Lorette

Squares

I finished the first square for the blanket project, and was all ready to mail it off to Annie. I have more than enough of this yarn left to make another square, so the mailing will have to wait another day or so. These knit up pretty fast, assuming you are referring to a speedy knitter who doesn’t get sidetracked by a zillion other projects in between rows.

Here’s the first one:

And the second:

These are both out of Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. The first one is “Fancy Lozenge”, the second is “Seaweed”. I picked patterns that look good on both sides. Someday I might just get the urge to make myself an afghan using these books. Once I get the second one finished, I’ll block them both and get them off in the mail.

Speaking of blocking, here’s what’s new at my house

I finally got around to ordering these*, and am very happy that I did. Okay, maybe it’s a bit of an overkill for that one little square, but the beauty of this is that you can use just as many of the blocks as you need for the project. I actually bought a lot more of these for when I have a huge shawl or a Bigfoot sweater to block. They come apart easily enough for storage. The other really great feature of these is that they are very easy on your knees when you are crawling around pinning stuff down. That wasn’t the case for my old plywood and styrofoam board.

On the remodeling front, we’re sort of in the homestretch. The carpet has all been installed upstairs, and the new window coverings upstairs mostly got put in yesterday. We went with the Duette fabric blinds, and two of the window sets didn’t fit, and a third one didn’t get ordered with the rest so will be in next week. (Hello, didn’t that guy come out TWICE to measure?) I now have doors back on all my bathrooms, though two of the doors upstairs got damaged at the paint shop so they have to replace them. They’ll be in who knows when. Now I just have to get all the clothes out of the bathtub and back in the closet. For some reason, I’ve been putting that one off. We’re getting together with our neighbors and having a garage sale next weekend, so it’s given me an inspiration to do some de-cluttering when stuff comes back in the house from the garage.

We are going to a Tacoma Rainiers game tonight, so if it doesn’t rain, expect some knitting-baseball pictures next time. They are having fireworks after the game, so I’m going even if I have to wear long underwear (it’s been a bit chilly here the past few days).

*I ordered the mats from here.

Five Things I Miss From Childhood

Celia from Unraveling tagged me for this one. I’m not tagging anybody, as I think I’m the last person in Blogville to do this, but if you haven’t, feel free to take this one on.

If you want to participate, the chain-letter part works like this: remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog’s name in the #5 spot; just check to make sure the links are still attached if you copy n’ paste.

1) purly brites
2) hkknitter
3) Kimberli New York
4) unraveling
5) knitting doctor

1. Playing outside all summer long with my little brother and the neighborhood friends until long after dark. The usual games were variations of hide and seek, with the main object being to jump out and scare the hell out of whoever was “it” when they found you.

2. Having whole summers off to play without having to think about school.

3. Going back to school in the fall. I especially liked the pre-school shopping. Every year we would get a new pair of school shoes, and the smell of new leather shoes can still transport me back to when I was eight. I also loved shopping for school supplies, and still do. Get me in the aisle with the pencils, and I am hopelessly smitten.

4. Going to the library in town on Saturday. My home town had only about 800 people, but thanks to some rich lady who donated money, we had a nice little library. On Saturday my mom would pack us all up to go to town to do the shopping, visit with the town relatives and friends, and then go to the library. I would load up with as many books as I could carry to last me until the next weekend. My mother had to keep reminding the library lady that, yes, my daughter can read more than one book in a week. And that it was OK for me to check books out of the adult fiction section, because I’d already read all the ones in the kid section. My mom was a fan of reading, and mostly we were exempt from chores if we were parked somewhere with a book in hand. Hence my love of reading. Anything that gets me out of cleaning house can’t be bad.

5. Having crushes on boys. Yes, I know you can still get crushes on boys as an adult, but they don’t have the same intensity or cause quite as much insanity as when you are thirteen. There is just nothing in the world like that feeling that you will certainly die if he doesn’t notice you, and then again the feeling that you will die if he does.
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I finished one of the Watercolor socks over the weekend. I grafted the toe while getting my hair foiled for highlights. Every single time I go to the salon, I wish I’d taken my camera, as I always take knitting along. Though I’m not sure you all are ready for a picture of me with ten pounds of foil and glop in my hair. Here’s the sock.

