The Knitting Doctor

The Church of Bluegrass, Day Whatever This Is

Let’s sum up, shall we?

I fracked up both of the knitting projects I brought with me because I’m totally distracted. One is a mostly stockinette shawl, the other is a completely stocking stitch sock that I’ve knit a million times.
Laurie Lewis sang a “my dog died and I’m sad” song tonight, and totally destroyed both of us. John and I were weeping in our seats, then laughing hysterically at the fact that she was singing a dead dog song and we were sobbing.
I’m sure we’ll find this all amusing some day.

Tomorrow is the last day of Wintergrass. We haven’t enjoyed it as much this year, and that’s not surprising. I’m glad we came though, it provided a much needed bridge between this past week and next week, when real life obligations hit us like a semi truck. I might get around to posting about some of my favorite artists later on.

I’m off to fix the knitting screwups.

The Church of Bluegrass

Yes, it’s that time of year again. We’ve had tickets (and hotel reservations) for this years Wintergrass festival since about two days after last years event was over. We debated for a bit about whether to go or not, since neither of us is in much of a mood, and decided that this would be better than sitting home staring at an empty dog bowl and the empty spot on the end of the couch where Riley always hung out. So here we are.

The festival started last night, and I made it through about two acts before somebody played a sappy sad song and I was just done. Hopefully tonight will be better. My favorite last night was Sarah Jarosz, who is a superb musician.

So far today we’ve been to a workshop with David Grisman and Kenny Smith playing an impromptu “concert” set on vintage mandolins and guitars, most from the early 1900’s. It was just fabulous, they played a bunch of old sweet tunes, many from Grisman’s Tone Poems days.

I’ll report back with more as the weekend goes on. Of course there will be knitting and spinning, I brought one of my drop spindles, which is a good portable activity for those down times between musical acts.

Speaking of knitting, one of the projects I brought is that Seraphim shawl. I spliced in the second ball of yarn yesterday using a Russian join. This morning I noticed this, which really irritates me to no end.

So I guess I’ll get more practice doing Russian joins. I hope this is the only knot I find, or there may be some inventive swear words flying around. What really annoys me is that this is on the very outside of the ball, so I should have seen it when I bought it. Oh well.

Thank you all for the sweet condolences on my last post. I’m working my way through answering all of your comments, but each and every one of them makes me cry, so I have to take it in small doses or I might run out of hankies.

On to more bluegrass!

Our Girlie

Riley

October 2000-February 27, 2013

Our sweet puppy left us yesterday, with her best friends around her. We’re both heartbroken and spent much of yesterday looking at the hundreds of photos that we’ve taken of her since she adopted us. Here are just a few that show the people and things she loved best.

Rest in peace, sweet girlie. We’ll always miss you.

Test

Or,

New Knitting Project

Sheesh. I’m trying this from the WP app to see if this works better on the ipad. Let’s try a photo, shall we?

Those are my new socks. The yarn is Lorna’s Laces, color is the January color of the month, A River Runs Through It. It came in the mail, my husband saw that blue, and said, “mine”. So these will be socks for John.

That’s all I have. I’m just trying to find a better way to blog on the road.

Baycation!

Or,

Hawai’i!

And that pretty much says it, right? I only have crummy phone photos for you, and not many of those. Yes, I brought the “real” camera, and yes, I’ve taken lots of “real” photos. I just forgot to bring that little extra piece that lets me upload photos from the camera to the iPad. So you get a few phone photos instead.

We’re on the Big Island, which I’ve never been to before. I think it might be my favorite of all the islands. We’re staying “upcountry” on the hillside overlooking Kailua-Kona, with a terrific view of the bay, well out of the traffic of the main town. The cottage that we’re in is part of a small coffee farm, and we have noisy chickens and tweety birds instead of city sounds. We don’t have air conditioning, but it’s been quite pleasant without it. We have wall to wall sliding glass doors along the ocean side, and it’s been nice enough to sleep with the doors open at night, and it’s been cool enough that we’ve needed blankets. And wool socks at night.

Here are a few photos.

Yes, I found a yarn shop. I only bought one thing. The shop had a surprisingly large inventory, with a great selection, but my vacation yarn buying goal is to try to buy stuff I can’t get at home. Here’s what I found.

