Sea Anemone Knits

"(Remarking about his drink while onstage) Look at all the limes in this god-damn thing! This fuckin’ thing is tropical! Look at the limes, how they float. That’s good news man. Next time I’m on a boat and it capsizes, I’ll reach for a lime… I’ll be water skiing without a life preserver and people’ll say ‘What the hell?’ and I’ll pull out a lime…and a lemon too. I’m saved by the buoyancy of citrus." - M. Hedberg

I’ve been listening to a lot of Mitch Hedberg lately. I like that joke above all of his others that I’ve heard. I laugh like an idiot every time I hear it.

So, I’ve been housesitting and updating was a major ordeal that I just was too tired to do. Sorry!

I went to Galveston for part of my labor day weekend. I grew up in Galveston and I’m proud to present to you an exceptionally pretty view:

Ain’t she purty folks?? I got to enjoy this view at lunch with my Mom!

(In case she’s reading, Hi Mom!! I put up the picture you liked!!)

I got lots of knitting done while I was incognito. It’s a LOT of stockinette. For some reason, I’ll get bored with a stockinette project and cast on a new one that is also 90% stockinette. What the heck is wrong with me?? I worked some more on the Hourglass & I’m about 3/4 done. The rest of a sleeve and a yoke to do. Go me!

But wait! There’s more! Do you remember back when I went to NJ a couple months ago? I started the Silk Camisole from LMKG? Then when I got home, I frogged the bejeezus out of it? Yeah, so do I. I hated ripping that out. Well, good news. I restarted it over the long weekend. I’m about 5 inches in. I didn’t screw up the lace too badly and I’m surprisingly ok with the few screw ups and am not about to rip back and try to fix anything. Screw it!

I figure that I won’t get to wear it this season and so soon, I’ll put it down for a bit in favor of attempting my Mom’s cardigan again. Lace and mohair is such a bad idea. Really. Ugh. But, I told her I’d do it so I’d best just cast on and get to it while we’re young, right? Please, I need encouragement! I’ll have never knit this much lace. It’s intimidating.

I finished some footlets while I was gone. There’s not much to em. I got the yarn (Alexandrite colourway. It self striped!) from The Fiber Denn on etsy.com. Delia is very sweet, everyone, go buy yarn from her. I used KP Options US 4 needles to Magic Loop ‘em. Simple magic cast-on toe, short row heel, and blah, there you are.

And with that, I bid you adieu! I need to get some sleep tonight. Especially since the cat woke my sleepy toucas up at 4am and I proceeded to just lay there.

Ok, let’s be brutally honest. If I were to show you a picture of The Hour right now, you’d wonder why I thought that I’d made any progress. I’ve done another inch, but she still looks the same. So I won’t waste your time or mine. Please, thank me later. Really.

So, you might remember Tuesday when I mentioned in passing that I might cut off all my hair and you chuckled? Ok, well be truthful, raise your hand if you thought I wouldn’t go through with it… Jeez, that’s a lot of you. Have some faith people! 

Let’s go with your standard crap, “Before” photo:

Not real great. And to think when my hair turned out decently curly that day in Austin meeting the Harlot, I thought to myself, gee, that looks pretty good.

And now we can enjoy 4 pretty “After” photos:

Thank you Mo, I love love love your stylist.

So, I sent Meryl off this morning. Sat in the chairs outside the security point and cried for a while til I couldn’t see her anymore and wandered forlornly off back to my car feeling like I’d left a part of me inside the airport. I know its only a year and this is the chance of a lifetime for her and that the year will be over before we both know it, but, crap, you know?

My hourglass sweater is coming along nicely. Kinda. I’ve been knitting slowly on the body. I’m almost half way through with the increases. I knit off the addi and onto my new knit picks needles and man, no change in gauge, the yarn flies and there is NO snagging. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch. I’m a believer!

We got shafted at the knitting group last week. Some group called and reserved the WHOLE back room at Cafe Express. (I have been left with the impression that they do not do reservations. How do I know, I’ve asked before. That’s how. *grin*) So we were stuck outside in the open section of the restaurant with about a bazillion knitters on the one time everyone and their Mom decides to show up. Literally - Jennifer had brought her mom along. Yay for knitter Moms! So I had declared that I would call and reserve the WHOLE back room for this Thursday. In reality, I probably won’t. I just dont feel up to messing with it right now. We contented ourselves with spying on the group and muttering about them. Mo decided to show us how to blend in with our surroundings and hide from them.

Doesn’t she blend in well??

I’m off now to go find a haircut. I need one badly. Perhaps I’ll be saucy and chop it all off. We shall see.

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!

I have to warn y’all now, I’m going to babble about my hourglass sweater again. (Kelly, if you’re reading, you may just want to skip down a bit *grin* I know my love for this sweater is beyond your comprehension)

I am totally in love with this sweater. I’ve started the body of it and it’s going slooooowly. Which, if you take a look at how much I had to cast on and how little time I’ve had to devote to it in the last like 5 days, the slow going makes sense. Most of what I’ve accomplished will be folded over and sewn down to become the hem. I’m trying to hem this as I go so that there is less finishing involved at the end. I really love the way the fabric feels and looks. It is the most perfect tweedy orange. I saw some more of this yarn at Hill Country Weavers and theirs was a darker orange and much less attractive than mine. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Last week, I told y’all I finished the Blue Argyle Baby Sweater I was working on… it has been gifted and very well received. I was quite happy with the reaction to it. Much cooing and ohhing and aahing went on.

