Dropping By

When you move to a small neighborhood everyone drops by to say Hi and to check you out.

Knock knock

Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Let's sniff noses.
This is the first time Sumi-e has seen a cat since I got him as a tiny tiny kitten. Look at the bristly tail. He's not sure he likes having neighbors.


And what busy bodies. They just sit and watch us for hours. We are the new kitty tv reality show.
We seem to have good ratings with as many as 4 cats tuning in. But I wonder, they seem to be compelled to leave poo on that roof they are sitting on. Everyone is a critic.

Happy Winter Solstice

Today the sun hugs the horizon.
Solstice" is derived from the Latin phrase for "sun stands still. It will appear that the sun raises and sets in the same spot for several days.
The solstices occur twice a year because Earth is tilted by an average of 23.5 degrees as it orbits the sun—the same phenomenon that drives the seasons.

Throughout history the winter solstice has been celebrated as the return of summer sunlight. Here is to longer days and new beginnings.

Settled In

I have moved, moved, move a lot of times in my life to the point that my princess dream is to never move again. Ever. But this time was not to stay in a place just because I'm done moving. No, the hole in the ceiling still wasn't fixed, the rent was raised, and I was sick and tired of it and frankly couldn't afford it anymore. So when an importunity to leave presented its self I took it.

Usually I can point to a moment in a move and say "That! That was the most sucky part of the move" Listing just the moves in this decade; 2000 it was loading a too small Uhaul in 100+ degree heat and having to leave things behind. 2002 it was driving 12 hours by myself with a dog and 2 rabbits to a home I now owned but had never seen. (That move wasn't so bad so the bad point wasn't all that bad either.) 2005 it was unloading in a snowstorm and an emergency trip to the vet for Joey's broken tail. 2006 it was Joey growing a new tumor before our eyes as we loaded the truck. That was another trip to the vet and 3 more months of chemo.

This move had none of that, or rather all of it. There was no one thing worse than the others because it all sucked. I even had the chance to take Joey to the emergency room again. This time it was the night before loading the truck and for an abscess in his jaw. He had surgery for that a few days later.

But it's over and we are settled in. The boxes are unpacked and it's feeling like home.

Cheap A$$ Swap

I revived my box in the mail from a Cheap A$$ Secret Pal Swap. The goal is to send a nice package to your pal for very little outlay of cash by stash diving, looking around your home, and some shopping. Thank you sdmisha. This is a truly fantastic.

Here is an overview of what was in the box.
The gummy bears are missing since I already ate them before getting out the camera. Yumm
I didn't know that Berroco made a sock yarn. It's the same composition of Berroco Comfort that I just love using for kids sweaters. Right away I cast on the navy yarn to be a baby sweater for Christmas, or rather New Year giving. A brand new baby boy will be very happy.
Lotion and a calendar, both very handy to have around. I've already hung the calender over my desk. It cuts down on the stress not seeing how many days of knitting are left before Christmas.Squeee. I've lusted after some Harrisville yarn for about forever now. I love how it's made. I love that it's crunchy and squooshy and everything a good rustic wool yarn should be. I love the heathered colors, especially this color Seagreen.

My SP must have done a lot of sleuthing to know me so well. Getting 2 yarns, one that I want to cast on right away (the Comfort) and one that I want to stash almost as trophy yarn (Highland) is a very good gift indeed.

Every winter package needs coffee and chocolate. No, every knitting package needs coffee and chocolate. A festive chocolate peppermint coffee and an organic dark chocolate bar.
A close up of the chocolate is needed. It had orange zest and lots of spices in it. It was so dark and rich and spicy with lots of fresh citrus taste. It's a truely splended chocolate.
This is the head and below is the tail of one of the knitted Whale cat toys. Sumi-e stole one and then the other before I got to them in the photo shoot. I think he likes them.Finally to round out an awesome package is a nice note form my SP and a batch of pretty note cards. Thank you sdmisha.Sumi-e after a hard day of playing with catnip whales.

Jumping on The Bandwagon

I finished my Clapotis just like 13,157 other people. I resisted the urge when it first came out in 2004. I actually thought it looked stupid and boring. Then I saw a few in person and they were pretty cool.

