Sea Anemone Knits

I tried to get onto my lil blog this afternoon and encountered chaos and unhappy website gobbledygook.

My blog had broken…super sad day!

So I emailed Dreamhost’s tech support and sobbed at them.

A little bit later, I hear my email go off and I have this:

Hi Amy,

It looks like there was a problem with your WP_CACHE. I added a comment
to it:

computer speak stuff

and it works fine now. Nice work btw, you do have good hands. Please let
me know if you have any more questions. Happy blogging!

Thanks!
Travis

YAY for Travis! Fixer of blogs! I really ought to knit him some socks.

I have gotten faster too! Remember these?? I started them on my flight to Monterey CA to see whales. (And whales I saw!!) And I finished them earlier this week.

They’re a wee bit too long in the foot, but, they’ll be good for surfing across wooden floors at home.

Speaking of which, I’m moving tomorrow. Bye Houston… ::sniff!:: I’m sad to be leaving, but I love Galveston just as much, and it’s still close by.

The Bug-boy is already down there. Has been all week. He’s mad at me for not letting him be here with me, but it’s easier this way. Plus, if he wasn’t mad at me, I couldn’t get adorable pictures like this:

Also, this a week or so ago, I found the perfect yarn to knit my best friend, Meryl, a shawl. She’s a teacher and has spent the last couple of years teaching in S. Korea and plans on spending some more time teaching in other countries before she returns home to teach stateside. And it can get cold in classrooms regardless of what country you’re in.

So I wrote to Susie who is the woman behind Perchance to Knit to see if she had a smaller skein of the perfect color because, frankly, I’m broke and I can’t really afford a full skein. Susie wrote me back and was so very lovely. She had a smaller skein that if I wanted it, she’d be happy to sell me. And I said yes! It was the perfect yardage and I could afford it and birds sang in trees. That sort of thing.

So about a week or so later (I was out of town for a weekend, it could have arrived faster for all I know) I get a package in my mail box and I am good, I took it upstairs with my groceries and unloaded the groceries and did my chores and when I was done, I opened my squishy parcel.

Inside was the magical skein of yarn that was perfect for Meryl (I can’t do the yarn justice. It really is worlds prettier than this picture says.)

Then, another skein of yarn popped out. And y’all, just in case you weren’t already aware, Susie is the sweetest woman on the face of the planet.

She sent me a skein of sock yarn with very explicit instructions to knit something for myself. And I plan to. Oh yes. I’ve been scouring Ravelry for patterns. Mmmm, more squishy socks. I love rainbows. Thank you Susie! It was quite the day brightener and I very much appreciate it! Warm fuzzies all around!!

I might have problems…

If I actually really did drink on a regular basis. But as I don’t, I’m not too concerned.

I was in Madisonville a couple of Fridays ago to attend the funeral of a close friend’s grandmother. Madisonville is kinda cute for a small town like place when you’re not getting drenched or hailed on. My story though takes place at the little reception after the funeral. My mom had called and so I wandered outside the restaurant to call her back and I’m standing on the front porch talking and a car honks. I’m on the porch and not in anyone’s way, so I ignore it. I finish my phone call and turn to go back inside when out of the corner of my eye, I spot hands waving at me from inside a darkly tinted white Lexus.

Now, I don’t know my way around Madisonville so I think to myself that there’s no point in me going over because I can’t give this person directions. I start to go back inside and the hands start waving at me even more frantically.

So I figure what the heck, I’ll go see what they want. So I walk over. This is where you’d think a window would be rolling down to talk. Eh, no. I get over there and the guy inside starts talking to me. I can’t hear him through the glass so I make a motion to my ear to let him know that I cannot hear what he is trying so hard to tell me. So he starts yelling it through the glass and I lean close to the glass to listen.

He is trapped.

Inside the Lexus.

He cannot open the door because the alarm will go off and he does not have the keys to turn it off. His father does.

(sidenote: Who the fuck would ever readily admit that they were trapped inside a Lexus. Is the alarm REALLY that scary? Open the door and go get the keys and turn the alarm off. It’s not gonna kill anyone to let the alarm scream for a minute.)

So he tells me his father’s name. And I go find this guy. This took me a while because I don’t actually know anyone at the reception save my friend and her husband. So I’m sure that by the time his father got out there, the guy thought I had abandoned him to the horrors of being trapped inside a comfy Lexus for several hours until his father got ready to leave.

