Everyday…

It’s a gettin’ closer…

Here’s where the Not-Really-An-Everyday-Cardigan is at the moment:

One back, one front, and the second front started. This is a little bit closer to what the color really is (did I mention that I got a new camera?).  I’m having loads of fun taking pictures, though so far I’ve deleted most of them as a little experimental.

We spent a couple of days playing in Seattle this past week. My sister is here visiting for a work meeting, and we went to the big city to see her, get a few really great meals, and play tourist. I didn’t even get to one yarn shop. She had never been to the Space Needle, so we took the ride to the top and managed to catch a wine tasting and some great views. Here’s us drinking wine:

And the view from the top:

If that one looks a little blurry, it’s because the wind was blowing about 80 miles an hour, and I was trying not to drop the camera over the side. Here’s a view of the Needle from below:

Though you’ll note that I’m holding a real wine glass in that first picture, I’ve been banned from any activities that involve wine and walking. We are scheduled to leave for that postponed Spain trip in eight days, and I am going even if I do major bodily damage to myself between now and then.

Here’s the other thing that I’m getting ready to do:

November is National Novel Writing Month! I did this last year, and finished. In case you’ve never heard of this, you commit to writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, starting on November 1st. Here’s the website, in case any of you want to sign up. I was waffling a bit as to whether I wanted to do this again this year, but finally just gave in and signed up. I figure if I don’t finish, that I’ll be in good company. The only thing that I was concerned about is that it means I have to take my laptop to Spain with us, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to haul it along.

We’re off to Seattle again today to have lunch with my sister. I’m hoping to get one more post in before we leave for our vacation!

Rogue!

First off, a big thank-you to everybody for the birthday wishes! I just finished one of those 7-day work stretches, so I haven’t answered any emails in a week. (And given my historically lousy letter-writing skills, I may never get to all of them!) The nice thoughts are very much appreciated, though.

Here’s something little that I bought myself for my birthday:

And when you buy a set of four, you get a fifth one, with a custom picture:

Need a close-up? I thought so.

I got them at Zephyr Style, you can find ’em here.

I haven’t figured out even a quarter of the features on my new camera, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying. The pets are getting a little sick of getting their pictures taken. Lucy has gone into the witness protection program again, and I can’t find her to get a shot, but here are the other two doing what they do best, during one of those famous Pacific NW “sunbreaks”.

And finally, the knitting content. Rogue is at last done. Here are a couple of pictures:

Specifications:
Yarn: Beaverslide Dry Goods Fisherman weight 100% wool, in the color Snowberry.
Pattern: Rogue, by the Girl From Auntie. Look under “Patterns to Buy”.
Started: early January, 2005. Derailed by this in March.
Finished: October 11, 2005.
For: Me!
Gauge: 4 st and 6 rows/inch. The recommended gauge for the pattern was 4.5 stitches to the inch, and I swear, I swatched. Twice. It still came out wonky at the very end.
Needles: I used my Denise needles, size 6 (5 for the hem). I can’t believe that I would need to use a size 5 needle for heavy worsted/aran yarn, but there you are.

What I learned: Patience! This one took me a long time to finish, due to my apparent ineptitude at walking. I also have learned to keep on measuring gauge as I’m going along. This sucker is a bit big for me, but there is no way that I’m giving it away, or worse, reknitting it. I wanted it baggy, because I will mostly wear it as a jacket outside (though I’m currently sweltering in it in the house because I just had to wear it today!). This is a bit baggier than I intended, but what the heck.
I learned a lot about knitting cables also. That kangaroo pocket was a hoot to knit. Next time I do something like this with a hem, I will consider doing a provisional cast on, then knitting the hem up to the body. This pattern was just so much fun that I might make it again.
I also just LOVE this yarn. It is so soft that I can wear it without any itch-factor at all, even right next to my skin. I already have another batch on order to make another sweater. Maybe another Rogue even??

Last Photo…..

…with my old camera, that is.

Because today is my BIRTHDAY!!!!

And here’s what I got from my sweetie…

And another…

It’s a Canon Digital Rebel XT, which I’ve been coveting but couldn’t quite justify just to take photos of yarn. My sweetheart knew that I needed a great camera to take pictures for the blog, so there you have it. What can I say, he spoils me.

