Goofy Stuff – Page 14 – The Knitting Doctor

My Desk

In keeping with the latest trend, here are a few pictures of my office. This is the “bonus room” of our house, and is a balcony room overlooking the main living area. It has a spectacular view out over the lake, and serves as a writing room, work office, and the knitting room.

Here is what one of the desks looks like:

My other desk is an ancient oak rolltop. I haven’t been able to get the top down over all the crap for decades.

If you were wondering, “Is that a crown on her desk?”, why yes, it is a crown!

A friend gave me this crown, clearly realizing my royal potential. I wore it to the hospital all day on Halloween this year. Most of the patients loved it; a few were clearly confused as to why the Queen was visiting them in the hospital and asking them how their breathing was doing.

In case anybody in knitblog world thinks they have the most books, you are dead wrong. Here are five of my bookshelves:

There are three more of those ceiling high bookcases in the lower level of my house. And books in stacks all over the floor as well. Even if they had been able to fit in my office, I’d have been afraid to have that much weight all in one balcony room! Every so often my husband has a meltdown and insists that we weed out some crap and give it away. When this happens, I spend an agonizing several days going through all the books to find ones that I can get rid of. I almost always find at least one little box that I can part with.

There is knitting going on in this house, and actually out of the house as well. Remember this?

I’ve used up one whole ball of yarn, and spliced in the second ball (of three) while at the theater last night, matching the stripes perfectly, I might add. We went to Noises Off, at the Seattle Rep. If you live in the area, go see this; it is very well done. On a much sadder note, Tacoma Actors Guild folded last night due to financial difficulties. They were the only professional theater group in Tacoma, and have done some fine work over the years. We were at their last performance Wednesday night; of course we didn’t know it was the last one. Here’s hoping that some huge corporation bails them out and fills their Christmas stocking with a wad of cash.

Purple Thing

After some serious dithering, the sleeves are done and are on the blocking board. The fronts and back shoulder seams have been matched up, and I’m just waiting for the sleeves to dry so I can set them in. Then a little seaming party, a few bands, buttons, and voila! A sweater!

Oh my god. Buttons. I forgot to buy buttons for this thing. I’m thinking something really girly and elegant. Another shopping opportunity. I just happen to have a gift certificate to the Weaving Works in Seattle, and we just happen to be making a trip to the city later today. Who the hell goes to a yarn store and just buys buttons?

The consensus on the bands, by the way, is seed stitch. I will try that first and see what it looks like.

Here are the sleeves:

I am one of the apparently few knitters who like the sewing and finishing part. I look at all those pieces and think “wow” I knit all that! Helping them all get put together in the right configuration is fun for me. Even sewing in yarn ends in not onerous. That moment when the last stray end is hidden, and the last button secured, is wonderful. Even if it is the middle of the night I want to get up and parade around the house in my finished work of art.

Don’t be sending me all your unfinished sweaters just yet. I don’t find the finishing THAT much fun.

The dithering on the sleeves was the result of my apparent inability to remember which decreases are paired with which, and which ones go on which side of the piece. The knit side increases I have finally committed to memory, but the last 18 rows of the sleeve caps required a decrease on every row. I am just not a fan of purl side decreases. I haven’t done them very often, so they don’t look as neat as they should. Then I just plain followed my scribbled instructions wrong, so had to rip back about three times to get it right.

For the record, and if I write it down here, I might have a prayer of remembering it the next time I have to do it.

On the KNIT side, the decrease that goes on the right side of the work, that is left-leaning, is a SSK. The left side of the sleeve gets a right-leaning increase, a K2tog.

On the PURL side, it gets a little dicier. After trying a few things, here is what looks best to me.
On the right side, the left-leaning one, is a SSP. Slip the next two stitches, one at a time, as if to knit. Return them in their now-turned configuration to the left needle. Now purl into the FARSIDE (the back leg) of the stitches, purling them together.

The left side of the sleeve as you are looking at it gets a right leaning decrease. The book that I looked this up in said to just P2tog, but I like how it looks on the public side better if you P2tog through the back loops.

I have to say, it takes a bit of practice to do the through the back loop ones without stretching the stitches way out.

I will leave you with a couple of pictures that make me happy. We have had the same angel on our Christmas tree since we were married. Here’s old Gabe:

And here are the Three Wise Guys:

If I could find the rest of the nativity scene that matched them I would buy it in a minute!

I’m off to finish my Christmas shopping. Who am I kidding? I’m off to START my Christmas shopping. Where the hell is the challenge in getting ready for Christmas in October??

I Did It!

