Sea Anemone Knits

Things are moving a little slower on the Hourglass. I love her. I really do. But she’s nothing but stockinette. Stitch after stitch of mindless stockinette. The sleeves, the sleeves move quickly. But I only have one sleeve done because I only have one needle for it and I dont want to just put the sleeve on waste yarn.  I need to get another picture of my progress. But as of 8/9, this is what I’ve got.

She is hemmed and a set of decreases are done on her. As of last night, I’ve gotten 4 1/2 decreases finished. I have to finish the last decrease (I added an extra one) and then to start the increases. I’m still debating on whether to do 4 increases or 5. We shall see depending on how the sweater fits and how long it is when I get there. As of this moment, I’ve used 4.75 balls of yarn and seeing as I have 12, I think I may be ok.

I did take some time off of Hourglass last night to spin. I spun some more laceweight and then I spun some handdyed stuff that I bought off of etsy. I can’t remember the name of the lady I bought it from, but this roving is incredibly soft and easy peasy to spin. I even managed to not spin laceweight! woo!

I’m thinking that I might use the handspun to knit a hat for a Chrisannakuh gift for someone I know. It would definitely be used and loved and taken care of. Something we all want for our handknits that we give away.

In other news, I’m still waiting for my new needles from Knit Picks. I ordered them on August 2 and they were shipped out on August 3. Now, here is where my great luck comes into play. Get ready for this… you ready? They were missent according to Smart Post. So I called and was like what does this mean? Well, the outcome of that conversation is that if I still do not have the needles by the 17th, I will call KP back and they will resend the order. So, I do not still have my needles. I got really excited about them, thinking that I was going to pick them up after work yesterday. But instead what I got was this yarn:

It will become a Waterlily top from the Spring 2006 IK magazine. It’s a little musty smelling so I do wonder about the storage used, but its fur free and doesn’t smell like smoke so a good washing should take care of this. Now don’t get me wrong, I am very excited to get this, but terribly disappointed in the idea that I’m not holding the needles I’ve been so very excited about. Ce’st la vie!

A few weeks ago, my friend Susan sent an email around to a bunch of us in the knitting group asking if any of us wanted to go see the Yarn Harlot magically appear in Austin. I wrote back immediately with a resounding YES!!! Apparently, I was the only one who did that without even checking the calendar. I was just going to make it work and any other plans be damned. As happy luck would have it, I had nothing going on for these dates. By the week before the event, we had managed to gather a group of 6 of us to be representin’ the H-Town. Whoopee!!! Kelly, Jet, Susan, Jennifer and I drove up together and Staci drove up seperately. Have a picture of us sitting in the Church before Stephanie came up to chit chat with everyone. Actually, I’m not in the picture because I was behind the camera!

I had an absolute blast. The Harlot was wonderful! She gave a talk and signed books and she’s so lovely and funny and down to earth. I mean, she’s totally just another knitter, like all of us, but at the same time, she’s a knitting rockstar! We got a group picture (my hair is allllliiiive!!!)

I was a struck by an inability to speak reasonably intelligently when it was my turn to have my book signed. I think I mostly grinned at her. I know I managed to ask her if she would take a picture with my "Mom Sock" to which she kindly obliged.(for my Mom who is in the hospital right now… that was the bitter part of the time in Austin. I immediately hopped in the car and drove down there within 15 minutes of being back in Houston. I’ve spent a lot of time in cars in the last 3 days…)

I didn’t really meet a bunch of new people while I was there but I bonded more with those that I knew. I ran into Christine, which was lovely. She had organized a lunch gathering across the street from Hill Country Weavers at a restaurant called Guero’s. With smiles on their faces, they can handle about a bazillion loud hungry knitters who are high on knitterly energy. Quite fun and I enjoyed the food alot too. Thank you Christine!! I hope she is able to join us on Thursday night soon.