And I cast on for the mate immediately, in hopes of someday finishing the pair.

I also started an afghan square for the Blanket Project started by Annie, in memory of John Glick, Kerstin’s brother-in-law. Go here for details.

Those of you with very good memories might recognize this yarn. It was gifted to me by Kristen after my hand injury, so I could play with Koolaid dyeing while I couldn’t knit. Here is the post that describes the process. I figured this was a very appropriate use for the yarn!

I’m off to unpack more boxes. We have company coming in a month, so I now have a deadline for getting all the stuff jammed into the guest rooms back to its proper place.

Not Much Knitting

I still don’t have much knitting to report. It has been so NORma! hot here that I really don’t feel like knitting. For those of you in the rest of the country, in the Pacific NW we get a little uncomfortable when we’ve had too many sunny days in a row. I just want to go hang out in the hammock with a fan and a glass of iced tea, or maybe a gin & tonic.

I did make a field trip north to see the Harlot today. She was at Third Place Books in Shoreline this afternoon, and also at Weaving Works in Seattle tonight. I went to the afternoon ~~show~~ signing.She is most definitely one of the funniest women I’ve ever met. She talked, showed off the latest sock, and signed books.

There were probably fifty or more people there, maybe more.(I’m not so hot at math.) It was a hoot to turn around and look at the room full of women knitting away madly while she was talking. Yes, there were a few men there. I didn’t see any of them actually knitting; they looked like they were with wives. Or maybe they were just trying to pick up knitters.

I got to meet Dorothy from Missouri Star. She is my new hero. Not only was she wearing a lovely shawl she had made (the Mediterranean Lace Shawl from A Gathering Of Lace), but she was knitting lace in public, while listening to Stephanie. And she didn’t have a pattern in front of her, but apparently was just making it up as she went along.

Here is where I am with my current projects:

I’m doing the toe decreases, in case you can’t tell from that lovely photo.

If you were thinking that this looks suspiciously like the last photo that I posted of this, you are correct. It’s not because I haven’t been working on it however. It’s just that a lot of it has been knitted and reknitted, and much of the progress has been in reverse. One of these days I may learn how to count. This is a bit more challenging than the Birch shawl. The pattern repeat is 24 rows, so it’s harder to memorize, and it has decreases and yarnovers on the wrong side rows as well as the public side. It’s really not difficult, it just requires that you pay attention.

The home remodeling is coming along. The furniture got moved back in this week, though we are planning to replace some pieces that have seen their better days. I’ve spent the past several days getting stuff out of boxes and back into closets and shelves. We’ve discovered in this process that we have way more crap than what any two people really need, so a lot of the junk is staying in boxes in the garage, and we’re planning a big neighborhood garage sale. (Don’t panic, none of the yarn is going on the block.) The carpet upstairs is mostly installed, though they ran out and left one stair to be finished when the next shipment comes in. I still don’t have doors on any of my bathrooms, or blinds on any windows. The doors get put back up tomorrow when the painters come back to touch up, and who knows about the blinds. My only consolation is that I’ve gotten to the point in life where there really aren’t many people hanging out peeking in my windows while I’m showering.

I’m off to find someplace cool to sleep. Maybe that hammock.

No Knitting

I have no knitting to report. The house is a bustle of activity, and I haven’t picked up the needles in two days. We’ve mostly gotten moved back into the kitchen, and I’ve been cleaning the cabinets and everything in them to get rid of the construction dust. The wood floors are done, though the heat duct covers aren’t on yet, and the painting is done. We can’t put the oriental rugs on the floors for a couple of weeks, so we’ve decided to just leave the furniture in the garage for now rather than move it twice.

We built a new fireplace front with this phase of the remodeling. The old one was just a blank hole in the wall, with a concrete slab stuck in the wall as a suspended hearth. Our construction guys built a box for a real hearth, which we had covered with the same tile that we used in the entrance. Then we had a mantle piece fabricated, which was installed yesterday. Here are the photos:

Here are our new pantry shelves:

This room used to be just a junk room, but we had shelving made for storage, and there will be a long desktop on the wall with the window. On the opposite wall is a bookshelf just for cookbooks.

