Another FO

Finally. Shapely Tank II is done. Pictures later, perhaps. Or not...it looks just like the green one only red. What was interesting about this one was that the row gauge was quite different from the green one, so I ended up with 16 fewer rows to knit, which was nice because I was thoroughly sick of it by finishing time. I hate making the same thing twice.

Lat night I went to a play. I haven't gone to a play in years. My friend and neighbor invited me to see The Triumph of Love at the California Shakespeare Festival Theater. This play was written in the 1630's in France and is a sort-of typical French comedy of errors love story. I would outline the plot, but it is too complicated to describe. To be honest, I wasn't really expecting to enjoy it very much, but the production was wickedly funny, and we laughed like loons. In addition, we were celebrating the birthdays of my friend's mother and sister-in-law, so we came in on back-stage pass tickets, which included wine and appetizers on arrival, question and answer visit with two of the actors, back stage tour, and a "picnic" boxed dinner (surprisingly tasty).

Twp picnic tables over I spotted A KNITTER! Delightful woman making a lace T in gorgeous yarn. Naturally, I had to introduce myself, fondle her fiber, and mention our local knitting group.

All in all a very satisfying evening.

It's On Its Way

The Dish Rag Tag box, that is. To Steffanie in Oregon. Steffanie, I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I did.

I've Been Tagged

NOTE from Aug 10, 2007 -- I was seriously short of sleep when I posted yesterday and typed "Sandy" instead of "Susan". I am deepsly sorry for messing up your name, Susan, and I have corrected it below (and included a link to your blog).

By a Dish Rag, no less. Remember Dish Rag Tag?


Today I received this package from Susan in Utah.

One skein of Sugar & Cream in Hot Green, one of S&C in Summer Splash, a bottle of nail polish in a color that I don't yet have (Susan, how did you know???). And the most adorable sheep I have ever seen, which turned out to be a retractable measuring tape. Measuring tapes are another fetish of mine -- I never have enough, and this one is absolutely precious! Oh! And, of course, a beautiful, beautiful dish rag. This one is almost too beautiful to use. I am humbled by your skill and excellent taste in colors.

In the meantime, while waiting for the package to come, I cranked out another dish rag for myself, honoring the state of my birth (my photo skills are not great, but this is California).

I'm Baaack!

Blogger/Google has this new robot system that is designed to detect Spamblogs. It is not perfect. It decided that my blog was one of these and took it down. Three days of frustration later, I got it back.

I considered leaving Blogger altogether, but I really like the look of the blog and am used to how everything works. Also, I was not happy about losing everything I had posted and starting from scratch.

My biggest gripe is that it is extremely difficult to get hold of anyone at Blogger. Did I say difficult? Nearly impossible. There is no email link for tech support or trouble shooting, no telephone #, no live chat. If the Big Boys can do it (you know, Microsoft, Ebay, ATT, Comcast, Adobe, Symantec), why can't Blogger and Google?

Oops

Just looked at my posting from yesterday.

$10 is not exactly a steal for a used book, is it? Unless it is Principals of Knitting.

I actually paid $1 for the Rowan book.

I really have to upgrade my typing skills.

What to do with the Leftovers

What to do with leftover dishrag yarn. Knitting dishcloths is the ultimate easy fix. I have made a lot of them. However, there is always something left over. Being the frugal person that I am, I just can't stand to throw it out, so I accumulate little balls of this and that, look at them from time to time, and wonder why. Yes, I could combine them to make some kind of patchwork dishcloth, but I don't find this very appealing, and I hate knots and things in the cloth.

The Summer 2007 issue of Knitters Magazine has a design called the Beach Band Sweater (or something like that, I don't have the thing here at my desk), using Takhi Cotton Classic worsted weight yarn. It is OK, nothing to really get me excited, and nothing that I would personally care to wear. BUT some very clever person, who probably had accumulated lots little balls of leftover cotton yarn from making the sweater itself and felt guilty tossing them, took the basic patterns and designed a small shoulder bag, which can be downloaded from the Knitters website.