This September everywhere I looked people were knitting them. 3 were being knitted at the knitting guild meeting, one was being knit at my knitting group, and they all looked so nice. When I saw this sock yarn but I didn't want to make socks I knew right away what I did want to make. I bought the yarn and sat down on the LYS couch and asked for a print out of the pattern. The knitter sitting next to me just whipped hers out of her bag and handed it to me.

I started knitting it and I showed it off at my spinning group and the next thing I know they are showing up at show and tell there too. The bandwagon is making its second turn around.
These are perhaps my worst photos ever. It's so hard to capture the purple/green color of the yarn. Cameras have a hard time with red and, apparently, purple/green.
Look at the ripples. According to my French to English dictionary clapotis means lapping. The lapping waves of the sea.

Just look at it.

So I thought it would be fun to pull out my other bandwagon knits. This is fitting since the Swallowtail of the last post is very much a bandwagon knit. I have a few more on the needles right now.


FLS (February Lady Sweater, so popular that it's no longer spelled out). What a sweet knit. It's in time out because this is an easy sweater to make too big. I knew that and I think I over compensated and made it too small. I'm not ready to deal with that.
Monkey socks. This is my second pair. Bandwagon knits are usually popular for being charming. Monkey fall directly in that category. Fast to knit, hard to put down, and just difficult enough to make a knitter feel cleaver without actually stressing any brain cells. Perfect. Perfect enough to knit twice. The yarn, however, is not perfect. These are in time out for splitty kinky yarn that is fiddly to handle. This yarn is for the epitome of the bandwagon knitting, Rouge. One of these days I'll cast on.

The Best Knit Ever

Girasol is finally big enough to go on circular needles.
To get those needles I had to finish this.
Swallowtail Shawl out of my hand spun silk.

I kept on running out of yarn and having to spin more. That lead to the variation in the color and the reason that it took a year and a half to knit. The actually knitting took very few days. It's impossible to put down.
It's so soft. It's not very lustrous because the base fibers are bleached tussah, but the shawl flows around my body like water. There's nothing like silk.
Every time I look at it or touch it my insides fizz with happiness. It's that good.

Random Acts of Kindness

Look what surprised me in the mail today!
Someone I barely know, that has never met me, but knows I'm having a hard time right now sent me yarn and some smiles. Right out of the blue! I'm amazed and touched she took time to make up a package so nice and pretty for me.

Thank you, bluecanary. Blessings to you and yours. (((hugs)))

that's 1600 yrds of laceweight merino dyed with onion skins

2 Hours of Knitting

That cute little triangle shows 2 hours knitting
I'm taking a class at The Studio and we are knitting a lace project together. Girasole by Brooklyn Tweed in Silky Alpaca.
I learned a fiddly new cast on that will make the center hole disappear. I learned that the pattern works out at the end of the row stop and count anyway. I got a good ways in and counted for the first time since casting on. I had a lace repeat too many. The 8 stitches I was off there would grow to about 64 stitches off in the final piece. Add to that the fact that other facets of the shawl wouldn't fit I chose to rip it out and start all over. That means I had to take another 5 or 6 tries to get the fiddly cast on to work.
The ruined pink sweater is now very nice non-ruined pink yarn. I can't wait to knit it again. I guess I need to reset the stash counter. Hmmmm.

Another hmmmm. I have poison ivy on my neck. How does a person get poison ivy on their neck in October? That's a rhetorical question. I can think of many ways a person could get poison ivy on their neck in October but I didn't do any of them.

@*#& Moths %#*

We grow moths big and furry around here.
Look what Sumi-e did to my sweater.
And here too. This sweater made from a nice minimally processed wool yarn, Beaverslide, that was innocently sitting in my hand wash laundry basket.
Bad kitty. Bad, bad, bad kitty.

Good dogie sleeping in the sunny yarn pile. Joey's never ate a sweater.
My Winter Hoodie out of Eco yarn that I started last year is all knitted and blocked. I hope it's dry by tomorrow (I washed it 3 days ago) so I can take it to knitting and learn how to sew in a zipper. I have big plans for this sweater. I love this yarn. It smells like raw fleece when it gets wet. I love that sheepy scent.

I've picked up my EZ Nalgar again. But it's no longer a Nalgar. I was thinking that the fair isle band I wanted to do would be too bulky under the sleeves in an aran weight yarn. So it was put into time out. I received new inspiration from Made in Brooklyn and I only had to add a few stitches to turn it into a Huron. Since I picked it back up a sleeve is done and it's time to cast on the second.