One of the main motivators for this whole project was this:

This is a refrigerated wine storage unit that we have had for several years. The previous configuration of our main living area was kitchen with eating area, family room/den, and a combined living and dining room (the room with the fireplace). We were very cramped in the previous dining area, and don’t really need two living room areas. So the dining room is being moved to the old family room, and the other room will be one large living room. We didn’t want the wine unit to take up half the dining room, so we had this built:

Yesterday the wine unit got moved back in, and we started loading it up.

I think we’ve found most of the wine boxes in the garage, though who knows with that mess out there. We of course had to sample some last night to make sure none of it had gone bad from the lousy storage conditions.

Today the new entrance light fixtures are being installed. I’m off to clean more cabinets.

Bluegrass Rules

We had a great time at the Darrington Bluegrass Festival. Well, I had a good time. John thinks that “bluegrass festival” and “great time” are phrases that just should never be used in the same sentence. He gets bored with the banjos after about the first hour, though he’s a good sport and keeps going to these events with me. True love, I tell you.

The Darrington festival is a three day event: Friday night through Sunday late afternoon. The festival is in its 29th year, and is held in a big outdoor amphitheater. The place is surrounded by the northern Cascade mountains, and the sound is great. The population has strong roots to the state of North Carolina, due to mill workers being brought in decades ago to work in the local mill. The festival always has a couple of “big name” headliners, but most of the rest of the performers are local, and play very traditional style mountain bluegrass.

We stayed in a rustic resort about 20 miles from Darrington called the Skagit River Resort. They have a huge rabbit population that runs wild. According to the locals, the bunnies were imported years ago, and when the population got a bit out of hand, they were just released to the wild. They make for great photo opportunities, but I suspect I’d get sick and tired of bunny droppings on everything after awhile.

Here’s the festival stage at night:

Bluegrass festivals make for great knitting time. Here I am working on Rogue. Friday night it was cool enough that I wished I was done with it so I could wear it.

If you are performing on the stage, this is the view:

Here is a photo of my all-time favorite bluegrass band, Country Current. They are five of the best in the business. And they look pretty sharp in their uniforms as well.

One of the great things about this festival is that it is truly a family event. There is plenty of space for camping, and people come with their kids and their campers, and there is music playing in the campground all night long. Apparently hula hoops have come back into vogue, for those of you who missed it the first time around.

Here I am knitting, with that view behind me.

I finished the hood on Rogue, and started on the first sleeve. The hood grafting wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Instead of worrying about grafting the reverse stockinette sections “backwards”, I just grafted the whole thing in stockinette. At least in this yarn, it all blends in, and you can’t tell the difference.

Here is what the park looked like on Sunday:

And my sock’s view:

So when’s the next bluegrass festival, dear??

Update

Catchy title, eh?

This blog post is being brought to you from my neighbor’s basement. Yes, I can access our home wireless network from the neighbor’s house. I guess it’s a good thing that we set up the security features when we installed the network. I even printed something to our printer from here this morning.

We got evicted from our house yesterday by the floor guys. The final coat went on the wood floors yesterday, and they were not kidding when they said that we wouldn’t want to be in the house. We packed up the cats and moved over here for the night. We’re going to be out of town for the weekend so hopefully it will have aired out by the time we get back. Riley is already at her little doggie bed and breakfast for the weekend.

So where are we going this time? Here. I love me some good bluegrass music, and I get to go to the mountains to hear a whole weekend of it. Country Current is one of my favorite bluegrass bands, so I couldn’t pass this one up. It’s an outdoor venue, and I’m taking all of my knitting projects and planning on a great time.

Here are some pictures:

I’m up to where the hood shaping starts on Rogue. Knitting with this yarn still bugs my hand a bit, but I’ve gotten enough strength back so I can knit six or eight rows before I drag out the ice pack for relief. I’m really trying hard not to overdo it.

I turned the heel on the sock yesterday also. Turning heels never ceases to amaze me. I’m easily amused.

And here is a view of our lake from our neighbor’s deck:

Lucy spent much of yesterday afternoon under the bed here. She was a bit freaked out at coming over here, but has adapted, and is clearly making herself at home.