Pattern: Argyle Pullover from Special Knits by Debbie Bliss

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in white, navy and a baby blue

Needles: 10" US 2 & 3 and a 12" US 2 circular

Modifications: I crocheted a button loop. I otherwise followed this one to the letter. I knit the 3-6 month size.

And now, before I go, this is what happens when you get bored and are playing with the camera. You get ignored:

Isn’t he sweet?

Just a quick little blab before I trek down to Galveston for the weekend to see my Mom. They let her go home from the hospital Wednesday, but they still haven’t made any decisions on what they are going to do to treat the cyst they found.

I finished the blue baby sweater and I’ll post some pictures when I get home Sunday. By then I’ll also be posting pictures of a fuchsia baby sweater that will be seamed this weekend. So there’s that.

Considering that I started the Hourglass Sweater with this:

I’ve made some progress. I put it down this past week so that I could get these baby sweaters done. So the pictures I’ll leave you with are the work of 3 days really. I cast on the sleeve at SnB on the 27th and by the 30th, I had this much done:

So today at lunch, I cast on the body and brought it home for inspection:

Until the next time then!

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!

I had two visitors this weekend. Terribly excited to see both. As of 8am, this one has left.

The other is more of the permanent houseguest variety. But he’s nice, doesn’t make a mess and I don’t have to explain all of the yarn to him. Could you ask for more? And a picture of my squooshy little man lest you think I may have changed my "single" status.

So, as noted by Kelly, Meredith and Susan on Thursday night, I have indeed broken my $#!+ knitting curse. Heaven shall only ever know what I did to deserve such torture. But I have started an "Oh Woe Is Me" project as a result. This will be my second Anthropologie Inspired Capelet as designed by Julsey from Craftster. I’m feeling sociable, have a picture!

I made this one back in January…

I’m really happy with this first one, but it’s so warm and fuzzy that it will only really work in like cold weather. And I wanted one to wear with tank tops in the summer, so hence the "Woe" project of needing one in a more Summer-In-Texas friendly yarn.

I also got some work done on the blue baby sweater. See? I did work on things that have a deadline!

So Friday night, Meryl and I met up with Kelly and Rob at Aztecas for margaritas. Note: Please never try more than two. These people are not making pansies over there. We saw some guy get sick. I later heard his friends comment on the 4 margaritas and 2 shots. This was not some little guy either. So there’s some proof of the pansy-less-ness of these ‘ritas.

Saturday saw us watching A Scanner Darkly at the Angelika. We both decided that we don’t hate the movie, but we don;t really love it either. I’ve decided that I like it, but don’t particularly enjoy the exploitative-ness of humans without their knowledge going on in the film. Definitely worth seeing though. Afterwards though we felt the need to go to a bookstore and look at books. We marinated in books for 4 hours. Can you imagine anything better?? Nope, me either. Anyway, it’s "Laundry Time" and I must go forth to the laundromat to create some clean clothing to wear to the office. I get the feeling that they don’t appreciate wrinkles and such…

remember that battery issue? yeah, still not a happy camper. only this time I don’t have brownies to drown my sorrow. bugger. that Vicki guy, the one who was so bloody aggrevating and yet slightly less helpful than he ought to have been, did he call me back? NO! a resounding pissy NO.

on top of all of this, I have ^#$%ed up so much knitting that I am almost tempted to pick up my cross stitch again. (it’s been about 6 years since I touched it) Let’s go through the list of things that turned to $#!+ the nanosecond I touched them.

• Grannie Smith Sweater Swatch - four tries to swatch the dagged thing. SWATCH. That’s it. I just want the gauge. Why is that so wrong??
• Pink Baby Sweater - I knit the back. I knit a sleeve. I knit both front pieces. Laid them out to see how they’d fit together. Scratched my head for about five minutes wondering why I had a funny feeling about the sweater. Then the lightbulb that says "::poink poink:: you idiot, you knit both the fronts 3 inches too short."
• Koigu Sock - Just a plain koigu sock. Trying to de-stash. Making a good will effort towards the yarn kiddies hanging around the house grumbling about neglect. I knit the toe of the sock. I got pretty excited about the idea of this sock. Had to start the whole thing over when  Igot a little too excited and knit a toe that would have been more at home on the foot of the Jolly Green Giant. Redo toe and think to myself, "Self, this sock would look mighty fine with a handful of small cables running up the front." Well, note to self. "Self, screw the cables. I’m sorry I mentioned them." I have frogged the mighty fine handful of small cables oh, about twice now and reknit probably 4 inches of sock once to discover not just one, but multiple dropped stitches from undoing the cables and missing a stitch and then there’s not enough leeway in the yarn to ladder them back up.
• Warshrag from MDK - I need to just throw in the towel on this one. If I had a dishtowel to throw in! Why else would I be trying to knit one? I keep putting it down mid-row to answer the phone, take the pizza out of the oven, etc only to pick it back up and proceed to do something wrong.

Am I just cursed?? What can I do to break this streak????

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?