of every row for easier seaming thing, but I'm just ignoring it.  BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! I can't HEAR YOU little voice in my head.  NOT LISTENING!

Square #4!  More blue!

IF A CERTAIN PERSON I AM MARRIED TO IS STILL READING (no worries, he rarely reads this blog-I bore him, but even if he did start reading this post I am sure I lost him somewhere around the paragraph that began Knitting) DON'T READ PAST THIS POINT!!!!!

Everybody else can click through.

I'm Losing My Mind, Won't You Join Me?Or I've Been Punked.

So....  It is pretty obvious that I like blue a little bit.  I tried to keep it a secret, but it turns out that is a secret I can't keep. I can't keep the secret about tea, teapots, sheepy things, knitting, spinning.....  Well, that list goes on, but for now that is all that is pertinent to this installment of I'm Losing My Mind, Won't You Join Me?  I'll be brief.

Over the last many years I have collected blue stuff, sheep things and teapots.  Then one day I ran across this:

So many of my loves in one little teapot.  I felt it was made for me and I have collected many pieces over the years.  It isn't as easy as it once was, and frankly, it was never easy, but now it is almost impossible to find new pieces and I would love new pieces. 

But that is a digression.  That teapot led me to commission a custom drop-spindle:

Gorgeous, no?  It is not a light weight by any stretch so I primarily use it for plying.  The yarn on it is the beginning of a spinning project that I recently decided must be completed, so I spun the remainder of the fiber over the weekend and on Monday went to grab this spindle and ply the singles. 

Only, I couldn't find the spindle.  It wasn't in the crock where I keep my spindles, decoratively arranged in the game room my studio.  This was not good.  I am not in the habit of casually laying spindles around, they have a home.  I had dropped a bag with this spindle in it once before and had to have it repaired, I try to be really careful with it now.   I would have put it in that crock.

A little back story or a little about me.  I get it into my head sometimes that in my sporadic attempts at home decorating I should incorporate a little of my fiber life in every room.  Some rooms have sheep, some have sheep on teapots, some have baskets of yarn or fiber or whatever.  You get a little of the picture.  Along that line I at some point think I had the spindle on the hutch in my dining room with the collection of blue sheep teapots/mugs/canisters/plates/bowls etc.  I'm pretty sure that is the last time I remember seeing it.  Then Christmas came and at Christmas all of the blue sheep stuff gets replaced with holiday teapots and decorations.  I know that happened this year, but I don't think I actually did it.  Not one of my family members produced illuminating information.  Nobody remembered seeing it or doing anything with it.  By this time I am going a little crazy.  I start searching in every nook, cranny, bag and bin that I can find.  I literally would recheck the same bags and containers of fiber and yarn and then go back and recheck it again, because when you empty a bin three times and a thing isn't there, it is likely to magically appear the FOURTH TIME!

I heard this story once about the scenes in our life being set up by, I don't know, a stage or prop crew or something like it, and they set up the scenes every minute or so and sometimes they forget an object or prop like keys for example.  So you look for your keys where you know you put them and they aren't there, so you keep looking around for them and coming back to the spot where you know you put them and they still aren't there until finally the fifth, tenth, fiftieth, definitely the last time you look and WHAT?!  They are THERE!?  Well, the prop crew finally got their act together and remembered all of the props.  That is why I keep checking the same places over and over again. 

You never know.

I checked that crock a billion times, moving spindles around, taking some out, putting them back, counting them.  Seriously.  I counted them because I was talking to someone about how many spindles I had and I counted them.  No blue sheep spindle.

I started to threaten my family.  "If you know anything about this and you are afraid to tell me and you let me go crazy and waste hours and days obsessing and looking because you know how I get and I won't be able to think of anything else until I know what happened to......."  Nobody 'fesses up.  Nobody helps either.  At that point it is difficult to discern which is making me angrier.

Exhausted, I quit for the day and Pete says he will take a look around on the morrow.  He is a good looker he says.  I'm just wondering if he is a good finder.

He didnt' get to it right away on the next day so that evening when I was headed out to the knitting class I teach I reminded him.  I texted him and asked him if he found it, no answer.  I came home and while he wasn't here I didn't see the spindle anywhere so I figured he didn't find it.  Bummer.  When he got home I asked him if he looked and he asked me what the spindle looked like.  I was bringing him in to look at the teapots and he said, "just tell me, what does it look like?" and I made a circle with my hands and pointed to the teapots and he said, "you're kidding me." 

What?

Pete:  You're kidding me, right?
Me: Did you find it?
Pete: Where did you look?
Me: Everywhere, you saw me, I looked everywhere! Where did you find it?
Pete (leading me into the game room fiber studio): I spent thirty seconds looking for it.
Me: YOU FOUND IT! Where? Where did you find it?
Pete: (picking spindle off of pool table cutting table) Right here.

And he carries it over to the spindle crock and puts it in with the other spindles.

Where it definitely WAS NOT before.

It wasn't.

Not during any of the one biiillllllion times I looked or the hours I spent searching.

