We’re not quite home yet, but I’ve finally found a relatively clear tabletop surface to fire up the computer. The train trip east was a hoot, and if you happen to be either my friend on Facebook or my husband’s, you’ve followed the progress of the Family Party through the week. One of my sisters has a place on a lake, and most of the family made it to the party. We’re now back in town, and get on the plane  tomorrow to head home. Here are just a few highlights;

That would be Larry, my brother-in-law. It’s a family tradition to celebrate the emptying of a bottle by playing taps while everybody stands and salutes. Let’s just say that Larry got the chance to perform this many times over the past week.

As you can see, nearly everybody was wired in some fashion. That’s me in the foreground, being a Luddite and spindling.

That’s a sign in my sister’s kitchen.

The family!

A little expedition out on the lake.

Sock on the lake!

Sisters! And an honorary sister!

Sunset over the lake!

This is the primary mode of transportation at the lake. Because God knows, we wouldn’t want to have to walk 100 feet to the bar.

Lake food!

More lake food! And a bonfire!

I even found a yarn shop. The closest little town to the lake is only about 14,000 people, but by God, they have a yarn shop, and a nice one at that. The photographic proof is on my camera however, not John’s, and I quite inexplicably forgot to bring the camera cord.

That’s enough for today, since John is threatening to revoke my laptop privileges. We head home tomorrow!

There are a lot of wonderful benefits to blogging that I’ve discovered in the last almost six years. The most incredible, and unexpected bonus is all the lovely people I’ve gotten to know over the last few years. Some sadly remain only “imaginary friends”, as my husband calls all of you. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of you in real life as well. Today was one of those days. I got to meet Jennifer, AKA the Major Knitter today. I don’t remember when I first discovered her blog, but we’ve become two of those imaginary friends over the years. She’s a great knitter, and a good writer. She and her husband were in town on business for a few days, so we arranged for a play date for the two of us today. The weather cooperated beautifully, and we had a stellar sunny, clear, and warm day together.

We hit a couple of yarn stores, went to the Seattle Art Museum for a couple of hours, had lunch, and gossiped. And compared knitting projects:

If you’ll all remember, we’re both doing the Faery Ring sweater. The Major is a bit ahead of me. We noodled a bit over the sleeve issue. The pattern is written in two size ranges, and the one we’re using isn’t finished, so we have to make up the sleeve instructions. After a little inspection of the pattern photos, I think we have a plan. Hopefully this won’t involve too much ripping and swearing.

Here’s another photo. We saw this funny tree outside a house on the way to lunch.

The birdhouses were just a hoot. You can tell what a beautiful day it was here! Thanks for a great day, Jennifer!

I had a wonderful time last weekend, though I’m just getting around to posting about it. Dorothy (Missouri Star) and her husband Bill came to visit us over the weekend. They live just a few hours from here, though we rarely get to see one another, for one reason or another. Now that she’s retired, and I have a more sane work schedule, I hope that situation changes!

Dorothy and I both used to say that we would never take up spinning. Ha! I fell hard last summer, and it was only a few months later that she was asking questions about spindles and wheels. When she joined the Beginning Spinners group on Ravelry, I knew that it was all over. She bought a spindle, then got a wheel last month. She brought her wheel with her, a nice Ashford Traveller, and some pretty hostess gift Romney fiber from a neighbor’s sheep, named Rainbow! We did a little spinning, a lot of chatting, eating, and generally having fun. John & Bill hit it off, and managed to find things to do that didn’t involve spinning or talking about spinning. They brought their Corgi, Maggie, along with them, and after a bit of jousting amongst the dogs to figure out who the biggest alpha bitch was, everybody got along just fine.

Dorothy is a natural as a spinner. Go look at what she’s been spinning on her blog (but come back!). After just a few weeks, she’s spinning nearly laceweight, very evenly.

I managed to finish spinning a whole pile of Cormo (that insulation yellow stuff from several posts back, though it hasn’t been washed up yet, so it’s not ready for a photo op). I did start a new spinning project while Dorothy was here.

The fiber is from Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks, in the color Forest. I bought 2 ounces of this color in a merino-bombyx silk blend, and another 2 ounces in the same color in merino-tencel. I have the silk blend all spun, and I’m about half way through the tencel, then plan to ply them together. We’ll see how that works out. I did do a little couple yard sample, and I think I’ll like it. Here’s where I bought the fiber. The colors really are that rich.

Last but not least, here’s one of my spinning helpers. Lewey tends to sit right under my feet while I’m spinning, and Will is just pretty sure this is where he belongs.

And this is probably why he’s so friendly lately. When the weather’s better, he’s outside a lot, but he’s not a big fan of rain.

Come to think of it, I’m getting a bit tired of that rain myself!

