The Knitting Doctor

More Knitting Time!

No photos today, since I’m supposed to leave for the airport in 2 hours and have neither showered nor packed (what? Plan ahead? I’m supposed to do that??). We’re heading to sunny San Diego for the week. The American College of Physicians has their annual internal medicine meeting there this year, and since I haven’t been to one in a while, I decided to go. It’s usually a really good medical conference, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s in a sunny spot in early April. It IS turning to spring here in Washington, but that still means rain, rain, clouds, 40 degrees, and more rain. And wind, let’s not forget that. So it will be nice to be somewhere warmer. And sun. Please, God, just a little sunshine.

I am planning to just take sock projects with me. I have two socks on the needles, one of which is in danger of immolation if it’s not finished by the end of the month, and the sweater is just too damned bulky to fit in a suitcase at this point. I haven’t researched yarn stores in SD yet, but I’m sure there are some. We’ll be staying in the Gaslight district, anybody have any suggestions for fibery things near there?*

OK, I’m off to pack. I’m taking Ernie** with me, so there might be blog posts if I have anything of note to report. Have a great week!

*Shhhhh…John thinks I just wander into these places by accident. Don’t spill that I research the yarn stuff before we go on vacation.

**Ernie is the Mac Air, he’s a great travel computer.

March Wrap-Up

It’s a new month, which only means one thing. A Wrap-Up! No joke!

So how did I do? Here were my March goals:

I’m getting back to that True Blood Faery sweater. My goal is to get at least half of the cabled bodice done in March.

I am going to finish that lilac fiber, and ply it too. So there.

I now have two pairs of socks on the needles, so I need to finish one of them. The brown Sanguine Gryphon socks need to be done. I have one sock done and the cuff of the second done.

I have some fiber from Spunky Eclectic on the wheel that I’d like to finish, but that might be a bit ambitious since there’s a pound of it.

We Have Winners!

Boy, I keep forgetting how putting up the “Free Yarn!” sign gets people to comment. I haven’t even come close to replying to all of you, but thanks for all the terrific suggestions for knitting patterns. I found some great suggestions in there, many that weren’t on my ever-growing Ravelry queue yet.

I know, I know. Quit yapping, Lorette, and get to the winners. I used a random number generator, crossed out the handful of people who said inexplicably that they didn’t want any yarn, and numbered the rest.

The first winner is Dorothy, of Missouri Star fame. She wins the red yarn (see previous post for a picture). I’m thinking that this would make a cute little girl’s dress! Or maybe an adult vest or short sleeve summer top. Dorothy’s favorite pattern is the Evenstar shawl, which I have as a UFO in a bag upstairs. It will get finished eventually.

The second is Debi, who commented that she likes to knit patterns she makes using EZ’s percentage system. This is actually a technique I’ve never tried, but may do so for my next sweater project. Debi gets the two skeins of sock yarn.

Next time, some finished spinning, and my report on how I did with my March knitting and spinning goals! Congratulations to the winners, and thanks again to all of you who keep up with my silliness!

Oh, and Lewey says “thanks” to all of you who were sad that he wasn’t one of the prizes!

Seven Years! Free Yarn!

Happy Blogiversary to me! Seven years ago today I started this blog. I’ve done 548 posts, and had 7626 comments in the past 7 years. I’ve met a bunch of really interesting people through my blog, and “met” a lot more virtually online. You all have stuck with me through silly knitting mistakes, goofy whiskey-related incidents, and one big accident that put me out of commission both for knitting and work for 3 months. You’ve cheered me on during bad work weeks, during a stressful job move, and encouraged me to be a better knitter/spinner, just so I wouldn’t have to show photos of crap here. I think I’ve become a better writer and photographer because of the blog, though I have a lot to learn still about both.

In honor of all of you, I’m having a contest! I have two things from my stash that I’m giving away. Here’s what you’ll play for, if you decide to participate:

The first is a sweater’s worth of Phildar Aviso that’s been aging in the stash long enough. It’s a cotton acrylic blend, and is a true crayon red. It is a heavy worsted weight, and there are 888 yards of it, enough for a short sleeved sweater (or something for a child!). I really like this stuff, but I tend to buy a lot of red yarn, and I have yarn in the stash for at least four more red sweaters.

Lewey approves, but wants to point out that he’s not included. Here’s a photo without the Corgi.

The second prize is two skeins of sock yarn. These are both from Three Irish Girls, and are two from her Sock Yarnista yarn club.