Or I've been punked.  Nobody is owning up to it.  Not even the invisible prop crew, those practical jokers!

2011.  Twelve.  $16.88.  Punked! I tell you!  I've been PUNKED!!!! 

 

I'm A Little Bit Random........

In bullet format.

• Throughout the day I had bunches of random thoughts that I looked forward to sharing with the masses (hahahaha).
• Can't think of one of them.
• I should keep a little notebook, because I suffer from CRS.
• (Can't Remember Shit Stuff)
• Then I think that I do keep a little notebook, two actually, in my bag at all times.
• I am addicted to little notebooks.
• Especially blue ones.  Duh.
• CRSTUN
• Can't Remember Shit To Use Notebook.
• Watching American Idol.
• This is maybe the third season I've watched ever.
• There is a kid, Stefano Lengano (?) on singing Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer.
• I can only ever think of Tony Danza when I hear that song.
• It is somehow fitting that this kid is a cross between Joey from Friends and Tony Danza.
• I can't take it seriously, somebody should have coached him to sing a different song.
• I still can't remember any of my random thoughts.
• A lot goes on in my head through the day, it can be an interesting place to be.
• Lucky for me there isn't a test at the end of the day.
• And I still recognize my family.
• For today anyway.
• I may have mentioned Angry Birds Rio in a previous post.
• I've not been one for games, aside from Solitaire, on my phone.
• Now I'm googling cheats and hints for getting golden pineapples and golden bananas.
• There used to be a live entertainment establishment for adults only called the Golden Banana somewhere near here.
• There is a rumor that my soon-to-be husband was removed somewhat forceably from said establishment at a party mourning the end of his bachelor life.
• That doesn't sound like a time of mourning.
• Unless he really wanted to stay.
• To this day I don't believe a word of it.
• Or maybe I believe every single word of it.
• I'm not stupid, you know.
• And it turns out I'm not one of those wives-to-be who gave a shit care.
• I guess that means I'm a sufferer of the other malady, CRSS.
• Can Remember Some Shit Stuff.
• That story is some shit stuff I apparently do remember.
• I still can't remember a single thing I thought of today.
• Maybe if I tie a string around my finger I'll remember to take notes in one of my little notebooks.
• More likely I'll come down with a serious case of CRWIHASTAMFS.
• Can't Remember Why I Have A String Tied Around My Finger Shit Stuff.

2011.  Seven.  $45.00.  Duran-Duran is on Jimmy Kimmel.  They look almost exactly the same.  Lucky.  They sound almost exactly the same.  I can't decide if that is good....  UWPMB.  Figure that one out.

You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up!And the Cost Per Use Analysis Is Halved In One Day!

Seriously, this stuff really happens to me and I couldn't make it up for blog fodder if I even tried. 

About a month ago I made a yummy chilled cucumber soup.  I was probably rushing and instead of reading the recipe I dumped all of the ingredients in the blender and just as I was about to hit the switch I saw that the fresh mint was to go in for the last fifteen seconds of the blending process.  Since all of the mint was on the top I pulled it out, set it on the counter, flipped the switch and then added the mint and hit the switch again.  This horrible grinding noise came out of my blender, and I don't know what I thought it was, but I stopped the blender and poured some soup to eat. 

The soup is YUMMY!  And so SMOOTH!  Except for, wait!  What is that hard thing in my mouth?  I retrieve it and find a blue piece of plastic.  Spooning through the soup I find most of a pull tab off of the cap of a bottle of water.  SERIOUSLY!? 

Fast forward to today:

I couldn't believe it when I heard that hard grinding sound AGAIN!!!!  Erin would eat it.  I said that it is PLASTIC!  She said that it seems I can feel the pieces and I probably won't ingest any.  I said it causes CANCER!  She said, "So does everything, don't you watch the news?"

Really, I just don't think I could make this stuff up.

2011.  Six.  Rounding up, I'm at $67.50 per post!  In the first day!  If the plastic doesn't kill me first, I might make this blog work!

Ten On TuesdayThe I've Got Ten of Nothing Edition

I really don't have a list of ten things to post today and don't have the time to think of one.  Carole has again come up with a great list, but I don't have an iPhone and can't contribute except to say that I have downloaded the beta version of Opera Mini 5 to my phone and it is so much faster than the browser that came installed on my Droid Eris.  Instead, I decided that at those moments that my hands need a little break from the frantic knitting that I'm currently involved in, I would post something and maybe that will happen ten times and that will be my Ten on Tuesday for today.  Or maybe it will be one.  If it is only one, then here it is, good luck following my ramblings.

Number One.  Degrees of separation.

I recently read (read:  listened to the audiobook, natch) Girl With A Pearl Earring, a fictional account surrounding the people and events that lead to the painting by Vermeer.  I am not, by any stretch, an art historian (although I loved the art history course I took in college) so I haven't the faintest idea how much of it was taken from verifiable historical accounts and how much is fiction, but my sense is that most if it is just a wonderful story.  In the novel, Vermeer is associated with Antonie Von Leeuwenhoek, known as the Father of Microbiology for his work improving the microscope.  I can say that I don't remember much of him from science class, but his Wikipedia page is very interesting (and adds a degree to this story in a minute). 