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If you haven’t done so already, go here and read Stephanie’s post about Haiti. She’s said it much better than I can. If Doctors Without Borders isn’t your favorite charity, pick another one, but dig deep and give. If we can all afford to have computers and yarn and fiber toys, we can certainly sacrifice a bit of cash to those affected by this horrifying disaster.

One of the Wordpress features that I’ve discovered is that you can upload a thumbnail of a photo, but when you click on it, it opens a bigger photo in a new browser tab. Go ahead, click on that and see what happens.

Do you recognize that man? That’s my sweet husband, many many years ago when he was in Vietnam. He found an old box of slides from that era, and I convinced him to get them transferred to digital format. I have to say, he took some great photos while he was there. I’m trying to convince him to start a blog of his own, so I won’t post them all here, but here’s one more of my handsome soldier boy.

The blog vacation, that is. I hope everyone is having a great holiday! Christmas was busy around here, but fun-filled. John and I decided this year not to buy gifts for each other. Instead, we’re keeping lists of little things we’ve always wanted to do together, like more walks in the woods, and more movie dates. The plan will be to choose things off the lists throughout the year instead of buying junk that we don’t really need.

We had two big holiday parties at our house. One was our annual Winter Solstice party with neighborhood friends. We had a dozen fine people around our table for a huge prime rib dinner, with plenty of wine and laughs.

Here’s how I plan and execute a huge meal for a dozen people:

Riley loving the whipped cream:

The table set for dinner:

And the aftermath:

The second event was with family, and we had another dozen for that set of meals. We did prime rib again for Christmas dinner, since it was such a hit the first time around. We have enough meat leftover to make one heck of a stew, which will be tonight. Nothing like using prime rib in stew instead of tough stew meat!

For some reason we did not get one single decent photo with all the kids and grandkids in it. A good time was had by all, though.

On the knitting front, I’m still working on the same projects. No photos, since I’m too lazy to take new pictures. True Blue, John’s sweater, is getting bigger, and I’m almost at the underarms on the first half. The Peacock Shawl is slowly growing. The dog mittens are about halfway up the dog legs on the back of the first mittens, and Wicked Witch socks are proceeding.

I’m working on some New Year’s resolutions, and will hopefully have those in my next post! Have a happy and safe New Year’s holiday!

First, thanks for all the lovely comments on my Not Cobblestone. I still haven’t blocked it, but I have worn it a few times. The way the weather’s been, it might not get washed and blocked till spring.

Kris from Sonny & Shear, and the Knitting Wannabe, is having a blog contest for a very good cause. I know that the economy is horrible, and that many of you don’t have a lot of spare change around. However, whatever you can afford to give will help immensely in helping one family out in their time of need. I’ll let Kris tell you the story, go check out her blog post. And don’t forget to look at the awesome prize that she and Dana are offering as a reward!

I just got done with another seven day stretch of work, and I’m still groggy and in my jammies. I didn’t get much writing done last week, so this week will be all about NaNoWriMo catch up. I’m off to make up more scenes!

I have a new item over there on the sidebar. Now that the economy is in the toilet, I’m very excited that I have boxes and boxes of stash to knit from. My sister-in-law Ena is visiting, as I mentioned in my last post. After she got settled in to our guest room, she came upstairs laughing. First she had to move a bunch of stash boxes around in the closet so she could have room to hang up clothes. Then she noticed Lewey talking to something he imagined was under the bed, so she got down to look. Yup, more yarn. I didn’t take her upstairs to see the 2 huge boxes of sock yarn, and the huge box of lace yarn in my office.

Anyway, I’m not committing to not buying any more yarn. You all know me better than that, and that plan has never gone well. I am simply committing to publicly keeping track of all the forward (or backward!) movement in my stash yardage. If I use a skein of yarn, the yards get added. If I buy a skein of yarn, the yards get subtracted from the total. Let’s hope it stays out of the minus numbers. I’m starting out with adding all the yarn I’ve used so far for the not-Cobblestone sweater. After this I’ll update it as each ball of yarn is used/added. My blog, my rules.

Ena is also a beginning knitter. She is knitting dishcloths as practice, and brought her knitting with her. Here is her first fine effort, and a photo of her knitting. Will you all please welcome the newest member of our fold, and encourage her on her progress?

She finished the first dishcloth in less than two evenings, so I’m pretty sure she’s hooked. I actually heard her say “just let me finish one more row” a couple of times. We went to the LYS today so she could stock up on her very own needles and more yarn (and stitch markers, tapestry needles, etc!).

Last but not least, here’s my hippie car, just to let you know who I’m voting for this fall.**

We vote by absentee ballot every year, and finished our voting this morning over coffee.

Whoever you are planning on voting for this year, get out there and get it done!