The one on the top is her Finley fingering superwash merino, color Seacoast. The bottom one is Beckon merino, a light sport weight, color Arboretum.

As usual, all yarn from this house comes with plenty of free dog and cat hair, though it mostly is stored out of their reach. There is no smoking allowed in my house, if that’s a concern.

How do you enter to win one of those prizes? Very simple: just comment, one comment per person, and tell me what your favorite knitting pattern is. I want to hear about sweaters, hats, mittens, whatever strikes your fancy. It can be something you’ve knit many times, or something you really want to make but haven’t gotten to yet.

Contest starts as of now, and I’ll pick 2 winners using a random number generator. Let’s say you have until Tuesday night, the 29th, at midnight Pacific time. After that, I’ll choose a winner! Good luck, and thank you all for 7 great years!

Ten on Tuesday

I don’t think I’ve ever done one of these. Usually I discover the TOT topic on about Friday, and by then it’s too late. This week’s topic is Ten Reasons To Be Glad It’s Spring, and who doesn’t love spring? So here goes. This is courtesy of Carole.

1. Baby ducks! We’re a ways out yet, but this little pair of ducks has been hanging out, so I expect they’re getting ready to make a nest. It’s cute how the guy duck stands guard while his lady swims around and eats.

2. The smells of spring. I love that damp leaf smell as everything warms up.

3. Spring flowers. The first things up in our yard are hyacinthoides. They grow wild along our driveway, and if they’re in sun they’ve already started to bloom in places.

4. Longer days. This is the reason we celebrate winter solstice so vigorously around here. Sooner or later we start getting more daylight.

5. Less rain, eventually anyway. It’s been a pretty typically rainy winter here, and I’m ready for a little sunshine.

6. Walks in the woods without a bazillion layers of warm clothes.

7. The dogs will get to play in the lake soon!

8. Chirpy birds in the morning. It’s only been in the last week or two that we’ve had a little bird choir to wake us up in the morning. We have a pair of Steller’s jays making a nest in our trees again this year. They’re more raucous than chirpy, but welcome anyway.

9. Willie the cat loves spring because he gets to start spending more time outside. He’s been absolutely nutso the past 2 weeks being cooped up inside with spring rains.

10. The farmers markets open in a few short weeks! Mmmmmm…green garlic, sorrel, new spring lettuces. I can’t wait.

What do you love about spring?

Still Life

With spindle…

And a closeup of that spindle.

I may actually reach my goal of finishing this fiber up by the end of the month. Here’s the handy-dandy drug dealer’s scale (AKA HDDDS) showing how much is left to spin.

21.2 grams, or a little less than 3/4 ounce. I started with 8 ounces of this stuff.

This post would have been up much earlier today, but it took me awhile to find the HDDDS. I finally located it under a pile of crap in my office. It amazes me how quickly this place degenerates into something resembling a poorly organized junk shop. On the upside, I found the sunglasses I haven’t seen since Wintergrass last month. They were in the bag I had at Wintergrass. Go figure.

I also forgot to post photos of our Fat Tuesday celebration. We had seafood gumbo and John’s favorite cornbread recipe. Here’s the roux in process.

And John stirring:

And the finished product.

Yum!

Even I Was Surprised…

At how many places I’ve been!

visited 34 states (68%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

The rest of the world* is little less well-travelled:

visited 18 states (8%)
Create your own visited map of The World

I have to laugh a bit at Canada. If you’ve been to one town in Canada, apparently you’ve seen an awful lot.

And here’s that map with some of the placed I’d LIKE to go!

visited 54 states (24%)
Create your own visited map of The World

So where have all of you been?

*Edited to add Morocco to the places I’ve been! Thanks, Kris, for noticing that, and you get the good memory award!

Because I Can

And, it’s Dorothy’s fault. Really. In her last post she mentioned she has an upcoming trip to San Francisco, and she asked about yarn shops. This reminded me of a trip from the past, and a yarn shop in SF, and some lovely stuff that’s been marinating in the stash.

Out it came, and here it is, started. There are no WIP Police in this neighborhood, and in honor of actually finishing something for once, I started a stole.

Click on that to see just how pretty that is. As you can see, it’s two separate yarns, the first is Houdini, a nylon ribbon, which they don’t seem to have on their website any longer. The second is Kyoto, a mohair silk blend. After I picked this out, I mentioned that I had no idea what I would do with it, and the shop owner sat down and sketched out a pattern right then and there. Fortunately I saved it and the needles in the bag with the yarn. It’s basically a rectangular stole, you knit two rows with the ribbon, then two rows with the mohair/silk. It starts with 3 stitches, increasing on each side every other row until it’s as wide as you want, then increase on one side and decrease on the other until it’s as long as you want, then decrease again on each side to narrow down to the other point. It’s totally different than anything else I’ve knit with. I have some of the ribbon in a deep red as well.