Anyway, skip to the book I am listening to now, Art In America by Ron McLarty.  I won't go into the story, but I am sitting here knitting away and listening and the main character relates to a friend that he wrote a novel about Von Leeuwenhoek.  I mean, really!  What are the chances that Von Leeuwenhoek would be mentioned in two out of the four books I have read over the last week?  But it gets even weirder. 

Art In America is written and narrated by Ron McLarty (I know, I am repeating myself), who I first encountered when I listened to A Walk In the Woods by Bill Bryson (a great book, I must say).  I enjoyed his voice and reading so much that I looked for other books that he had recorded and came upon The Memory of Running, the first book I listened to that he had written and narrated.  So I have read that and another novel of his and now I am listening to this one.

Yes, this does get someplace.  Not necessarily anyplace meaningful, but when you are knitting like a mad woman and these little things happen they make more of an impact on you than they would if you were out in the world with other people to keep you on the sane side, OKAY!?

So, back to Von Leeuwenhoek.  I hear about him and the connection to the microscope, vaguely remember that I had heard that name recently, take a minute or two for the correct neurons to fire in my memory so that where I had heard the name could come clear to me and decide to increase the random information in my brain by looking him up and reading a bit on Wikipedia and what do I find there?  This:  "In A Short History of Nearly Everything (p. 236) Bill Bryson alludes to rumors that Vermeer's mastery of light and perspective came from use of a camera obscura produced by Van Leeuwenhoek."

Do you see the degrees of separation making one big circle in my little world?  Here is the chronology:

• I listen to A Walk in the Woods, by Bryson, narrated by McLarty
• I seek out more McLarty and read him.
• Some time later I read Girl With a Pearl Earring and hear of Von Leeuwenhoek (Man!  I hate typing that name!)
• Then I am back to McLarty with Art In America, again with the Von Blahblahblah.  Within one week!
• I check out Wikipedia and Bryson is connected to Von Whoosie-Whatsie, well, only in my mind because he mentions him in his book.
• In my mania of solitude and crazy I make more of this than should be made and having nobody home to share it with am forcing it on the few people that visit this little blog.

2010.  Fifty-two.  And she returns to her decent into insanity.

What!? It's Wednesday Again?!

I keep thinking of things to post, but then I keep working on the things to post and forgetting to take photos and then well, how boring is a post about stuff I say I am doing, yet have no proof of?

Last week I decided to have a little UFO Smackdown.  I have a basket with projects in it, small ones, and most of them are oooold.  At least several months and some a couple of years.  A partial first mitten, a partial first sock, a scarf.  Those were pulled out and Smacked Down!  First mitten?  Knitting complete, second mitten almost finished.  First sock?  Knitting complete, ends woven in.  Scarf?  Completed, ends (tons of flipping Silk Garden ends-stupid knots), woven in.  And because it was intended at the start (over a year ago) to go to the Red Scarf Project, I let the momentum pull me (okay, you'll see that it wasn't me, but you get the idea) all the way to the post office.  Hey, it may be a little late for this year, but they can use it next year if they want.  

• Pattern:  Noro Striped Scarf ala Jared Flood. Ravelry link.
• Yarn:  Noro Silk Garden in colors 84 and 47
• Needles:  Size 7
• Cast On:  February 7, 2008 (WHAT!  TWO YEARS!)
• Bound Off:  January 17, 2010

This almost didn't make it into the mail.  I have this thing, I can be going full force on something until I have one little hold up and WHAM!  It all stops and I move onto something with a path of less resistance while I overthink how to overcome some little obstacle.  (Wonder why you aren't seeing any completed cross-stitch snowmen?)  Well, I had a scarf and I had a pile of stuff to take to the post office and had a vision in my head about how it should be.  A label, a card, a gift card, stuff.  I spent an hour debating the label.  Make a label?  Which would have been a project all by itself that would have taken me hours to design and figure out?  Send without a label?  Draw one?  Meh.  Then it hit me.  Some brilliant person must have created one for download, right?  I head over to the Red Scarf Group in ravelry and, YES!  Somebody, an angel named Melissa, made it easy for me!  Print, sign, tape.  Done.  That lovely woman even created care tags.  I love her.  I dug a card out of my stash of cards (really, even though it was a corny card with some angel holding a heart, and I could have held this up by making a trip to the card store and finding a perfect card, which would have added time I didn't have and more decision making, my stash of stuff needs to get used) and wrote a quick note of encouragement.  Then, the gift card.  I must have gone back and forth over this one a billion times.  Knowing that the card may or may not end up with the scarf I was on the fence.  This one little added errand could have held this good deed hostage for days.  So I did what any good procrastinator learns to do.  Handed the project off to someone who won't put so much thought into it that he ends up paralyzed.  Not only did Pete head to Starbucks for a gift card, he took all of my mail to the post office AND a package to the Brown Store that needed to go UPS.  I'll bet he didn't spend a second over-thinking any bit of it.  Like which place to go first, what route is the easiest, which should be the last stop making it easiest to get to the highway on the way to a doctor's appointment.  See what it is like to be me?  I wonder what it is like to be so, what is the phrase?  Focused?  No, I can be focused.  Goal oriented?  I don't think it is that.  What is it that makes a guy so straight to the task?  Just do it. 

