Reading While Knitting

I may have a problem

2011-07-28T10:37:00.001-07:00

My daughter was impressed with how little knitting I was bringing on a camping trip. . . until she realized it wasn't just the small red tote. The backpack is coming, too.

Hackey Sack, Anyone?

2011-07-26T20:54:00.001-07:00

This hat was designed to use up bits of yarn. The two ounces of handspun, naturally-dyed yarn from a workshop used for it has been sitting, unused and unworn, for longer than I want to admit. Even if I feel that this hat looks like something someone much more committed to hippie fashion than I might proudly wear, at least the yarn is a garment now, not just a skein.

Besides, camping trips are just made for this sort of look, right?

Two done

2011-07-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

A sweater with handspun yarn as some of the colorwork, proportions and shaping figured out on the way, along with a fully-handspun (except for the ribbon!) hat. Now, on to other not-yet-done knitting.

Double or Nothing

2011-07-05T23:09:00.001-07:00

We're supposed to be coming out of a heat wave here. While I know that many areas of the country suffer from much more extreme weather, I reiterate -- we're not prepared for this. With neither thick walls nor artifically cooled air, these old Victorians (especially in rooms under eaves) are just hot.

How better to enjoy weather like this than to drive inland, away from any errant sea breezes, and walk around on asphalt all day long? Yes, it's county fair time, and I'll be baking myself out there tomorrow like a crazy person. Let's hope the folks tightening bolts on the roller coasters were sober enough.

Oh, and why not, while I'm at it, throw in a little Eco Wool knitting? I can't stop working on this baby because I have finally (!) figured out how to knit two sleeves on two needles. It took drawing, talking to my sister, and many many rounds of "nope, that's not it, take out the needle and turn it around" before I finally wrapped my head and subsequently my fingers around the technique:

That's not so easy to see. one needle is I believe 24" long, while the other is 60". That way, I can tell them apart. But the shorter one makes spreading the sleeves out for a picture a bit tricky. Folded is a little clearer.

I don't think I'm ready to write up a tutorial, but for me, I divided the sleeves into "fronts" and "backs" and each one has one needle. Two sleeves, one side, one needle. To knit, then, one needle gets knitted across one side of two sleeves, necessitating one yarn change. If I start with the fronts, then I knit both fronts. Then I drop that needle and knit two backs.

It's easier, much easier, than I had managed to make it for a bit. Maybe this will pump up my speed on lots of things, like mittens! Christmas is coming, make no mistake. But first, this and a couple of other sleeveless sweaters.

Castaway

2011-05-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

Sleeve Island, what a lonely place to be.

So little left to do on this Cotton Sweater of Many Ends

And yet, picking it up to knit some more rounds of a sleeve feels a bit like running away from the Thing behind the door in a dream. My hands move slowly, and surely a sweater this size shouldn't weigh 25 pounds! The weight of resistance burdens every stitch.

And yet, I do want it done, and the deadline for county fair entries looms. What to do?

Well, I did finish some spinning.

And how I miss the good camera, which is hurt and out of commission right now. Turned out I got about 500 yards of singles from the Grafton Fibers batt. Once they were skeined up, I washed and shocked them with agitation and repeated plungings from hot to cold water so that they'd be slightly-fulled. I don't trust my singles spinning that much yet.

Even with the rotten pictures, perhaps you can tell why I can't wait to get this knit up into something. This yarn wants, I believe, to be a warm, squishy hat. Exactly which warm, squishy hat is still in debate.

I must not be the only spinner who waffles about finding the Right Pattern to complement finished yarn. Commercial yarn doesn't carry the weight that handspun does for me. I've loved every one of my few handspun knitting adventures, so I probably should get going.

Once I finish 4.6 sleeves, that is.

Read. The. Pattern.

2011-05-09T21:43:00.001-07:00

Cheerfully resurrected Odelia by Julie Weisenberger to simply finish off the sleeves and voila, have a sweater for summer.

Except, eight inches ago, I neglected to continue the edge decreases.

Guess I'll just rip that puppy right out to the point where I left the pattern to wander in the wilderness and redo it the right way.

Grrrrr.

Thank goodness the high school team won States again! Seven years of domination sort of make up for redoing eight inches of sweater.

Sort of.

Should've made it longer

2011-05-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

. . . although I barely made the deadline as it was. Seriously cute, even if it's too short.

This almost makes up for the three sweaters stuck on Sleeve Island.

Can't knit? Spin!

2011-03-09T19:57:00.000-08:00

Knitting seems a bit stall-ish here. The mittens are slogging along, and I'm surprised every time I pick them up how little I'm enjoying them. I think part of it might be the steel needles -- they're slippery, and so I spend some energy just keeping the alpaca on them -- and part of it is that I'm contemplating learning the two-at-a-time-on-two-circs methods, so the stop/start of dpns is a bit of a drag. And some of it is that I knit woefully slowly when I remember to knit.

Then there's that sweater. A sweater I would actually happily wear most mornings in this house. It's a bit chilly. Got to the bottom, did the second round of color work, ribbed, bound off. . . tried it on.

And. That second round of color work doesn't do much for my shape or my mental image of myself in the sweater. Out it came. Now I'm back to round and round and round we go with stockinette. In brown. On metal tips. Feels perhaps slower than it really is, and I hesitate to believe that it's going to look any better on me. Sigh.

Tonight, I spun instead. Fun, fast, almost instant gratification (or else it feels that way; it's clearly not) and I finally finished the first half of the lovely Grafton Fibers orange:

Such a small-looking bobbin in front of a blanket of top. I'll cross the ply/single bridge in the months to come, since it will probably take that long for me to finish. I do know a couple of babies who deserve hats, though. . . Do the moms want hand-wash only hats? I do not know.

I also don't know what goes through my children's heads. As I noted, the house is, indeed, chilly. And homeschooling gives one some flexibility in education that isn't available in other settings, but still. . .

Happy Birthday

2011-03-05T04:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday somebody turned 16 at my house.

She's a treasure -- always something interesting to say, funny, sharp as a tack, and doing that lovely "growing up in front of you" thing so I get to enjoy it. Considerate, no?

Right now she's asleep nearby. I know there aren't many more years I'll be able to say that, so I'm enjoying it (even though I kind of wish I, too, was asleep). And tomorrow I'll watch her run and leap on the Frisbee field and think of how fortunate we all are to have her in our lives.

Stalking patterns

2011-02-25T18:01:00.000-08:00

I hope the lady I stood behind at the grocery store didn't mind me intently staring at her skirt. I was thinking, "That would look nice knitted up. . ." so I sketched it in Paint:

Time out knitting

2011-02-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I hit a real knitting slump. Either I don't knit at all, or I try making knitted things that don't really engage my brain at all. During the next-to-last bout of this, I cast on a 72 stitch garter afghan square, and then, after knitting about 10" of it, discovered I'd made a funky something way down near the cast on, and needed a crochet hook to address it. That square, instead of merrily beginning the "eat up all the stash and make a blanket while you're at it" effort, is now languishing in a bag in time out.

Meanwhile, even though I'm being pretty good at not buying yarn, more yarn came to my house. In a bag. From a friend. Not much, and I moved the stuff I wasn't thrilled with right out of the house, but just enough to make some wee baby things. I figured, my wonderful niece deserves a little spring hat, no? And I, the dorky knitter, deserve to knit something that is soothing and repetitive, and easy enough that I don't spend my usual 30% time ripping and re-knitting. Every project I finish is usually about a 130% project.

At any rate, check this out. The amazing cuteness of the wee baby face makes up for every silly thing about the hat. I must immediately knit more things, so her cutie-fu spreads to more knitted items, no?

The other one

2011-02-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

This Sunday was The Other Team's day. Four high school teams, a beautiful sunny day, with just enough of a hint of a breeze to promise the storms which hit last night. Unfortunately, my two favorite players had spent the week being very sick, and weren't up to their very best. They still did the frisbee trifecta of run, catch, throw, and it was a wonderful day. Good games, good parents to hang out with, and I even got some knitting done.

The kid runs fast, even when sick.

Nice bid, but not everything is completed:

The next trip down was more like it:

So cool she is.

I'm not going to be cool until this sweater gets much bigger. So far, I think the other knitting project looks like an alien chest protector:

Mix of bamboo and silk handspun (the green) and two colors of Cascade EcoWool. The body and sleeves will be chocolate, with something else along the cuffs and bottom. Some echoey pattern, probably. Anyhow, almost instant gratificaton, unlike the mitten project, which received a couple of rows' work last night.

Another one suits up

2011-02-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

On the verge of heading off for a full day of Frisbee and knitting (child and me, respectively), I felt like posting evidence that it's not going to stop any time soon:

She's not the tallest player, and she did sprain her ankle the first game out, but she's got a lot of heart and I'm sure I'll be driving her from tournament to tournament for the next few years, too.

All done, with thumbs

2011-02-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

We all know that we'd be up a creek without the ability to paddle without our thumbs. My mittens (Rav link) are happier with them, it turns out. Also with duplicate stitches. And blocking. And woven-in ends. All add up to mitteny happiness.

Here, perched on the overly-abundant lime tree, just to give a shot of sunny weather-type plants to anyone up to their duplicate stitches in snow:

Thumbs! And also, varied tension on stripes. Maybe over time they'll even out. Or not.

Some people are unhappy with gussetless thumbs. They don't bother me so much. It's not as though I'd like to do some kind of hand-intensive dance, such as Balinese dance, in them, but since I'm not likely to do that at any time, I figure these are good. They fit fine.

It took me much longer than I'd like to admit to figure out that the duplicate stitch went in the little in-between diamond thingies, not the fronds. Fortunately it unpicks easily. And I really don't like duplicate stitch much.

It makes an already-poppy mitten just that much nicer (unlike the obvious mistake in the photo above. Oh well.) They're done.

All the fingers

2011-01-31T17:52:00.001-08:00

But as of yet no thumbs.

With blocking, they'll be the same size, I assume. If I stay up after book club tonight (we're reading Kicked, Bitten and Scratched, a book I heartily recommend) and knit, I might get the thumbs done and perhaps the duplicate stitching.

Probably not.

However, since I knit about four total mittens this month, and almost have a pair done, I'm counting it good. Last night I began charting my next pair, and I can't wait to cast on for those.

I'd have worn them if they were done

2011-01-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

Homeschoolers get to chaperone almost every field trip. This is big fun. Today was a marine preserve for tidepooling! Hooray!!

For a woman with, let's say, issues, about the coastline here, it was a pretty low-key day, safety-wise. This despite the official notices:

We saw many critters:

Who knew hermit crabs went in for the Southwestern jewelery look?

These lovely anemones get their green from algae which continues to photosynthesize inside of them.

Color inspiration was everywhere. Do you think the hermit crabs evaluate their potential houses on aesthetic grounds?

Mossy chitin.

After all of our research, and identifying creatures, and talking about tidal zones and why the rocks on the way to the coast were tipped to the side (hint: we're on a tidal plate), the real learning might have been social. How long can you play "Let's lasso each other" before someone gets hurt?

It was a bit chilly, though. If I had finished the mittens today, instead of just taking them along for a ride in the car, I might have worn them. Think I'll finish before the month is up? Yeah, I wonder too.

Consequences

2011-01-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

Eric always tells me, "In knitting you can just unravel your mistakes; in woodworking, that wood is gone if you mess it up."

Turns out that's not the only difference.

If you mess up in woodworking, you can partially amputate one of your joints. We have about six weeks before we find out if he gets to keep that finger tip. . .

Distant Cousins

2011-01-20T09:14:00.000-08:00

This summer, I had the incredible privilege of meeting and being hosted by my grandfather's cousins' grandchildren. In Sicily. My biggest regret was not being fluent enough to speak a lot with them -- we did a lot of drawing. It's astonishing how much people can convey without a lot of common language.

So, although distant, we were definitely related.

Which, really, is all I can say about these mittens.

Same yarn, same needles, same knitter. . . very different sizes. Perhaps it was the random handspunness of the yarn (which doesn't speak much for my spinning) but it more likely is due to counting errors. I had planned to rely on Magical Blocking, but I think I'm just going to suck it up and knit another one. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to have finished three mittens this month and still not have a pair!

When I say my children "read the newspaper daily" in my homeschooling diary, I'm not always very detailed as to what, exactly, they're reading.

I do, however, draw their attention to stories they might like, such as a recent one about Mt. Etna erupting in Catania, across the island from our cousins, but generally I'm okay with them not reading every horrific daily headline. The comics are generally current-event enough.

Mikey continues to learn what he is allowed and not allowed to do.

Sigh. He's redirectable, thank goodness.

Not quite up to cuff

2011-01-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

My first year at college, my sister and I wrote letters to each other. A lot. We had to keep each other up on stuff, and it was just nice to get letters. Then I moved back home for a while, and we didn't have to write to each other. Through various moves, we wrote, or called, and during one particularly fruitful period, we wrote and called. I have boxes of letters from her just sitting around. Now that we get to see each other in person, we don't write much more than the occasional card. I'd rather have the face to face memories, really. However, I still am fortunate to have a couple of friends to whom (and one from whom) letters go pretty regularly.

My kids may not have this, so much.

Hours on the phone, hours IMing, but scented bundles tied up with ribbons? Let's hope they do, at least some. Besides, we love our postal carrier. I'm sure he would appreciate some good handwritten mail to deliver.

He would not, however, appreciate this mitten, cast on to have something simpler to knit out and about, so much.

The cuff is a little short on Eric, who doesn't have unusually long hands. So far, it's a woman's mitten. I like the way the darker handspun looks as though it has black stripes in it, and how the thumb cap-stripe matches up with the body. Completely unplanned.

On the checkerboardy side, the singles effect really shows up -- the stitches have a straight line marching up the mitten.

I've cast on, at least, for the second mitten and its green stripe on the cuff is moving along. I'm tempted to knit it longer, but I think these are going to have to be a shorter pair, in the interest of getting back to finishing the snail mitten

He's no Good Dog, Carl

2011-01-12T19:09:00.000-08:00

But he hasn't eaten (or even tasted) the baby yet.

In fact, he appears to be nobly taking on the position of Loyal Family Retainer. Ha.

All the two-legged ones got to hold the baby.

She even smiled some!

Thanks to all of the help, I got a nice chunk done on a couple of mittens. Is it wrong to rejoice when the baby sleeps so I can knit? No, probably not. The jury is still out on using her as a work in progress photo prop, though. For the record, her mother cracked up when I showed her this picture.