I slid across the NaNoWriMo 50,000 word finish line on November 30th, at approximately noon local time. Local time for me at that particular moment was located on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. November 30th also happened to be my 10th wedding anniversary, and my sweet husband took me on a 14 day cruise that left from LA, sailed around western Mexico, through the Panama Canal, through the Caribbean, and landed in Ft. Lauderdale Friday. We had several “at sea” days, and those were perfect for sitting in the observation lounge staring at the water and pounding out a 50,000 word novel.

Towards the end I had to bribe myself. “I can’t go to lunch until I write another 1000 words.” Then, “I can’t order another Bloody Mary until I get to 45,000”. Now, THAT was a motivator, let me tell you. I was one of a very few oddballs that had a laptop computer on the ship, and I do believe that I was the only one of the 700 passengers that finished a novel while on board.

The Panama Canal almost did me in. I was more or less on track to finish the thing by that point, but only if I wrote like a maniac and skipped the bingo and shuffleboard sessions. The Canal journey took me away from the computer nearly all day. We started our transit through the Pacific side of the locks before dawn, and most people, including me, were up on deck by 5:30 or 6 AM to watch the proceedings. We stopped just short of the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side for several hours, and took a tour by bus of the Locks facility, then back on board and through the Gatun Locks just as the sun set. It was a marvelous day, and worth the whole trip. We have the Ballard Locks in Seattle, which work on the same principle, but the similarities end there.

I didn’t get much knitting done on board. The time I didn’t spend writing was spent mostly in eating. One of the restaurants on board ship had a Cordon Bleu chef. There was also a chef from the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Ottawa on board giving cooking classes, which we took. I have a little diploma that says I am a graduate of the Cordon Bleu cooking program at sea, as well as a lovely white starched apron and chef’s hat.

This is the certificate that I am most proud of, however:

I have no illusions that I will be short-listed for the Booker Prize for this one. I discovered in writing this that yes, I can write a novel in 30 days. Crap it may be, but it’s my crap, and I figure that I have nowhere to go but up! No, I probably won’t ever try to publish this one; yes, I will try to write a better one next time; and emphatically no, you can’t read any of it. If you are one of my readers that also happens to be in my family, yes, you are probably in it. Next time I’ll try to disguise you better so you won’t need to go into the Witness Protection Program when I get famous.

I should be off sleeve island with the purple cotton cardigan in a few days, then on to button bands and sewing up. Rogue is my next sweater project, and I can’t wait to dig in to that Beaverslide Dry Goods yarn.

Ramen Noodles

No, this has not become a fast-food blog. Though ramen noodles do have their advantages. I did a fair amount of knitting on the lavender sleeve this week. Unfortunately “work” does not always translate to “progress”. I mentioned in my previous post that the armhole on the finished and blocked body is a little bigger than the pattern measurements. I will have to change the sleeve dimensions a little to make the sleeve cap fit into the armhole. Then I decided I want the sleeves just a little bit longer than the original pattern (I have gorilla-length arms). Sweater Wizard makes it possible to change every single dimension in the pattern on the schematic picture of the sweater; when you hit “enter” it changes the pattern instructions accordingly. I love this software! The original pattern instructions for the sleeve instructions were something like “increase every 4 rows 18 times, then every 6 rows 6 times”. The new instructions were to “increase every 4 rows 25 times”, then go to the every 6 rows part. I had just finished all the increases using the previous set of instructions, and briefly considered just doing more “every 6 row” increases, but figured I would end up with a sleeve that dragged to my knees. So I ripped it out back to the every 4 rows part and am ready to go again. You still with me?? Here is the ramen noodles part:

I rolled some of it back up before I took the picture, but 30-some rows of ripped out cotton yarn looks like purple ramen noodles to me. The good news is that I didn’t wait to decide to change this until I had finished both sleeves. Now I just have to remember what I did when I get to the second one.

Here is the non-knitting picture of the day:

My Christmas cacti appear to be confused about the season.
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You might have noticed a new link over in the Webrings and Buttons section on the left. I decided in a moment of temporary insanity to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). This group of truly berserk people commit every November to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This started in 1999, and this year so far there are over 39,000 people who have signed up. I didn’t decide to do this until the last couple of days in October, so I’m a bit behind on my word count. 50,000 words in 30 days means about 1667 words a day. As I’ve never written a novel before, this should be highly entertaining. I did convince my husband that I needed a laptop computer in order to complete this task. I will never hear the end of it if I don’t get to 50,000 words. If you join and start writing tonight, you only have to do 2083 words a day to get there…any takers??

Ack. Short Rows.

