Now you all know what I’ll be doing today. And if you live near me and haven’t gotten yours yet, the FedEx guy said he had 14 more to deliver before 10:30.

There will be knitting in the next post, really.

And if you have no clue what that box is, you need to just get a Mac! It’s Leopard, the new operating system for Mac, just launched today. I’m off to play.

The 16-day work slog is finally over. Due to some trades at work, I did 16 days in a row, with 2 days off about a third the way through so I could catch up on sleep. My “short” days at work are 11 hours, assuming I get the work done on time. The “long” days are 15 hours. I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. Remind me not to agree to trades again. The flip side of all the trading is that I now have 12 days off in a row. Well, 11, I was in a coma yesterday and missed most of it. My plans for today involve not getting dressed for several more hours. At least my husband, a dedicated morning person, has finally learned not to shake me at 7 AM with a “honey, honey, it’s a beautiful day, want to get up and go do something?” Honey, honey, I’m already doing something, shake me one more time, and you’ll lose a hand.

I have done a bit of knitting, but it’s all been on a grey stockinette Peace Fleece sweater with no shaping. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s boring as hell, but also very, very satisfying in a grey stockinette tweedy wool sort of way. OK, OK, here’s a photo.

Really, it is pretty exciting. You should smell this stuff. It has that wonderful sheepy smell that I just love. I’m almost to the underarm shaping on the first piece. And that’s about all the knitting news around here.

Oh, not quite, I forgot about my knitting excitement yesterday. The one thing that I did get done was my annual girlie physical, something really to look forward to when you’d much rather spend the entire day with a blanket over your head. I have a new gynecologist, and yesterday was my first visit. I was knitting away on a sock* when she came into the room, and it turns out that she’s a knitter, is relatively new in town, and wants to come to our weekly knitting fiesta at the local coffee shop. Sweet.

And the most exciting non-knitting news? November 1st is only 12 days away. Who cares, you ask? It’s NaNoWriMo time again! The crazy month where thousands of insane wanna-be writers decide to pick up a pencil on November 1st, and not put it down again until they have a 50,000 word novel done by the stroke of midnight on the last day of the month. I participated in this nutball event in 2004 and 2005, finishing in the first year, fizzling in the second. Last year I decided to sit it out, but this year I’m going for it again. Finishing the novel is of course the main point, but it’s a hoot even if you don’t. The next 12 days will be spent on nailing down some characters and a rudimentary outline of a plot (plot? you mean I have to have a plot?), then rushing headlong into the writing on the 1st. If you’re equally insane, go on over and sign up. And I don’t want to hear any sniveling  that you don’t know how to write a novel. Neither do I. It doesn’t need to be good, nobody but you will read it, it’s all about getting 50,000 words down on paper in 30 days.

Go on over and sign up. If you do, let me know. Here’s my Nano profile page.

*What, you don’t knit with your feet up in stirrups??

It’s the same damned excuse. Work work work. I just fell out of a 9 day work stretch rabbit hole, and go back tomorrow for another 5 day siege. Then I get a little bit of a breather. So I’ll get a quick post in before I put my head back down.

There’s been hardly any knitting around here for the past couple of weeks. As a sample of how things went, I got home late one night after a long day at work. While my lovely husband made me dinner, I sat in the kitchen and said, “All I want from life right now is to be able to sit here and knit ONE danged row.”

I stupidly picked up that Langsjal Jóhönnu stole, and started across the row. About 7/8 of the way across the row, I ran into a mistake I’d made in the prior row. I messed around with it a bit, trying to fix the row below without going all the way back, then realized I was brain dead and would probably frak the whole thing up if I tried that. So I painfully unknit all the way back over the mostly done row, then the prior row, fixed it, then started forward again. I eventually finished that one row. Be careful what you wish for.

Speaking of wishing for things, last week was my birthday. How lame is that, failing to blog your own birthday? I even got to work late, as Friday, the big day, was my late shift day. 7AM to 9:30PM. Do I know how to have fun or what? I got a great present from my lovely husband though, the same one who fixes me dinner and makes sure I have plenty of wine and bourbon always available. I drive an oldish VW Beetle with the original radio/CD player. I also have an Ipod loaded with over 10,000 songs. My guy bought me a new car stereo, one that has a connector wired through the glove box for my Ipod. It is very cool. I find myself just wanting to drive around so I can listen to it.

OK, I promised you a finished knitting project a post or so ago. While we were in Idaho, we went to the yarn shop in Ketchum, and I <<cough, cough>> bought a few <<cough cough>> things. One of those things was a lovely little single skein of Synchronicity by Alchemy Yarns. This stuff is just heavenly. I’d like a whole tub full of it so I could roll around in it all day. Unfortunately, it’s also spendy enough that I decided to spring for only one skein. So I made little fingerless mitts out of it. I sort of made up the pattern, as I was in a cabin in Idaho, and couldn’t resist casting on immediately when I got back from the store. Some day if I can decipher my notes, I might post it. For now, here are the mitts.