This is a quick thrill, friends. In less than 1 week I had finished the bag body, bottom, and strap and pretty well demolished the dishrag leftovers:



Yesterday I sewed it together, wove in the ends, and voila!



I do not spend a lot of money on myself (especially now that I am committed to using up stash before any significant yarn acquisitions). I had a bunch of Border's Bucks I needed to spend use this month (like $15, which is pretty useful). And I got a 25% off coupon from somewhere that was about to expire. I suppose I could have saved the bucks for the Harry Potter coming out over the weekend, but I could not use the coupon for that. Behold the reward for being such a good girl. Lovely, lovely, lovely.




Our local public library has a table where they sell donated books for cheap. I scored this Rowan book for the princely sum of $10.

Shapely Tank

The Shapely Tank is all finished. It still needs a little blocking, but it is done and fits like it was made for me. Great pattern. So great that I have cast on another one, in a cotton blend.






When it comes to contests and/or knit-alongs, I am a day late and a dollar short. Usually miss them by a mile (or am not at all interested in the item-along). But I stumbled on the Yarn Miracle website and saw a button for Dish Rag Tag. Perfect for me. I love dishrags. I knit them all the time. Limited to 200 participants, this group is now closed, but it should be a blast.





Finally, a touch of summer in the persons of DH and DD2.

Overheard in a yarn shop recently

(not by me, but related to me by a trustworthy source):

There was a woman at a table knitting a blanket. For her daughter. She mentioned that the blanket required 30 balls of X---- yarn. Cost per ball: $17.00.

That's a $510 blanket. I am weak at the knees.

Another woman sitting near her asked whether she ever knit with cashmere. Apparently not, as she said that cashmere was much too expensive.

... And the Livin' Is Easy

The past two weeks have just flown by. Saturday before last I spent a lovely afternoon with Ceallach Knits and the former Chocolate and Raspberries. We had a royal lunch of Shrimp & Crab Quesadillas and Watermelon Margaritas before embarking on a mini yarn crawl. We only hit two places. First was Big Sky Knitting in Lafayette. This is the nose bleed of yarn shops, but OMG what gorgeous stuff they have. Didn't buy anything there but looked and drooled for over an hour.

Then back to reality for a stop at Michael's, which is more my line (price-wise). I broke my yarn fast to take advantage of a couple of sale items: Lion Brand Microspun in Lime and Royal Quick Crochet Thread in Cranberry, both destined for the Shapely Tank (free pattern on the White Lies Designs website). I need some more tank tops for summer, and this is a great design. The Lime one is 2/3's finished. Yeah, yeah, I know -- but the Knit from your Stash rules DO let you fall off the wagon ONE TIME. (What? I bought 2 yarns? Hello! Ahem! By the time the first tank is finished, the cranberry will have been in storage long enough to be classed as stash, so there).

This last week was also the last week of school, and DS#3 was promoted from 8th grade to high school (and a close thing that was, too). Naturally the ceremony was held outside, and naturally it was the hottest day we have had so far this year, and it goes without saying that there was almost no seating provided, there was no shade, and the thing went on way, way too long.

I am thinking of donating to the school one of those gong things on a timer -- you get 15 seconds to make your speech, give out your award, whatever. Then the bell sounds and the next person goes on. The whole shebang would be over in record time. If you absolutely have to have the long speeches, throw a private party afterwards.

Another option would be to hand each parent an ice-cold pitcher of Watermelon Margaritas and a folding chair upon arrival. The ceremony can poke along as usual, but who would care? I guarantee that the applause would be extremely enthusiastic. And everyone would join in singing the School Song.

Running Wild

I am by nature a conservative dresser. Grey and black, well-loved and well-worn, figure large in my wardrobe. Make-up? A little mascara, dab of blush, lip gloss, I'm done in 30 seconds or less. I hate polish on my fingernails.