I know learning new things is good for me. It’s supposed to stretch my brain and keep my mind nimble. My green striped sock pattern is a toe-up version with a short row heel. I have never tried this before, and I’m beginning to see why. Now, I like the idea of doing the socks from the toe up. You can just knit till your yarn is half gone without doing all that guessing as to whether there will be enough to get the second sock done. I keep reminding myself that I wasn’t so hot at doing flap heels and gussets either, the first several times I did it. I’ve only ripped this sucker back once so far, but we shall see. It’s really not a difficult concept once you try it and just follow the freaking directions. Here are some pictures:

Let me tell you, I’m not feeling very guru-ish right at the moment, despite what this quiz says.

You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting
and do it all the time. While finishing a piece
is the plan, you still love the process, and
can’t imagine a day going by without giving
some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation
involves leaving ample space for the stash and
supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn
ends and you begin.
http://marniemaclean.com

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

If I sound cranky, I’m not really. It’s actually fun to do something new, even if it is a bit fidgety at first.

I promised Norma a picture from my yard the next time the sun was shining. I figured I better not wait till April to do this, so here’s one with the sun NOT shining. This is from our back deck.

Note that there is actually some blue sky there!

Speechless

My birthday was this week, and I received some lovely gifts from relatives that have left me speechless.

The first was from my husband. We had decided we weren’t going to “do” gifts this year, as we just spent a week in San Francisco and spent enough money in some very fine restaurants to feed a third-world country for months. I came home from work Tuesday and found these:

And this:

It’s a wine and cheese teapot, of course.

And from my sister-in-law:

From one of my sisters:

From my other sister:

You of course want to see what’s in it, don’t you? Sure you do.

It’s a Bunko card game, complete with Barbie cards.

Last, but certainly not least, is the gift from Jen, my husband’s daughter.

You push a button on the back, and she “shushes” you:

This comes complete with librarian bookmarks, and a Librarian Action Figure Trading Card. By the way, the librarian is supposed to be Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, author of Book Lust. It’s a great book.

Some women get jewelry or kitchen appliances for their birthdays. What can I say; my family knows me too well.

And just because it was on the same photo card as all of these pictures, I’ll leave you with a photo of where I live. Well, near where I live.

Purty, ain’t it?

Go here…..

Folk Alley. I’ve mentioned it before, and will mention it again. Rachael led me to this internet radio station a few weeks ago, and there has been little else playing on our stereo since. We have our computer hooked up to our home stereo so we can get streaming internet radio with great sound. That, and the speakers we wired in to the upstairs of the house means we can listen to great music night and day if we want.

Anyway, this is 24-hour commercial-free radio, with a great announcer who tells you about all the songs. Not too much talk, just enough so you know what you are listening to. It’s a great mix of traditional folk, Americana, world music, bluegrass, and stuff I just can’t pigeonhole. And it’s all FREE!

As you know however, nothing great is really free. Somebody has to pay for it. In this case it’s mostly the listeners who volunteer to send money in. Go listen, and if you like it, send them money so they stay on the air.

They don’t pay me to write this, really!

Yee-haa, we’re going to listen to Leon Russell tonight! He’s playing at Jazzbones in Tacoma, and I didn’t find out till I figured tickets were long gone. I called and they are saving a bunch of tickets to sell at the door, so we’re going to line up in the rain soon.

I worked on that purple sweater today. Looks the same, just bigger! We spent part of the day taking a bird watching walk in the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge today, then a nap to prepare for a late night out. So not much knitting done.

You Can Do It At a Trot,

You can do it at a gallop. You can do it real slow so your heart don’t palpitate. Just don’t be late, do the Puyallup.

Yes ma’am, we went to the Puyallup State Fair this year; complete with three small children in tow. For those of you not fortunate enough to live in this heaven we call Western Washington, Puyallup is pronounced “pew-al-up”, sort of rhymes with gallop. This and other unusual place names is how we tell locals from out-of-staters. Sequim is another good test; locals know to say “squim”, the furriners say “see-quim”. Some people mistakenly think we keep these unusual names to honor our local native people. Wrong, so wrong. We do it so we know who the visitors are.

If you live around here, every year in mid-September that silly song runs through your head non-stop. And you just have to go. There are cows, chickens, rides, deep-fried Twinkies (really!). There are more varieties of fancy pigeons than you would ever believe. There are 4-H girls and boys showing their horses and pigs. I had a whole conversation with some very cute noisy geese with huge orange bills. I forget what variety they were. The only sheep I saw were in the children’s petting barn; I think the main sheep showing events are next week (yes, the fair goes on for weeks).