The banjos are calling me. I’ll be back after the weekend!

Birch Shawl

Started: August 2004
Finished: July 2005. This one sat on the back burner for a long time after I started it. It is also the first big project that I finished after my hand injury.

Yarn: Rowan KidSilk Haze, in Liqueur
Pattern: Birch, from Rowan 34, Fall/Winter 2003

What I learned:
This was my first big lace project. I learned to use a lifeline, and not to get cocky and take it out because I thought I had mastered the pattern repeat. I also learned that you do NOT want to rip out KidSilk Haze. I learned that I love knitting lace. It’s magic when those little patterns appear. It’s even more magic when you block it and that pile of mohair turns into exquisite lace.

Birch, Done

Here are the promised Birch action shots. It’s not so easy to take pictures of this on a breezy day, let me tell you.

Here’s the shawl enjoying a nice day in the hammock:

Riley likes it, too.

And the “Claudia“:

This took me forever to knit, not because it was difficult, which it is not. The hand escapade intervened and took three months off my knitting life. The pattern is easy, though knitting with KidSilk Haze can be a pain at times. I love this, and will likely wear it often.

Project details will be in the next post.

Guest Blogger Day

By Riley, the Pure-Bred Brown Dog

Loose Parts, by Dave Blazek

New Lace

I haven’t taken that Birch action shot just yet. Of course, now that it’s done, the sky is cloudy and not at all conducive to taking even a remotely decent photo. I have worn it, though, and love it. I can see wearing it often!

Since this is the Summer of Lace and all, I started a new lace project. Actually this is an old project that I started way before I started this blog. It’s the Lead or Follow lace scarf from HeartStrings FiberArts. She doesn’t sell retail from her website any longer, though you can buy her patterns at various retail shops.

That’s what the pattern is supposed to look like when finished and blocked. Here’s mine so far:

I actually was about ten rows farther than this, but for some reason that escapes me, I didn’t write down where I was when I left off. I suppose that I had the notion that when I put it down that it wouldn’t sit unattended for two years before I started again. After I fiddled a bit with it, I lost patience and ripped it all out and started over. The yarn is Richesse et Soie, a cashmere/silk blend from Knit One Crochet Too. This is truly yummy yarn to work with, though a bit spendy to make much more than a scarf. Here’s the deal though: I bought this years ago when it was cheaper, so my yarn-stashing retirement plan is actually working!

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Here’s a new-to-me blog that will make you spit your coffee all over your keyboard. Don’t say you haven’t been warned. You Knit What?? has photos of all those lovely projects you’ve been just dying to make.

Pinning Ceremony

Birch is done! Yee-Ha! I finished it last night at 2AM, while watching the first of the Lord of the Rings series on DVD (for the umpteenth time). There wasn’t anything on TV that would keep me awake, and I just had gotten to that point where I had to finish it or else.

This is sort of a down-and-dirty blocking, which I may have to re-do at some point when my house is back to normal. The only relatively flat surface I have available at the moment is one of the extra beds, and the room is so jammed with junk from the rest of the house that it was hard to maneuver around to pin it straight. I have a set of blocking wires somewhere. “Somewhere” is the key word in that sentence. I found the instructions to the blocking wires today while looking for something else, but strangely enough, the wires and the instructions were not in the same box.

I also have a homemade blocking board made with plywood, styrofoam, and canvas, but it’s not big enough for this. It’s also behind stuff in the garage. Murphy’s law of home remodeling is that no matter what it is you need to find, it will always be in the box behind the most stuff in the garage. At least I had the sense to pack the wine in boxes in FRONT of everything else, so we can get to it readily.

When we were looking at carpet this week at the flooring store, I noticed that they carry these:

Has anybody tried these for blocking? The ones that they had in the store had a smooth surface, and come in a 2 foot by 2 foot size. They sure would take up less space for storage when not being used.

As soon as that sucker is dry, I’ll post a twirling-around picture, and details of the project.