**Yes, I have a license plate, I’m blocking it out for safety reasons!

I just realized that I’ve been talking about my latest lace project for the past couple of weeks and have never posted a photo. I’ve updated my Ravelry project page as I’ve gone along, but never here. That’s what comes of trying to keep up with both, and doing a half-assed job of it at that.

The lace on the needles is the Peacock Feathers Shawl, a Fiddlesticks Knitting pattern by Dorothy Siemens. (Ravelry link here.) The yarn I’m using is Blue Heron Egyptian Mercerized Cotton, in the color Bluegrass. I bought the yarn from Kris at Sonny & Shear, and as soon as I got it I knew it needed to be a Peacock.

And here’s what it looks like now, at row 95 of the pattern.

I can’t say enough good things about this pattern. It does require a bit of attention, as the stitch counts change on a few of the rows, and the repeat markers shift back and forth frequently. However, the whole thing is clearly charted, and the pattern notes are quite explicit. Though the charts look quite complicated, they really aren’t. It’s one of those patterns that you just want to keep knitting, as it’s not just the same old thing on every row.

I also love this yarn. I’ve never used mercerized cotton for lace work, so we’ll see how it blocks, but the shine is just spectacular, and it takes color marvelously. It also looks like Jello. Here’s proof. John had a little procedure this week that required a clear liquid diet for 36 hours, and we made him some blue and yellow Jello. When the dishes were partly emptied, we just tossed them in together.

Proof that I’m easily amused.

And speaking of John, here’s a photo of several of my housemates out on the deck yesterday, enjoying an early fall nap.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Once again, it’s been awhile. Happy August! Just so I can bitch about it publicly, the temperature has gotten up to a steamy 61 degrees here today, and it’s raining, again. Where the hell is summer?

Actually, we have had a little summer weather, but only in bits and pieces. We had friends over a couple weekends ago for beach fun and barbecue, and to try out our latest toy.

Meanwhile, John managed to convince Riley that riding in the canoe is a good thing.

And after a tough workout on the water, a nice hearty dinner of barbecued ribs and all the fixings.

A closeup of the ribs:

Yum, they were really good. I bought John a smoker a couple years ago, and thanks to his southern heritage, he makes the best barbecue in the west!

Now, on to knitting. The title of this post has nothing to do with the knitting book by the same name. I’ve finally finished the body of the Whitewater alpaca silk shawl, and am about half way through the edging rows. I may or may not have enough yarn to finish.

6.5 grams. That’s how much yarn I have left, with half of the edging to go. I love the excitement of knitting, let me tell you. Fortunately, I placed a lifeline many rows back, after the second to the last repeat of the main shawl body. If I don’t have enough to bind off, I can always rip back to the lifeline, then knit the edging and have lots leftover. Where’s the fun in that, I ask?

Stay tuned next time to see how it all works out. Any guesses as to how much yarn I’ll have left?

Oh yes. The Elizabeth Zimmerman book in that photo has nothing to do with the shawl. I’m still working on that damned Cobblestone sweater that I’ve had on the needles for years (not really years, but it seems like it). I’m doing yet another bit of jerry-rigging of the pattern. I’ll tell you about that later, too.

The astute reader will note that the yarn buying ticker was reset. This past weekend was the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, and I had no illusions from the beginning of this little yarn fast of making it through that one without buying yarn. I mostly bought sock yarn*, with a couple of skeins of laceweight thrown in for good measure.

If you think I’m going to post individual photos of all that, you’re delusional. Let’s just say that when I fall off the wagon, I fall hard.

I had guests here for the Madrona weekend. Kris had also signed up for classes, and Dorothy just came along to shop and play. They all stayed here all weekend, and we had a blast while John waited on us hand and foot (thanks, Sweetie…that was the best Valentine’s gift!). Dorothy brought Maggie, her Corgi pup along for a play date with Lewey. Lewey is seriously in love. Here are a couple of photos from the weekend.

I took an all day class from Evelyn Clark on Designing Lace Triangles, which was terrific. She is a great teacher, and I learned a lot about shawl structure, as well as some techniques that will carry over into non-lace knitting. The following day was a morning class from Kathy Connelly on learning to knit continental style. I learned to knit as a confirmed “thrower”, and wasn’t all that convinced that I could learn this particular new trick. During the class, I knitted several rows of garter stitch, then some stockinette. Ok, this isn’t so bad, I thought, but nothing to write home about. Then I tried a K2 P2 rib pattern. Oh yeah, baby, now I see the point. I’m now a converted “picker”. Once I finish the projects I currently have on the needles, I’m never going back. All in all it was a great festival…good classes, and a great market. Combine that with wonderful friends, and what’s not to like?

This coming weekend is the annual Wintergrass extravaganza, so I’m getting my bluegrass knitting lined up. Next time I’ll post some project photos!

*Because we all know that sock yarn doesn’t count!