I can hear the story now. Cue dream sequence a la Wayne’s World

Trapped Dude: “Oh the horror! I actually had to stay in the Lexus for several hours! I could have died! No food! No Water! It was a cool day in the low 60’s! I would have perished from heat stroke! Swoon!”

Other Dude: “Dude, it was only for a few hours. I think you would have survived.”

*end dream sequence*

As it was, a little bit later, this guy walks in and sits down at the table next to me and my friend and her husband and everyone at the table is very concerned and asking him “Where were you?” and “You’ve been gone a while, we were worried.”

(Apparently not worried enough to go looking for him though…just sayin)

So trapped dude starts recounting his story. And mid sentence, looks up, sees me and says “There she is! That young lady saved me.”

I’ll just say that I wanted to sink through the floor. I hate being pointed out like that. But still, nice to know he appreciated being out of his Lexus.

For next week, finished objects. Possibly as many as three. Goodness!

63,000 is a lot right? It’s actually a rather depressing statistic. At least for me. Mainly because this time around, I am included in that statistic. It’s the number of people who were laid off in the US in February.

So yeah, the job that I moved back up to Houston for, (Bitter? Me? Never!) let me go. I’m relatively ok with that. I’ve worked with these people before and I did agree that this time around, no, we were not a good fit for each other.

Unfortunately it means that by now, I’ve had a month and a half off. Now before you get all, “Man! I want a month and a half off! Lucky!” let me just say this: I am, officially, the *most* boring person on the face of the planet. I get excited by saying hello to someone I pass on the street when I walk to the grocery store.

My cat and I have spent so much time together, that we’ve begun arguing. And I don’t mean that I gripe at the cat for getting on the table and he glares at me. I mean that I gripe at him for getting on the table, and when he glares at me, I talk for him and then argue my answer back. And I sometimes lose the argument.

Anyway, enough of that. I suppose you perked up when you saw that I’d updated because maybe, just maybe with a month and a half of free time, I’d have some new FO’s for you. Eh… no… kind of.

I have a couple of new dishcloths. They’re already in rotation. Which is to say that there are no pictures. Seriously, they’re no longer pretty. But still electric blue and lime green! Nauseatingly bright colors! I love it!

I have a couple of new berets too. Both have been gifted. But! I did get pictures before I gifted them! Woo!

These are both the Purl Beret from The Purl Bee website. The top one was knit with less than a ball of Rowan Felted Tweed on a US 3 needle and the bottom one was also knit on a US 3 with some Lorna’s Laces in Baltic Sea (I think it was the LL Sport, but I could be wrong)

Stupidly easy. Seriously. I could totally crank out one a day and rid myself of SO MANY little random balls (giggle! I said balls. God, I’m 12!) of yarn.

I haven’t really finished anything else. I’ve got two sweaters on the back burner, but I’ve been working on these for a few months now so really, who cares if I haven’t finished them? It’s already starting to be warm in Houston and for me that mean that I most likely won’t touch these until November when I start begging Mother Nature to let me have snow just one more time! Once! And then I’ll be ok for a few more years. Who am I kidding? I’m still secretly pissed that I have not seen snow in more than 4 years. WTF Nature?? A white Christmas in Texas and then you wuss out? Pansy! (Thank you for those by the way. Super pretty work there.)

I have been working on a crocheted blanket and a pair of opera length gloves though. You know, because wool gloves that reach mid arm and a heavy wool blanket will go real well with summer in Texas. Oy, I have my priorities a bit off sometimes.

Isn’t that pretty??? LOVE! It’s the perfect shade of blue in my book. For the moment. I have many love affairs with many shades of blue. Two weeks ago it was navy, last week it was pale ice blue, this week Tiffany blue. Oh! And because I’m completely infatuated with the hem on this glove, check this out!

Ok, and now I’m going to show you the project that is destined to become my 600-lb Gorilla. (I shall name him Igor.) Igor, as he shall henceforth be known is going to be a King-sized blanket to go on my Queen bed. I like oversized blankets. The better to not freeze your ass off if you happen to be sharing a bed with a blanket hog. Which is what happens when you are owned by a 16-lb cat who refuses to move over.

Oh, and just in case you ever wanted to know, when you wake up to said 16-lb cat “cleaning” your arm at 4 in the morning? He’s not cleaning you. He’s tenderizing you. For later. When you are killed from tripping over him in the hall way. Anyway.