2010.  Ten.  A guy totally came up with that ad campaign.  Had it been me it would have been something more like, Just Do It.  But first think about it for a little while.  Then work out all of the options.  Then research any alternatives.  Then just do something else while you think about it some more.  Don't forget to get bogged down in the details.  After narrowing all of that down to a few practical ideas, go back and forth on those choices until you are just about to go crazy and it is the last minute at which point most of the decisions you have to make are eliminated because there just isn't time to execute them.  Finally, with all the doubt remaining, but no more time, hand it off to the guy who will have no problem with Just Do It.  

This Is Where I Decided To Begin

Snowmen.

Big and fluffy ones.

Teapots and tealights.

Salt and pepper shakers and teeny, teeny tiny snowmen.

And teapots and tealights, which is sort of funny when you think about it.  Lighting a candle or filling one with hot tea, but I like it.

This is a Mary Engelbreit set, a salt and pepper, teapot and sugar/creamer.  I'll bet you didn't think I was a Mary Engelbreit girl, did you?  All those dots and flowers and checks.  Well, here's the deal.  She is a little busy for me.  I have a couple of things around, but in my usual decorating you won't find a lot of it dripping off the shelves.  Except at Christmastime.  That is when my inner Mary gets realeased.  You'll love how I share that over the next week or so, but today is snowmen.  They come out with the Christmas decorations, but stay out for the duration of the winter, along with my snowflake stuff.  As collections go, mine is pretty modest, I mean, there are a few more than what are shown here, but not a lot. I haven't gone all hoarders with it.  Not with these.  The Mary Engelbreit set is my favorite.  There was a set of mugs that went with it, the Let It Snow mugs, and I don't have them yet (yes, I said yet).  I always thought I would be able to get them on ebay someday, but it appears the availability has dried up.  I will keep looking, though.

 

This old snowman is the most precious of the collection and lives out year-round.  My mom-mom, my mother's mom, had a snowman like this one that she gave to my mom.  It was a treasured holiday decoration that I remember her taking out every year.  I don't know the history of it, but I think it was some sort of "bonus with purchase" gift that she got, but that is just a guess.  It is a sugar/creamer, the bottom being the bowl that holds sugar and the top section is the creamer that is filled and dispensed through the top-hat.  It is extremely rare to find one with the shovel, which acts as a spoon, still intact, and this snowman is in excellent condition.  How do I know the comparative condition of these old snowmen?  I have owned a few since my mom made it her mission to find one for each of her kids.  And her sibs.  And her grandkids.  And any future progeny.  Or not, because I think she has made it her mission to own every one of these that still exist.  Woe to you if you are bidding against her on ebay.  You.Will.Lose.  The upside to this is I have been able to trade up to a snowman in great condition with a shovel.  Who knows how many snowmen are out there, and at this point, who knows how many are at my mom's house.  The last count I heard was a number over twenty.  That does not include the ones she has given to us kids and her sibs.  Yes, I know.  There is a television show about people like her and don't think I haven't been taking a critical look at how the crazy has been passed down.

Do you have a snowman collection?  Check this out.  Who knew?  I'm off to read..... 

So it began today and this is where I decided to start.  This is going to be fun.

2010, five.  There is a fine line between collecting and crazy and it might be a tight-rope walk I balance. Or not, we'll see. 

Leftovers, Day Two orThe Tipping Point.

It is just the way I work.  You know those things that even way into adulthood, those things about your personality that you just can't face as truth or keep trying to change?  Well, this is one of mine and I have learned (pretty recently, actually) that it is just best to go with it.  You see, with me there is usually a tipping point.  That one moment in time that in the reflecting on things can be identified as the point when it all tips.  Some little trigger sets something off in my brain and if I don't just run with it I will only be thinking of it constantly until I give in and go with that particular flow.  Probably not the best way to get things accomplished that actually need to be accomplished, but at least something gets done.

The catalyst for this tip was a skein of yarn and some fall colored felts.  I received as a little gift a skein of yarn from Barb Parry.  I can't find the tag, but it was one of her plyed yarns, probably the Wool & Alpaca Twist and the color was a dark orange, possibly the Sweet Potato?  Anyway, it isn't a color I would normally use so I thought it would be great as a gift of fingerless gloves or something for someone.  It sat around for a while and in moving things I placed it on top of a collection of wool felts that I got to make a little coin rug.  It rested there until....... The Tipping Point.  I was walking by one day and out of the corner of my eye I saw just how great it looked with those fall fabrics and that is when it hit me.  That yarn would make a great felted, stuffed pumpkin.

 

Or maybe two.

Then maybe another.