After frogging, restarting, then counting and tinking back carefully, the snail mitten is now at the correct amount of stitches and heading along fine. The handspun mitt now has even more knitting than in that picture, because after making dinner, I figured out charts for both front and back and am rollicking along. The somewhat uneven thickness is a challenge -- thin spots disappear in colorwork -- but I'm just breathing through it. Warm. Fuzzy. Stash-busting. These are the things to think of. If I knit a matching hat, maybe I'll put it away for a gift set. But that is in fact Crazy Talk. No need to get ahead of anything.

Focus, focus

2011-01-11T20:49:00.000-08:00

The folks who wonder how I get so much done ought to see me the past week. Starting work up again after a break has thrown me for another loop -- by now, I feel like my own ride at the fair.

Anyhow, it appears clear that daily blogging might be out of my reach. I'm not going to let myself off many hooks, though; I always assume that if I tried harder, was more organized, I'd finally get everything done.

But I'd have to stay home a bit more to do so. Tuesdays are now my offical Bad Day (I think most homeschoolers have at least one), during which I must feed, school, amuse, hug, and drive four children three different places, then produce a dinner. Then I have to grade papers if I have a class in which nineteen students managed to turn in essays of various competency levels.

But tonight? Tonight I also had to go to my beekeeper association meeting. January is the dues-paying month, and I wanted to see if the new slate of officers meant a new way of doing things.

Alas, no. During the portion of the meeting I stayed for, I knit this:

Handspun singles of some indeterminate wool. I must have bought it years ago at a fiber festival. Looks nicer than I remember it looking, and it will make a handsome pair of mittens. Originally I'd planned to make child mittens, but they'll grow. The kids, that is, not the mittens.

This one's nearly grown:

Generally I like seeing fellow beekeepers at the meeting. Sometimes I get a new bit of information about the bees. But when the new officers did not move the surprise speaker (a city official who had some news about our meeting space) along after every single relevant bit of information in the presentation had receded far, far into the distance, I realized I would rather be home, even if it meant wrangling bedtime and grading papers.

I wondered if I were just unusually impatient and/or touchy. But disorganized meetings, kids who have to sit and read to eat, even if they have just gotten out of bed and dear lord, it's nearly noon and we have to go places and they haven't yet scooped the cat box and yes, thank you, I would enjoy help finding all of the overdue library books, just make me want to cry. It's not that I think I'm an Important Busy Person, it's just that life is so full of good stuff to do and my brain makes meandering conversation in a business setting maddening. I'm pretty good with friends, I hope. I like to focus on a person and talk, and listen, and hang out. A friend said the other day, "You always seem so stressed, but you don't feel like you're rushing me." And I was truly, truly glad.

I think I have so much to do all the time just to keep things this side of Child Protective Services, and yet I'd like to be doing some more of the things I want to do and in order to maybe, just maybe, have a chance to do that before they all grow up and leave the house, they have to toe the line, darn it.

There's always tomorrow.

Just a pet, not a kid

2011-01-09T18:14:00.000-08:00

Many thoughts competed for this blog post, and the title one isn't one I planned to go into. I love my pets, love them bunches. But ever since having kids, I've done the, in my opinion, normal shift. Kids first, then pets. Even though they sometimes look like little people, they're not. I also have no kid pictures today. Just the way it went. So I can't prove that they're different, photographically.

For one thing, they're generally less trouble, but my children rarely chew furniture. On the other hand, I just heard a son return yelling before he got through the door. Sigh. I think he's hungry.

He's hungry because instead of putting the (already cooked) dinner on the table, I took ten minutes at the wheel. Then it stretched to twenty because I took the time to make a teensy fairy swatch:

Looks like one of the cats, sort of:

Now I'm all excited about spinning it up, then skeining and I bet fulling the snot out of it so it won't drift. It's so pretty I want maximum yardage, so no plying.

Off to feed the beasties.

Add one, subtract one and get one done

2011-01-08T22:28:00.000-08:00

What could my kids be looking for

yesterday, in the cold, on the beach?

Elephant seals!

Everyone knows a family who lives somewhere great but doesn't take advantage of their opportunities, right? Generally, we're that family. Fortunately, I have much more organized friends, and every year, they trundle down the coast to one of the very very few places that elephant seals come ashore to pup.

Imagine only spending a few months a year on land, and the rest hunting and swimming in very cold water. Walking near them was cold enough, thank you very much. They are awesomely big up close. They said it was safe, but I couldn't get a good picture of my next-oldest child; she was staying very close to the rest because she was wary of these huge pinnipeds.

Speaking of enormous mammals, Mikey got to play with his neighbor, Star, today.

She's so much faster than he is that it's mostly a chase, and eventually he gives up and just watches, making halfhearted feints as she careers around him. He enjoys it mightily. He does most things mightily, come to think of it.

I'm mightily glad to be nearly done (save the thumb) of mitten the first, aka the second.

The real first is now poised to become the second. Hooray for looser tension. It fits less like a glove and more like a comfy mitt. Still, it is a little daunting to be right back where I started, more or less. Oh well, if one has to stay in place, having one warm hand is something.

When I just couldn't face the thought of starting more colorwork tonight, as it got later and later at my friend's knit night, I decided that I could definitely face winding a plying ball. Turns out that laceweight baby camel and silk makes for a slow-winding ball, but a pretty one:

Alas and alack, the "wobble" on my Bosworth mini spindle turned out to be due to a rather substantial crack in the whorl, just at the base of the central "throat":

I guess we're going to try to clamp and glue it. I love this spindle. In fact, I have a huge bunch of baby camel and silk roving rooting for it to pull through.

Tomorrow is certainly enough time to worry about it.

What's with the snacks?

2011-01-06T19:27:00.001-08:00

I am a fairly good cook (tonight's dinner and frequently undercooked broccoli excepted). Nearly every evening, however, at least one child declares the meal "inedible." Generally, I'm a "more for me!" kind of gal, and besides, there's always that old standby:

yogurt.

A mother who loves food can hope, though, that some day, her averagely-adventurous eating children will say, "This is terrific. You give us the best meals!" right?

At the end of the penultimate ferny thing on the mitten, I realized that I had really goofed way, way back near some antennae on one snail.

For about five minutes, ripping seemed like the right thing to do, then I tried duplicate stitching, at which I am no whiz. It's still visible, but I don't think I'm up for ripping another mitten that much. I'm so close to finishing, and I think that I'll just wear them and not worry.

Of course, I could always change my mind later. What do you think? Rip and redo? Finish this one and start the next, and then decide? Argh.

So much fun I had to do it again

2011-01-05T21:29:00.000-08:00

As our littlest one would say, "Of course I want to play Sorry again. It's so much fun!" (So we do, as often as we can.)

Which is how I felt tonight about spinning. My wheel stays idle for months and then I remember that I love this.

As I noted, I love it more without the brightest yellow bits. Sometimes I wonder if I have very strange reactions to colors, because I'm pretty much all about single-color yarns, although I love colorwork. Oh well, unless I'm going to start dyeing or get a drum carder, I'm not going to worry about it.

Worrying about aging has become something of a hobby for me, though. Currently, I'm annoyed that I have something I consider a serious Old Lady problem. One of my heels has cracked in the dry weather:

Nothing like slathering coconut oil on a foot before bed to make me feel the miles. . .

Progress without pictures

2011-01-04T21:14:00.000-08:00

A few rounds more on the mitten today. My sister asked how many hours I thought it took per mitten, and I once again wished that I had a portable chess clock for my knitting. Apparently I could use a downloadable app to do so!

At any rate, I estimated 13-15 hours a mitten (I'm a painfully slow knitter, alas). The sobering realization is that I knit maybe 30 minutes a day, even though I'd like to do more. Seems that between chauffering, and cleaning, and cooking and feeding and homeschooling and working, there isn't a lot of time to knit.

Tonight there was no knitting because it was Spinning Night at the library. I wish I'd brought my camera (and if my friend sends her pictures I'll edit them in) because my Grafton Fibers batt looked so lush laid out I almost wanted to just leave it as is or felt it for a lap robe.

Instead I spun it, and then decided I liked it best without the neon yellow and orange. It's going to be a tweedy brown. Maybe I'll make enough as a long-draw single to make a teeny girl sweater. If not, the standard hat, I suppose.

The dog appears to be standing guard. It's an illusion. He'll follow me upstairs as soon as I go. Definitely a mama's boy.

Doing yoga with a stuffy nose

2011-01-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

It's kind of hard to feel on top of things when you wake up to your spouse saying, "The alarm didn't go off," and you thought he was saying, "The dog has to pee," so leaping from bed is the only sane option.

I dragged on my comfy clothes and ran out front with the dog (who did, in fact, very much need to go) and then watched as Eric almost sprinted out of the door, on the way to his new year.

Even though we were later than we'd hoped, it was early enough to feed Mikey in his crate and use that relative peace to do some yoga. Kristin is my inspiration here. I don't have a fancy yoga/honey house like she does, but now I am the proud user of a deck of yoga cards. Nothing quite like easing into a down dog and realizing that there needs to be a box of Puffs as part of your practice.

Waking up is hard to do. . .

Darn you, Neil Sedaka. What else, I ask you, fits this kind of morning?

I've learned that making children go to bed early is relatively useless, but waking them up early eventually works on the other end. They think I'm cruel, and they might be back asleep, but baby steps will do us all.

At the halfway point?

The second first mitten is now halfway done. That has to be some kind of milestone, right?

Breathing in the wave

Just before I woke up, I was finishing a long dream about being at the beach with the homeschoolers. I know I was with them because there was much discussion about which glass lasagne dish was whose, and we hadn't even started with the Dutch ovens. I finally announced that even if no one else was, I was going swimming. The water was perfect -- still and clear, and there was another shore across from us. It was some sort of bay!

I struck out across the water, and then a giant wave rose up under me. I could feel the power as I kept on swimming. Looking at where the wave was going to land after it crested, I knew I was in trouble. Growing up in Southern California, I spent a lot of time riding waves, and landing this one was going to be a doozy. However, in the dream, I had my face right at the level of the water and kept breathing in and out, deeply and calmly. I thought, "As long as I can breathe in the wave, I'm okay."

Since we can't predict the things that happen, it seems as good a way to proceed as any.

Eye can't see well

2011-01-02T17:03:00.001-08:00

I need to call the vet this week because it's time Mikey got some shots and other doggy things. But it seems I'm going to have to call the kid-vet too, since Benadryl isn't touching this one:

As a general rule, panic isn't my first reaction. It's still possible that this is a mosquito bite-type thing, but it's gone on for days, and it's getting worse rather than better, and it is uncomfortable. If it's not changed soon, we'll get it looked at.

About four more rows today -- that mitten is halfway done.

As you mean to go on

2011-01-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

Resolutions and new beginnings just seem to go together, as do the concomitant disappointment when keeping them is more difficult -- the pounds won't come off, the photos don't get organized, those pesky weeds just keep coming up, and who said twelve pairs of mittens in a year was doable?

I've managed this in years past by not making resolutions, other than the most general: "Eat breakfast. Walk occasionally. Eat kale a lot."

This year, though, I'm brimming with them. Maybe it's tipping well into my final half of life; maybe it's not having a truly little child of my own any more (thank goodness for a new niece!) that's freeing up some space in my head. And this blog is part of that. While researching when we got the cats for a pet insurance application, not only did I discover when we got the cats, thanks to the blog, seeing the pictures of the kids and reading about what we were doing was so pleasurable and not having it was an actual ache. So I resolved to post at least one picture of one kid per day and blog something. Alas, that's only one thing I want to do.

Some of my plans involve the kids in other ways:

And, as any parent knows, rearing kids means limits. Screen time is an ongoing struggle here -- in fact, many things about this child are struggles. Rarely do parents blog honestly about their challenges with their children, and the line between exploitation and sugar-coating isn't easy to find. I hope that this year, we're going to unlock some of the more difficult puzzles with our son, even though paying for the professional help to do so is going to be painful.

I'm also embarking on a self-taught course of dog training. Mikey, who recently joined our family, was trained to be a show dog and not much else. He's big, and mouthy, and not quite sure what's expected of him. He's also very lovable.

I love the look he's giving the kid here. "Squirrel? You call that a squirrel? Take me outside!" In researching training methods, I've fallen completely for Karen Pryor and her positive reinforcement classical conditioning clicker training. Her Reaching the Animal Mind book provided hours of entertainment for us, and then gave me a place to start when Mikey came home. As I've delved more into training, I'm feeling overwhelmed, so finding this website with its structured instruction has been a boon. I think it might also save me a few hundred dollars in private training lessons.

So what else? Um, study Italian, teach my courses, keep homeschooling as effectively as I can, walk briskly a few times a week - that leg is still not at all run-able - do some yoga, keep decluttering the house, and oh, yes, knitting.

I started working on the second of the Norwegian Snail Mittens a few days ago:

This would be great almost-two-years-to-a-finished-object stuff if I didn't also bite the fit-bullet and do this:

And it's not done. That "first" mitten was just enough too tight around the thumb area to make it not up to snuff. In a moment of strength, I figured, "I can do this" and just started ripping. When I get down below the tight part, I'll set it back on the needles and start over. By then the "other first" mitten will be done, and I'll be halfway to the first pair done.

As I mean to go on, I mean.

I went to Italy and all I got. . .

2010-11-26T17:05:00.000-08:00

Was four skeins of yarn, badly photographed. A Rav friend in Lucca directed me to the best yarn shop, Lovilana, and the rest is history. Each skein is approximately 1400 yards of teensy weight yarn. I thought the gray and white would make dynamite colorwork gloves or mittens, and the pumpkin and yellow would be lovely lace work. Or sweaters. Or something -- I couldn't go all that way and not get something, even with a generalized yarn diet.

And what did I do with my five travel weeks? Well, I saw things, I met far-flung family (a real highlight of the trip! I think everyone should have wonderful Sicilian relatives), and I knit for future family.

Lucky me, I am getting a niece!

And she is getting a little dress/tunic, knit from Elsebeth Lavold Cable Cotton. I hope it's the kind of size that will go from too big to just right to slightly short, and therefore move from dress to top and be worn for a long long time. Although I used my standard Incredible Custom Fit Raglan ideas, I was aiming for a Debbie Bliss-ish feeling. Just before I was done, my sister said, in passing to me, "I just love picot edges," and the finishing was determined in that instant.

I just didn't have time to block it before the party:

One part that I enjoyed was figuring out how to make a facing as I knit the top, to make a shoulder opening for big toddler head. I knit to the increase point, increased, then purled a turning stitch, and five knit stitches (on each side), then tacked it down when I was done. Crochet-loops and sewn on buttons made the closure.