Lately I've caught myself thinking. I'll do that tomorrow or I'll do that when I move or I'll do that when I'm working. With that change I'll change me too. I've gone through many life changes. Such thinking rarely works. It turns out that the move or tomorrow or a new job is hard enough to deal with on it's own and after all it's still the same me. So instead I took those things I wanted to do but later and did them today.

The most photographic is the top shelf of my waiting to be filed papers. It used to look like the bottom two shelves. Now it does not.

Chilled

It's late and night and pouring rain. I have Joey in my lap and everything feels right. My craft fair is over. Sales were good the company was better and the weather was cold but not as bad as it could have been. It was a nice way to spend a weekend.

I came home cold to a chilled apartment. It's October and for as long as I have been paying bills October and April are the two months I live without heat or AC. It's a fun little game that makes a huge savings in my bill, but last night I would have loved to crank up the heat. My apartment fell to 65 but since I only heat to 62 turning it on would have been pointless. It's going to get colder and stay that way. I'll get used to it but something about the first cold night is extra hard.

Last year I turned on my heat on the first day of winter. I'm thinking about this year. It will be harder since I'm home looking for work. Last fall I was in a heated classroom 10 to 12 hours a day. Also, I just know that this year is going to be a cold one. Picking a date could be bad planning. So instead I'm thinking about going until the inside temp reaches something low like 50F. That might be too extreme. 55F might be cold enough. But I don't need to decide until October is over.

I finished my Circular Shrug. It looks fantastic. I'll see if I can get some photos up.

Day 3 of being sick

And I'm now at my favorite place of being sick. A friend made a grocery store run for me and picked me up more Tylenol and Rocky Road ice-cream (thanks sweetie). I took the Tylenol and it's knocked my fever back to 99.7 and got rid of all joint aches.

It would irresponsible for me to leave the house but I finally feel well enough to knit again. So after sending out 2 more resumes with my generic cover letters (I don't feel that well and the jobs aren't that great to write them new ones) I am going to curl up on the couch and knit for the rest of the day.

Now is a good time to do a check up on the stash.

I finished the Nutkin socks and gave them to their new home.

In exchange she gave me 6 balls of yummy yummy Noro Silk Garden.I'm knitting it into a Circle Shrug. It's mindless knitting and very close to done so I might finish it tonight.
Scored from the 50% off shelf at The Studio 10 balls of Classic Elite Countess.
This yarn is slated for a shawl color sweater suitable for Sean Connery in Hunt For Red October but in a purple and pink, cashmere and angora, yarn.

So the tally is one ball of sock yarn out sixteen balls of yarn in.

Thankfully, I don't keep score like that. It's one project out, two projects in. That's not getting me any coser to my goal. But, wow, what yummy yarn I have now.

I'm Siiiiiick...

Ok, ok, there are too many iiii's in that. I am only sick. My back hurts, my teeth hurt, and I have a fever of 101.4 That's it. I woke up feeling fine but my ear hurt and I went out in the world and by noon I was pretty sure I had a fever. I checked when I got home and I do. I spent the day sleeping on the couch, taking vit C, and eating Rocky Road ice-cream.

In-between naps I knitted.
The Vine Yoke Cardigan in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride. The color is Red Hot Passion. A fantastic lipstick red.

Last weekend I went to Mom's house and she surprised me with a loaf of wheat free bread. It was exspensive and a little scary because the use by date was July 2010. But it was bread and I haven't eaten bread in 2 years. Too bad it was dry dense bread, hard to chew and tasted like sourdough. It wasn't very good plain. I took it home and made grilled cheese sandwiches. Mmmm Grilled Cheese Sandwiches I have missed you. I ate the whole loaf in two meals. Tasty.

Joey Was Mugged

Last night I made my weekly phone call to a friend and I used that time to walk laps around my apartment complex. My cell phone service is nonexistent inside my apartment so when the walking was over but the phone call was not I sat down on the stoop. Joey was sniffing around minding his own business and once and a while barking with fierce joy when he heard sirens or a car alarm in the distance. Poor boy is completely blind in the dark but he loves to sniff the wind and to announce new noises.