Meet Igor:

I am currently 36 hexagons into Igor. He’s got a good way to grow before he’s big enough. But the Hexagons

(Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you might like to know that I just about leapt through the ceiling. I have a feather pillow and it’s not cool to be deathly afraid of roaches and then have a stray feather trail across your arm. Because if you are me, you will think that it’s a roach. And about swallow your tongue trying not to scream.)

Ahem, but the Hexagons are pretty big. The whole thing measured is something like, 39″ x 20″ I’m pretty proud of myself. But, I’m shooting for getting Igor up to a rippling 108″ x 90″ (Which is what Bed Bath & Beyond says is a King-sized Comforter.) Whatever size Igor ends up, I’ll be happy with him. Big loveable snuggly gorilla and all.

Having some rumblings underground here at Chez Sea Anemone.

I’ll be back when I find a new job.

Anyone’s company have any openings? Call me.

I’m going to see these some of these huge dudes in March.

So. Excited.

In other news, I’ll also be going to the ArtFibers store. Anyone been? What should I check out?

A while back, I think in October, I bought some silk thread from Blue Moon.

It’s quite a pretty color called Stormy Weather.

(Note to self: Self, avoid yarn that is named after a type of weather that can be nasty.)

So last night, I decided that I wanted to wind it. You know, to get it ready for February when I’m allowed to start new projects. (I know, I have been seen cheating. Oops.)

So I set everything up and I’m winding, winding, winding (these are 1200+ yard skeins folks) and I keep encountering knots. Not the type of knot that means that the yarn broke and was retied, but the type that you get when the yarn tries to eat itself and then all of a sudden you can’t get the knot out because it’s so tight in there that you’ll break the yarn should you try.

Frustrating much?

So I’m ignoring these and picking out the big ones with loops all over the place that are still fixable. Somewhere in there, a huge loopy knot slid by me and got wound in and in another spot a couple of big loops worked their way to the surface and half way through the skein I think to myself, “This is ridiculous.”

So I very carefully remove the ball of yarn that I’ve already wound and set it up to reball it on the all winder and move a little slower so that I can try to prevent the knots and before I know it, the yarn has barfed.

The yarn yakked all over the side of the table and down onto the floor.

I attempted to untangle this. It wasn’t worth the headache.

(I have to give my Bug-man credit. That one picture was the closest he got to the yarn the ENTIRE time I was struggling with the knot.

He truly is a wonderful cat and even better knitting companion. Never messes with the yarn. Not even when it’s rolling around the floor. He will stare at it disconcertingly though. Like he wants to.)

I have cut the knot out and made a wee tiny knot in the yarn on purpose to rejoin the ends and will just ignore the knot when I knit it. And that will have to do.

In the mean time, I still have half a skein of yarn to wind and the ball on the ball winder to retame.

Suggestions? How do you wind your silk lace yarn?

I’m back!

I feel a lot better having finally taken a hiatus. I suppose it was inevitable given that I’d gotten into the habit of not posting except every couple of weeks and even then, it kind of felt like something was off kilter. So I just stopped.

I’ve had a couple friends ask if I was going to give it up entirely. And until now, I wasn’t so sure if I wanted to keep going. But honestly, I kind of miss it.

Onto knitting related things. I’ve had a lot of projects cluttering up the needles. As normal, I’ve over extended myself and I’m paying the price by not wanting to actually work on the projects I was originally excited about.

I did attempt to pare things down and I ripped some stuff off the needles and frogged it before I could think about what I had done. Some of the things to bite the dust included

The Waterlily Top

The Mis-diagnosed Clap

Some of the things to get hurriedly finished in fits of “Oh-goodness-I-have-to-have-this-finished-tomorrow-so-I-guess-I’ll-stay-up-late-tonight!” as a result did not get photographed. But did you really want to see a huge batch of Fetchings? I’ve now knit 7 pairs and 5 of those have been in the last month. Never. Again.

I’ve still got some stuff on the needles. Stuff that will not not get frogged.

One is a project for Drew, that I need to go ahead and finish. But cannot be photographed.

One is my Drunken Circles sweater, that I love. I knit on this sweater from morning to night in between baking and cleaning with my mom and it still only grew what feels like an inch. Really, I managed to add 8 inches of length to it. But it’s stocking stitch, so who cares if I didn’t take new pictures.