Run out of yarn?  No problem.  Shop the stash.

Shop the LYS.

Shop the stash for vines and stems, the dark green was left from my Witch's Hat and the light green was a swatch that I made when I recently knitted a sample sweater for Barb, I pulled that out and re-knit it.

I made eight before I ran out of yarn and vowed to purchase no.more.yarn.for.pumpkins! 

• Patterns:  Heavily modified versions of Pumpkins by Jordaina Paige, a free Knitty pattern and Munckin Pumpkins by Vikki Harding (ravelry link).
• Yarns: Foxfire Fiber Wool & Alpaca Twist (1 large, 1 small, 1 munchkin), Reynolds Lopi Lite (1 large, 2 small), Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted, color M280 (1 large and 1 small) and Foxfire Fiber Upland Wool & Mohair (for stems and vines).
• Needles:  Sizes 9 & 10?  I think?  I can't really remember
• Cast On:  Sometime in October, 2009
• Bound Off, Felted, Stuffed and Finished by November 25, 2009

I made a lot of modifications to the Jordaina Paige pattern.  It is written to be knit in separate wedges, sewn together and then felted.  I adapted the pattern to be knit in the round taking into account the stitches that would be lost in the seams and reworking the cast on and bind off to cinch in the edges a little bit more.  The Munchkin Pumpkin was knitted as written, but I used a stem and vine from the other pattern, which I worked as written.  The Foxfire Fiber and Brown Sheep yarns felted fabulously, the Lopi Lite felted well enough, but more stitch definition was left in the fabric than the others.  It is a great color though.

The patterns call for you to felt the pumpkins, stuff with plastic bags and tie them up tightly along the ridges (which I made by working purl stitches) to dry, creating the sections of the pumpkin.  While that worked, I wanted more definition so I wove a nylon thread along the ridges and tied them off at the top where they are hidden under the stems.  That is a step that might have been unnecessary, but didn't take long and I prefer the finished result.  Here is a photo of one pumpkin before I tied up on the left, you can compare it to the one it pulled up on the right.

The stems and vines were sewn on with the nylon thread and there might have been some glue gun action in there as well.  Whatever it takes, right?

I made eight of these in all, one went off in October to live with Gillian and the one pictured with the teapot above spends it days with a favorite Woolen Rabbit as part of a much belated birthday gift.

As I was working these up some people expressed some shocked surprise that I made these, and truth be told, it isn't my usual m.o. at all.  It was so much fun though, and I love the finished outcome.  These pumpkins looked great scattered around my house this Thanksgiving and I can't rule out the possibility of more pumpkins in the future.

 

I'll write out my modifications in detail on ravelry sometime this week.  I imagine there isn't a rush for felted pumpkins right now, but they will be there for next year, when I know you all will be felting a pumpkin patch of your own.

One hundred thirty-one.  Or day TWENTY-NINE!  So photogenic, that pumpkin patch of mine!

Sheep ChairsA New Blue BlogIt's Thursday and I'm Thankful

Wow, you people have strong opinions about the Sheep Chair!  I can just picture it in my sewing/fiber room, all set up as my spinning chair.  That'd be good, right?  Spinning from my sheep chair.  With the sheep overseeing my work.  And I just know that if I threw party and invited everyone I knew, you would see the sheep chair would be, fought over allll through the day.  Thank you for being a friend.

Yeah, so.  Typepad has introduced a new blogging format, Typepad Microblog.  It would be really cool if I understood the purpose well enough to explain it to you.  See, the thing is, I totally ignore this blog for long enough intervals that when I come around to post or change my content, sidebars, all that stuff..... I have not a flipping clue how to do it.  Usually I am too tired to figure it out.  There is this Typepad Profile thing, friends, communities, I have no clue how that works, although I set up a profile, I just don't know what to do with it now that I have it.  Follow?  What's follow? (I think I need a private lesson.)  And now they've added this microblog thing, but! it happened now, when I'm paying attention and I thought it was kind of cool.  So I thought I'd try it out and started another blog.  (I know it!  I can't remember to categorize my posts correctly and now this?!  Well, this one can go under  You Thought I Was Sane?)

World of Blue will be mini-posts about things I find around the internet.  Some of them will be blue.  I can see how cool this could be.  A blog about any topic you are really interested in, say, cute little kittens.  Everytime you come across one that you want to share with other cat-ladies people who like cute little kittens you are just a toolbar click away from spreading the love.  Or short-term, the month of December with Christmas traditions that you come across, or great gift ideas or sales...  It's free and from what I tell so far, pretty easy to set up.  I could have one for great knits, quilts, tutorials, sales, other shopping.  This could get out of hand. 

So the most recent five or ten (we'll see how it goes) posts will be linked over in the sidebar.  It would be cool if those links would have a thumbnail.  I'll suggest it to Typepad............

I hear you laughing.  Norma.  Cookie.  I mean you.

It's Thursday And I'm Thankful For.....

• Dragon Pearl Jasmine Tea
• Steelhead Trout.  Yum.
• Car battery chargers.
• The alarm clock feature on my cell phone which lets me set multiple alarms.  Love that thing.