All of a sudden from behind me comes this streak of fur. All I can see is gray fluff and huge blurry white feet. This cat. A Cat! Football tackles Joey out of the dark. Joey gives a snarly shriek in surprise and falls over. The cat leaps back two feet, hisses, and launches himself at Joey's other side before streaking off to hide under the cars in the parking lot.

Joey is severely shaken by this drive by attack and when I get him inside he has 3 small in length but very very deep scratches. I think the largest could have used one stitch but I decided we could live with the scar to skip the trauma of taking Joey to the emergency room (chemo hell in his mind) for one stitch. I washed them out with hydrogen peroxide but when Joey snapped at me then hid in shame and fear I let him do the age old doggy cure of licking them clean.

My poor baby.

Cats are the highest rabies carriers of domesticated animals. That unprovoked attacks are a sign of rabies. Joey's rabies vaccine is good until 2011. Rabies is rather hard to get, even without the vaccine only 15% of exposures result in infection. Joey was scratched not bitten and it's spread through saliva. And google is a lot of fun but not always right so I'm waiting for a call back from my vet.

For The Want of a Photo...

A blog post was lost.

The job ended two weeks ago. And it feel like it was yesterday. I have been meaning to post about it but I was waiting for a photo. There is this fantastic photo of the braid in action on stage. The actress is clutching all 36 feet to her.

It's a fantastic photo worthy of basing a blog post around. It shows all the good and bad parts of the job. But I don't have clearance to own that photo. It's been said I could have it under the table but it is not yet actually given to me. I think it's because there is worry that I would post it illegally on facebook. Ummm, no, not facebook but yes my blog so they are right to worry. So here is the photoless post and I can move forward back into knitting.

The only thing I can say about the job that I didn't cover in my last post is how it feels to be pushed out when it's over. It feels like something is missing. Like I lost a part of myself. Like a tooth. Even 2 weeks later I feel like looking over my shoulder to find out what is missing in my life. Whenever we dedicate so much of our life to something it feels funny when we stop.

Hmmm, I need to explain that last part. Dedicated so much of our life? After all it was only 16 days. Yes, but the first 11 days I worked from 9:00am to 9:30pm. The last 5 days I worked from 8:30am to 12:30am. My supervisor said we had to have 6 hours of sleep a night. Some people worked more. So it was enough, long enough, that I thought of nothing but the braid until it wore a groove in my mind. It feel funny to have that gone. For that groove to have no more use.

Got To Run

No time for knitting.
The pattern Spring Forward, the yarn Jitterbug and I haven't touched them for days because...

I have a job!

I'm so tired that I can't think strait but I want to tell about this before the luster fades and I turn into a zombie. I'm a Prop Artisan at the KC Rep doing a special project for their upcoming show Into The Woods.

My job there is to make Rapunzel's 40 foot braid. To do that nylon rope is dyed, unwound, ironed, and glued to a thick cotton cord. I was hired at 4pm on Wednesday and by Friday night I have put in 26 hours of work.

12 feet are finished. All 50 feet (that is strait, we are hoping that no more than 10 feet will be drawn up in the over and under of the braiding) must be finished by Monday night so that no later than Tuesday morning I can start atttaching the real hair that will cover this.

I got this job through networking. There was no opening at The Rep but I offered to volunteer on this job for a few days. Since I actually showed up to help my friend, and the person in charge of the braid, did much arm twisting to get the money to hire me so that I could be used "as slave labor". That is just fine by me.

Buy tickets, this is going to be one fantastic over the top (prop wise, I haven't seen anything else yet) production. You don't want to miss it.

Delight

I'm such a fan girl.

Tonight I went to the AIGA sponsored showing of Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight. I have always admired his work. He is down as my most influential designer for that guaranteed interview question. I feel that we have a similar use of illustration and white space. I hope to be a fraction as good as he is some day.

When this opportunity to see a documentary about him and his work I jumped at the chance to go. After all, besides making the NY logo he also is a fantastic illustrator and we all have his work in our home.

Before the movie started there was the usual announcement to shut off all cell phones and I dutifully did. About 8 minutes into the movie someone's cell went off. The movie was stopped and the lights came up as the guilty person stood up to sneak out and answer. She was halfway up the aisle when she said "It's Milton Glaser on the phone!" and it was. He spoke to us live on speaker phone .

I love you, Milton.