Here’s a photo of what I had for dessert last night.

It would seem like I’m on a gold-orange-brown cycle.

Happy Fat Tuesday to all! We’re having seafood gumbo for dinner tonight in honor of the day. I’ll get photos for next time!

Big Pink!

Well the mystery package has reached its destination, so here’s the Finished Project post!

Project Details:

Started: Way back in October of last year, in plenty of time to finish before the recipient baby was born.

Finished: February 27th, a good two months after the recipient baby was born. Don’t even ask. There’s another baby in the family due later this summer. I should probably start knitting now.

Project Name: Tweed Baby Blanket, mostly. I made it a little bigger, and of course it doesn’t look anything like the original since this one is knit in Startling Pepto Pink acrylic-cotton yarn.

Yarn: Cotton Ease in Startling Pepto Pink, from the stash. This is one of the older, now-discontinued colors. I can’t for the life of me figure out why they did this in favor of the insipid pastel neutral colors they have now. I love this yarn. I’m not ordinarily an acrylic fan, but this is just plain nice stuff. And it’s machine washable, a big plus when doing baby knitting. I love the look of the original yarn that the designer used, but what real-life new mom has time to hand wash a damned baby blanket?

Needles: Size 5mm, started on Denise interchangeables, finished on Knit Picks acrylics since I needed a really long one for the edging.

For: Baby Rowan Annabelle, my latest grand-niece. I realized that I never showed a photo of her.

Isn’t she adorable?

What I Learned: Once again, babies come faster than you think. Start knitting early. I made the center square a little larger than in the pattern, which gave me a finished blanket that was very good sized. I forgot to measure it before I sent it off, I’ll have her momma do it at some point.* The edging is just a feather and fan with an I-cord bind off, and I had to do a little math to figure out how many stitches to pick up around the edges. The original pattern called for 6 repeats of the feather and fan pattern on each edge, I did 7. My garter square was 86 garter ridges, and I picked up 128 stitches on each side. I think.

Here are a couple more photos.

That’s Sweet Pea, of course, standing in for baby Rowan. My verdict is that this one is a total success!

*Oh wait, I can measure that chair that the blanket is on. 49 inches across the diagonal. There you go.

Big Pink….

Is still in transit, so you get cat photos.

I forgot to post two great photos of the closet remodel. Lucy mostly hangs out in our upstairs, rarely venturing downstairs unless there’s Dungeness crab on the table for dinner. She’s a bit weird about where she chooses to hide, but it’s usually someplace back in my closet. The lady that designed the closet had instructions to mostly keep the hanging stuff high enough so it wouldn’t be covered in matted cat fur, and I ended up with a perfect spot for a kitty bed, right next to the heat register.

Want to see closer? I thought so.

And that’s where Lucy spends most of her day.

If the mailman cooperates and gets that package to Arizona, I’ll have a finished project post soon.

Funnies!

I’m not posting Big Pink till I’m sure it’s gotten there, so you get cartoons today.

Mutts is probably my favorite comic. If I ever get another cat, I’m seriously naming it Mooch.

The Church of Bluegrass Finale, and February Wrap-Up

Or,

It’s Still Raining, It Must Be March

The last day of Wintergrass was Sunday, and it was a good grand finale. After some fast-food Thai for brunch we staked out our territory for the last few concerts. My favorite of the afternoon was Laurie Lewis, though we didn’t get one good photo of her. The Blind Boys of Alabama wrapped up the weekend with some fine gospel music, though it most definitely was a stretch from bluegrass.

And the car packed to head home.

It really was difficult to pick a weekend favorite. There was a lot of good bluegrass, and a lot of very good eclectic music to hear. The Bellevue Hyatt gets my vote for best bluegrass festival venue ever. And no, I don’t have tickets yet for next year, though I certainly will do so soon.

Now for the February wrap-up. What were those goals again??

Finish that damn Big Pink Albatross.

Finish plying the blue stuff.

Finish spinning the lilac stuff.

Continue the blogging effort.

And how did I do?