One hunderd eighteen.  Or day NINETEEN!  Told you I would just leave it from now on. Oh, and I was just poking around the Six Apart site, what the heck is blogs.com?  vox?  Who has time to work or play anymore, too busy with my virtual communities and social networking!

Drive-by Blogging?

Is it wrong that I really want one of these?

One hundred seventeen.  Still day EIGHTEEN!

A Tale of 20 Fat Quarters(Plus 2 and a Backing and a Binding)Part Four orOver How Many Posts Can This Project Be Dragged orYou're Back For This AGAIN?!

Well, I guess you want to see what the backs look like, right?

There are so many ways to put a pillow together, the easiest is to cut a square the same size as the front, sew around leaving an opening for the pillow form and then hand sewing the opening closed.  It has it's drawbacks:  the hand-sewing for one (if you don't care for it) and the pillow is not as easy to remove as if you put a zipper there instead.  I mean, I would have no  problem picking out the sewing and re-doing it if I really needed to launder the pillow, but how often do people really launder these things anyway?

Another way is the way that Allison suggested in her post, make two sides to overlap, you have to hem the pieces, put them together and size them to the front, but then you just sew all around the pieces and stuff the pillow form in the opening.  All done.  The buttons to hold the opening closed are optional.  It is a little more work, not much, and you can always just pop the pillow form out and back in with no additional handwork.

I did both.  Why?  I was not offered choices.  The piece of zebra fabric I had was not big enough to cut, make hems and then overlap to leave the opening.  The rest of my scraps were not big enough to cover the back of the pillow all by themselves, so necessity being the mother of whatever it is, I had to make do and make up.  I totally love that I was able to center that forward facing zebra.  I didn't think it would make such an impact centered, but that zebra totally looks like he is gazing right atcha!   Either one of these pillows could be shown backside out, but the fronts are so cute, I can't imagine wanting to.

Why is it that you never see those stupid threads until your camera battery dies and you are so.over.taking.more.photos!

Closer-ups, you ask?  Here you go, stupid thread and all:

 

Oh, you must click to make them big (on my computer the big pictures are much better for some reason, always click here, always).  They are too cute!

Don't they look sweet with the quilt?

 

 

More photos?  Oh, Heck yeah! 

 

Prinna checks it out, because the old lady takes care of her Gillian.

 

The old woman approves.

Would you just look at the cute label I made?  More scrap usage!

So, whaddya think?  Am I finished with these scraps yet?  Do I have any left?  Well, yes I do.  Some with Wonder-Under and even more without.

Oh! The things I can do! The ideas that pop into my head! I am a woman obsessed, I have thought of a couple of things, but I have more than one kid and the others are starting to think I'll never do anything for them. I just cannot decide, keep? Chuck. Keep? Chuck.

KEEP! You might not have seen the last of these scraps yet.

One hundred eleven.  Or day THIRTEEN!  Seriously, I think I may need an intervention, I half expect to walk out of the sewing room into a gathering of my closest friends and family, there to force me to face my addiction.

It's NOVEMBER!!!

 

And I said somebody was keeping a little secret, didn't I?  Well, a couple of years ago I challenged myself, a sporadic blog poster, to post every day during the month of November, 2007.  Whoa!  Some challenge it turned out to be.  The WWW was treated (or bored to tears) to nearly fifteen straight months of daily posts from Knitting the Blues.  Who knew?  I'm thinking I might be able to do it for one month again.  Won't it be fun?  To that end I have saved a bunch of things that I have been doing and plan on dragging them painfully out for as many posts as I can.  For instance, who is that little secret keeping witch, anyway?

 

Ninety-nine.  Or Day 1.  Still crazy after all these years.

Insert Random Haven't Blogged In Ages Title Here.Make It A Good One, They Bug the Crap Out Of Me.

No offense.

Something is off a little with Typepad.  That is my first impression as I begin to compose.  It must really have been a while since I logged in.  To have forgotten that, I mean.

Anyway, I had totally intended to at least join Susan in the "Five Things on Friday" posting, and in my mind I really did.  You mean you can't read my mind?  Hmmm....

Alright, now Typepad is just bugging the sh*t out of me.  Why do I have to double enter to get to a new paragraph?  I didn't used to have to.  (Yes.....I am in the Rich Text compose screen, because I know one of you will assume that I haven't figured that out.)

Yawn.  I'm bored.  Bored, bored, bored.  Aren't you?  The thoughts in my head bore me, the internet bores me, my knitting bores me (okay, not my knitting), Facebook:  yawn, blog:  yawn.   Ravelry:  Yawn.  I'm in  a bit of a lull with the internets these days, it has happened before and as it has before, a spark of interest will return to my cold heart and I'll be all back into it.  Of course, I have still managed to waste a.lot.of.time on the boring internets.  There was the day last week when I could have gone to work, but instead I spent hours (really HOURS! people) looking for sea glass earrings and beads on Etsy.  Etsy doesn't seem to bore me as much as the rest of it all.  All I got for that day, in the end, was a feeling of a wasted life and no sea glass earrings.  I liked too many and couldn't decide so I shut the computer down and wasted time on something else I am quite sure.  I can't remember what, but I'm darned sure it didn't involve planning a meal for my family.  Yawn.

