Category: Just Happy!

Making progress!

Summer has finally arrived in the Pacific NW. It’s going to be close to 90 today, and warmer tomorrow. At least it will drop to the low 60’s at night. That’s a good thing, since we don’t have air conditioning.

I am making progress on my summer cardigan. Which is another good thing, since it is actually summer.

The back piece (on the bottom in that photo) is done, one of the front pieces is a few rows short of the armhole shaping. It’s mostly mindless except for that cable/lace border, which is pretty easy.

You might not be able to tell, but the edging on the front is an I-cord edge, which is pretty cool. I don’t think I’ve done one of these on a sweater before. It does pull in a bit, making a slight curve in the edge rather than being nice and straight. We’ll see if that blocks out. The yarn is mostly cotton with a bit of cashmere, so who knows. I can live with it either way.

I’m off to find a relatively cool corner to knit.

Back in business!

After a lot of gnashing of teeth, I finally got this mess fixed. And I take back any disparaging remarks I may have made about my host server.

It ended up being a boat load of malware selling a variety of pharmaceuticals. At some point it loaded so much crap that the Bluehost tech whiz found two dozen processes running in the background. No wonder it finally just quit.

So I think I’ve got all the old posts. I need to sort out whether all the photos were reattached to the appropriate post. I think I still have some work to do on that.

So how about some knitting, since this is a knitting blog? I finished the last lace baby surprise thing, it just needs blocking. No photos of that, then. I started another lace baby surprise thing.

It’s hard to tell from that photo due to the background color, but that’s a cream merino. This is from Acme Fibres. I have a ton of their undyed yarn in the stash.

That’s all I have. Fingers crossed that this uploads!

A blast from the past

Since I finished the Winter Solstice shawl, I needed some lace in my hands. I am knitting a secret project that eventually will have some lace, but don’t really want to post about it until it is done and gifted. It is currently in the witness protection program. And currently it is just endless garter stitch, so not particularly interesting anyway.

I have three other lace shawls in various stages of progress. I found the oldest one and pulled it out to work on.

That is the Cathedral Stole, pattern by Birgit Freyer. I’ve renamed it Ruby Slippers, since it is a glowing ruby red.

According to Ravelry, I started this almost exactly four years ago. I remember when I bought the yarn. This is a handspun mohair lace yarn spun by women in Tajikistan.

This is lovely yarn, and the pattern is delightful. The designer has about a million lace shawl and stole patterns available, this likely won’t be my last one.

Since it is hard to imagine what the finished lace will look like, here is a photo from the designer’s pattern page.

Longest night

Winter Solstice is one of my favorite days of the year. I’m not a huge fan of the cold and dark, so even though the days are barely perceptibly longer from here, I still know that they are indeed getting longer. For the last decade or so (twelve years actually), John and I have done a huge solstice sit down dinner for friends and neighbors. It always turned out to be a 5 or 6 course meal for a dozen people, that involved days of planning and cooking.

Last year, we just decided not to do it. And we’re not doing it this year either. I still love to cook for people, but it had gotten to be more about the production and less about the fun of being with friends. The winter months are also often a challenge for me. The “undertoad” starts to grab at my toes and try to pull me under if I get too much on my plate and start stressing out.

I pulled out my Longest Night shawl this morning and gave it a bit of love. I’ve been knitting Euroflax linen “somethings” for Christmas gifts all month, and my hands forgot how nice it is to knit with soft silk and merino lace. Next time I decide to do something like that for the holidays, somebody remind me that I should start earlier so it doesn’t turn into a marathon. I still have one left to finish, but it’s close enough that I can take a break from it.

I’ll leave you with a photo of one of the Christmas trees at work. It makes me laugh every time I walk by it.

I hope your weekend is peaceful, and that you don’t have too much busy stuff to finish before Christmas.

Tuesday

That’s all I can come up with today. I was back at work, feeling considerably more like a human, and actually got home at a reasonable hour given that I took yesterday off.

I took this photo at my desk this morning. I have a couple of orchids in my window. This one has been blooming for months. The other one dropped its flowers a month or so back, and is waiting for its next cycle.