Another one is Ward from Kim Hargreaves new book (book! finally!) Heartfelt: The Darkhouse collection. It’s a great book! I wholeheartedly recommend it. To see what it will look like complete, follow the link. My pictures are awful for this one. The lighting sucked and just from looking at the knittin I’ve got done, you can’t tell that I didn’t just knit a brain fart instead of a cardigan piece.

See? I told you.

I’ve also got a tiny baby sweater on the needles for a friend. But no pictures of that yet. I cast on the 29th and I’m already almost done. I’ve got a few more rows on the body and then I need to knit the sleeves and get some buttons. It’s super quick and maximizes the cute quotient. I have not however photographed this.

In face of the new year, I’m not real great at keeping resolutions. But I always try. One that I will keep this year is to not knit anything that does not make me happy. January will be my month to finish things. Tie up loose ends from last year (that feels funny to say). Etc. I will finish organizing the stash. (I’ve sold a bunch.) I will organize my fifteen million needles. I will finish photographing things so that I’m no longer pretending on Ravelry to have a modest stash. Because I don’t.

On February first, I’ll start with clear needles. And I’ll pick a project. And use stash yarn. And I’ll knit it. If I find that I’m not happy about it and thus stalling, I’ll take it out.

All this and I’m going to start taking a walk in the mornings when I get up. I need to get moving around and lose some weight. My pants are tight again.

I’ll be back again next week!

Apparently it’s not good for you anymore…

Seriously.

I’ve been in my new home for about a week and I’ve got a A/C system that doesn’t listen to me and a fridge that talks my ear off. None of this is particularly bad though. The A/C cools the place down and the fridge keeps my milk and beer cold. (Notice, however, that it’s closing in on mid-November and I’m still talking about my A/C and running it. Welcome to Hell.)

I’m back in Houston and in love with every aspect of my new apt except for the kitchen. I’ve not put hardly anything away yet because, well, I went from having a kitchen that was probably more than 100 sq. ft. to one that is 7′ x 6′. It sucks just a little. I want to buy some contact paper though before I start trying to whittle down my kitchen accoutrements and putting those that make the cut away.

I did get a really nice welcome back to my SnB. I was trying to take a picture of something, who knows what, but when I looked at the camera afterwards, I had this:

Wow. Mo, Nice to see you too! We all cracked up as I passed that picture around the table.

A couple weeks ago now, Jet came into town for a wedding and the next day, we all trucked out to have a meal and grocery shopping and tea together.

While grocery shopping, I got the notion to take pictures and well, you can find some weirdness in grocery stores, like the people you hang out with. (Meant with love folks. Meant with love.)

and

But wait, Susan’s got her camera out too. I wonder what she was taking pictures of…

Yeah. That is not really bird, but I love cultural grocery stores for the stuff on the shelves. Even if alot of it leaves me glad that I don’t have to eat it.

Lest you think that in all of this, I’ve not been crafting, I have!

I decided to have a Christmas party this year and of course, as a knitter, I’ve got to find a way to include yarn in the decor. (Duh.)

What better way than to take $40 of yarn and cut it up into little pieces??

And to encourage some cold air action down here in “Still Need A/C” Land, I’ve been working on fingerless mitts and a scarf.

and because I really like the scarf,

I’m using some Noro Silk Garden with the Clapotis pattern but I’m not spacing the dropped stitches evenly. I’m screwing them up and in a fit of cleverness one night, I titled the scarf “Mis-diagnosed Clap”.

The Fetchings are done (obviously) and the scarf is not. But I do have some other stuff in the works. Namely, more Fetchings for a lady from work who wanted to know if I would knit two pair for her to give her daughters for Christmas. I’m apparently a sucker.

On this note, I’m going to retire and go get some sleep. I have to be up at 6. Bleh.

(Stop laughing. I can too sell stash. I’ve got too much yarn as it is. Most of you Houston gals know it too.)

Ok. Here are the goods:

Elsebeth Lavold Silky Tweed Color #08

PENDING

There are two different dye lots that are indiscernable (Above photos have one skein from each dyelot spooning each other)

There are 11 skeins total. 6 of one, 5 of another. $60 takes all eleven (shipping included), Paypal only. I will split the dyelots up if requested, but will need to provide an alternate quote if that be the case.

email me

Elsebeth Lavold Silky Tweed Color #21

There are 10 skeins total. $55 takes all ten (shipping included), Paypal only.

email me

Thanks everyone! I look forward to a little destashing!