All this boredom also doesn't mean that I haven't been reading your blog.  Yours, too!  And yours, yours, sometimes yours.....nope, not yours, probably yours, over there in the corner.  If not yours, it is only because I probably don't know about it yet.  I might have even left a comment on.......no, not you, or you.  Maybe you.  Definitely yours!  All of this maybe reading and rarely commenting means that on the rare occasion that I post I am pretty sure the rest of you are either a)probably not reading anymore.  Can't blame you, I bore myself, b)not commenting because even though you find me almost read-worthy you can't find a single thing worth saying about what I have written or c)treating me as I treat others.  Mind you, this is not a whine or a tactic to weedle out a comment, I am right with you on all of those things and they are all legitimate.  I haven't a feeling about them one way or the other.  It is what it is.  Nobody knows that better than me.  I.am.so.bored. 

Thankfully my boredom comes when there are plenty of reasons to be doing other things.  Sometimes (when I am not spending too much time on the internet-which I really have been-and I can only blame the weather some of the time) I am doing other things.  Knitting, spinning, sewing or sunning being chief among them.  I have a shawl (!) to show, but I haven't photographed it yet.  I'd show you my tan, but I wouldn't want to make y'all jealous, although it isn't much of one considering the weather.  (Yes, I know, I promise that my face never sees the sun, and while I use sunscreen on the rest of me at the start of the day.......)  How about some interior, hmmm, design seems to supercilious a word to describe what I have been doing, but there has been a teeny bit of sprucing up to the game fiber room.

We have a large room at the back of our house that leads out to a three season porch and the backyard.  It's main attraction is a pool cutting table, there is a cat-hair covered couch, some book shelves filled with knitting, quilting, sewing, needlepoint and spinning books, containers with fiber and yarn and my sewing cabinet.  One corner houses a computer table which for a lot of years held the desktop computer that the girls and I shared for a long time.  For one reason or another (leaving for college, the continual crashing of the desktop computer) we have all ended up with laptops.  Now, that corner of the room never seemed to feel organized, no matter what I did.  When it was being used on a regular basis as the computer spot there was always a mess there.  Computer paraphanelia, printers, multiple towers, manuals, software discs, hundreds of miscellaneous disks, cartridges, paper for the printer, wires and cables (in use and not) homework messes, spills, plates left, fast food debris, you name it, it could get really disgusting there.  As soon as I had my own laptop I pretty much ignored it until we might be hosting company and then would flip out in an attempt to organize it all and, organization not being one of my natural talents, it just never would be neat.  Even after we all had laptops, the printer was there so homework would still be done there with all of above messes piling atop another atop another. 

The room had been pretty much closed up for the winter unless I went in there to sew or retrieve something, so this spring when we started leaving the door open and using it again that corner sent me over the edge.  I threw almost everything away because I was pretty sure that software for a computer that we hadn't owned in years and manuals for ancient programs had decided their new mission in life was to send me over the brink of sanity.  I cleared and dusted and scrubbed and vaccuumed and transformed that corner to a corner of nothingness.  All that was left was the internet box, a router and a printer along with that computer table.  While it was clean it still was icky and Pete was set to destroy the computer table and I was set on destroying the printer etc. when it struck me that I could make it look nice!  I do that!  It is easy for me.

Of course, what started out as two quick little table cloths......  I found a crappy little end table in the basement, made a tablecloth for that to hide the internet cables and router and put the printer there.  While Pete really thought dumping the computer table was the best idea, I had in short order crammed sewing junk under there, interfacings, patterns, cotton batting and fabric scraps.  Not prepared to lose the new storage space OR purchase furniture to replace it at this time, I went on a fabric dive at work and found these.  The original plan?  The check for a tablecloth on the small table, the stripe would be skirts with velcroed bands to stick to the computer table.  I can never do anything that easy.

First I thought a contrast welt would be so.cute. on the tablecloth which, by the way, has only three sides to make it simple work to run all the cables and crap behind it.  Then I thought, "wouldn't it be just adorable to have a bias band on the bottom of the skirt for the computer table?"

 

If there is a way to turn a quick and dirty project into a full scale production I will find it.  But man, it tickles me to no end, every time I go in there, to see the transition in that corner.

Formerly a scene of chaos and disaster, it is now neat and organized and a little sewing/quilting center.  Well, there may be a little bit of chaos left underneath. At least it is hidden, right?  In case you are wondering: sticky velcro .  It is sort of doing the job it claims it should (super sticky, holds all of your decorating jobs!), but I think we may be stapling the velcro to the table for security.  There are a couple of other cute spots in that room, I'll have to get photos of them as well.  All the better to bore YOU with, right?