I can hardly wait to see it modeled!

Now to get to the projects I did not finish, on the trip or after.

SQUEAK

2010-07-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

All done. Used the charts from this blog, and a general gauge x kid-head measurement for the size. Yarn is Mirasol "Tupa," and I used size 3 needles.

The chart parts were done back and forth, intarsia style, because I haven't mastered intarsia in the round, and this worked out best, although the "A" needs some help. I joined and did the top in the round, then seamed the bottom part. Then I undid and redid the seam because I discovered that it's generally better to seam black wool in bright sun versus a dim evening house.

The resident Pratchett fan is pleased, and warm*, and that's all that matters.

*Hey, it's summer in the Bay Area. It's chilly!

Maybe?

2010-07-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

At the end of yesterday I made a list of what I'd accomplished, since I didn't feel as though I had done "enough."

Today I'm doing it the other way 'round -- a list of the planned things, while not yet noting what I've done (like taking the cat to the vet and trying to figure out how to pay for it).

Notice what the last item is on today's list:

prune out front
lay bricks in patio
clean basement
clean freezer
assemble and place last bee box
cut and dig buckwheat into the open garden bed
do classwork for my three classes: paper grading, answering email, posting grades, etc.
make pickle relish and can it
make enchilada sauce and can it
make dill pickles and can them
put clean dishes away
knit?

260 yards

2010-06-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

This came out to somewhere in that neighborhood.

I figured that I needed to spin through my fiber stash as well as knit through my yarn stash, and in order to do that I'd have to loosen up a little. Instead of working for perfection, I'd concentrate on speedy and soft.

This old batt, held back for when I was "good enough," seemed like a fine bunch to let go of some self-imposed perfectionism with. I think it's bamboo/silk/alpaca. The black hairs showed up much more in the spin than they did in the batt.

Over the fold, medium whorl on my Lendrum, and a few spinning nights at the library. I tried to spin loosely and ply tight.

Not perfection, no, but done, and already planned for a sweater yoke -- swatched and everything. On size 10 needles, it knits up at about 5 stitches to the inch. And it's very soft. I don't want to spin everything like this, but it was a good exercise.

She wears it well

2010-05-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

Giving baby knits is great fun. Seeing them on the baby is almost better.

While I was changing that little model's diaper today, I realized it didn't seem that long ago that I was doing the same for this young lady.

That picture was taken during the photo shoot for the Glitter Ball homeschooler's prom. The kids looked beautiful, and apparently a good time was had by all. I sort of wish I'd knit her a little wrap, though.

If you want attention in Italy

2010-05-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

Try pulling out a drop spindle on a train. Eric and I got to spend a week in Genoa for a conference he attended, and I managed to find things to interest and amuse me.

A Ravelry friend helped me buy yarn -- the whole "yarn museum" approach in Italy (and, I'm told, much of Europe) can feel intimidating. Thank goodness for generous people who are willing to help you talk to the shopkeepers. This store was much more yarn-filled than the one I had found on my own, and I don't think I would have discovered it without help.

Everywhere I went, I worked away on the knitting I brought with me, even though, in retrospect, three projects might have been a bit of overkill. I have enough problems knitting lace without jet lag complicating things.

On a short day trip, though, I was tired enough that even my ongoing project seemed too much for the train ride home. So I pulled out this yummy baby camel and silk I've been working on, and proceeded to go into a sort of spinning zone.

Eric said some guy did a triple take as he disembarked from the train, but it was when we were en route in our compartment that the fun began. Two delightful ladies sitting across from us chattered away in surprise. "Mi nonna" was all I caught, but the foot gestures were unmistakable. I managed, with the help of the woman next to me, to tell them that I, too, had a wheel (come un bicicleta! I tried), but that when I traveled, this was the way to go.
Then we managed to get onto how to say "crochet" in English, as it's spelled the same but sounds like the game with balls and wickets. When I pulled out my knitting, the woman asked for it and showed me, I believe, the "right" way to knit, English-style, but very fast. I told her I was faster doing it my way, but went on to show her that I could do it her way and did when I knit with two colors.

It was simply charming, but I don't think I would spin when in Italy again unless I'd done some serious work on my language skills. It's just too much of a conversation piece.

I had gotten about 600 yards of a nice steel-gray two ply lace yarn to bring home to my sister, and for me, just enough for a pair of very bright colorwork mittens. I can't wait to get to them. Eventually.

It's good to be home, and it's good to realize that even in another country, faced with what seemed like overwhelming temptation, I found I didn't need that much yarn. Maybe having a spindle and three projects wasn't overkill, in the end.

Getting ready for the new crop

2010-05-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

Family and friends are having babies, what seems like a lot of babies, lately. So I've taken it as an opportunity to try out some little things. And Mother's Day seems like a good time to get them posted.

Debbie Bliss' "Kaftan" pattern, which looked a whole lot nicer in the pattern (to me) than this version, knit in Jo Sharp's SoHo Summer, in a lovely light grey. The yarn gave me a different gauge, so I had to do some fiddling, and I think it's workable, but it's nowhere near what I'd hoped. Oh well, it was done, and done and sent before babykins showed up, so it's a mark in the "win" column.

A closeup of the neck. I'd like to see someone else's version and see how they dealt with the opening. Just splitting it (as the pattern indicates) can make a stretched stitch at the bottom.

A total labor of love, this set is in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in "Jungle Stripe." Made up hat pattern with seed stitch ear covers and borders, and a generous pom pom, plus generic ribbed baby socks.

I live close enough to this crew to see the moms and baby -- when he or she shows up! I can hardly wait. And that's one pleasure that the moms who were done having babies didn't convey strongly enough to me -- how much fun it is to be around other people's babies when you don't want any more.

When I finish the sweater for baby Violet, which is lacking a zipper, I'll post that one too. Three for three before the babies was probably too much to expect.

Catch and Release

2010-04-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

There is real knitting going on here, partially because a new crop of babies is hatching all around me, it seems. One item is completely finished, but I haven't gotten pictures of it yet. One requires a zipper-sewing (and that baby is here), and one requires that I untangle the yarn so I can finish the socks to go with the hat. So you'll just have to trust me that I'm waving needles around. Oh, and spinning. Lots of spinning. On a spindle, no less. I'll show that eventually. When I find the bag with the spindle and fiber in it. . .

Knitting or no, I stepped away from my "no new yarn this year unless I'm traveling" vow long enough to go to a fellow Raveler's yard sale with my sister. Believe it or not, I actually exercised a bit of restraint. Note to self, do NOT take the youngest yarn shopping. I came home with some Baby Ull in shades I do not love.

The most recent pressing news is that the Ultimate season is in full swing. Last weekend was the States tournament. The kid played well, but more importantly, she played with total heart. The first day wasn't the best for her, she didn't get to play on the team she would have loved to play on, but you couldn't tell from watching her. She ran the entire time, despite heat, despite no feeling terrific, and she still had a big smile by the end of the weekend.

She was occasionally in just the right place, and the disc shot in, and she was there. Catching.

Only to release off to a teammate.

And sometimes the defenders are there, just the way you hope to be when on defense. It was a nice play, anyhow. And the joy of this sport is that there is always another play.

As far as I'm concerned, she's a champion (as was the upper-division team). Now it's on to Westerns, although I won't be able to go! I'll sit and knit and wait for the phone calls.

This parenting thing seems to be exercise after exercise in letting them go, launching them off, just when you might want to hold them a little closer. I wonder if the new baby parents are ready for this?

Oh Say can you see, see, see the OCD?

2010-03-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

I'm such a seat-of-the pants kind of woman. Days go by, and I just carom from stimulus to crisis, reacting as best I can, but not much is planned. Yet, there's a small part of me (probably huddling in the attic of my mind, moaning) that likes order, and clean Scandinavian spaces, and light, and quiet. Caterina right now is listening to Bowling for Soup, there goes the quiet. . .

Anyhow, the other day, Beloved Sister came over to rearrange the yarn room with me. Afterwards, she gently suggested that I might have a wee problem. This, of course, is the same sister who reminded me about the bag sale at Stash, so, "enabler" comes immediately to mind. However, due to some unexpected good fortune, I have a couple of travel-related delights to save money for, and certainly enough yarn and fiber to enjoy the using of it without needing to spend any money to acquire more.*

So, I gave myself a challenge. Twelve completed items from the stash before any more yarn or fiber comes home. They don't have to be huge -- I have some yarn set aside for an afghan, and that's not getting done any time soon -- but swatches certainly don't count. Spinning does, however, so I pulled out this lovely eight ounces of. . . something unlabeled. I remember that it had bamboo and silk in it, but there appears to be some dark long hairs in it. Alpaca? Maybe. Maybe it's wool.

And I think I'd been saving it for "when I was good enough" to spin it. My last experience with bamboo was unhappy. Then I figured, there is more where that came from, essentially, and the spinning is a joy, especially with the Woolee Winder Eric got me for Christmas. Woo-hoo! Just focusing on that long draw from the fold while the yarn is wound on in that smooth, even way. Makes my knees go weak, practically. This is where my inner order-lover comes out in the spinning. It's a clean, neat, sunlit room on a bobbin. So it doesn't matter if it's perfect, it's flat, and it's very very pretty.

I can't wait to spin up the whole whack and decide whether or not to knit it as singles or ply it.

And not just because I could get more eventually.

*At least, not until the Delightful Travel experiences.

Chattering monkeys

2010-03-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

Today was a running day. I've sort of fallen off the training schedule, but I'm still out running almost every other day. So when Eric rousted me out of bed, I got up, made breakfast and school lunches in my pjs, and then went back upstairs to get dressed.

First choice -- grab running clothes. I've found that if I'm wearing them, the odds that I will run go up markedly. Getting into (and out of) tights and a running bra isn't for the faint of heart, so if they're on, you might as well use them.

So I made breakfast, as I said, made lunches, dropped a pot with boiling water and tofu dogs in it on my ankle, causing a nice burn, asked Eric to do the school drop off while I took off.

About three quarters of a mile into the route, which consisted of "run toward the wind, then toward the sun," I looked at my little wrist computer. I try not to "ride" it, but just check distance every once in a while.

I looked again.

The pace was blistering. Really fast for me. That was great. What was a little disconcerting was forgetting to start the timer. Power on? Check. Start the recording? Not so check.

So I hit "start," and continued on. But what I was thinking of, as I was feeling the pace finally, was how much I like running, and yet my mental tape in the morning sounds like someone being forced to do something utterly against their will.

"Don't go," say the chattering monkeys. "You never get any faster, your clothes don't fit differently, who says you'll live longer. You don't even like it that much!" "It's too hard, you have too much to do, stay in bed another half an hour!" Or maybe, and this doesn't work much around here, apologies to those of you still in winter's grip, "The weather isn't right, it's too cold/hot/windy." The message is always, "Why bother? Just don't."

And some days I listen, and roll over, and the world doesn't end. And some days I go and have a crap run, and think, "Hey, monkeys, you got it right this time."

But today, despite the operator error, it was worth struggling with latex and shoe laces, dodging children who don't know that maybe sharing the sidewalk works best for everyone, judging whether I can get across the road before the car has to slow, dealing with the fact that running chin-up as I do makes the rising sun flash straight into my eyes, despite my cap, and dealing with hauling what my mama gave me around town, and only timing half of the route, eventually going about a half mile less than I intended. It was a good run.

And now as I'm having my tea and listening to the bookend girls get ready, I'm thinking maybe the monkeys will be quiet for the rest of the day.

On the go, go, go

2010-03-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

I was thinking of writing up my day yesterday and seeing if it made the top of anyone else's head lift off. It went something like this:

Up at 6:30, graded papers.
Showered.
Woke kids, fed kids, made lunches.
Got Eric to drive kids to school.
Decided what to make for dinner; made shopping list
Woke up Sarafina.
Woke up Sarafina.
Woke up Sarafina.
Suited up, got bee stuff together to take to school.
Got Sarafina to take pictures.
Took bees out of hive, put in carry box.
Got Caterina and bees in car.
Went to school, got stranger to close car because I was holding bees and a hive box.
Did presentations about bees in three classes.
Got call from Sarafina; needed an emergency ride to class.
Got home, put bees away.
Regular ride showed up.
Got shopping bags together.
Realized Tor's doctor appointment wasn't at 5pm, it was 2pm.
Got in car, called back up to pick up Ellie after school.
Picked up Tor, got him to doctor.
Walked 6 blocks to get tea with Cat.
Knit on baby sweater.
Walked 6 blocks to get Tor after appointment.
Tried to get ice cream, they only take cash.
Nice lady offered to treat.
Cat said she'd rather have ice cream in Alameda.
Thanked nice lady, drove through afternoon traffic to ice cream shop.
Talked to Denise on the phone about getting together right then.
Got ice cream.
Drove to grocery store, got milk in recylable bottles, asked about the honey which is all gone.
Drove home, put away groceries, cleaned up kitchen, put beans on to boil.
Denise came over, we picked vegetables.
Cleaned and weighed veggies, chopped kale.
Denise left, Italked to my mom on the phone while I made soup.
Eric home, talked while I made rest of soup.
Ate dinner. Eric made me laugh so hard I almost shot soup out of my nose; Sarafina followed suit when he made a crack about that. Tor dramatically fell over "dead" because he had eaten kale.
Tor and Cat began to kick a large ball back and forth.
Eric and I and Sarafina cleaned up.
Tor ate a bagel.
After multiple tries, got Tor and Cat brushed and in bed.
Ellie came home.
Got her in bed.
Read bedtime story.
Turned off lights.
Knitted while Eric drew shelf plans.
Cat got up saying she was hungry. Offered her soup. She took it, therefore she really was hungry.
Put Cat back to bed.
Went upstairs and got read to while knitting on sweater.
Collapsed.

Today seems much calmer, although I realized I've repeated the get up/lunch/drive routine, plus taking Ellie for an 8am tooth extraction, then grocery shopping and driving the teens to writing class. Now I'm going to make lunch for park day and pick up some baseball supplies. Maybe I'll finish that baby sweater today! And maybe, just maybe, I'll do some running of the sweaty kind today and tomorrow.

Numbers don't lie

2010-03-04T20:17:00.000-08:00

One of the very best parenting ideas I ever, ever had, was to take a long, thin board and paint a growth chart on it for each child. We tended to move a lot, and any kitchen doorways that had charted kids' growth would have been left behind. (Plus, with four kids, can you imagine? It would look like a New York subway car after a graffiti artists' convention.)