Well, the Big Pink is done. I can’t show photos, since it will go out in the mail today, if it ever finishes drying. After all of my complaining, I really like how it turned out. Even John, who was quite skeptical about a shocking pink cotton-acrylic baby thing, in the end admitted it looks pretty cute. So next time there will be finished photos. Here is a teaser or two.

If you have to weave in a million ends, you might as well do it with a nice needle. Here’s another shot.

That’s a sterling silver needle from Celtic Swan. It is simply gorgeous, and my favorite sewing needle.

How about the rest of that list? I did finish plying the blue fiber. I didn’t finish spinning the lilac merino silk stuff, but I took the spindle with me to Wintergrass and made a huge dent in it in between shows. If you think the muggles stare at people knitting in public, you should see them when I haul out the spindle. I don’t have very much of it left to do, though I spindled so much over the weekend that my hand hurts a little.

How about the blogging? 8 posts in February, not as good as January, but still good by my standards. I also finished two books and half of a third. I finished the “Girl” series (you know the one, the hornet’s nest, etc), finishing the third in the series. I am glad I finished them, but they’re not my favorite books in the world. The second finished book was Gone With The Wind, which is well over 1000 pages, so that definitely counts as an accomplishment.

And what about goals for March?

I’m getting back to that True Blood Faery sweater. My goal is to get at least half of the cabled bodice done in March.

I am going to finish that lilac fiber, and ply it too. So there.

I now have two pairs of socks on the needles, so I need to finish one of them. The brown Sanguine Gryphon socks need to be done. I have one sock done and the cuff of the second done.

I have some fiber from Spunky Eclectic on the wheel that I’d like to finish, but that might be a bit ambitious since there’s a pound of it.

The Church of Bluegrass, Part 2

Today is sadly the last day of Wintergrass. Of course, even I can get banjo-ed out after awhile, so it’s probably good that it ends eventually. Friday was a fun evening, and until I heard Sam Bush’s band, I would have said that Darrell Scott was my favorite artist of the evening. The lineup this year has been pretty spectacular, and the range of musical styles pretty broad, so it’s difficult to pick one “favorite”. Sam and his band would be my choice for Friday though. They played a two hour set at the end of the evening, and even though it was approaching 1 AM, they had the huge packed ballroom at the Hyatt on its feet.

Yesterday we had a few food experiences. It started with breakfast at the Hyatt, with menus printed especially for the occasion.

From there we went to a workshop in the afternoon. It was a combination of food show and Cajun band. The band, the Red Stick Ramblers, played in the background while their lead singer made a huge pot of gumbo. After it was done, we all got to eat. The band did a fabulous “real” set later in the evening as well, minus the gumbo show.

Because we’re sort of wimpy old farts, we took a short nap before the evening festivities. Here are a few shots of last night’s fun.

Michael Doucet has been one of my favorites for years. He’s an unbelievably talented Cajun fiddler; he usually heads up the band BeauSoleil, but was here last night on his own.

There was knitting, and wine drinking. There’s that sock.

More crazy fiddling. That’s Darol Anger, another gem.

Last but not least last night was Scythian. This is a Washington DC based band, they sort of play Celtic rock, but that’s an understatement. They also play insane gypsy Klezmer style rock, and I just wish someone could bottle their energy. Their show sported the only rap-hip-hop performance, and likely the only extended crazy drum solo. The accordion guy and the fiddle player are brothers, and yes, they are that cute. Click to see.

I’m a bit sleep deprived, so you’ll need to google all of those bands yourself. I need some serious coffee this morning to get up and going for today’s show. My favorite of yesterday is….impossible. I can’t choose, and I think that’s a good thing!

The End

Actually, that would be “ends”. I finished Big Pink today, at least the knitting part of it. By my count, I have about 36 ends to weave in.

I’m about a third of the way done with them, so I should finish this over the weekend. Angie, you might even get this by next week!

Here are just a few Wintergrass shots. Although the scheduled professional performers here are fabulous, some of the best music is heard just wandering around the hallways. Anybody who has an instrument brings it along for the weekend, and there are dozens of impromptu jam sessions set up all over the hotel. Here’s one from the afternoon.

I’m off to take a nap before the evening schedule. I had a long week at work this past week, and need to catch up on sleep before the fun begins tonight!

The Church of Bluegrass, Day 1

Here we are again, my favorite time of year.

We got here a little late tonight for the first night’s festivities, since I had to work all day and then get my butt home and finish packing. We’re here in lovely downtown Bellevue for the whole weekend.

I have my knitting and spinning ready, the wrist band is on, and the course through the schedule maze plotted. Let the banjo music begin!