It actually was easy to come up with the pattern, except when I got to the thumb. The first attempt looked horrible. Then I remembered, I just learned how to do an underarm gusset with the gansey class. I dragged out my trusty knitting notebook and a pencil, and in a few moments had it figured out. Yeah, yeah, I know, mittens are easy. This is just a basic mitten pattern, find one in a book and just work till you get to your knuckles and do more ribbing. But I’ve never done mittens or gloves, and I’m pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to do them all by myself.

Project Specifications:

Pattern: I made it up.
Yarn: Alchemy Synchronicity, in the color Resolution. It’s a silk/merino blend, and the photos just do not do this yarn justice. I used almost a whole skein for these, with just enough left over to let Lucy have fun with. (What? You don’t let your cats play with silk yarn?)
For: Me
Started: In September, when I was in Idaho.
Finished: Four days later. It wouldn’t have taken so long if I’d had any clue what I was doing.
Needles: Metal double points that I had with me for the gansey class. I think they were 3.75 mm.
What I learned: I learned to trust my knitting instincts and just “let the force be with me”. It’s only yarn. Pattern, schmattern, who needs a pattern?

I’m off to try to catch up with NetNewsWire. I’m 513 posts behind in my knit-blog reading. Have a great weekend everybody!

This is an interlude in my knit blogging to send you off to help a worthwhile cause. Lisa, AKA Black Sheep, is walking in the Step Out to Fight Diabetes fundraiser later this week.

As a doctor, I can’t pass this one up. John has a daughter-in-law with gestational diabetes, and his grandson carries the gene for diabetes. This is a big one, people, and affects 21 million people in this country alone. You would be helping out a lot of nice folks, many of them your family members and fellow knitters, by sending money.

Every bit helps, so even if you can only send a little, please do so. This horrid disease affects all of us in one way or another. Thanks a bunch!

I’m back from Idaho, and have a new FO to report!

First, though, I omitted something from my post about the goodie/prize bag I received from Kim. She included a little “L” shaped notepad, and I discovered yesterday that there were also little “L” stitch markers in the bag. Here they are:

Very cute, eh? I love them and just want to cast on something that needs little stitch markers.

Next, I got a couple of requests about one of the yarns I scored in Boston. It’s the Claudia Handpainted Silk Lace, and it is divine. The color is “Chocolate Cherry”.

Click on that to make it bigger, and start drooling. I have no idea whatever to do with this, but it will be lovely to knit with. It will be a shawl or stole someday once I find the perfect pattern.

Now, the trip. I have never taken a knitting class, and was a little nervous about doing so with someone as famous as Beth Brown-Reinsel. Not to worry. She was fabulous. The class was on “knitting ganseys”, and I learned more in 2 days of classes than I have in months on my own. Beth is a very patient instructor, and managed to get a bunch of women of varied skill levels absolutely enthusiastic about traditional gansey construction. In the process, we finished (or mostly finished) a tiny sample gansey. If you have her book, it’s in there, though I’ll warn you, it’s a lot more fun knitting it with Beth alongside coaching.

Here’s my finished gansey, after a bit of steaming with my trusty Rowenta to block the edge into submission:

And a closeup:

I learned tons of cool stuff by doing this sweater. I had never done an underarm gusset, and was very surprised at how easy and intuitive it is. It’s a little like turning a heel on a sock; once you do it, you wonder why you never thought of it before. I also learned how to do a channel island cast on, which is truly cool.

Probably the best thing, though, was being at an isolated resort for three whole days with a master knitter. Beth spent a couple of hours on the second day talking us through the design process, and showed us how to come up with a gansey sweater pattern of our very own. I intend to knit a full-size gansey some day, but even if I never do, the stuff she taught me will make my knitting much better. And being around a bunch of other great knitters was wonderful. We laughed, shared, and just in general had a blast.

Here are some more photos:

That’s Beth in the middle, with her giant teaching swatch.

That’s Jennifer, who owns Isabel’s Yarn & Needlepoint shop in Ketchum.

Here’s where the retreat is:

Our cabin:

This answers the question of what kind of wine goes with Cheetos:

And the sock enjoying the scenery:

Here’s the details if you are interested in next year’s retreat. Jennifer has done this retreat for several years, and it’s at Redfish Lake Lodge, Idaho. It’s very remote, though they do now have wireless access in the main lodge, if you can’t live without internet access. The cabins range from rustic to more rustic, though we found it very comfortable and absolutely the perfect setting for a retreat. There are no phones in the cabins, and no television, which is perfect. The food was lovely, and the scenery can’t be beat. Ketchum (Sun Valley) is a little over an hour’s drive away, so this really is out in the middle of nowhere. Email Jennifer at her website if you’re interested in next year’s retreat. I certainly plan on going if at all possible.

Next time, another FO!