Sarafina's been feeling sleepy and hungry (not to mention a teensy bit grouchy) lately, as well as stumbling around a tiny bit more than usual. The doors, table legs, and cupboards haven't been jumping out at her, so if she's smacking into them, it's probably because she's been issued Another New Body that she's not completely checked out on. So I've been suggesting that it's time to whip out Ye Olde Measuring Boarde and check.

But she's been resistant. "Wait until next week." "Wait until Thursday," and today was the day. Despite my cherished belief that I am Very Tall, the kid outgrew me a couple of months ago. I can tell, because my height is marked (like a goal) on the stick.

Today, she moved past the next inch. Three quarters of an inch in just over three months. Who knows, I might have been grouchy, too.

And why was today the day? Well, of course. She's fully fifteen as of one o'clock this morning. But daddy's height is a goal that might just not get overtaken in this life.

Happy Birthday, tall daughter.

Restraint and the lack thereof

2010-03-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

Running this morning reminded me that workouts are as individual as dyelots. Although I can do this distance, today was more of a slog than usual. It's grey and gloomy outside -- who knows if that contributed to it? Sunshine seems to act as a battery charger for me. In the absence of actual sun, bright colors seem to help, too (this may explain the colorways of some Scandinavian designs. My brother who moved to Sweden says it's grey much of the time. Get your sunshine where you can!).

I was lucky enough to go to Stitches West this year with friends. Somehow it always feels too far away, and I don't need any more yarn, or fiber, or books, or anything. But a day out with the girls did sound terrific, so off we went.

It was so much fun, of course. Turns out it takes longer to look at everything than I expected, so if we do this again we'll take that into consideration. Also, I think taking classes would have been more fun than just the marketplace, but that's also for the future.

One of the nicest things ever to happen to me was over before we made it through the doors -- a woman in line for tickets said, "That is a great sweater. Where is the pattern?" So I got to point at my head. She was so flattering that we gave her our spare ticket. Then wandering about, I had my muse/voice of reason with me, my sister. She suggested that I might want to look at colors other than green, for instance. So -- red became the Color of the Day. She was obsessing over brown and orange, so it seemed even.

The find of the show, for me, was Miss Babs handdyed yarn. The woman I spoke with was lovely, and seemed to understand how important it was to find just the right red. Meet "Vlad."

Right behind my delight at finding this yarn came a typical worry: How was I to find the perfect sweater for it? To do the color justice, be able to be made with this yardage, to flatter me? Does anyone else do this? Eventually I shook myself mentally, and realized that an imperfect finished sweater trumped a theoretical sweater any day, and that there would be, in fact, more yarn made.

My wardrobe used to have three neutral-colored sweaters, all by the same commercial designer. One was thick and cable-y, one thin and slubby with silk, one was thin merino. All flattering, all the kind of neutral which could really pull a look together.

All, alas, irrevocably stained. Two were the victims of leaky tea cups; one has some sort of oily stain right over a nipple. Lovely, let me tell you. I tried to overdye the tea'd ones with more tea, but it wasn't successful. So finding neutral replacements became another Stitches quest.

Yarn? anyone can buy yarn. I ended up with fiber. Pound of BFL; half pound of BFL/silk. I bet I can get a sweater out of the first, and you can see that it's spinning up into a nice mix of colors.

Spinning up, in fact, on a spindle. I don't, as a rule, like spindles. I drop them, they're hard to use, give me my wheel any day, etc. But this spindle, which I picked up on a whim at Asciano FiberArts Tools seemed to spin itself. I'm no expert, and I'll probably do the bulk of this yarn on the wheel, as I'd like more loft than I'm getting with this, but it's a nice breakthrough feeling. I may have to get Abby Franquemont's new book.

After I toted up everything I spent while there, I thought I'd been pretty restrained. But the Russet and orange yarns (I don't remember the name of the second) at Miss Babs had been left behind. I swear I could hear them calling me. So I went online and got them, too. One good itch scratched. I have got to get my papers graded, my baby sweaters knit, all to get to the good spinning/knitting waiting for me here.

Anyhow, everyone seems to love Vlad:

Making do

2010-02-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not done with even one of the three baby sweaters that I need to do pretty much right now, if they're going to get here before the babies' arrivals. Maybe I need to let go of (in two cases) finding The Perfect Baby Sweater and realizing that "finished" trumps "ideal and still unrealized" almost every time!

That attitude helped me get out and run today. Raining -- again, and I wasn't feeling overly motivated, but it just doesn't matter. Since I'm not running for time, except in the "more time to live" sense, I can just call it discipline practice, and it counts.

That whole idea of discipline is relatively new to me -- I didn't get it, really get it, until I started having children. Along with some other shifts (hey, I do need some time alone or I go crazy! Who knew?), I began to deeply appreciate the beauty of just doing the work at hand, just showing up over and over and over. So in my world, that ends up looking like running in the rain. Even though I claim to be capable of regular exercise without concomitant increase in fitness, it's not true. Three miles wasn't terrible today. So. Something works sometimes.

I felt a little tight when I got home, so some yoga poses seemed called for. There's only one problem in my house:

Fred thinks that anyone on a yoga mat needs repeated "bonks" from his very hard (and possibly empty) head. Nothing quite as relaxing as easing into a deep Down Dog, hanging your head there, eyes closed, focusing on breathing, when "Bonk!" right against my forehead, my elbows, my legs. Between him and Caterina doing yoga under me, well, it was enough just to show up.

Change of the guard

2010-02-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

Last year, I grew Japanese Indigo in my garden, and did some dyeing experiments with it on Sheep Shed Studio mill ends.

The first filled bobbins are now all plyed -- 295 yards of about sport weight three ply:

The lighter side is probably truest to color; it's cloudy today.

Because I am not the kind of person for whom details work out, one bobbin finished before the other two. And they looked so even! Anyhow, once I wind those two off to make another one again, I'll finish plying and end up with a bit over 300 yards. I spun this as worsted as I can, and it's crisp -- no bounce, lots of shine. It should make something nice and intricate. Now, if I can only think of an appropriate pattern. Maybe Koolhaas? But who needs another hat?

The really exciting part about finishing this yarn is getting to switch from my Lendrum's stock slider option to the Woolee Winder that Eric gifted me for Christmas. I can't wait to just spin without stopping. And it fulfills my weird flat filled bobbin mania. There's some orange fiber with my name on it upstairs. . .

Running around

2010-02-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

After my injury hiatus followed by enthusiastic holiday reading, training starting at the beginning seemed like a good idea. Now I'm at the end of the beginner 5k training, and doing okay. I'm not setting any land speed records, but since the real prize I'm heading for is "middle aged discipline," I'm doing great.

Next, speed work! Sprint until you want to throw up! So. Much. Fun.

Something else that came from discipline (and redoing until it was right)? That's right!! The ribbed sweater is done, done, done.

I got to indulge in Extreme Blocking (which should so seriously be a spectator sport). The teeny tube of ribbing that was this:

Had a date with some water, soap, and pins:

And opened up to fit quite well:

It's an "Action Sweater" (apologies to Mr. Izzard) -- I can run the obstacle course that's the yard:

I like how curvy it looks from the back. All in all, I'm really satisfied.

Medium-Core

2010-01-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

I ran in the rain, but only a little bit of rain. Since the pattern has been: squall, clear, light rain light rain, heavy rain, light rain light rain light rain, squall, I figured that a spate of light meant time to lace up the tennies, since I'd finally gotten over the cold. The cold I got during a lovely three day knitting workshop with Janine of Feral Knitter. I got a cold, and many ideas for a sweater, and had lots of fun (and tea). I also discovered that no one making two ply jumperweight Shetland has what I'd call great oranges. Are you listening, yarn companies? yeah, I thought not.

Anyhow, it did feel good to run even though my hurt leg is still very much a part of daily life. It may never feel just right, but it isn't hurting any more if I run than if I didn't, and getting out and going even if the weather isn't perfect makes me feel kind of studly. Not hard-core, because I'm still puttering along at 10 minutes a mile, but medium-core at least.

Despite the rain, life goes on. One of the errands I ran yesterday was mailing a package out to the in-laws. They have cold heads; I'm a knitter, ergo, hat time! The ones for my mother in law are placeholders, one for her and one for my sister in law, so I have time to knit one to the requested pattern. I had these handspun ones done just from fun travel knitting.

Speaking of travel knitting, I plan to carry the gray sweater with me today to a friend's house for a few hours, but will probably leave it languishing in the bag because a baby sweater from stash is calling me. Babies come like inevitable January rainstorms, and I'd like to be done by the time the baby is. Actually, there are two babies on the way, so I need to identify more stash to romp through. And ignore any ideas about colorwork sweaters.

Have I written enough? If the package isn't at your house, and you expect to get that package soon, you can stop reading Right Now. I'm talking to you.

Okay. Pictures now.

Handspun "Felicity" hats. Slouchy, so soft, not my handspun but an absolute dream to work with. I should spin like this.

Regular flip brim watch cap style hat, out of EcoDuo and so soft and light I'd knit one up right now for me if I'd bought another hank, same color. Which I won't because I said anyone with as much yarn as I have should probably just knit some but the yarn is a dream. I'm afraid the brim blocked out floppy -- perhaps the baby alpaca was too much? but it's warm and soft, soft, soft.

So that's it for finished things these days. Except for running. Never finished, which is sort of nice, in a way.

Right on schedule

2009-12-20T19:48:00.001-08:00

I am, weirdly.

But first, pictures from that three year old Christmas present.

I think she likes it. If she doesn't want to wear it, it would make a nice table runner:

Close-up of mistake free section.

Friends and acquaintances keep telling me how stressed they are by holiday preparations. I keep waiting for the "oh no oh no oh nos" to hit, but they haven't.

You see, I have a Secret Plan. It involves A List:

If I do everything on that list, in the order listed, I should arrive at Christmas morning serene and with enough sleep. We shall see. Tonight, I finished one Fetching, in Jimmy Bean's 8 ply from stash.

Here it is spokesmodeling one of the uneaten gingerbread houses I got made up and decorated with the kids yesterday. (I delivered them, fully assembled, right on time. A List.)

Now I have to go and quilt one end of a lap quilt before I go to bed. Yawn.

Knitting while Traveling

2009-11-29T17:36:00.000-08:00

A big family Thanksgiving isn't the only way to go, but every few years I like to get together with all of my cousins, or at least as many as will get together at the old farm place, and Thanksgiving is a fine time to do it. So I'm in Tennessee right now.

I brought an early Christmas present to my mom. This was started back in 2006, and put in time out for some mistakes I couldn't fix then. Denise suggested that I neither fix them, nor even find them, but bind the piece off and call it good. After I knit that edging, then pinned it out for blocking, I found the mistakes. . . but it's okay. After three years, my memory sort of softens.

She said she'd put on a nice blouse and model it for me tomorrow.

A stop at Bliss Yarns in Brentwood to meet up with some absolutely lovely Ravelers led to these two skeins of local alpaca coming home with me. I love that the name of the animal is on the label. These come from Teardrop. Teardrop has a nice gray coat.

These are going to become either Brünnhilde or Ceangaltas Mittens from Knitting New Mittens and Gloves. Is it only coincidence that they almost perfectly match the Araucania Nature Wool in this sweater?

Yes, this sweater now has only a start to a sleeve. . . I took the plunge and ripped it out after discovering (through the magic of counting) that I had cast on approximately half the stitches of the entire body for the sleeve. No wonder it got too big. My arm isn't half of the circumference of my waist; it's nearly a third. I hope this one works well. It's going to be my "flight home knitting," but I'm going to switch to a longer cable for easier magic looping.

I also discovered that the lovely orange/yellow raglan cable sweater I made for a little one has a tiny mistake in it -- right in the front. I was gazing at my littlest daughter wearing it and thinking how nice it is to see my kids wearing sweaters I make, and saw a miscounted stitch right on the front of the sweater.

Sigh.

Saddle Up/Feeling Edgy

2009-11-11T20:48:00.000-08:00

Two saddles, done and stitched into place. One sleeve, done. Cuff edge, unstretched, matches the waist measurement, unstretched. My waist and wrists are not the same diameter.

I'm going to have to strike model poses to show off these sleeves. Either that, or rip them back and do a less-extravagant increase. Denise pointed out that they weren't going to be warm in the arm area. Maybe I'll knit a ribbed and cabled set of long fingerless gauntlet/gloves to wear with it. I don't know if sleeves like this will look high-fashion, or silly knitter. She also pointed out the effect of adding a new ball of yarn. Yes, I know. It's darker. Semi-solid yarn does that sort of trick occasionally.

I have an urge to set aside the second sleeve in order to work on a design for the collar. Maybe finishing that will allow a sane decision on the sleeve width. Saner, that is, than swanning around striking model-y poses.

In 2006, I started a lace rectangle for my mom. This year, I bound off the edge and decided to see if I could get it done before a Significant Gift Giving Occasion. Nothing like a three-year hiatus, eh? A simple pointy edge, sewn on because picking up and knitting made a wonky join, and turning a large item to knit back and forth made no sense. It's altered so it's a stockinette design, and it will do. At this point, "done" is a terrific thing.

Many delightful things already this month; many delightful things to come. One child has become so mature, with double digits and all, that she didn't even mind that I dorked her birthday cake pretty badly. I didn't have enough red icing to spell out "Happy Birthday," so I told her I was abbreviating it. She didn't seem to mind.

And today, I decided off the cuff to gather the three youngest and head out to Marine World for the homeschooler's day. Turned out it was probably the right decision. We got to see Sarafina (who had already made plans to go separately) and her friends -- who were cool enough to take an almost-8 year old Tor on big coasters with them, and I discovered that all four of my children have their mother's affinity for roller coasters.

This bodes really well for the future.

Jumping for joy

2009-10-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

Not because anything is done on the knitting front, but just because, well, you know. . .

Halloween is just so exciting. We had dinner at a friend's house (well, some of us did). The older one has her own tribe thing going every year.

Eric worked hard and made a useful pumpkin guillotine. Many evil winter squash were dispatched.

And Sarafina was fierce as Trinity.

The little ones got tired early enough so that I was able to hang out with our neighbors while they played with light sabers. A good night all around!

Making it up as I wait in line

2009-10-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

One reason I try to make up my own sweater ideas is that I can't always find exactly what I have in mind in a pattern. Not that they don't exist out there, but even with the power of Ravelry, I can't always find them, and I'm certainly too impatient to keep hunting until I find The One. Besides, I generally alter patterns in some way anyhow. And this way, I can go, "yarn first, then pattern," and since I buy faster than I knit, well, there you go.