Chaos, Part 2

Unfortunately, I think there might be more than 2 parts to this home-remodeling chaos. The floors are sanded, stained, and have the first finish coat on them. The painters got them covered up with paper before I could get a good shot. Tuesday the painting guys showed up, and we are finally getting an idea what this will look like when it’s all done. Here are some photos:

Our bedroom, wrapped in plastic.

Everything in the house was previously painted a stark white. When we get done with it, the trim and ceilings will be a creamy white, with a yellow shade for the walls, and a light sage color for our bedroom.

The new bathroom door that the guys rigged up:

Riley loves this project. There is somebody new at the house every day. She thinks they are all here just to see her.

Lucy the Cowardly doesn’t think much of the whole project. Being the big chicken that she is, she has discovered this spot in the TV/cable box cabinet to hide out.

Here are our new French doors out to our patio, with the first coat of yellow on the walls:

And a shot from our kitchen which shows just a little of how different this place is going to look when we’re done with it:

The really bad part about remodeling is the “oops, I made a clean spot” phenomenon. This really started as a wood floor project, then morphed into knocking out walls and replacing tile, painting, and new doors. Yesterday we decided that all the carpet in the upstairs master bedroom level is going to look like crap next to the new tile and paint, so it’s going as well. I don’t want to pack up all that junk upstairs into boxes twice. It’s all jammed into the garage now, so we might as well go for it. We picked out the floor carpet yesterday in about five minutes. I think I have reached that “I can’t make any more decisions right now” point.

On the knitting front, I have gotten a bit more done on Birch, in between micro-managing the home project. I’m hoping to have it done by the weekend. Blocking might have to wait a bit until the mess around here is under some control, though.

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We received some very sad news over the weekend. If you’ve been visiting here regularly, you’ve met Daisie, our neighbors’ Corgi. She and Riley were best friends, since my husband would pick her up on the way to the park almost every day over the last year. Daisie was hit by a car on Sunday, and died instantly of her injuries. She was just the sweetest dog I’ve ever met, and we’ll all miss her greatly.

Chaos

That would be my house at the moment. The remodeling is proceeding, though messily and slowly. The front entrance tile is almost in, and the grouting and finishing will hopefully be done in a few days. The boys are here to sand the wood floors this morning, and we are plastic-sheeted into a corner of our house. After the floors get finished, the other boys will come and paint the whole upstairs. I will almost be glad to go back to work tomorrow so I can pretend this just doesn’t exist for awhile.

Here are a few pictures. Where our living room used to be is now a dance hall. We tried it out the other night after a few bourbons, and I think we’ll turn it back into a living room. Note the classy furniture.

Here’s the front tile.

My yarn is locked up behind several layers of plastic, doors, and boxes, hopefully to keep the sawdust out.

When life is in chaos, I shop. It seems that there is an epidemic of yarn-buying around the blogs this week, so I joined the crowd. I couldn’t resist buying enough Cotton Ease for two sweaters of some sort. I ordered it from the Lion Brand website, and it hasn’t arrived yet to take pictures, but I got the Banana Cream and the Candy Blue colors. Sitcom Chic, here I come!

Elann has Pakucho Organic Cotton on sale, and I bought enough in Forest to make this cardigan:

I’ve had the pattern for awhile, but didn’t get around to getting the yarn until now.

Last but not least, Alpaca & Silk, from Blue Sky Alpacas, purchased from Knit Pixie. I want one of everything they have for sale! This will be a lacy scarf someday when it grows up. It is indeed as pretty as it looks.

Lest you think that all I do is shop for yarn and dream about new projects, here are photos of actual knitting. The three projects are the Rogue sweater, the ~~Black Hole~~ Birch shawl, and the Lorna’s Laces socks.

I’m going to go find someplace quieter than home to knit today….say, perhaps by the runway at SeaTac.

Merrily We Rogue Along

When we last saw that mystery Rogue, it was way back in March; back before I discovered that I apparently can’t walk and drink at the same time. Here is where we left off with the Rogue tale:

This week I decided to tackle this again. My hand still doesn’t like knitting cables in heavy worsted wool, but I figured I needed to get back at this. I’ve managed to get about a dozen rows done on the hood this week, though very slowly. At this pace I’ll finish it by winter.