My otherwise supressed wild streak comes out at my toes -- toenails that is. New color every week. Here is the current line-up. As a rule they sit in a prominent place on my dresser, where I can see them from my bed. Just looking at them makes me happy.

A closer look at the blues, greens, and coppers

The red, purple, pink and white selection

This week's toes are purple.

I'm a Felting Fool

Finished the bag! I knitted a gusset using the navy yarn and attaching it to both sides as I knitted (no sewing up for me). Then I took the rest of the colored scraps, knotted them together at random, and knitted two long pieces of i-cord, threaded them through, and tied knots to make 2 handles. Next came the felting/fulling part. I have never felted anything (on purpose). I tried the careful way (washing machine with old bath towels, checking every couple of minutes), but some colors did well, some did not. Since I did not have a particular size in mind, I threw caution to the winds. Luckily, I have a teenage son who only wears jeans. Four pairs of jeans, lowest possible water setting, hot wash with longest possible cycle, cold rinse, spin cycle and --

One side

The other side

It's beach-bag size and should hold a lot.

I had a skein of Colinette Skye, Aran weight, which I scored at a sale years ago. Knitting Daily had a really cute felted bag, Amanda's Squatty Sidekick. Pretty good fit, except that the pattern called for 200 yards of yarn and I had 150. This is an easy pattern to size down, and it knitted up really quickly. Pulled DS's jeans out of the dryer for an instant re-play of the above. Stuffed a handtowel inside to help it shape while drying. When dry I will find a really nice button for the closure.

DS probably has the cleanest jeans in this part of the county.

I continue stash busting with another circular dishcloth.

Have a Safe & Fun Holiday

I have finished the front of my tote bag:







I have also finished the back:




The patterns is called Roundabouts, also from those clever mathematicians at Woolly Thoughts.

The next step is to make the gusset and join front to back, decide on handles, and felt the whole thing.

More Curves on the Horizon

This is the Curve of Pursuit as of this morning.

I think this pattern is extremely cool. I doubt that I have enough yarn to make it into an afghan, and I am not really wild about woolen knitted cushion covers. Now I'm thinking TOTE BAG, with this on one side and some other geometric pattern on the other. All using the leftovers from two Philosophers Wool sweaters. I have never before made a tote, but I am a Bag/Purse Ho. You just can't have too many.

The rest of the yarn I have to work with -- a goodly amount of navy, copper, and coral, and bits and pieces of everything else. Copper will be the next color used, then finish with navy. The coral is too bright and pink for this design. It will be a major player on the reverse side.






The round washcloth from stash. Nice design, so I am doing another one in orange from stash. It looks way more complicated than it is, although I have sightly modified some of the original instructions to make them more user-friendly.

I realize that, in an earlier post, I may have been a trifle unfair to You-Can't-Fix-Stupid Brando. Made him look like a total punk, which he is. Here is a different side of him, a kinder, gentler, and quite decorative Brando, guardian to DH snoozing on the sofa.

Catch-Up & the Curve of Pursuit

I have put the shawl aside for a few days. It is a good thing to do when in the middle of a project that requires a ot of concentration, not to mention eye strain.

I took a little rest to make a lovely circular cloth from a free pattern on the web. Instructions are nice a clear, although I prefer working from a chart. However, each row is pretty short, so I rarely got lost in the middle of things.

I bought Mason-Dixon Knitting when it first came out, and every time I opened the book, I went straight to the picture of the ultimate log cabin afghan -- you know the one I mean. The blue one. The wierd, curvy one. The one lacking a pattern. The one from Woolly Thoughts. I was obsessed with it. It haunted my dreams. I had to knit that afghan.