Ha. It sounds as though I know what I'm doing. I don't; it's just that this is the way my person leans. Doing otherwise would be like doing bonsai: possible, but a lot of work.

At any rate, the sweater that's fun to wear but a bear to knit now has one shoulder:

I tried, I really really tried, to make this a seamless saddle-shoulder. I did two or three iterations of picking up the stitches along the fronts and backs, only to find that I had picked up different numbers on each side; that preloading the stitches to be picked up on needles felt like wrestling a catatonic octopus ; that finally what I wanted wasn't a purist "no seams allowed here!" sweater, but one with a saddle I liked.

Bowing to the inevitable, I knit a saddle, seamed it in, then proceeded to do some sort of knit back and forth cap for a few rows, then joined in the round, discovered I had picked up enough stitches for a nice sleeve cap but too many for an arm, and while standing in line to see Mortified in the city with my sister and some friends, figured that I could create a little reverse-gusset by placing markers on each side of some underarm stitches and decreasing them as I went down the sleeve.

And it worked! Easy-peasy lemon squeezy, as they say. Click for a sort of gussety close-up.

So now I'm just chugging along, enjoying myself. That is, until I get either to the end of this sleeve and have to try out my stylish idea and see if it makes me look like a dork, or love it and then just have to knit a. whole. other. sleeve. Not to mention something around the neck, I guess. Also, not to mention that "counting to three" is still a skill I'm struggling with. I just noticed two purl stitches lurking down in some knit ribs. Thank goodness for crochet hooks!

Either way, I want to get it done and out of the way, to make mental room for the gloves I just swatched for. Yessiree Bob, 14 stitches to the inch and I just can't wait.

Finally done

2009-10-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

So, four weeks after the baby, the sweater is done and gifted:

Back:

Lazy Daisy detail:

The yarn, Mission Falls Superwash, seemed splitty and a little fussy to work with. That reminds me -- I had better tell the (understandably sleepy) new mom that it can be washed. I hope it still fits -- it seems quite wee when I look at it. I'll start the Christmas knitting now, after the camping trip this weekend when I intend to make great strides on my gray sweater. Inspired by Denise, I'm contemplating bell sleeves. . .

MIssion Creep

2009-09-26T20:38:00.000-07:00

That baby sweater really is almost done. Good thing, too, because I'm not sure it's going to fit the wee lass who is now already three weeks old. Sheesh. Some day I'm going to need to crank this knitting speed thing up a bit.

So. Did I spend my free afternoon finishing the sweater with adorable embroidered flowers and clever ties? No! I spent it bringing to conclusion my first foray into Japanese sewing books. I tend to try to keep my book acquisitiveness in some kind of control --mostly it just pops out in something like garden seeds -- but these books really got to me. I love sewing, and I'm not great at it, but my kids will sometimes wear what I make, and these just look so -- well, like things I'd love to see my kids in.

The books are all in Japanese, but they're pretty clear if you've done any sewing. My big challenge is recognizing which pattern pieces go with which pattern, as they're all on one paper and you're to trace your own cutting copy. Not reading Japanese means that I did my best. I didn't actually use a pattern for the trim, though! (And I just realized that I omitted the pocket. Must add that. . .)

So here is the little beauty resting on a bed of kale I went on to thin drastically:

And from the back, on the child it's meant for. It's been warm here -- good for the skirt, bad for a baby sweater -- so she'll be able to wear it this week to school.

After a hard day's play, her hair is less sleek than it was when Bridget braided it this morning:

I'm looking forward to doing more sewing soon. I noticed some really yummy flannel and couldn't help thinking of matching Christmas pajamas. Ha! Maybe I should finish some matching Christmas gloves for Sarafina before I get completely nuts.

Sweet Stages

2009-09-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

Spinning and knitting continue apace. I now have a 3x3 rib halter sweater in charcoal. That's what I'd have if I stopped and added straps to the saddle shoulder hate to knit/love to wear sweater. There has to be a name in that somewhere. Baby sweater for neighbor #1 (I've heard tell there is going to be a crop of the baby kind here soon, so I'm planning more) is coming along nicely. Lately, I've put evening knitting aside for paid work, and daytime knitting aside for yard work. Whew! Someday, I'll sit and knit in my yard, and won't that be the bees' knees?

I don't want to embarrass anyone or cause family friction, but right now I'm finding my eldest child easy to enjoy. Thoroughly. A wise friend told me to enjoy it but not assume it will stay. Said child also reminded me that five years ago I thought frequently and longingly of boarding school for her, so there is hope for the younger set at home. She's right.

But she just emerged from her bedroom and said, "Gleaves go over your boots, right?"
I must have looked owlishly at her, because she said, "Leg armor?" hopefully. I said yes, I assumed that over made sense.
"Right," she said, and disappeared back into her room.

Finished things

2009-09-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

I realized that I didn't explain the helmet hair in the last post. We've been riding our bikes and we all have wonky hair after pulling off our super-duper bike helmets. Oh well, small price to pay, I guess. Plus, my hair is often damp so I just do some heavy-duty finger fluffing once I get home.

The latest hat will probably mash hair much more thoroughly than a bike helmet, though. My own 3/2 rib design, quickly put up in Lamb's Pride worsted, in the same color I knit my very first sweater for me in, about 12 years ago. I have got to get this yarn all used up! Maybe I'll knit feltable potholders or something.

I liked the decreases when I was done:

The yarn dyed with indigo has been humming in my head ever since it was dry: "Wonder what I'll loooooooook like? Wonder how I'll spinnnnnnn. . . " I may not be able to resist heedlessly starting new knitting projects as the whim takes me, but I can wait on spinning, partially because I only have a few bobbins and it's hard to spin over other yarn. Besides, I had to finish that lavender wool that I had 3/4 spun up. So I did.

618 yards of two-ply laceweight. I haven't figured out the wpi yet, and it clearly varies. I'm toying with the idea of replying it. It's nicely balanced, but it's very loosely plied. I obviously need some remedial spinning help.

The color is sort of all over the place. Some of the white appears yellowish to me, but the lavender is kind of appealing. A swatch would tell a truer story.

Maybe when I finish the two sweaters just hanging about on the needles, that's just what I'll do. Or else I'll spin indigo. . .

Helmet hair and a lump in my throat

2009-08-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

I deliberately sent two of my always-homeschooled kids off to school today.

See if you can guess which one is the focus of this effort:

She didn't quite get what her brother was doing:

He's still homeschooling in his head, I think:

But it's an experiment he's willing to go along with:

Many paths, no destination

2009-08-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Well, at least none yet. Once that rainbow sweater was all done (except of course it's not all done because I have to reseam the arms. . .) I gleefully continued with other things.

Although I still have that lavender wool (about 75% spun up) hogging my wheel, a garden expansion required that I harvest all of the Japanese indigo I grew this summer. I'd tried once to dye with it, but it turned out a shade that didn't do it for me thanks to an equipment malfunction. This time?

I got blue. I can hardly wait to spin up "old blue jeans." The fiber is a Sheep Shed mill end, the kind with a bit of mohair in it. Should be fun to make and fun to use!

Mostly, it's been all summer work around here. Canning produce,

taking little ones out to do some fishing in the local lakes,

and doing the big honey harvest for the year. I may get some more in October, but 52 pounds was the haul this time. Not bad, not great, but maybe enough to see this honey-loving family through to next year.

Sarafina got her braces put on, and she's dealing with the not-fun parts of sore teeth and expanded hygiene requirements. My teeth moved quickly under my braces, so I'm hoping she'll have the same experience. Ellie is currently visiting grandparents out of town, and being celebrated in the ways only grandparents and aunts and uncles can do. I miss her and believe she's having a great time. Tor is reading more every day, and playing a lot with his little sister, who is currently sick. That's why she's leaning against my leg in the canning picture. She just feels rotten.

Ellie and I took a beginning crochet class. I can make at least one type of granny square and just need some practice and maybe I'll give a pattern a try after that. I'd like to make market bags as gifts, I think, and this seems a quick way to do it. No pictures -- maybe after I practice some more!

Through all of this, I am doing some knitting, though. From extreme left to right clockwise, a swatch in Mission Falls' Merino Superwas, for a baby due next month -- and a little bird tells me another one might be on the way in the neighborhood, so I'll have to get cracking on that, too -- then the Extremely Boring To Knit Yet Fun To Wear saddle shoulder sweater, up to the armpits. I'm actually having trouble figuring out how to make symmetrical armholes. That's when walking away seemed like a very good idea. Then another pair of Embossed Leaves socks, or at least the cuff, in Piedmont Yarn's kettle dyed sock yarn, then a quick hat in Brown Sheep's Bulky. I had actually finished the hat and realized that the decreases drew it above my ears -- a common hat experience for me -- and it's been picked out and set to go again.

I keep getting projects started and realizing that what I need is mindless knitting (hence the hat) for little bits of distracted time. But I do have to get that baby sweater moving, so perhaps it will draw the other projects along in its wake. Of course I promised Sarafina some wickedly complicated colorwork mittens for Christmas, and Cat has requested a Dale of Norway sweater, and I caved and bought the yarn, so who knows when anything will get finished?

The check is in the

2009-07-22T19:36:00.001-07:00

. . . not the mail, but my sister's hands.

Denise sweetly went all the way out to the fair to claim our goods. She picked up a sweater, a skein of yarn, and some marmalade for me, in addition to her award-winning jam. There were envelopes with our prizewinning ribbons in them.

And. . . checks! Apparently the powers that be aggregate your winnings and cut one check. So that sunflower bread? I won $10 . . . in addition to the free tickets and such. A nice bit of fun, that.

The sweater got $10 also -- whee! As Turltlegirl pointed out, they don't seem to care that the wondrous colors are the responsibility of the dyer, not the knitter. They did say my stitches were nice and even, though. And not a word about the horrifying seams.

I'm just delighted with it all. It seems like one of the most fun things to do in a summer.

The other one is picking blackberries, and lo how the season is upon us. In my refrigerator rests a bowl of macerating fruit, to put into jam tomorrow, and in the oven rests a blackberry silk pie -- seedless puree plus a custard. I'm already thinking of how I can alter this for future attempts. I've never felt that I had enough berries to cast away the leftover pulp, but this year? More berries than I think I've ever seen.

I have almost every day picking plans, in addition to dealing with my ongoing fascination with the idea of a harvest hovercraft and/or elastic arms. Today I realized how lucky I am to be picking fat, luscious berries without the humidity I associated with picking as a child -- Tennessee was the only place I knew you could go and pick. While we possibly could have found them in Southern California, no one I knew did that sort of thing. I'm hugely grateful to be that sort of person and to have the berries to indulge her.

It's a major award!

2009-07-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

Anyone else remember that line from "A Christmas Story"? I didn't get a leg lamp, but I got something oh so very exciting at the fair last week.

It all started with a letter. A letter that said, essentially, you've won an award, there's going to be a ceremony, here are some tickets and a parking pass, please come.

Oh, well, it's really not that difficult to get me to go to a fair. I love almost everything about them. And an award! What could it be? About my sweater? It must be, I thought. So Eric and I ditched the kids ("You've been to the fair," we reminded them. This is about me.)

Yes -- what I do not appreciate at the fair? Heat. Lots and lots and lots of heat. The previous visits were during an unseasonable cool snap, and it was actually kind of fun to be there. Even going on little rides wasn't bad, and as I mentioned before, the concert was all we could ask for.

Not this time. It was hot. I'd dressed as loosely as possible, and I was still melty.

So, we sit outside with a crowd, and sit through what felt like fifty sponsored awards. It was then I started to get suspicious. The fair applications are pages and pages long, and I do read my sections pretty carefully. The baked good section had a little asterisked comment that since the fair theme was "sunflowers," using sunflower seeds or oil could get you a special award.

I'd used sunflower seeds in my second-place bread.

Then they called my name, and I got to shake hands and get the special award envelope.

After posing for a picture by the crazed-looking fair photographer, Eric and I looked though my special award envelope.

Not a lamp. A letter, saying "Dear award winner, congratulations for winning a sponsored award for ___________" and in the space was handwritten "best use of sunflower seeds/oil in a baked good."

We just cracked up.

Then I went to visit the unawarded spinning and the sweater and we sweltered home again. Still, the worst day at the fair isn't that bad and soon I get my sweater back.

(I'll laugh more if I actually get any prize past a letter -- but I'm not holding my breath.)

A fair Fair

2009-07-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

The first concert for three of my four children, all of whom ended up down in what passed for a mosh pit, prizes for both me and my sister for our entries, and lovely weather. We couldn't have asked for more. Except maybe fewer spinny rides. Click to make the collage bigger, if you wanna see.

Boring, with exciting mistakes

2009-07-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

This is how far I've gotten in my new sweater project. Miles and miles and miles of 3 by 3 ribbing. It's the bottom portion of a seamless saddle shoulder sweater I'm working up. I think I'll block it so it's not the completely body-conscious shape it fits as now, but still slim. Araucania Nature Wool, in the gray multi that the hood for the little elf green sweater was knit with. Size 6 needles, and occasionally I'm finding a purl stitch at the end of the knit part. There's one right about the middle of the sweater. Fixing those with crochet hooks is about as exciting as it's gonna get for a good number of rows more.

Another race tomorrow morning before the small town parade, then Sunday is the cheesecake competition at the county fair. I get to find out about my rainbow sweater and bread and jam without having to deal with the kids, because Eric's going to keep them at home (thank you!!). As I said, I don't expect to win, but it's fun to see them there.

More needle holders

2009-06-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

This time we're visiting the continent of Australia (with a side trip into the land of Acrylic).

The Coolibah tree was, of course made famous in the song Waltzing Matilda. The Mallee tree was used for medicine by the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. The Sheoak is (surprise!) like an English oak tree, but weaker, so the dratted Victorians called it a "She" oak. Grrr.

Anyhow, $25 paypalled to drhpang AT verizon DOT net, with a clear description (material, number of bumps, etc.) of which holder you'd like will get it mailed to you from me. You can also email me directly.

All done and off

2009-06-13T20:05:00.001-07:00

The cardigan's finished, as of last night, and it's sitting (damply) on a judging table at the fairgrounds.

I was really unhappy with the arms -- both the sleeves and armscyes just stink. Partly my skills (I kept thinking about all the advice about poor finishing ruining a good knitting job) and partly because the sleeves were too big at the top. Too big for a good fit either on me or into the arm holes.

I may get out the sewing machine after the fair and have a go at it. It's already cut; I don't see that I can ruin it any more. But I'll ask a more experienced finisher for advice first.

It sure is pretty, though.

Steeking while Camping

2009-06-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

My sister and I were in charge of activities on this camping trip. We planned none.