We ate, we petted, we admired, we saw the lady doing cowgirl rope tricks. Any other time of year this would have been unbelievably corny. I spent serious time in the craft pavilion admiring the many lovely quilts and knitted items. And watched the end of the fastest fingers contest. There were about ten women entered; they each got a ball of yarn and a crochet hook, and were timed to see who could crochet the fastest. Here are a few of the knitted things:

I dared John’s son George to ride the Extreme Scream with me. I would have one piece of advice: pee before you try this. You get shot straight up in the air at about a million miles an hour, then dropped like a rock.

I don’t look nearly as terrified in this picture as I really was.

As this is a KNITTING blog, here is another finished project. I have had the yarn and pattern to make fruit hats for John’s grandchildren for a long time. While we were hanging out here this week, I started and finished an eggplant hat for Penelope. It started out as a blackberry hat, but the little bobbley things were just looking too weird for me. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran.

Yes, that’s me in those fashionable slippers and robe behind her. We were all still in our jammies waiting for pancakes when I took these pictures. More pictures here.

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If you haven’t already checked this out, sign up for Bloglines. It saves a ton of time if you surf through a bunch of blogs every day. Kerstin and Wendy led me to this one. That little sign-up button in the upper left of the page will subscribe you to my blog and let you know when I’ve updated. Cool, huh?

What’s On Your Refrigerator??

I am STILL working on the Audrey sleeves. Go back a few posts; it looks just like the other one. Not very exciting, I realize. I actually don’t experience the “dreaded second sleeve” syndrome. I’ve found that I’m quite capable of screwing up knitting exactly the same thing twice. This keeps me alert and interested. The same thing happens with socks. Between my aging memory, my slow knitting speed, and my tendency not to keep track of changes I’ve made in the pattern along the way, the second one of the pair is like a new knitting project.

We were in the kitchen cooking dinner just a minute ago. We are making a great French beef stew that is stewing, as we speak. This involved flaming the beef in the saute pan with cognac. Let me tell you, you just should not do this after a glass or two of wine. I could market this as a way to get rid of facial hair. I haven’t actually checked to see if I have eyebrows left.

Anyway, I was thinking that my refrigerator door surely must be unique. I’m posting a few pictures in hopes that this will inspire the rest of you to do the same. If you are of the Republican persuasion, you might as well just not look; this might annoy you more than it’s worth.

Here is a shot of the whole frig:

And a close-up of one corner; what can I say, my family knows me well:

And my favorite section:

What’s on your refrigerator??

Ah, Summer!

I finished the front of Audrey this week, and am madly at work on the first sleeve. Here are pictures to prove it:

That’s the sleeve. It took me a while to wrap my brain around the directions to do the sleeve increases while maintaining the rib pattern. Basically the pattern just says to do this, not HOW to do this. One would think that this would not be difficult, but it took me a bit to figure this out. I’ve never done increases with a rib pattern before; so far it looks like it is working. The little pins are the way I mark my increases. I start with a chain of pins for however many increases I need to do. Every time I do an increase, I transfer one of the pins to mark it. When the pins are gone, I’ve done all the increases that the pattern calls for.

That’s the front and back.

We went to a Rainiers’ game this week again. This time I remembered the camera, unfortunately BOTH batteries were dead. I did manage to get a couple of pictures before the second one died altogether.

Here is a terrible picture of me knitting. John mostly didn’t get the knitting in the photo. He did however manage to get a dozen of the thousands of small screaming children that were there from summer camp programs. Total attendance at the game was about 6000; I’m pretty sure that most of them were under 10. 6000 10-year olds sounds more like 30,000.

Here’s an action shot:

And the mascot, Rhubarb:

The home team won, it was a beautiful sunny day, and I had my knitting along. What could be better? We have tickets for tonight’s game also, there is a big fireworks display after the game. Ah, summer!

Half Finished

I’m not talking about the Audrey sweater. I’ve finished a sock, and started the second of the pair. The yarn is Sheep’s Gift, from Joslyn’s Fiber Farm, in the color Montego Bay. Here is a picture before I finished the toes:

Yes, I have big feet. It takes more than the average amount of yarn to make socks for size 10 1/2 feet.

This is the Blueberry Waffle pattern; I’ve been working on these a while in between other projects. Socks make a great portable knitting project.

I’m just to the end of the increases on the front of the Audrey sweater. For some reason, I had to redo one section of the increases twice. I was more than a little cranky over this. I did the “make one” increase wrong twice in exactly the same place after tinking back, leaving a big honking hole. I’m sure this was intended to make me humble as a knitter. No picture, as it still looks just like the back piece. I thought I would spare you pictures of the holes.

I will leave you with these pictures. I have never in my life put bumper stickers on my car before this election year. I will make an exception for this year.

You can buy these here.