It’s from local alpacas, hand spun, natural colored. There are 400 yards of it, I might try dyeing it with some of my natural dye stuff that I have at home.

Being upcountry in the tropics, you might guess that there is a bit of wild life here. Our hosts warned us about mongoose, and the rare wild boar that wanders in. Last night’s fauna was a gecko that we found in one of the kitchen cabinets.

Last but not least, a Finished Project! This was one of my January goals.

I’m not going to do a whole Project Details thing with these. The yarn is Frolicking Feet, from Done Roving. The color is Pot o’ Gold. I used size 0 Pony Pearl double points.

I’ve already started another pair but that’s for a different post. Blogging from the road on an iPad sounds lovely, but the WordPress dashboard interface with the iPad browser is less than ideal. That’s it for today, we’re off on another adventure!

Oh For Pete’s Sake

Or, January Project Update

Or, I Hate Having The Flu

I could just stop there, right? Be careful what you wish for, is all I have to say. The past few weeks at work have been a bit busy, to say the least. The hospitals are not just full, we have hallways lined with sick people in extra beds sans rooms. It’s been pretty demoralizing and exhausting for everybody; last week I saw veteran nurses in tears. At any rate, I finished my work week Thursday night, ready for a three day weekend, and had the thought “It would just be nice to have a few extra days off.”

Ha. Friday morning I woke up with the crud which just got worse as the weekend went on. I finally broke down and went to our Urgent Care Sunday morning, and came away with the last two packages of anti-flu medicine, one for me to treat influenza*, and one for John to keep him from getting it. The pharmacy was also out of prescription cough syrup, which should tell you something. Our hospital was near to running out of influenza test kits last week, so we’re down to diagnosing it the old fashioned way, by history and exam. What a concept.

Anyway, this “got” me those two extra days off I was wishing for. I haven’t done much except sleep and wander around in a drug induced stupor. I’m hoping to be up to speed to go back to work tomorrow.

Enough whining. I have gotten some knitting done this weekend, though I’ve stuck to plain stocking stitch for the most part, since my brain isn’t working very well. Here are my January goals for your reference:

Finish the body of my Green Jeans sweater
Finish the pair of socks on the needles (Pot ‘o Gold socks)

And here’s where I am.

That’s the Green Jeans sweater (AKA Corduroy). I’ve reached the split for the bodice part, and have started the upper back. This is actually pretty mindless knitting, with just a bit of garter striping for interest.

And those of course are the socks. One done, one almost half done.

I’m not sure I’ll hit either of those goals by the end of the month, but we’ll see. I’d be closer to getting there if I hadn’t gotten distracted by that shiny shiny platinum yarn from the last post.

I’m off to take more drugs.

*And yes, I did get a flu shot. I hate to think what this would be like if I hadn’t.

Cast On Sunday!

I am officially bored with everything I’m knitting. I actually like all my projects, but they’ve all been in progress for so long that they are starting to grow mold. There is only one thing to do in that circumstance: cast on something new!

I rummaged around in the yarn bins and found some lovely light fingering weight shiny stuff that I bought when we were in Europe this past fall. It was a simple matter to find a pattern that would work. I had both in the stash, and voilà, I even had the right size needles!

The yarn is Lana Grossa Lace Lux. It’s more of a light fingering than lace weight, and I have 930 meters of it. The color name is Platinum 10, though it looks more like cremini mushrooms to me. Very shiny cremini mushrooms, to be sure. It’s a wool/viscose blend. I got this somewhere on our trip through Amsterdam to Budapest, though didn’t write down where we were at the time.

The pattern is Miriam Felton’s Seraphim, so this is officially my Platinum Seraphim. Just to keep track, I’m using my Holz & Stein ebony needles, size 3.5mm. I uploaded the pattern to my iPad, tweeked it in KnitCompanion, and sat down to knit and watch those Seahawks lose today.

How about you all? What’s new on your needles?

True Blood Faery Ring

FINALLY! This one is done done done. Excuse me if I must post a gazillion photos, I’m so freaking happy this is finished.

I’ve never made a tassel before! I used a piece of cardboard to wind the yarn around, using these instructions.

I used the sweater yarn to crochet a tight single chain for the button loops, then just tied them into the button band from the back side.