I had joked about having "steeking" being an activity, but was sure I was going to get to it after I'd done all the preparation needed for a camping trip. I didn't.

So it turned out to be something to do while we were there. (Hey, you can't play dodge ball, wade in the creek, or hike all the time!)

I cleared a space on the Stump By The Fire, and started in.

I didn't bother sewing stay stitches on these, because I planned to sew up the sleeves using mattress stitch right away, and they aren't going to be under any stress. I just sort of eyeballed a line down the middle.

The back side was fairly attractive.

But apparently the euphoria of cutting apart knitting got to me, because modeling them seemed like an appropriate behavior.

And then it was serious time.

They went together fairly easily, although I'm not thrilled with the seam myself, it will definitely do.

Once they were seamed, I couldn't resist a little creative basting.

I did get one sewn into the armhole, but realized afterwards that I'd wandered off the straight line and have to pick it out. After that I put them away in a fit of pique and darned an old sock instead. Plenty of time to seam, weave ends, wash and block before Saturday, right?

Guess who showed up?

2009-06-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

While I was moving camping equipment down in the basement yesterday in preparation for a weekend away, I found a shed snakeskin. It was pretty big. "Uh oh," I thought.

Then I looked up and saw 5" of tail sticking out from behind a piece of wall. I must confess, I seriously considered not telling Ellie and just letting him be -- obviously he is/was thriving! But he's not, technically, my snake. So I took a deep breath, and called her.

To her credit, she worked for about 1/2 hour, with an ice pack, a long sleeved jacket, and a lot of patient tugging, enduring being hissed at and even snapped at once, and she's got her Zipper back.

Sigh.

Going, going, almost gone

2009-06-02T08:37:00.001-07:00

More of the needle cases are gone, off to new homes to make their owners very happy. My father in law has a new set, based on Australian hardwoods, that are coming available, but you can see here which ones are still around.

Haven't cut the sleeve steeks yet, because I had a wild, wild day in the beehive yesterday, followed by many household responsibility-before-going-camping sorts of things. I did discover that Costco sells bagels that I love and the balance bars my spouse eats at work are less expensive there than at Trader Joe's. The things you learn.

Finish Line in Sight

2009-05-30T21:14:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if folks get tired of slow as molasses knitting pictures. I know I prefer ones where it seems as though the knitter has a bunch of "Shoemaker and the Elves" helpers, buying yarn and then having it seem to magically knit itself up into exquisitely finished garments, presto-changeo.

My knitting is not like that. I don't knit much, and I knit slowly. This is a theme in my life, apparently.

But, even a slow knitter makes progress. Sometimes, that progress is even serendipitous. For instance, when I chose to knit the sleeves for my current project at the same time, planning to steek and sew them later, it was to make the color runs approximately the same size as the body.

I didn't know they would also be a close match.

And now, despite having absolutely zero elves of the helpful-in-handwork category, the sleeves are almost done.

All that's left is to bind off the steek stitches, and then figure out whether to connect the remaining stitches into two separate rounds, and knit the cuffs before cutting the steeks, or cut the steeks, sew the sleeves into tubes, and then knit the cuffs. I think I had better ask around -- I'm tired and can't quite figure out what order to do them. I want it to be done well ahead of the fair, but also done well.

And why am I so tired, you might wonder? Remember how I don't think I knit much or fast? Well, I know for a fact that I don't run much, and that not very fast.

Nevertheless, I ran my first (and perhaps last) 5k today with two really good buddies. Even with approximately 2500 other women running, it felt like it was just us, and Eric and Caterina, who came out to cheer me on. The slower of us in the threesome had dubbed today the "Chasing Grace" day, and it was. I lost her quickly at the beginning and never caught up. I know I ran a faster first mile than I would have thought, because I heard someone call the time. I paid for it, and finished the race with an average of (wait for it) -- ten minutes a mile! So a fast first, slow second and medium third. Sheesh. I could have done that without the crowds and tags and electronic timing.

Oh well. I figured I deserved a little something (although the free massages afterward were wonderful), so I drove my friend's yarn store and picked up some treats for my feet.

Saucon Sock in "Forest" and Rio de La Plata Multicolor Sock in some combination of "Wood Thrush, Crimson, Posy Green, Chestnut, Indial Teal and Black." It's pretty, anyhow. They'll make cushy socks.

And after this sweater, I'm going to want something a little smaller to work on.

I am knitting

2009-05-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

But who wants to see pictures of 1/3 of a pair of sleeves?

In order to ensure that I get this monster done, the Alameda County Fair is going to expect me to be there on the 13th of June with it finished to submit it for judging. I don't expect much, but a) it's fun to enter things and b) I get a free ticket for everything I enter, I think. Since one of our favorite bands is playing there -- I know, is there anything more pathetic than the fair circuit? -- we're looking forward to a night out.

I am, however, doing lots of stuff on the gardening blog. See you there if you'd like, otherwise stay tuned. Pictures of finished sleeves next time, I promise.

Buzz on the garden blog

2009-05-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging bees at the garden blog today.

Buzz.

Strike up the bands; more needle cases

2009-04-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

I keep saying, "I only have to do the sleeves," and Sarafina keeps muttering, "You keep using 'only' and 'sleeves' in the same sentence, and I cannot think of one instance where you haven't knit each sleeve at least three times. So you actually have six sleeves left."

Pish tosh, is what I say. I'm pleased with the fit, I'm pleased with the bands, and I do need to figure out where in the color sequence to start the sleeves. I think I'm going to make two at a time, with an in-between steek, to keep the color repeats similar in length to the body. Fortunately, even before I began knitting at all on them, I realized I'm going to have to have a selvedge to sew into the arm holes, so I should make a few extra rows before the pattern. See? That's two sleeves' worth of mistakes I don't have to make!

Still, it's something of a long road between here and finishing completely.

I sewed the bee buttons on just today, while watching "Life in Cold Blood," lent to us by Susan of Homeschooling in the Kitchen fame, using a needle from my olivewood needle holder.

Unless Rosi G. and Kim M. release their claims on the walnut burl and the Shiro plum, these are the seven needle cases I have left until the Australian Hardwood series hits my mailbox. I was thinking that, while these pictures are nice, sometimes it's helpful to see them up close. So I took individual pictures.

This is the maple burl. It's very smooth (he does lovely finishing work).

This is a pecan burl.

This one is taken.~~This is one of the dyed and laminated wood ones. When I look at it in sunlight, it's mostly gray and red. The Knitpicks laminated wood needles use the same technique.~~

Also gone.~~This is another of the pecan heartwood burl ones.~~

All gone.~~The last of the blue acrylic. I like the silver findings on it.~~

These are the red acrylic ones. He's calling these "uncut rubies." They look like a pile of crushed red glass, but of course are very smooth. One has thirds turned into it, the other is more bilaterally symmetrical.

So, if you want them, you can paypal the maker at drhpang AT verizon DOT net, and we'll get them out to you asap.

Oh, Deary Me

2009-04-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

Just realized I'm supposed to be part of a symposium on growing local food on Saturday. I suppose I can talk about how I got a whole pound and a half of snowpeas out of my garden. . . how's that for local (but possibly not very impressive)?

I think I'd feel better with a bit more preparation. So today after I grade, that's what I'll work on. Sheesh.

Generally, I'm really happy to speak in public, but I prefer to feel as though I have some clue about my subject.

More Needle Cases

2009-04-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

For anyone who's been waiting, more are on their way to my house right now.

If you're one of the people who have been waiting for a case, please let me know which ones you want by number and name, left to right (like Walnut #2, etc); I'm trying to go on a first-come, first-served approach.

First, all of them together (click to make bigger):

Then, the American Hardwod series II. From left to right, there are two walnut burls, two pecan burls, two Shiro plum, one cherry, one lilac, and two maple burl.

Finally, there are a few acrylic. He says he doesn't usually work in this, but they're pretty and someone might like them. They're a product of the Taiwan plastic tree! I think the ones in the middle look like Tesla coils.

I can imagine a lot of secret pal packages being livened up with one of these little beauties. It's fun having non-knitters find out about the secret underworld of those who wield sticks.

Buttons before bands

2009-04-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

At least when I finally get the button bands done, I'll be able to close it up. This one is sitting on the bottom band for size comparison purposes. I just couldn't resist these when I saw them on ebay.

Does it count if the knitting came for the ride?

2009-04-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

The weather's been the kind to make kids kind of crazy -- sunny and pretty, but with a chilly wind. Mine were, at least, a bit edgy, so I took a page from Kristin's blog and announced that we were going wildflower hunting today. Believe it or not, there was whining. I ignored it and loaded them and a spare in the car. Big sister had a science project with friends today, so she "got" to opt out of this hike.

I had the foresight to bring along a CD player so we listened, mostly, to more of A Hat Full of Sky, by our beloved Terry Pratchett on the drive. Maybe it was all those Feagles running around head-butting things, but the boys immediately found sticks and did not put them down for the entire hike.

They enjoyed nature by bounding around in it (and falling into it, in the case of the creek, but fortunately that was late in the day), and I realized that they weren't able to slow down yet to appreciate the flowers. So I took pictures and they can identify them later. I'll tell them that there are a lot of lupines!

We did manage one quiet look at a little bird, either a flicker or a woodpecker, peeking out of a hole in a dead tree, but then they were off again, running as though pursued. Or pursuing.

The Kauni cardigan came with us in the car. I thought we might get to sit long enough in one place so the front band might be finished. I thought wrong.

So mostly I just carried the food and water and camera and was bemused.

Not a bad way to spend half a day, even if I haven't finished that band yet.

Going Fast

2009-04-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Not me, of course.

In fact, this morning I forced Eric to walk to a coffee shop a bit closer than Peet's, but farther than the one he wanted to go to -- they weren't open yet. Sorry, honey. Slow, and spacey, too.

The needle cases are going fast. [Later this morning -- Cherry is gone; just laminated one left.] I still have the laminated one without the turquoise streak, the cherry one, the maple burl, and the Shiro plum. Whoops! The maple burl and the Shiro plum are gone as of this morning!

I just talked to the artist himself, and he's promised me another shipment -- if you don't see something left that you like, keep coming back and there will be more.

The laminated with turquoise, the dark walnut, and the pecan, are all spoken for and on their way this week to their new homes.

My father in law is busily turning more, so keep an eye on this spot! I can email updates when/if I get more. Just let me know.

6 mph

2009-04-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

That's how fast I'm running, which, while slow, is back to my pre-fall sickness speed and distance.

Hooray.

If only I knit that fast, I'd have new bands on the Kauni cardigan, instead of having no bands at all.

My time, these days, is spent on other things. I'm halfway through sewing a shirt for Caterina, and this morning I cleaned and inventoried the refrigerator and freezer, and am halfway through the cabinets. My shopping list is going to be slim today, because I have enough for a few meals. Then there's the weekly bread to make, and I'm doing a lot of gardening.

So that's it. Any of you have spring fever?

Get 'em while you can!

2009-04-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

Needle cases by my father in law. $25 to me and I'll send you one right out - this includes regular first class postage in the U.S., international stuff I'll add shipping to it.

The light one, in Lilac, is spoken for (click to read the labels):

He's calling these his "American Hardwood" series, except for the laminated two on the left. I can vouch for how lovely they are -- I use my olivewood one, made for my Italian heritage, all the time.

So let me know. I'm also hoping our local yarn shop will carry them in the future. For now, it's a readingwhileknitting exclusive.

What was I thinking?

2009-04-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Fortunately I could, if I wanted, take both the band and neckband off and redo them. I'm leaning toward just undoing the front band and knitting it with the yellow/bluegreen combination that the neck band is in.

Arguments for? Easier to redo only one, and I want to pick up 2-4 more stitches than I did the first time around. So doing it over would not only harmonize the colors, but ease the lack of good fit.

I'm really glad, really, that knitting is an easily-redone craft. It's not like sculpting in marble or woodworking, where the material is quite difficult to repurpose once cut or shaped. And I'm glad, on one level, that I can learn from my mistakes.

But still.

Sigh.

Front Bands

2009-04-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

One's picked up along the left of the Kauni cardigan and I'm noodling along on it.

There had been some discussion about whether or not I wanted a zip or buttons on this sweater, but I found some lovely pewter buttons with bees on them and thought it might be fun to have those, since they had a nice geometric feel to them, to go with the squares on the sweater.

Busy couple of days. I got to play with someone else's bees, and got dinner out of it -- thank you so much, Esperanza! Finally did some gardening, and I'm looking forward to finishing those bands. Slow, but I see progress on the horizon. So much to knit, so little time, such a messy house to do it in.

Steeking in Public

2009-04-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

My Kauni sweater came with me and my swollen hands to park day today. Partly, I wanted to work on it, since I'd just finished the neckband on a ride to and from the snow yesterday (thank goodness for friends who drive) and partly to cut a steek dramatically in front of a group.

It's all part of my "demystify life" paradigm. Do it right in front of people, a lot like John Cleese showed many years ago, right? Well, not quite like that. But I do try to obviously create and do and show other people that life isn't a matter of perfection, or fixed rules, and that just jumping in rarely creates disasters -- often it's a perfectly reasonable approach.

Anyhow, I used regular sewing-up needles to sew guidelines, then got out my scissors. A friend yelled, "Come look! She's going to cut her sweater!" A few of the other homeschoolers gathered around. I didn't ask their permission, so I'm not going to put their faces here, but Sarafina snapped some pictures of them recoiling in horror. Gasps all around. Poor Sarah just said something like, "I couldn't do that. I'd just knit a regular cardigan." It made me laugh.

Then I got to demonstrate how well this whole "cutting up your knitting" thing works -- "Look!" I said, "it fits really well, and it holds together nicely."

A young friend, a relatively new but already very adventurous knitter, said, "Why doesn't it unravel?" I showed how the yarn was "sticky," and had good inter-thread adhesion, and also that I wasn't pulling on it.

I didn't get the bands picked up, partly because I was wavering on the zipper/cool pewter buttons decision, and partly because this morning I tried to give the bees sugar water using my new Zen beekeeper persona. This involved lifting the covers, putting in baggies of sugar water, putting on a new empty box and replacing the cover.

I got as far as lifting the first cover when the first bee bumped my nose. Apparently it wasn't the accident I thought, but a warning shot. The next three bees didn't bother bumping.

Treat and Retreat

2009-03-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

[If you're here for the knitting, feel free to scroll way down.]

Thank you, everyone, for the lovely birthday wishes.