I did get to meet a very lovely knitter named Sarah. I met her because I went over and proceeded to gush a bit about how much I liked the tank she was wearing. It is the Waterlily top from the Spring 06 Interweave Knits. I have some Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton that may have to become this tank in the near future. I am inspired! I then got to talk to her just a tiny bit more at Guero’s. But not as much as I would have liked.

While I was waiting my turn for the book signing, I wandered around amongst other knitters. Some were drinking beer to combat the nasty life-sucking heat. Others were inside marinating in lovely cold air conditioning. Still others were inside HCW shopping and cleaning out the yarn. I bought some lovely things. Spent more than I should have. But how often does one get to meet the Harlot and shop in a new place?? I think every person there can offer the same explanation! My first purchases came before I met Harlot. I cast on a sleeve for the Hourglass Sweater from LMKG on Thursday night at SnB. I wanted something nice and plain to knit on this weekend. I cast it onto a 16" Circular Boye needle. By the time that I sat down to listen to the Harlot, the needle was making this scratchy noise and was no longer knitting smoothly. Jet confirmed this for me and I put it down in disgust because I couldn’t tolerate the scratchy. So my first purchase was a 16" Addi to solve this. Smooth sailing since! I’ll provide pictures soon.

My second purchase included these two things:

The teal wool will be used for my attempt at shibori knitting. I bought a bag of marbles at walmart that I will tie into the finished fabric before I felt it to create the bumpies. The needles are a new set being released by Blue Sky Alpacas and they were most definitely bought while tripping along high as a kite on so much knitterly energy that I apparently didn’t notice the price tag, because WOW. I have knit with them and they are quite lovely. Very smooth and easy to handle. Plus, the tin will hold many more needles than the set of 5 that come in it. I’ve currently got all of my nice birch dpns in there too. The needles will only fit if they are 5" or less though. A requisite kitty shot follows and that will wrap up the post for today as I really really need to go to sleep so I can wake up for work on time. Yikes… I’ll only barely get 6 hours tonight… Oh well! Ciao!

So Kelly and I went to a spinning class this past Saturday. Unfortunately, Kelly got quite ill while we were there and so she drank water and watched. I felt horrible for her feeling so sick. The class itself was ok. It was good for me in that it put everything I’d read on the web into the correct order and cleared up that ‘S’ and ‘Z’ twist deal for me. But other than that, all three of us in the class seemed to have a grasp of it already. We got so far ahead that the lady teaching it joked (quasi-joked. she didn’t seem too thrilled) that we were getting two classes in one and as a result, cheating her out of class fees. I don’t know if anyone else caught it, but it touched a nerve with me. I think this was mainly because she didn’t so much as teach us anything, but just sat there and told us what to do and wow, we knew so much! I could have done this at home with a book and saved money. Also, she had this skein of "yarn" that she had spun herself out of fur that her cat had shed. I declined to touch it at first because it looked like a massive knotty hair ball. But at the end of the class I finally picked it up and yeah, I could have done without that. Curiousity killed the cat so to speak I guess, but it was disgusting. Note to self: Never spin your pet’s shed fur. It will look as gross as it sounds/feels.

I did actually finish a tiny mini skein that fits neatly in the palm of my hand. I was pretty pleased with myself. It’s plied too. She told us how to do an "Andean Ply" which makes no sense now that I’m outside of the class, but worked out pretty well to make 2 ply yarn. I think it’s something that will work best with small amounts of yarn. I spun a little bit on Sunday. But I woke up late and didn’t feel all that wonderful. I am apparently unable to spin thick bulky yarn. I found that I had more luck with spinning yarn that was probably cobweb weight yarn and should I ply it, would possibly be laceweight. Which is funny since I’ve yet to have a successful lace knitting project. What on earth could I do with handspun laceweight?? I suppose I could give it away or something. I don’t know.

We each bought 8oz of uncolored roving to try our hand at dying but we didn’t quite get that far. Soon though. Soon. We have each bought dye so that between us we’ve got a rainbow. I did however manage to buy the wrong dye. I remembered what brand to get, but I didn’t know that Kelly had bought powdered dye and I bought liquid. I looked this up on the company website and sure enough, while the dye I bought would be ok for dying wool, its better suited to that silk screening thing or silk painting. Whatever it’s called. So I’ll go out again and pick up the powdered dye here soon.