Project Details:

Pattern: Tuilich Faery Ring, by Mary Scott Huff
Started: 11/2/2009. Yes, this was in a very long time out.
Finished: Today! 1/3/13! First finished project of the year!
Yarn: Black Water Abbey worsted weight. The color name is Haw, though in real life it is a True Blood Red.
Needles: Knit Picks Zephyr, size 6 & 7.
For: Me!
Modifications: Well. I pretty much knit the pattern as written up to the hood and sleeves, then just winged it from there, since the pattern was never completed in the Tuilich sizes. I used the sleeve pattern from the largest size in the Faery Ring pattern, and just made up the hood. The hood instructions for the smaller set of sizes called for a bigger hood for each size, which is just ridiculous. Your head doesn’t get a whole lot bigger as the rest of you expands. I just picked up what looked like the right number of stitches around the neck, then increased until it was wide enough, decreased a bit, then grafted the top when it was tall enough.
What I learned: I love cables. And I love this yarn. I have another sweater quantity of it in the stash in a warm caramel toffee color that will turn into a sweater someday. The yarn feels a bit stringy and harsh initially, but softens up, and shows cables marvelously. I also adore these buttons. They were made by a goldsmith named Carolyn Kent, her website is Minnowcreek Studio.

Alrighty then. Now that that one is done, here are my New Years resolutions, such as they are:

Read more. See my reading blog page for details
Knit from stash. John and I have been going through our credit card expenditures to set up a 2013 budget. Let’s just say that the amount of money I spent on yarn last year is quite embarrassing. I’m not ruling out the occasional yarn purchase, especially if it’s in the category of vacation purchases, but I’ve got plenty of yarn around here and I’m going to try to use some of it.
Blog more. I’m going to go back to doing monthly updates and goals.
Spin more. And get back into dyeing fiber and yarn.

That’s pretty much it.

Here are the January goals:

Finish the body of my Green Jeans sweater
Finish the pair of socks on the needles (Pot ‘o Gold socks)

In the cooking category, here are the photos of our New Years BEPs (black eyed peas). You didn’t think we’d forget them, did you?

Onward!

Merry Christmas!

And He shall reign…

Almost There

OK, did anybody else think of Andy Williams or the Lettermen when they read the title of this post? Terrific, now I’m not going to get that sappy song out of my head.

Anyway, this post is not about Andy Williams or the Lettermen. It’s about being Almost There with a finished project.

Yes, I have been knitting this blasted thing for eons. It’s Almost Done, though. The knitting is All Done, and it’s currently in the tub getting a soak. Then it’s the buttons, and the little button loops, which I have no idea how to do, but I suppose I’ll just wing it, like I do most things. And a tassel. I’m pretty sure the hood needs a tassel. Then it will be Really Done.

Buttons! I keep forgetting about the buttons, which is pretty much why I made this sweater. Here they are, again.

True Blood Faery Buttons!

We’re Almost Ready for Christmas around here. We’re having our big annual Solstice Dinner on Saturday, so I’ve got a lot of cooking to do. Of course there will be photos, so stay tuned.

Here are a couple of photos from our tree decorating this year.

Why yes, we do open a bottle of champagne for the tree decorating!

And now, just for your listening pleasure:

Oh Dear

I sort of missed most of the past month, didn’t I. Oh well. I’ve been sick, then busy, then more busy. And I haven’t even knit all that much. That crazy bug that I picked up on our cruise has really hung in there, and more or less knocked me on my butt. It turned out to not be whooping cough, according to the test; didn’t get much better with a round of antibiotics, and has turned me into a total slug for the past few weeks. I’m still coughing though it’s finally getting better. All that whining is my latest excuse for not blogging.

I did start doing NaNoWriMo in a fit of insanity. I got to about 7000 words before I decided I really wasn’t having any fun, and wrote another 2000 or so words before I REALLY decided that, no, in fact I am not having fun with it this year, and abandoned ship.

Enough of the pity party. Here’s some fun stuff. My latest socks.

Click on that to get a better photo of the wild and crazy that is Lewey.

Getting that model to cooperate was no easy task. He was not one bit interested in helping me blog, he just wanted to eat the yarn. I didn’t take the time to shoot any more photos since the mutt smelled a little funky when I got close enough to tell. He just had a bath too, so I’m sure he thought it was necessary to roll in something at the dog park. Lovely.

