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.

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.

Read more, blog more, again.

There you go, you read it here first. I’m off for more coffee and to get some formal shots of Big Pink.

Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve gotten a couple of questions about the yarn for the Wintergrass socks I started. It’s Lisa Souza’s Sock! yarn, in Little Devil. It’s striping beautifully, though it’s in time out until I finish those brown socks.

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!

Spindle Purse

This will be a quick one; John and I have symphony tickets in the big city tomorrow, and we decided to go up tonight and spend both nights. We’ll see the sights, eat some good food, relax and have a little mini-vacation to celebrate Valentine’s Day. I had to work on the “real” day, so this compensates.

I’ve been trying to find ways to safely carry a spindle around without wrecking it. While I was dredging out our pantry this week, I found this.

In case you’re wondering what that is, it’s a wine bottle carrying purse. It has little “feet” on the bottom so it stays put without rolling around, a carrying handle, a strap inside to hold the wine bottle, and it came with a corkscrew. My sister gave me this for Christmas a couple of years ago. Since I really don’t carry wine in my purse that much, I haven’t really used it. I was about to donate it to the Goodwill pile, when it dawned on me.

Absolutely perfect. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.

And in knitting progress, here is a teaser photo of Big Pink.

I’m getting close! I’m now doing the endless i-cord bind off row, on about 650 stitches. It’s very tedious but actually goes fast, especially with a glass of wine by your side. I am about half done with the bind off, then I have to weave in a million ends, then it’s done done done. I can’t wait to get this mailed off so I can show pictures. Stealth knitting isn’t really much fun for blog readers.

I’m off to pack for the weekend, hope you all have something fun planned as well. I might have a tale of wool fumes to tell next time…

Finished!

My second favorite “f” word! This time it’s spinning stuff. I’m still working on Big Pink, I’m getting closer, closer. There’s been another impending baby announced in the family (different parents, another grand-nephew on the way!), so I better get moving. I’d like to finish this project before the next baby arrives. I tell you, these kids better stop multiplying for a little bit and let me catch up.

OK, the spinning. The first is a spindle project, and one of my February finishing goals. Here’s the finished yarn:

Click to embiggen, but remember these pictures were taken in the house in February, at the end of a very grey rainy day. The fiber was a batt from Butterfly Girl, and is a merino/bamboo blend, color name Blue Morpho. I spun this on a tiny stone whorl spindle, also from Butterfly Girl, and plied it on my Bosworth Midi spindle. This is a 2 ply. Here are the stats:

357 yards

96.2 g

This comes out to about 1684 yards per pound, or ypp. Here’s a web page that describes this, according to this, my yarn should be about a sport weight. That looks about right. It’s heavenly soft. I think it would be a great cowl or scarf.

Next is fiber from Corgi Hill Farm. This was a merino/silk blend with a little firestar sparkle, also a batt. The color was Raven’s Wing, spun and plied on my Schacht wheel. Finished weight was 4.53 oz, yardage 468 yards. YPP is 1671, which puts it in the sport weight category. The fiber was just divine, as is all of her fiber.

These are really hard to get photos of in February in western Washington, when it’s been raining all day. I might have to actually drag out my cheap lightbox and give this another try at some point. It’s gotten buried somewhere around here.

Last but not least is a very long term spinning project.

This one, I’m very proud of. Click on that photo to get a better idea of what it looks like. This started out last summer as 3 pounds of corriedale fiber from Louet, purchased from Paradise Fibers. The color is Pagoda Red, and isn’t quite as lipstick red as in that photo. I really will have to drag this out the next time we get sun and try another photo. It is more of a rust red than a ruby or garnet red. I wasn’t all that excited with the color when I got it, but now that it’s spun up, it is perfect for my coloring.

This was spun and plied (2 ply) on my wheel. It’s generally a worsted spun, as much as anything I spin is generally anything. I spun it with the wheel in Scotch drive. The finished weight of the yarn is 1315.7 grams, or 46.4 oz. The yardage is 2138 yards, giving me a ypp number of 737.2. This is pretty much a heavy Aran weight yarn. It is a little uneven in sections, but is way more consistent than I thought it would be for 3 pounds of fiber spun over 6 months. I think this will make a terrific sweater, which was my goal. It might even be next up in the queue, if I ever finish that True Blood sweater thing.