Don’t ask me for any tips for how to grow them. With me it’s just dumb luck. I kill most plants, but for some reason can grow orchids. I mostly admire them, tell them how lovely they are, water them once a week, and give them some plant food when they’ve quit blooming. I think it helps that these are “grocery store” orchids, not the fancy hothouse kind, so they are bred so people can’t kill them.

NaBloPoMo

Otherwise known as National Blog Posting Month. The idea is to commit to writing a blog post daily in November. It’s a riff off of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

You all are going to get sick and tired of seeing the same unfinished knitting projects, so I plan on changing it up a bit and adding a little non-knitting content.

Today it’s meditation. Carole wrote today about her meditation practice. I’ve meditated off and on for years, though my practice has slipped a bit more recently. I find myself using all sorts of excuses, like I’m too busy, and I’m too stressed out. Of course, scheduling a meditation practice every day helps enormously with that sense of being too busy or too stressed.

See how that works?

Anyway, I have been using the Calm app, I can do either one of many guided meditations, or just use their meditation timer, with or without soothing background music or sounds. I have found that doing a daily meditation practice really does slow down those squirrels in my head that run around like crazy banshees.

At work, I have this tiny note on my computer.

Yes, it does really help to have that little reminder.

And here’s a screen shot from the Calm app.

If you don’t already have a regular meditation practice, give it a try.

Trust me, I’m a doctor.

Lace reboot

Kiri was a bust. I spent much of the day trying to get it started. The pattern is described as easy, for beginner knitters. After a couple of false starts and tinking back, I eventually ripped it out. I’m not a beginner lace knitter by any means, but there was something wonky with this pattern. I couldn’t get the stitch counts to come out, and I just didn’t like the look of the pattern in this yarn. Last but not least, I use Knit Companion to keep track of absolutely everything I knit, but especially lace charts. The grid on the pattern chart was “off”, with grid squares that varied ever so slightly from place to place. This made adding stitch markers and counts impossible. It was driving me nuts.

So here is the reboot:

This is much better behaved. The entire thing is charted, the pattern repeats don’t shift around aimlessly, and best of all, the main shawl body chart has 16 rows, 12 of which are plain knit or purl rows. This is much more what I had in mind to keep my sanity.

The pattern is Feather Duster, by Susan Lawrence.

By the way, WordPress has stopped emailing me blog comments again. I can still reply directly from the website, but if I miss a comment and don’t answer you, that’s why. ????

Progress!

I’ve been knitting this shawl forever. It starts out with a big garter stitch triangle, then you pick up stitches on two sides and knit a wide lace border. I finally finished that part this morning.

The last section is a knitted-on lace edging, which is knit perpendicular to the shawl body, knitting the last stitch of every other row together with a shawl border stitch to attach it. It’s easier to do than to describe it.

Here’s another photo.

This yarn is so squishy soft that I want to keep knitting it forever. It’s from Blacker Yarns.

I might have a few more colors of this in the stash. It also comes in a DK weight, I’d love a sweater out of this.

In other shopping news, I’ve been coveting this bag forever. I finally broke down and bought it. It amuses me that it’s the same color as my Subaru. Army Blanket Green!

Spinning

I haven’t done much spinning the the past several months. I’m not sure why, since it is such a relaxing thing to do at the end of a stressful day.

This fiber has been on my wheel forever. I had just a little bit to finish, and sat down this morning and spun up the rest of it.

It’s a Polworth/silk blend, from Three Waters Farm on Etsy. I’m going to leave it as a single, there should be enough for a “neck thing”. This was a dream to spin.

I also dug out all of my spindles and played a little bit today. Here’s one.

That is a Golding spindle, which I love. The fiber is a very fine merino/silk/yak blend.

Last but not least, a photo of my wheel.

That is my treasured Watson Marie. Andrew Watson, the maker, sadly died a couple of years ago. His father, James, has found a new wheel maker, and they are back in business, but I am very grateful to have one of Andrew’s wheels. He was an artist, and a pleasure to work with. I was on his waiting list for a couple of years, and then it took several months for him to build the wheel.

I often joke about what I would grab on the way out of the burning house, but I think I’d try to save this, it’s one of a kind.

She also needs a good cleaning and a new drive band. That’s on my agenda for tomorrow.