Anyway… I’ll post pictures when I get home. Have a lovely rainy day!

So, I went to the Dr yesterday and was throughly violated, but I like my new Doctor. She’s still pretty young, but very disarming and nice. Totally made me feel comfortable about the fact that I let her poke and prod my body about 5 minutes after I first met her. The result of this Dr’s appt meant that I had the rest of the day off to play. Yay!

My first stop after my appt was to mail off my package to my downstream SP and pick up my giftie from my upstream SP.

Monsiuer le Bug inspected the package on arrival to assure that it was not tampered with by my lovely mail person.

Upon opening, I find these!

Bug thinks I’m a spoiled rotten girl. He may be on to something.

Upon closer inspection reading the card I discover that the pretty blue yarn

is some yarn that was handspun by my SP. Am I lucky or what?? If I had spun that, I’d be unwilling to let it go! It’s gorgeous, soft and squooshy; ie: perfect!

She also sent some pretty mystery green wool (I think it’s got a little mohair or perhaps angora in it. I will need to look into this when I get home tonight. And, oh but wait, there’s more! She sent a skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn in the most delicious purple-y green-y colors. The sock yarn children broke down crying last night by the way. They are jealous. They know that Laura’s yarn and this will totally be the next socks to be knit instead of working my way through the sock yarn according to acquisition rank.

And then, I know! More?? Geez. I’m gonna be a total priss after a box of goodies this good!

It’s a new book of baby patterns! Exactly what I needed as I’ve got three babies to knit for! Dark Chocolate (half gone now, by the way!) and last, but most definitely not least, a moose magnet! I love the moose! Moose are so funky looking and funny. I love this magnet!

I can’t even remember what else I did with my afternoon off. It was all eclipsed by my box of surprises! Thank you SP!!!!

I’ve been waiting patiently for my laptop’s battery to recharge. I’ve been waiting for three whole days. This laptop is 3 months old. That’s it. WTF, mate, WTF? I got on the phone with tech support last night and talked with a guy named Vicki while I’m pretty sure was Indian (India Indian, not Native American) and we stumbled around trying to fix this without relaly knowing what each other was saying. Very nice guy. Loaded some newer version of a "BIOS" on my computer. Whatever that is, it was supposed to fix my battery problem. Yeah, not so much. So, he is going to be calling me probably tomorrow to check up on the battery situation and I’ll be able to tell him that it’s not working out. Which means they may end up having to replace my battery. Arg.

Knitting wise, I wish I had pictures for you and I do, but not on my computer yet. Why, you may ask? Because I’m a lazy bum. They’re not even all that impressive either. On the baby sweaters and this Knitting World Cup, I’ve represented America well. I followed in their footsteps. I lost. But I’m baking brownies with cinnamon. So I win! On the sweaters, I’ve got two backs, one and a half pieces of three total front pieces and no sleeves. So I have one and a half front pieces and two sleeves to go. That’s not too bad considering both babies are due in September. Right??

I also started swatching for my Mom’s Grannie Smith Cardigan. Did I tell y’all what she did? She saw the cardigan on here and liked it so much she went out and bought the pattern. She actually searched and bargain shopped the kidsilk haze (and got a killer deal. She bought at $10/ball. I’ve seen it as high at $15. Way to go Mom!) and bought the amount needed + one extra and get this. She’s not a knitter. So she emails me to tell me that I need to go buy the yarn for her and gives me all her info and tells me that I will need to knit this up for her and does she need to get anything else for me to make the sweater besides buttons. The woman has got cojones. I don’t know any knitter whose family actually tells them to knit something up for them. Asks them to, yes. Tells them to? No. Cojones. So what do I do? Do I retrain her and instruct her in the art of wheedling a knitter into knitting for her? Nope. I email her back to let her know that I"ll start the sweater as soon as I finish the baby sweaters.