I got through it just fine -- and I mean that in only the nicest way. While some people have really come down on me for saying this, for me, 45 is about the exact midpoint of my life (I hope). I come from a line of mightily long-lived people, and if nothing untoward happens, I will probably be about 90 before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

And that had me well and truly freaked out. I mean, halfway, right? Aaaaaiiiiieee! Halfway? I want more time!! I want more life!! Why did I go to graduate school? Why on earth did I drop out of not one, but two PhD programs? How can I instantly be a perfect parent and wife?! What is wrong with me!!!

So I was making Eric really happy, as you can imagine. For my birthday, he gave me me. Off for a retreat, all by myself, just to think and knit and spin. In quiet.

I drove to a yoga retreat center, and checked in. I looked for my parking place -- I was camping in the van -- and drove past the first one on the map, thinking, "That can't be it -- it's a gravel lot next to a building" The next one? A gravel lot next to the fire house. Finally I found a gravel lot, but away from the activity centers of the buildings. Unfortunately for me, it was a tiny bit tilted. Undaunted, I got out my spinning wheel and prepared to enjoy my peaceful solitude.

Then came the bulldozers. Two of them. Back and forth, up and down, right through and past my gravel lot. Grrrrrmmmmmm, zooooooooom, grrrmmmmmm. Thumpdumpdumpdump. Apparently yoga retreat centers need a lot of rubble moved.

I finally had to laugh.

Going and having a lovely massage helped -- it was quiet down on the other end of the campus. After that, I didn't try to spin any more. Not only am I horribly out of practice, but there was a gummy residue on my lace flyer and I didn't have rubbing alcohol or silicone spray or lubricant of any kind with me, although I did find a bit of oil from the massage behind my ears. Not enough, however, to approach that hard to turn wheel. Instead I thought about and wrote about my garden plans. It's easy to be a master gardener on paper.

Dinner next! Lovely vegetarian food, eaten alone while looking out at a small garden of some sort and some still-bare fruit trees. It wasn't until afterwards I realized that many folks were sitting in a semicircle around the guru of the place. Because of some difficult family history, gurus kind of make me itchy, so I wandered back up to my tilted van. . .

Just in time for the singing and stamping dance sounds to come wafting towards me. I could also hear birdsong, and running water, and frogs -- frogs!! -- but had to hear them through the human-generated noise. It wasn't as silent as I'd hoped, but no one was actually talking to me, and I got a whack of knitting done even though I waited until after dinner to start on it.

As I unknit first, in true Stefani knitting fashion, the sounds gradually died down until all I heard was the frog chorus. And people walking around and talking loudly, cars starting and driving out, or driving in and parking, but it didn't matter any more. I was so engaged in counting aloud and thinking and wondering if it was long enough yet and did I figure the decreases correctly -- I should never put a project down in the middle of any shaping -- that my focus became narrower and narrower. Just me and the needles and yarn and color.

Until I got this for my birthday:

I didn't have scissors with me, or even a pocket knife, or I probably would have tried steeking then and there, I was so excited. I folded it up and stuffed it in the bag and tried to figure out what angle to sleep in the pop top so I wouldn't roll downhill in the night. There really isn't much room there; I know now why some of the kids object to sleeping up there. Sorry, kids! It is, however, more comfortable than the downstairs bed, so maybe we can work out a trade. I'll have to talk to Eric about that for the next camping trip.

A three-needle bind off, from the purl side, seemed like a good choice. I'm happy with the shoulder seams. I thought about casting on for the sleeves and getting a few repeats in on them, but about halfway through the casting on, I thought that it was the better part of wisdom to realize when you're tired and go to sleep.

I drifted off to the frogs, looking forward to getting to go home. And then I woke up early, and cold, and thought, "Forget this, I'm going home now." And I did, and I snuck into the house full of sleeping people and was so glad to be home that I could hardly express it. It was also Eric's birthday, and I got to be the first to wish him a happy birthday by touching him with really cold steering-wheel hands.

The next day, I used a teeny crochet hook to make steek holding stitches, instead of dealing with my sometimes-balky sewing machine. They're hard to see, blue on blue, but my fingers are on each side of them.

Crochet worked well for short steeks, like the one for the back neck opening and the sleeves, but the neckline seemed too long to deal with each little crochet stitch. Plus, the yarn is really sticky. I am not that worried about it unraveling. Not unworried enough to do nothing yet, but I did switch to simple backstitch.

For sewing like that, I keep my sewing-up needles in this custom-made just for me needle case:

My father in law made it out of olive wood for me. You, too, can own one in any of a dozen woods or wood-blends. Just ask me how!

As the steeks fell open, it was more and more exciting. Deciding to do fewer neck decreases made a slightly less deep neck, which was good. I even slipped it on overhead and it will be a close-fitting cardigan, just the right length, blocking permitting. Finally, finally, I started to believe that there might be a real sweater "soon," a knitter's soon, for me. I picked up neckline stitches, as you can see in the top of that picture, and will knit that up, then knit the front bands, and then I'll knit the sleeves.

Once those puppies are done, there won't be anything more to do. Seems like a fantastic plan at the moment. But I won't be yoga retreating again any time soon.

Bee story over on my gardening blog.

I'm 45 today

2009-03-27T09:06:00.001-07:00

As a birthday present to myself, I finally started another project. I'm looking forward to it for lots of reasons.

I also went for a nice run this morning, and am looking forward to a lovely day of showering, cleaning, baking a cake with the kids for me, and planting out another flat of basil. Maybe I'll move the cukes up into bigger pots, too.

Whee!

My Favorite Work Out

2009-03-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

Running alone has become a favorite activity of mine. Quiet, both inside and out, because no one is talking to me. I love feeling my body moving through space, even on the days when I'm heavily aware of my, well, heavier places.

But once a week, according to my new workout plan, I'm supposed to take a long walk. A walk about 60 minutes long. Turns out, walking to Peet's for coffee takes about 30 minutes. Bonus!

Eric's knees don't really want to run, but walking works well. Together, it's a different quiet. At home, getting a full conversation in with him is really the art of finding the interstices between childish pronouncements. Verbal juijitsu, if you will. But while we walk, we can talk and talk and talk. There's enough time to find our way through conversations, to circle back and reexamine topics, or just to walk in companionable silence.

A good run is invigorating like little else. But a good walk and talk fills me up for the whole week to come.

Re-Newed

2009-03-19T16:35:00.000-07:00

Maybe you're blessed with naturally photogenic looks. The camera doesn't have to see a classically beautiful face to love that face. Some people just always have flattering pictures of them -- something about the arrangement of cheekbones and eyes, chin and forehead.

I'm not one of those people. I routinely allow my children to take pictures of me, only to gasp in horror at the Sicilian crone looking out from raccoon-dark eyes, wild, mind-of-its-own hair, and horrifying expression. In them, I'm only inches away from grabbing a broom and chasing them around. Fortunately, I'm in charge of deleting pictures from the disk and figuring out what to print, too, so I only leave about every fifteenth of those in there. No sense lying to the great-grandchildren that I didn't start the slide into cronehood at about 25. Maybe they can use it as a warning, and start investing into good under eye cream early on.

There is one picture of me, though, that I adore. Fortunately I get to carry it around all the time, but it's not quite the same. I'd like, ideally, a 14x16" print of it on my wall, in one of those oval old-timey frames. It's that good. I look Sicilian, but more Sophia Loren than a little old village lady. It came in the mail today. Unfortunately, it has some holograms right over my hair, and it's only about an inch square.

(wait for it)

Something that's not often seen -- a beloved driver's license picture. This one's good until 2014, so maybe I can keep it until I truly am a little old lady and it will more obviously be the vanity it is now.

Something else got done today.

This one was started way back in 2007 for Tor. I must have messed up the cable and put it away in a fit of pique. I found it yesterday in a shopping bag, didn't know why on earth I couldn't have fixed it earlier, and figured I'd finish it off. It will, of course, only fit Caterina right now.

Unfortunately, I created some more mistakes in the finishing, none of which I'm going to either point out here or dwell on, firstly because I'm not doing that to my knitting any more: good knitters can see the mistakes and think I'm an idiot, non-knitters won't see them, and secondly, I'm not willing to reknit this baby a single stitch more. I'm also out of yarn and would have to rip, cannibalize, and then reknit. Not going to happen.

Instead, I'm going to encourage behavior like this as long as she's wearing it:

See? No mistakes! Amazing how fast a sweater gets done when 7/8 of it is already finished. I wonder if I can arrange to have that happen to all my knitting from now on?

Quiet Morning

2009-03-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

I think it really dawned on me this morning.

It's quiet.

No clicky toenails on the floor. No whining to go out, no jingle of tags on a collar.

We had Mack put down at home yesterday.

It was all too much -- the blindness and his subsequent fear made him unable to navigate the physical challenges that our house provides, and even when carried outside, he was running into the bushes he usually greeted with a morning shower instead.

I wish I had some of the good pictures we have taken of him over the years, although photographing a glossy black dog is a challenge. As he got older, his muzzle and front end grew gradually whiter, so it was easier, but his eyes got cloudier and cloudier.

The best pictures are probably in my head, though.

Him jumping impossibly high to get a tennis ball, and Sarafina's reedy three year old voice, "Good catch, Rothbart!" Even the dog didn't escape her "Swan Lake" obsession. Him dancing in impatience on the side of a lake, "Just throw the stick, already!" His quiet disdain for the children, and the long-suffering looks he used to give us. The way he sighed happily when we finally went to bed and he could come in and lie down. Kids at homeschool park day who would vie to walk him, when what he really wanted was to stay right by me, and maybe cruise for leftovers. The way he'd run inside after a bath and then scrub his muzzle all over the couch, drying his face and leaving wet marks all over, no matter how much we tried to dry him.

I'm sure more good memories will come back, although right now my view of him is colored strongly by his last year or so. The kids are doing okay, but sad.

It's just too quiet.

Fortunately, the rest of the family is due to wake up really soon. That'll stop.

Done and off to school

2009-03-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

Caterina, from under her blanket this morning, said, "Scratchy homemade socks," when given a choice between those and a "regular" pink pair for preschool.

Even not completely awake, she knew what she wanted. I'm glad they're done. This child is definitely worthy of better socks, too.

This is so hard

2009-03-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

Mack the Wonder Dog is getting old.

This is, of course, to be expected.

But since his diagnosis of diabetes, he's been facing more and more challenges. First the diabetic neurapathy, making his hips weaker. He's still drinking a lot, as we struggle to stabilize his blood glucose. Sometimes he wakes a person up in the night to go out and pee. Sometimes he wakes people two and three times a night, and I tell you, standing in the rain in just a t-shirt at 3 am waiting for my elderly dog to finish in the yard is not my idea of a great time. And for the last couple of days, we've realized that his sight is going. Apparently diabetes can speed the formation of cataracts, which he already has.

Now the vet is telling me to buy a harness to help him go downstairs -- we live on the first floor of a house, up a flight of stairs front and back -- as he's afraid because he can't see the step under his feet.

I'm growing very weary. Nothing seems bad enough to say, "Enough!" but it adds up to a sad twilight with this fine, and truly noble, dog. He doesn't seem to bee too pained, just sort of foggy.

It's just hard. I don't want to be the grownup. I don't want to carry him into the vet because he won't go where he can't see. I don't want to worry about him all the time. I don't want to be the one who has to make the final call. Sarafina wants a puppy, and when I say versions of "Over my dead body," it's not only the thought of all the work a puppy makes, and the idea of the freedom of a non-dog life. I also (I realized today) don't want to do this part again. It's just too hard.

Bit by bit

2009-03-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

The rain this morning was perfect for running. Not too hard, just a teensy mist that softened every edge, the heads of the daffodils hanging heavy with water despite the lightness of the rain. They reminded me strongly of when I worked as a gardener's elf in Virginia, at a very posh horse farm. I learned to deadhead and mulch, and that I really didn't care much about growing non-edibles, but I did love to arrange cut flowers. That was as close to the posh as I ever got.

As I was making my way through my ~~pitifully short~~ gradually increasing length run, I was thinking about how like knitting it is. I'm nowhere near where I'd like to be, running-wise, but I'm slowly getting back to where I was before I started getting sick (over and over and over) last October. And I run on faith, that if I keep putting one foot in front of the other, I'll get to the point where running will feel effortless again.

Knitting might not ever be what I'd consider "effortless;" my brain just doesn't work that way, but if I keep stacking up stitches, then objects will keep getting finished. Not just the snowflake sweater, but things like this little bonbon, made up while Eric and I were reading out loud to each other last night. [Currently, my book is much funnier than his book.] I was asked for socks by the smallest-footed person in the house, so sock(s) I made.

Scratchy natural wool, unhappily dyed with Koolaid many years ago for trim for my now-eight year old nephew's toddler sweater. Caterina doesn't seem to mind the scratchy, as she's running around with just one on her foot right now. Better hurry for the second one.

They're all unique

2009-03-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

That's at least what I hear about snowflakes; we don't get enough snow here for me to do any personal research.

My only recent experience with the singular nature of snowflakes was a wooly type. I finally (finally!) finished the Stashbuster Raglan, and was embroidering snowflakes along the red band, as I'd planed.

"How hard could it be?" I asked myself. Well, three snowflakes in, I realized that for me, it was "hard," perhaps "impossible," to embroider snowflakes I was both happy with and that bore some relationship to one another, designwise.

Duplicate stitch! That would surely save me. Nope. Apparently making duplicate stitches resemble one another in more than a third-cousin-once-removed way is also beyond my capacities.

Leaving it with just one finally made the most sense, I figured. We'll go with the "it's as unique as you are" approach.

He doesn't seem to care that I managed to knit one red arm-end with a too small needle, since I picked up the last needle I'd made the rolled edge on the other one to finish the second. He just likes it because it's warm and soft. I don't think I'd do the purl ridges on the arms again.

They look a little bit like weird arm gauntlets, but the bustin' out all over apricot doesn't mind, either. And I don't live in Blueland, it was just evening when I took the picture.

The brown cat doesn't mind the children, as long as they're asleep.

Oh! For those of you who care, I pulled a total Bee Whisperer move yesterday! I had talked with a new beekeeper at the Association meeting on Tuesday evening, and he was telling me about his mentor, who works his bees barehanded and often veilless. And yesterday, I wanted to super one of my hives. Didn't want to get in it, didn't want to powder sugar them to treat for Varroa mites, just wanted to make sure I got that honey super on before the flow.