THIS IS YOUR WARNING TO AVERT YOUR EYES OR MOVE ALONG TO ANOTHER BLOG IF YOU ARE BURN SQUEAMISH!

In the category of Lessons I Cannot Learn The First Several Times They Are Taught let this serve as a lesson to STAY AWAY FROM THE PIPES ON A MOTORCYCLE!!!!!!!

That blister measures about an inch and a quarter across, but funnily (because there has to be something funny, right?) doesn't hurt all that much.  There is the occasional sharp pang of pain, and I do not look forward to the inevitable....  The bruise is fairly spectacular as well, but that lesson never learned is the DON'T WALK INTO THE DOOR TO THE DISHWASHER or QUIT LEAVING IT OPEN TO BEGIN WITH, THEY WILL NEVER GET THAT IT HAPPENS TO BE THEIR INVITATION TO PUT THEIR STUFF IN IT ANYWAY!

In happier news, I went with pink polish and white polka dots.  Of course the lesson unlearned and showcased in this photo is TAKE BOTH SANDALS OFF WHEN SITTING IN THE SUN SO YOUR FOOT LOOKS TAN INSTEAD OF JUST DIRTY. 

Seventy-eight.  The unlearned lessons.  I'm rich with them.  I wonder how many I've brought from past lives, never learned yet.  And then, just how many will follow me on into future lives.  It is a scary thought.

This post is filled with sarcasm and maybe to some, whit.  I am not in a bad mood or cranky or anything, so don't be taking me the wrong way.  Just, ho-hum, yawn........

Once upon a time there was an insulated cold drink cup that I loved.  And then lost.  The links in that post have long expired, but let me tell you, as much as I loved that cold cup there was no way I was spending in the $70-100 range for a cold cup.  No.Way.  (I seriously thought about it though, I kept justifying it by dividing the number of uses I would get into the price I might pay, but sanity overruled.)  A friend or two (possibly more) searched all of the Starbucks they came across, but there was not a cold cup to be found at regular retail prices.

Until now.

I have been frequently checking into Starbucks this spring, waiting for them to introduce this season's cold cup and as recently as Monday I couldn't find one.  I was actually thinking that it was kind of late and that maybe they weren't doing one this year, but then Gillian called me and said that she got an email alerting her to the news that the cup had been reintroduced this spring.  She did the internet version of a run to the website (immediately clicked on the link) only to find out that they were already sold out.  Already!  I couldn't get to a Starbucks at that minute, so I called Pete and sent him to check our local store. 

SUCCESS!!!!!

Now that I have procured one for myself, one for each of my kids and one for the one I will break, I can share the news.  AND!  This year it comes in a grande and a VENTI size!  Gillian found a venti in NYC and got it for me for Mother's Day.  In my usual obsessive nature I am tempted to buy every one I can get my hands on and hoard them.  If you want one, you should get yours before I get to it!

Sixty-one.  Now brewing:  Iced Tea!

Finish AND Frog It Friday?

Contemplating this post yesterday I figured I would be showing y'all an in progress sock with a little story about how I rarely succumb to second sock syndrome.  I was going to write about how I am usually motivated enough to finish both socks in a row, even if they are not the primary project of the moment.  Then I was going to show this pair of socks, the first one knitted back in the spring of 2007 (I think), started on my way out the door to a school concert where I needed some plain, able to knit in the dark, stockinette stitch.  Then I was going explain that occasionally I can be in the middle of the pair of socks and other things become priorities. New babies, contract knitting, birthdays, sick friends, whatever, all conspire to get in the way and the sock may be forgotten until searching through the stash for something and it pops to the surface as it patiently waits its turn for my attention. 

Having taken this sock out last week to demonstrate the short row heel and toe for a student in one of my knitting classes, I had knit the foot and rounded to the cuff and thought it would be the perfect knitting for a day in Boston with my mom.  At that time I figured I would be posting a partially finished cuff and proof that I was "finishing" not "frogging" for Finish or Frog It Friday.  Things being what they were, and hours longer in the hospital than anticipated, I actually finished the sock!  Who knew!? 

Aren't the stripes pretty?

Unfortunately, the story does not end there.  Once upon a time I posted about my own personal version of Second Sock Syndrome. (That last one has two of my favorite-to-this-day pairs of socks in it.)  It has little to do with not finishing a pair of socks and more to do with my inability to knit a second sock at the same gauge as my first sock.  Drives.Me.CRAZY!!!!!! 

These two sock cuffs are the same number of rows.  While I was willing to live with the striping being different on the cuffs (even though I like the second one better-not that it matters, once they are on my legs you can't even see the striping, they aren't that pretty on as they are off), I don't know if I can live with a difference of almost an inch in the length.  There is a part of me that wants to work the EZ sewn bind off and call it a day, but this little niggling voice in my head is telling me I might not be able to live with that.  UGH.  To be me.  It isn't always easy.  So Finish and Frog It may be the story of this day.

And just because this gave me a little giggle:

My little argyle ball of yarn.  Hee.

Thirty-eight.  Sigh.  Maybe I'll mark these as finished by next week.