But I’m baking! I have completed cinnamon brownies. Very yummy. I swear I’ll post pictures soon. How about I leave you with a joke instead!

What lies on the ocean and twitches?

Oh, I hate Newark airport. Jay-sus. Ok, so Friday, Jenifer (sweet gal from work) took my tush to the airport and dropped me off. I met up with my dad and his gf, Annie. Our flight, was an hour late taking off. We left at 8pm instead of 7 like planned. grr. We got to the hotel in Princeton at 3am. gahh! Our flight home, lets talk about this one. We first show up at 4 for our flight at 7, which yeah we were early, but better safe than sorry. Our flight gets delayed an hour and a half due to the weather in Houston being crap (read, flight now at 8:30). Then, the flight gets delayed another hour due to shite weather just north of Newark (read, flight now at 9:30). Then, oh holy mother, THEN! the flight gets delayed further when the airport loses POWER. Fricking power outtage! In all of this, the plane never gets there. The plane finally shows up at 10pm. We get boarded at and are in the air by 11. We land in Houston at almost 3 in the morning. I get home by 4. I was originally supposed to be home by 11. I called my boss’ voicemail at like 4 in the morning and was like, I can’t do it. I won’t be in today. There’s no way this will work. I’m sorry. I then took a quick shower and passed out. I didn’t wake up until after 3pm this afternoon. How’s about a nice almost 12 hour sleep?? I really really enjoyed the trip though and got to see my family and spend time with them and share in the celebration of a truly beautiful life. I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

I called my friend Meryl up in tears that Saturday though. My dad’s cousin Chris is a filmmaker and had done a film of Marnie with pictures and old film clips of her and there were pictures in there of her and my Grandmother and all of a sudden, I wanted nothing more in the world than to be able to hug my grandmother again and tell her that I loved her, and I couldn’t. It broke my heart all over again. Thus, I’ve been getting weepy the last couple of days whenever I think of my Grandma. This sucks. But I’d still do it all over.

On another note, I went today after I woke up and picked up my sp gift from the postoffice. I very gently placed the package in the front seat and then went to the grocery store.

I got home and calmly quickly made myself something to eat. Ate, and then scrambled to get into the box like a starving person tearing into a cracker packet. And this dear SP of mine, had sent me to the loveliest, most well suited surprises ever! A tantalizing note telling me a few things about herself. The package hails from NJ. (Which is where I just visited!) SP put in 3 skeins of Misti Alpaca laceweight yarn in a gorgeous dark eggplant color and a handmade drop spindle (which is absolutely sweet because now I’ve got a spindle to use for my class next month!). She also put in a bunch of Ghiradelli dark chocolate with mint filling which is only like the best dark chocolate in the entire world! Yippee! I am so spoiled!! Here, have a picture!

By this time, I’ve now finished all the yummy chocolate (yes, I’m a piggy, but I enjoyed every last bite) and am plotting what lace to knit. Granted, the lace will most likely be a couple months away on the knitting radar. I want to finish the tank top I started and do the Hourglass sweater and finish the purty blue socks that I’ve done exactly one toe of. I’m thinking that I either want to try the Madli shawl (minus the nubbly nupps) or the Print of a Wave shawl that Eunny has on her blog. Suggestions are desperately needed greatly appreciated.

I’m humming along to a Jack Johnson song right now which is where I got the title…

I’m about three inches of ribbing away from finishing the SC. I’m finding it hard to stay motivated. Is this stupid or what?? I mean so friggin close and yet I’m starting to eyeball other projects. So, I WILL, MUST be done and able to wear this sweater on Saturday in NJ. Meaning that I must block it Thursday night.

I need help deciding what project I will cast on for this trip to NJ on Friday. So listen to the choices and weigh in please!!

1. The Leaf Lace Shawl - Fiber Trends - Rowanspun 4-ply in Hansel: I’ve only got half of the yarn needed for this project. I’ve located the other half but am waiting on a shipping quote before I purchase it. The shawl would be specifically knitted for use with this dress and the green yarn matches the paler green of the leaves perfectly right on down to the tweedy aqua bits matching the blue bits in the dress. See this picture.