I’ll forgive you if you’ve forgotten what yarn that is. It’s Frolicking Feet, from Done Roving (I got mine here), color is Pot o’ Gold. Do me a favor and go buy her out so I’m not tempted to buy more of this.

Here’s more fun. I needed some new shoes, and found these.

Closer…

Click on that one, too.

Knitted shoes! How cool! They have these on Amazon, here they are. Danskos are not cheap, but they are seriously some of the most comfortable shoes you can buy if you are on your feet all day. Take a clue from hospital nurses, Dansko clogs are what many of them wear. You will note that I’m wearing mine with hand knit socks, too.

I’m off to knit. I get to work the weekend, so I want to stockpile some stitches today.

We Interrupt This Travelogue…

We’re home! We got home Wednesday evening, and I’ve pretty much been in a fog since. The Budapest photos will have to wait a bit, since I don’t have them sorted. I came home with a nasty bug, and have been laid low by it, which is quite unusual for me. Most of the boat passengers were sick with some sort of respiratory bug; by the end of the cruise the ship sounded like a floating TB sanitarium. Mine kept getting worse and worse, and last Sunday I signed into my medical website and scheduled an appointment for Thursday (Group Health! Schedule your appointments from Budapest!). Both my primary care doc and I were at least a bit concerned about pertussis, so she consigned me to isolation for 5 days of antibiotics. I didn’t really want to go back to work after a nice vacation, but this is ridiculous. I just got the results this morning (Group Health! Get your test results Sunday morning online!) and it’s not whooping cough, though I still feel like crap, and I’m pretty sure most of my patients and co-workers would be glad I stayed home and didn’t spread whatever it is around.

I do have some good news to report, though. Not too long after the spinning bug bit me, I stumbled upon Watson spinning wheels, and developed a serious case of wheel lust. I ordered a Marie later that year, and mine finally came due earlier this summer. Andrew Watson is a genius and a marvelous craftsman, let me tell you. He came up with a plan after several back and forth emails, and it was done in September. He packed it up and planned delivery for when I returned home from vacation, and it arrived here the same day I got back. Let me tell you, I’m sick, but not so sick that I couldn’t unpack it and put it together. Here are some photos.

I was a little nervous about having to put it together myself, but Andrew sent explicit directions. John got the box open for me, and it was pretty simple after that. It’s a “Marie” wheel, mostly cherry wood with purpleheart accent bits. It is quite lovely, and spins like a dream.

That’s all the news I have, I’m off to take more sinus drugs.

ETA: Knitting Doctor now with Photo Embiggen! Click on that spinning wheel and get a close up view!

On The Way Home

We are back in Amsterdam, and will fly home tomorrow. It took 14 days to get down the river to Budapest, and a little under two hours to fly back here! Here are a few more photos. Even I’m getting tired of them…

The town of Melk, where there is a magnificent Abbey and a very cute little main market area.

Then we came to Vienna. Neither of us has been there before, but it is a city I could easily return to for a week’s vacation. Here are a few highlights:

That’s the town incinerator. You might wonder why I would find that fascinating. It was designed by a man named Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. Those of you who are knitters know that the sock yarn company, Opal, used several of his designs as inspiration for one of their sets of sock yarn. I knitted a pair myself, and might just have bought some more on this trip.

ABC in Vienna:

That’s the Hotel Sacher. We had to stop and eat a Sacher Torte. Yum!

I’ll bet you’d like to see a close up. Here you go…

That was in a bakery window. It’s a baked replica of the imperial crown! They wouldn’t let me try that one on, either.

We also saw the summer residence for Maria Theresa and the rest of the Hapsburg gang.

I suppose they needed a big house, since she had sixteen children. Only eleven survived to grow up, but still, that’s a lot of bedrooms.

That’s a photo taken in Bratislava. I missed that stop, since I finally caught the respiratory bug that swept through the cruise boat for the whole two weeks. I still feel like I have ebola or something equally as dire.

Next up is Budapest, but I’m saving that one for its own post. Both John and I agreed that it was our favorite place on the trip. We were on the boat overnight there, and then stayed on another day and a half, and could have stayed another several days at least. I’ll show photos later when I get them sorted.

Last but not least, new socks in the making:

The yarn is Frolicking Feet sock yarn, by Done Roving, color Pot O’ Gold. I got mine here. There might be some left in the shop, though I tried to remedy that. This might be my new favorite sock yarn. The colors are splendidly intense, and the yardage is amazing. It might even be better than Wollmeise (shhhhh…don’t tell anyone).