That’s it for the finished stuff. Oh yeah, I also finished sorting through all my yarns and fibers. After we got the closets done, I realized that I had a lot of empty space left over, so I dragged out all the yarn boxes and sorted through them. They desperately needed a little weeding out and reorganizing. I have one big box of yarn that is going on the for sale block at some point, I just haven’t decided how I want to do that. I’m not sure I have enough readers here to put it up on the blog, but if there’s enough interest I might be convinced to sell it off here first and then put the leftovers on Ebay or something. It’s all pretty good stuff, I just needed to get a little realistic about what I might actually knit up in the next few years. After I sorted it all out, it ALL fits in my closet, which makes me happy. If it’s out where I can see it, I’m hoping I’ll be more likely to shop the stash instead of those internet yarn stores that seem to be open 24/7/365.

Oh, OK, here’s a photo or two.

Yeah, I know that’s a boat load of yarn. John mentioned a business concept known as “just in time inventory“. I clearly need to take this under advisement, since I actually only finish knitting about three things a year.

Dorothy, now all the yarn is out of the guest bedroom, so you won’t be tempted any more when you come to visit!

And last but very not least, I now have room in my closet to do the sock laundry. Here’s proof.

That’s it. We’re off to the theater for the evening, then a late dinner afterwards.

Closet Capers

I promised an update on the closet re-do. Here’s what it looked like in October, when the shelves pulled loose from the wall. We finally got it finished this past week, and we’re close to having stuff back in the closets. Here’s what it all looked like.

John doing the prep work.

The temporary closet.

Painting done!

My closet done!

John’s closet done!

And here’s what they look like mostly reloaded. We did a little more decluttering while we were emptying boxes back into the closet.

It’s amazing how much more usable space we have. I even have some empty shelf space. I was able to get some knitting related stuff off the floor of my office and in baskets on the shelves, which in turn makes my office much more usable. It’s a win!

On the knitting front, no photos, but I made a stupid mistake on the Big Pink thing last night while knitting in front of the television. I screwed up a plain knit row of all things, inserting part of a patterned row right at the beginning of what was supposed to be a plain row. Of course I didn’t discover it till I got all the way around to that section again. In trying to fix it, I screwed it up even more, and now I’m tinking back about 600 stitches to get to that section so I can fix it.  I think this is my own fault for saying something in the last post like “I only have about 6 rows left”. Please send whiskey, before I stab myself in the heart with a knitting needle out of desperation.

January Wrap-Up

Let’s see how I did with my January goals.

The first was to blog more. How did I do? Twelve posts! In one month! In December of 2010 I did four posts, in all of 2010 I did fifty-four posts. I consider that a success.

How about knitting? Ahem. Remember this post? Here were the knitting goals from January 1st.

Finish the Big Pink Baby Thing.

Finish the pair of socks on the needles, an embarrassingly aged project.

Work on the True Blood Faery sweater. I’d like to finish the bodice section by the end of the month.

Finish the mittens (dog mittens) that have been on the needles since last year, and start the first pair for 2011.

Nada. Zero. I didn’t accomplish any of that. Though I “only” have about 6 rows of Big Pink left, then an interminable I-cord bind off on 60 billion stitches. And I made a bit of progress on the brown socks on the needles.

Brown socks on black needles make for difficult television knitting. As much of my sock knitting is done while wasting time watching television, this isn’t getting very far. And is there any way to photoshop in a decent pedicure? Sorry if that big toe grosses you out. I intended to get a pedicure while we were in Mexico, but I opted for the hour-long massage instead.

Spinning? Equally a flop.

Finish at least two spindle spinning projects that are languishing, a blue/black merino/bamboo blend that just needs plying, and some merino silk that has been on the spindle since last summer.

Again, not a thing finished. I did work on plying the blue stuff, but that’s about it. Not finished.

So, in summary, January 31, Lorette 0. In my defense I worked a lot, had a great vacation, drank a lot of margaritas, and read a few good books*.

Here are the goals for February:

Finish that damn Big Pink Albatross.

Finish plying the blue stuff.

Finish spinning the lilac stuff.

Continue the blogging effort.

That’s a little less ambitious. We’ll see how it goes.

Here are photos of the spinning projects.

That’s a merino/bamboo/sparkle blend, and it’s been on the spindle so long I have no recollection of where it came from. Oops, here’s where the blog comes in handy. The fiber is from Butterfly Girl on Etsy. The bigger spindle is from Bosworth, and I’m doing the plying on that one. After I got my plying ball all wound up, I found another little wad of the fiber and spun it on the other spindle, also from Butterfly Girl.

This is my Cascade Mt. Helens spindle, named Helen, of course. The fiber is merino/silk from Louet. Who the hell knows when I started this. I think I bought this fiber right after I started spinning, so this is another of those embarrassingly ancient projects.

Tomorrow: Remember this? An update later this week on how it’s going!

*By the way, if you’re a reader and on Goodreads, come be my friend. Here’s my profile.