2. Hourglass Sweater - Last Minute Knitted Gifts - Classic Elite Renaissance in Valencia Orange: Valencia is a soft tweedy orange wool. I’ve got 12 skeins (priced at $5 each? Who could resist?) weighing in at way more yardage than needed for this sweater and frankly, it’s such a flattering knit, who could resist!

3. Silk Camisole - Last Minute Knitted Gifts - Adrienne Vittadini Teresa in a smoky blue: It’s the exact shade of my eyes on a day to day basis. I’ve heard that the Fiesta La Luz called for in the pattern pills a lot. I don’t like pills on my handknits. It’s an absolutely elegant little top and I’ve got a feeling that it will be a quick easy knit for a long boring flight.

So, my question is this… besides the socks I’ve been struggling with for my mother, which of these large scale projects should I bring?

OK, so I totally meant to post about this earlier. But I’m doing so now. I ordered sock yarn today from a really nice lady named Lisa Souza. I bought two colorways from her - pacific and wild things. I got a really nice email from her and am totally stoked about the yarn. Really great price too. I paid $14 for each skein and one skein is enough for a pair of women’s socks. Can’t beat it for handpainted sock yarn!

So, I don’t really know how to work this picture thing. I’ll figure it out, I promise! Eventually. In the mean time, I ought to mention that I went to a yarn swap that Staci very graciously hosted. I took what felt like a ton of yarn. My big "Whole Foods" reusable shopping bag was overflowing when I went over. I got rid of a lot of stuff that frankly, I was never going to use.

I came home with about twice what I took. I made out with a bag, a whole freakin bag!, of Rowanspun Aran in Caviar. What on earth am I gonna do with 2000+ yards of Aran weight drool worthy wool yarn? A heavily cabled sweater that would stave off hypothermia in Siberia perhaps… I also took on 2 lbs of pink laceweight cotton. It came with Kelly in a giant tidily twisted loop. Far into the night, we were delirious, Staci, Jet and I took up the task of winding this giant loop into neat little cakes of yarn. Staci broke out the swift and ball winder, we set up and commenced to winding. We wound, and wound and wound and wound. Then we wound some more. At that point, it looked like it had shrunk in size slightly. But only slightly, mind you. All of a sudden, mid wind, the swift leaps free from the table and takes flight. We scrambled to save yarn loop and swift, set back up and commenced to winding some more. Then the cake of yarn grows so huge on the ball winder that it projectiles into the air and luckily finds no one to take out with it. Soon thereafter, we finish winding the giant loop and we emerge victorious over the laceweight. Please, kids, don’t try that at home. Especially not alone. Or sober for that matter. Try to be delirious and drinking and amongst other knitters of course!

I also committed myself to the idea of spinning. I passed up some beautiful sock yarn that sang to my soul (sang to my soles is more accurate!) in order to take on a big ole bag of gorgeous deep green and brown with hints of almost purple roving. Enough to make quite a bit of yarn I hope. Now I just need to find a spindle and someone to teach me…

This faces me with the ever present concern that many knitters apparently have to tackle when first deciding to learn to spin. "How will this new interest affect my knitting time???" I’ll admit, it’s scary. But I’m sure that it’s like having a cat for a long time and all of a sudden, you take on a second kitty and there is this period of adjustment when both kitties are hissing and spitting and demanding you only pay attention to one of them. Eventually, I think it works out like the kitties work out. You come home from work one day and both are curled up together sleeping as if they had always been the very bestest of friends.

In other news, I have progressed on the Somewhat Cowl. I’ve finished all of the waist decreases and tomorrow at lunch will start the waist increases. I tried it on before going to the knitting group tonight and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t fit like a glove. It’s so perfect and I’m completely enamoured with it. I love it.  The end is sooo near! Wah-hoo!

And with that, I’ll bid you a good-night!