So without changing any clothes or suiting up, I walked to the hive, and with lots of slowness, eased off the top cover very slowly, set it on top of the super, and turned toward the hive. A bee landed on my hand. So I made like a statue, and held very very still. Tor called across the yard, "What are you doing?" I just said, "Waiting for this bee to fly away." After some moments, she took off. Various other bees had been landing on my shirt and pants, but just sitting there and flying off when they were done doing whatever they were doing.

Without moving my feet too much, I turned again toward the super, grasped the sides, and pivoted to place it on the now-topless hive. I didn't want to crush any bees, so I placed the first corner of the super on one corner of the hive, then gently, so gently, lowered it along the sides so any bees in the way could move. Once it was on, I walked away.

Then I felt the shakes. Apparently I'm not quite the Zen beekeeper I was acting as. Not yet. I don't think I'll open hives at least without veils, but it made me feel as though I was making some progress.

In other catch-up news, I'm still maintaining the running schedule, although my slowness and literal feeling that I'm "hauling ass" down the street (like dragging a bag of rocks) hasn't changed much. And I'm supposed to be on a panel discussion on local food production for Earth Day, so I have to get my talking ducks in a row. Someone asked me yesterday how many hours a week I knit. I laughed and laughed. I consider it a bonus day if I even get to pick up needles lately. With four kids, three classes to teach, and a household to run, who has time?

Dreams Can Come True

2009-03-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

Last night I knit and watched a movie on the laptop with Sarafina, while poor Eric slept next to us. Even though we were using earphones, we're movie-talkers, and he found it amusing that we couldn't just watch quietly. Didn't keep him from snoring away. Being really sick will do that for you, I guess. Anyhow, I woke up this morning -- for the final time -- from a dream involving John McCain's tailless silent helicopter, about which I said, "No matter how cool it is, it's not worth sitting with him to get to ride in it." Subsequently in my dream, I was contacting a student in one of my classes, and going through someone's estranged father's custom-made study: drawers for everything, including old letters. I remember thinking, "I have more old letters than these; no matter how beautiful the cabinetry, this study isn't very practical."

I called the student up, and apparently the student's mother disapproved mightily of this Older Woman calling, even though I wanted to talk about the missing paper. And then I realized what I was riffling through the study for -- the perfect Blueberry Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake recipe!

In my dream I never found it, but on my run through the quiet streets this morning, I figured it wouldn't be that hard to do, so after I got home, I boiled eggs to assuage any guilt, and pulled a Bill Cosby. Behold, breakfast:

Not enough blueberries for the berry-lovers and too many for the berry-haters, but it is a compromise, even if it is a dream come true.

Before succumbing to the Land of Nod after the movie, I'd done the collar on this little beauty. I figured that it was all done, short of weaving ends and embroidering snowflakes.

Then Tor tried it on this morning, and in a medical miracle, apparently his arms have grown two inches overnight. Sigh. This entire stashbusting sweater has been a labor of knit, rip, reknit, rerip, and still it's getting done. Just a little slowly, and there are two skeins of green sock yarn wanting to be knit into Embossed Leaves and a rainbow Kauni still patiently waiting for attention.

This alpaca sweater fits Caterina very well, but when I suggested that she ask her brother if he still wanted it, and she interpreted that as an opportunity to prance in front of him wearing it and announcing, "Do you want this, because it fits me!" he screamed, "Mine! mine!"

It's nothing but amity and high level communication around here, I tell you. Let them eat cake.

Has it really been 14 years?

2009-03-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

I went out for a brief run this morning (I'm still not quite admitting to a Training Program, but still) in the rain-washed air. Then it struck me -- fourteen years ago I had just done something really hard, too.

I haven't scanned the old pictures, but I had just given birth to a baby, my first one. She'd started in one of the most beautiful deserts in the U.S., and despite the months where the only thing I wanted to eat was chocolate malts, and the fact that easily 90% of this baby girl was made of ice cream, the pregnancy was a hoot.

Birth had its funny moments, too. But mostly, it just felt miraculous. I had been oddly alienated from my body for years, and having her at home, in our bedroom, with screams and some blood and some extreme silliness, just gave me back myself. I remember holding her immediately after she was born and having the stunning realization: It was you the whole time -- you were who we have been waiting for.

Eric and I stayed up all night, just looking at the exquisite beauty who had showed up.

We should have known, then. We'd stay up all night for a lot of nights. This one wasn't what you'd call a sleeper, and we were still learning how to do this parenting thing.

But we made it through her babyhood and toddler years. I think she spent most of them tucked into a sling on my hip. And she stayed beautiful. And got funnier and funnier.

There were the "dress and leggings" years, and "Swan Lake" mania, and adjusting to siblings, and a couple of very cranky periods, but through it all, she's been fascinating.

Now that it feels like she's fully into "youth," she's even more interesting. I know, I know, how could it get any more interesting than Ballet All The Time, but it is. She's a boon companion on walks, watching movies, discussing books, playing Frisbee. She's a fierce friend to her few chosen compatriots, and a sometimes patient, sometimes irritated sibling. She's a fun Big Kid to her cousins, even though they try her patience. She loves her pets and keeps having interesting insights that she will sometimes share with me.

That radio silence is in itself a miracle, since she literally talked without stopping for a few years there. I thought it would never end.

But one thing this precious firstborn daughter did teach me is that it ends. . . it goes by fast, and maybe increasingly faster. The journey has been constantly interesting and it appears to be getting ever more fun.

So happy birthday, Sarafina.

Busy busy busy

2009-03-02T18:45:00.001-08:00

According to this site, one anagram for my name is "Elation Fest."

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday, here's the one for whom that's accurate, a real Cat in a Hat.

New Beginnings

2009-02-28T21:26:00.000-08:00

That's going to be the theme of our Mother-Daughter meeting tomorrow. Thing 1 and I figured that since we had to have a theme, and "Themes are Stupid" wasn't an acceptable one for this group since they're a bunch of overachievers, we'd get people to talk about the new things they were doing. She was amenable to any of my crazy schemes as long as a) she didn't have to talk about her feelings and b) there was birthday cheesecake involved. I'd planned to make it tonight, but it's too late now.

I offered to gel-draw some Feegles across the cake, but she said this group wasn't into them and so I should save my efforts for her actual birth day. I think practice wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't have either the gel or the time, so we'll go naked cheesecake. Snort.

As she's growing older (almost 14! Where did the time go??) we've been enjoying watching movies together. Recently, we watched and talked about "The Matrix" trilogy. I walked into the living room the next day and saw this:

It's Fred, immediately post-freeing by Morpheus and the gang -- you can still see his ports from the "battery fields." She cracks me up. Thank goodness for Magz toys. 1000 uses, one small box.

The baby apricot tree has put out little buds, and I'm thrilled to think of a future with Blenheims in it. New beginnings, indeed.

Today's garden pickings. The new beginnings out there are, obviously, the seeds and seedlings taking the place of the pulled things. Poor broccoli raab. Once such a nice, bitter, rare green, and today perhaps I pulled all of the remaining stems of it and composted them. [Even my sister had started leaving bundles of it, lovingly picked for her to take home, in the refrigerator "accidentally."] There wasn't enough garlic in the world to render it edible any more.

So in place of some of it went a dozen cippolini onions, with a backup band of "True Siberian" kale and some tat soi. They've both done well and been delicious, so while we're waiting for the tomatoes and peppers to grow very big and the outdoors to warm enough for them, they can be the cool weather's last hurrah. Even though garden books remind you to reseed replacement plants every two weeks -- and sometimes I dutifully note that in my calendar -- I have yet to do it, so there are these vegetative boom and bust cycles. I overplant, forget to provide succession plantings, eat everything, and have bare soil until the next round. Maybe the garden can qualify for its own stimulus package. Real California real estate.

It's to my credit that there are no new knitting beginnings because as a result of not casting on for either another pair of Embossed Leaf Socks or a baby blanket for a friend, I'm only one sleeve away from finishing the stash alpaca raglan for my boy. Maybe he'll still fit it next week, and maybe it will be cool enough to wear a few times.

Of course I have three new courses beginning next week also, plus this session's three courses to pack up, gradewise, and the first meeting of the community fruit exchange. I had planned to make a batch of marmalade tonight for timing purposes -- if I'm going to lead a group, I should probably have trod the ground at least once. But I'm not going to. There's enough work to do and enough going on that I can let it go for tonight. And anyhow, if I'm not going to bake a cheesecake at ohmyhowlateitis PM, I'm certainly not going to break out my new jam pan and start shredding zest. Sometimes it's time for a new beginning, and sometimes it's time to go to bed.

All my fault

2009-02-24T08:01:00.000-08:00

During one of the many, many wakeful periods I experienced last night I realized why the orange peel didn't work (or one reason; I suspect the peel isn't very "orangy").

I had a clear memory of me turning back to the sink for a second cup of water, thus rendering the syrup a 1:1 water/sugar mixture, rather than the 1:2 one called for.

Just a brain fade, probably because there are many distractions in my kitchen, but now I need to decide whether or not to re-syrup them or feed 'em to the compost and start over.

I know where more oranges are, anyhow. . .

Pretty but insipid

2009-02-23T19:58:00.000-08:00

Taking a page from my buddy over at Homeschooling in the Kitchen, I decided to candy some orange peel today. I didn't get a lot of help from the kids, but some company.

One exciting thing, given my other activity lately, is that the oranges were foraged from an empty house. How about that? The economic crisis provides bank-owned houses with abundant fruit. Sad, really. The navel oranges were pretty, but I need to figure out a way to find juicy ones on the tree, because some were punky and dry.

After they were peeled, I cut them into strips. I tried to be careful to make them uniform, but I'm not the Queen of Details.

They were then thrice-poached,

Since Susan had said that they chopped too much pith off, I left more on, but I think it was too much. Maybe next time (if there is a next time -- this is a lot of peel), I'll trim the pith by scraping with a spoon before cutting into strips. Then they were simmered in syrup until fairly translucent, and I rolled some in sugar and left some dry for dipping in chocolate.

They look lovely, but tasted insipid when still wet -- it tasted as though the pith just held water. I can't imagine that dipping them in dark chocolate would hurt, but I don't want to throw good chocolate after bad peel. I'll taste them again tomorrow after they're drier and double check.

First Crush

2009-02-22T13:06:00.000-08:00

I really did finish.

The name of the pattern is "First Crush" in Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool, and should one wish to purchase this pattern, it can be had at Piedmont Yarn. It's a little thing (despite the outrageous length of ruffling), but I'm pleased not only that it's knit up, but that it's written up. Even fiddling with the leaf pattern was kind of fun. There wre the usual Keystone Kops moments due to the fact that until I sat down and typed it out, my "pattern" was scribbled numbers on a piece of used paper.

Probably not what I'd wear usually, but fun, and that's about all one can hope for, huh?

(crooked picture courtesy of a 3 1/2 year old)

Let the sun shine

2009-02-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

The three children who were not sick in bed and I went to Sugarloaf Mountain State Park today to check on the status of a wonderful waterfall which of course runs better when it's been raining a lot, as it has. Since rain is predicted again for tomorrow (not enough to ease the drought, since reservoirs are at about 30% of normal now), we figured we'd get in and out during the dry.

And we did, although I remember the last time we were there having that odd, liquid light also. Middle of the day, lots of trees, but just. . . not really bright. That was okay, though, since that meant hand me down sweaters made by mom. Seeing my children in sweaters worn by their older siblings just makes me want to eat them up, especially this one, the last little one. Even though she didn't want to put up the elfin hood, she was yummy:

Things 2 and 4 found the entire experience rather meditative

(Insert sound of me and Eldest daughter laughing and falling about here), and if you noticed that I looked a little tired in these pictures -- trust me, I have not put up the ones that really show the effects of the last few nights -- the dog has been getting us up multiple times during the night to go out and do his business. Seems that the heavy drinking is not in fact a sign of kidney failure, but of canine diabetes. Fortunately I have lots of experience with insulin needles due to a couple of exciting pregnancies, so I'm the one shooting him up every day.

The fact that he ate an entire cheesecake that Thing 1 inexplicably left in her room today is probably not something I'm going to share with the vet during next week's glucose tests, though.

Sigh.

In more cheering news, when we came home, this is what the enormous walnut tree in the neighbor's yard looked like:

Doesn't the chicken coop look like something out of a movie about dust bowl farmers? I'm not one to willy-nilly cheer the chopping of large trees, but this one has dumped an enormous amount of leaves on the chicken wire over the chickens, making it dark in there, but more importantly, it shaded a huge part of our yard. Urban farmettes live and die by the sunshine hitting their yards, and this effectively doubles my growing area. It also means I don't have to dig up and move the Fuji apple tree right by the coop into a sunnier spot, as I had planned to do. Maybe I'll pop a fig tree back there instead!

So the next time it's really sunny, I'm sending the oldest kid up into the front yard street tree with strict instructions to trim out enough leafy branches that the sun at least dapples into the yard. The new persimmon and apricot trees are beginning to bud out, and I just put out six of a variety of rasp-and boysenberries out there. Come on, sun!

And tomorrow, I'll have pictures of an actual finished knitted object. Amazing, even to me.

Come on, rain!

2009-02-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

There's a storm forecast coming my way. In fact, one weather site uses the words "drenching rain" for tomorrow night.

Potentially 275 gallons of summer water for my garden. Whee!

That time of year again

2009-02-08T17:34:00.001-08:00

I love watching my Thing and many others play ultimate. We even had a beautiful break in the rain for the game.

She caught. . .

And fell right down.

And she popped up

And got off a nice pass

Which was also caught.

Whenever I go to a practice or game, I don't recognize her on the field at first. She always seems so much bigger than I remember her being. Once I reset my view of her, she's a lot of fun to watch.

I got something done

2009-02-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

The Hat fit for a Boyfriend in Louisa Harding's Grace Silk and Wool in a colorway that might have been called "Oh, So Incredibly Blue."

I like the decreases pattern on the top -- this is before blocking, on a smaller head. After I saw it from the side,

I had some serious worries about the length, even though I had carefully measured and then made it about an inch longer. So I brought it in and blocked it, and it covers my ears, so I hope it will cover Eric's too. If not, I guess I can pick out the top and redo it.

Sigh.

Only three more projects in the works and I can cast on for an hourglass sweater for me, in a green tweed that's talking to me as I speak.

In other news, I spoke in front of a City Council meeting last night in support of a project I've been planning. It would have been much less nerve wracking (I don't generally mind public speaking) if not for two circumstances:

1) I was called to come and speak about 40 minutes before the meeting, and

2) The person who called me used up all but one of my talking points in her off-the-cuff remarks, so I had only one thing to say. Fortunately, the council had lots of questions, so all I had to do was answer them and it worked out okay. It was a nice start.