We head home in the morning. I’m off to dinner; we’re staying in the same B&B in Amsterdam where we were on the first leg of the trip, and our hosts kindly offered to make us supper tonight. Since Petra is a chef and does cooking classes, we weren’t about to turn that down!

ABC!

Which stands for “Another Bloody Cathedral”, or “Another Bloody Castle”. We’re now 16 days into our vacation, with three more full days of the cruise left, then we’re staying in Budapest another couple of days, then home. I can’t possibly do a blog post for each stop on the cruise, since I just had to dump a nearly full 8 GB photo card off my camera so we can finish the trip. That’s way too many photos to show you all. So here are the highlights. Get yourself a beverage before you start…

Cologne, or Koln. Magnificent cathedral. Of all the ABCs we’ve seen, it’s my favorite. Gothic excess out the wazoo.

It wouldn’t fit in one photo, so you get two.

We had a glass blowing demo on board one morning. He was a comedian as well as a glass artist.

Cruising through the Rhine Gorge. Lots of ABCs here.

That was taken at the Residenz Palace in Wurzburg. I’m not showing you a photo of the Palace, it looks just like a humongous castle and a church combined.

Teddy Bear shop in Rothenburg:

I found a new friend for Sweetpea. He doesn’t have a name yet, his ear tag says Fynn, but I think he needs a German name, don’t you? Any suggestions?

I had a birthday, and shared it with about 140 or so new friends!

This was in Bamberg. I wanted a photo of the guys in front, but pretended to shoot the monument.

Nuremberg. What can I say? This was one of the most sobering places I’ve ever been. That’s Hitler’s rally grounds, never completed. What he was planning to build there would have been terrifying.

That’s of course the courtroom where the Nuremberg trials were held.

On a cheerier note, sunrise off our “balcony”.

ABC. This one is in Regensburg, or RRRRrrrrrrreghghensburgggg, as Jan, our cruise director pronounces it. This has probably been one of my favorite of the cities we’ve seen so far. This may have had something to do with it.

John continues to be amazed at my ability to find yarn. I was like one of those people who won a contest and could take home everything I could pick up in five minutesl

Do you want to see a closeup of what I found? I thought so. Here’s Sweetpea and not-Fynn to show you.

Doesn’t Sweetpea look happy? She might have found her true love. I should ask her, she probably knows his name.

Next up was Salzburg. It was a lovely city, and I could show you lots of photos of castles, old buildings, and churches. Here’s a different one:

That’s a bridge in the city over the river Inn, which runs into the Danube. The tradition in the city is for lovers to pledge their commitment to each other by placing a lock on the bridge with their names or initials on it. I asked the guide if they have to take it away if things don’t work out, which sounded like a reasonable question to me. She didn’t have an answer.

Last, but not least, finished socks! I’m not doing the whole “Finished Project” thing. I started these eons ago (February 29th, according to Ravelry). The yarn is Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes, color Primary Ink, same old pattern, size 2 mm Ivore needles.

It’s cocktail hour, so I need to go find a glass of wine. We’re finally on the beautiful Danube river, we head to Vienna tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Ama Dolce!

We’re already more than half way through our two week river cruise on the Ama Dolce, so I thought I should post some photos!

We have a pretty slow internet connection on the ship, so I’ll just post a short bit of the trip for now. We started in Amsterdam, of course, boarding our river boat last week. Our first full day on the ship we cruised the canals leaving the city, on our way to Dusseldorf. Here are a few photos of the first day on the ship.

One of the many locks we’ve gone through:

After disembarking there the next morning, we took a bus to tour the Floriade 2012 Horticultural Expo. I’m not much of a gardener, and expected this to be more of a boring flower show, but it was absolutely fabulous! Here are some photos:

There were three of these creatures walking through the expo at the entrance. They were marvelous, and made me just laugh out loud.

Giants:

The Willowman’s building projects:

A fire breathing dragon:

Very big wellies:

Back on board for some knitting:

And of course, the requisite towel art, by our cabin attendant, Jack.

Next up is Cologne, but my internet is about to give out on me, since we mostly only have a connection while we’re docked in port. I’ll leave that to next time!