I finished my first week back at work yesterday. The fingers made it through OK, though after ten or twelve (or sixteen) hours of writing in a day, I needed ice therapy. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I worried that it would be. After three months of enforced “vacation”, I easily remembered all the essential information I needed to get through my day. I remembered where the bathrooms were, all the nurses’ names, which doctors go with which specialty, and the phone numbers that I call regularly (emergency room!). It helped that it is summertime, and our hospital census was on the manageable side. After a seven-day, roughly 80-90 hour work week, I now have a week off to recover until the next one. And maybe get some knitting done.

I did discover one good thing this week. I really missed work. I love what I do, and though I do my share of bitching (or is that birching?) about a variety of crap on a regular basis, I really did miss it. My work can be a challenge at times. I function as the “lead” doctor for up to six or seven hospitalists in the hospital that I mostly practice at. In addition to seeing a full roster of patients daily, I am in charge of managing the “patient list”: I make sure that every patient that our group is supposed to be seeing is assigned to a doctor, which isn’t always as simple as it sounds. (Organizing doctors can be a little like herding cats some days.) I coordinate admissions via the ER and outpatient offices, as well as the occasional transfer from other smaller hospitals in the region. And triage what seems like hundreds of phone calls daily.

And amongst all the whining that I can do about how difficult and energy-sucking it sometimes is, I rediscovered this week that I wouldn’t want to do anything else but what I am doing.

Home Again, Home Again…

We are finally home from the Great Wine Buying Expedition of 2005. We left almost two weeks ago, and just got home last night. We drove down the Oregon coast, then down the California Coast just past Mendocino. We turned east and drove through the Anderson valley, tasting along the way, then into Napa. After nearly a week in the Napa valley, we headed home through the Mt. Shasta area, and stopped in Ashland, Oregon to take in a Shakespeare performance. After a night in Portland with friends, we headed home. All in all we put more than 2000 miles on the Dogmobile (John’s car), though I suspect a lot of those miles were driving up and down the Napa valley, dipping in and out of wineries.

The trip was very relaxing, and with only a couple of minor glitches along the way. John had a run-in with the law the first day and has a speeding ticket to prove it (his first ever, so not bad I guess). We took a ton of pictures all along the coast. On day five of the trip, I managed to delete every last picture on the camera. Don’t ask. There were a lot of swear words involved. And I wasn’t even drinking wine at that point. At least we have the pictures from the last half of the trip.

We stayed in a number of swell little hotels and inns along the way, and then spent six days in Napa, staying in a timeshare that was billed as “individual cottages”. We’ve found that there is a wide variation in accommodations when you exchange timeshares; this one was no exception. The “cottages” basically were a trailer court. When we drove into the resort, we saw hundreds of little trailers all backed into lots right next to each other. They were all painted different colors at least, and were nicely landscaped. They were quite comfortable and adequate inside, though the outside was a hoot. Here is a picture:

That’s my new sock in progress. In Harlot fashion, I have dozens of pictures of that sock all over the Left Coast. Well, I HAD pictures, anyway. Here are a few from the trip to Shasta:

I managed to get to two yarn shops on the trip. The first was in Lakeside, Oregon, a shop called Angelika’s Yarn Store. It’s in this tiny town, way out of town in the bottom level of the owner’s home. I used to have good pictures of that one. She has the most amazing collection of Lorna’s Laces, with just about every yarn and color in stock. I bought one little skein of Helen’s Lace for a shawl.

The other yarn shop was The Web-sters, in Ashland. Here’s what I got there:

It’s Mountain Colors Bearfoot, for socks.

All in all, a lovely trip. I’m glad to be home, and I ~~have to~~ get to go back to work tomorrow; first day after my three months off. I hope I remember where the bathrooms are.

I’ll try to post some pictures later this week of more knitting progress. Between wine tastings, I did manage to make some progress on that sock, as well as on Birch. This week may be pretty much shot to hell, though what with going back to work, and this:

This morning the floor people came and tore up all the carpets in our main level, in preparation for the wood floor installation. It’s just a mess around here. I’ve spent most of my day packing up as much crap as possible in boxes so I don’t have to clean wood dust out of everything I own after the sanding. It’s too bad they couldn’t have done this while we were gone.

It’s good to be back!