This weekend I (finally) found the on-line order form. The pattern comes in two versions -- the afghan and a cushion size. There was a notation that the cushion pattern was the basis for the afghan, and that the cushion pattern could be used and expanded for that purpose. This would not have made much difference except for 2 things:

1. Pattern and designers are in the UK, and the afghan pattern has to be mailed from there (It is a booklet). Not terribly expensive, GBP 4 + postage. However, postage from the UK is a mysterious item, and the exchange rate isn't all that wonderful, either. And you have to wait for it to arrive.

2. You can order the same from Amazon.com, but the price is higher, and unless you are ordering a bunch of stuff and get free shipping, postage and handling are almost as much as the item itself. And you have to wait for it to arrive.

HOWEVER, the cushion pattern can be received as a pdf document by email, costs GBP 2, no postage, no wait. It arrives in a very timely fashion in your email, along with a very nice note from Pat Ashford, one of the designers. And I really don't think that expanding a cushion-size pattern to afghan-size is going to be all that difficult, even for a mathematics-challenged person like me.

April Showers

I am not much of a gardener. I have a live and let live outlook on yard work. I have been told that I have a "black thumb." I can kill anything. Some things grow in spite of my efforts; lots of things don't. And the area where we live is renowned for its blue clay soil (slippery when wet, cement when dry), voracious snails and slugs, droughts, very hot summers, and general cussedness, garden-wise.

This having been said, I present my 2007 flower garden.

Not too impressed? Don't like my designer planters (is that a laundry detergent bucket)? Well, check out these cala lilies and marigolds

Begonias

Pansies

Heliotrope and dianthus

My favorites are the calas. I have them in flame

Rose

And white

Still Kntting Away

On that shawl, that is. I am on row 76 of the second repeat.

I would post a picture, but, really, it looks just like the last photo, only longer.

Something You Can't Fix

Yesterday my youngest son decided to wash the travel trailer. Naturally cleaning an object of this size requires using the garden hose. The Gang of Three was with him.

Micky quickly got out of the way (one smart dog!)

Franklin watched from a distance (another smart dog!):

Brando (sigh) loudly and viciously attacked the hose, water, mud, scrub brush, over and over and over again :

As Ron White says, you just can't fix stupid.

The lights are on, but there is nobody home.

How Abnormal Am I?

Yes, silly, I know.

You Are 44% Abnormal

You are at low risk for being a psychopath. It is unlikely that you have no soul. You are at medium risk for having a borderline personality. It is somewhat likely that you are a chaotic mess. You are at low risk for having a narcissistic personality. It is unlikely that you are in love with your own reflection. You are at high risk for having a social phobia. It is very likely that you feel most comfortable in your mom's basement. You are at medium risk for obsessive compulsive disorder. It is somewhat likely that you are addicted to hand sanitizer.

How Abnormal Are You?

What Rhymes With...

My DH has very little patience with these uppity 'Modern Women'. Part of this is his age -- he is from a completely different generation. Part of this is from his upbringing -- his mother was the Perfect German Wife (or so everyone thought) of a Perfect German Husband. The poor man (my DH, that is) has two extremely modern daughters and a wife who decided, when she turned 50, that there is no reason that she/they have to take any shit from anyone. Several years ago he started referring to elder DD as Bitch #1 and to younger daughter as Bitch #2. In all fairness, the titles were/are merited. In recent months they have been demoted to Bitches # 2 & #3. Who is now Bitch #1?

MOI!

And I am proud to say that I have earned it!

Check It Out

Chocolate and Raspberries has told me that my baby hats will be featured for Worldless Wednesday. Check it out tomorrow.

I am now on Row 59 of the Faux Russian Shawl. That is Row 59 of 96 of the first repeat. The pattern has 5 1/2 repeats. This shawl is going to take a looooong time to finish. It's not all that difficult a pattern, but I only seem to find time of a row here and a row there, and, even with an enlarged chart and total silence, I am having keeping track of where I am. New glasses are in order, I think.

But it is a really gorgeous pattern, and I love the way the edging moves around the corners and up the sides.

Detail of the center (sorry for the blur, this is the best version I had).