Now I have to go knit some good stuff, so I can take some swell pictures to justify this baby.

And Dena, (new and improved-i.e.-correct spelling!) if you’re reading this; say “hi” in the comments! I was in the hospital deli this morning with a mouth full of donut when a woman came up to me and asked, “”Are you Lorette? I read your blog; I’m a knitter, too.”  I was so surprised that I truly acted like a dork. I hope we run into each other again! Say “hi” if you see me again…maybe I’ll have the presence of mind to actually have a conversation!

Back From Georgia

Blog Rule #1:

When you don’t know what to write, lead off with a cute baby picture, preferably a cute baby wearing something that you knit:

That’s Huck, wearing the baby bear suit that I knit for his big brother two years ago. It was a bit snug for Griffin, and I think he only wore it once for a photo shoot before it was passed on to the next child. It fits this baby pretty well, don’t you think?

We are back from Georgia, and stepped off the plane to rainy cool weather. It’s finally Rogue-wearing season! I seamed the sleeves last night and installed the first sleeve before I just got too tired to go any further. I wore it around the house with one sleeve for awhile to celebrate, but I’m not taking any more pictures of it until it’s really done. It fits fine: I could have made the next smaller size, but it is just really not cold enough here to wear this much indoors, and I wanted it big enough to fit as a quasi-jacket over my clothing. I’m hoping to finish the sewing parts in the next day or two.

I did get some knitting done while away. We had four hours on the plane each way, and I worked on the Not-Really-An-Everyday-Cardigan all the way there. Here is the progress: a finished back piece, and part of one front…

This is really an easy, knit-in-front-of-TV project.  Or the project you go to when your eyes are crossed from too much lace:

Notice anything sad about that picture? Here’s a close-up to help:

At least the stitches didn’t fall off the needle. I worked on this on the way home, and as we were in a bulkhead seat, the bag went in the overhead bin for landing. I think somebody shoved it in a little too hard.  One would think that I would have another pair of needles in this size, given this collection…

…but I actually had to search a bit for a replacement pair. I don’t think that the busted one is salvageable, at least not with my lack of patience for anything fiddly. I learned something new while working on the lace scarf. I reached the end of the first ball of yarn, and realized that I needed to learn how to join the next ball. Usually when I’m knitting garment pieces, I just knit the first few stitches with the old and new yarn held together, then drop the old yarn end and weave it in later. Most of the time this works just fine, and the extra bulk doesn’t really show.  That method doesn’t work so well with lace. So I learned the Russian join. Spit splicing is also an option for lace work, but this is a cashmere-silk blend, and when I tried it I just ended up with a spitty mess. I think that works better for mostly wool yarns.

I’m off to sew sleeves!

New Project Monday

It is Monday, right? I’m never quite sure unless I’m at work and have to write the date nine hundred times.

The kids are all back home, and the house is mostly cleaned up. It’s awfully quiet around here, is all I have to say. They were here for 5 days, and I think we ran fifteen loads of dishes and ten loads of laundry, at least, while they were here. I have a new respect for my grandmothers. My mother’s mother had nine children, and fed and raised all of them along with the usual collection of shirt-tail relatives who lived at her house off and on over the years. She helped my grandfather run a farm out in the middle of nowhere, with no running water, and no conveniences of any kind. She made all their meals from scratch, and grew or raised most of the ingredients herself. She washed all the laundry by hand, and hung it out on a clothesline to dry, summer and winter. And here I am, bamboozled by four small children, with all the conveniences in the world! The one thing that they did leave behind was an unwelcome viral visitor. I estimate that the incubation period of that cold virus was less than 36 hours, given how fast it moved from one kid to nearly the whole family.

I appreciate all the comments on my last few posts. I have discovered the secret to getting lots of comments: just post a picture or two of cute babies, and you’re all set!

Here’s what’s happening in my knitting world. Rogue is still drying. That yarn is so heavy that it is taking forever to dry. I didn’t just steam it lightly to block it, as it’s been all over the place in the last several months, and I figured it needed a good washing. I’ll be out of town for the rest of the week, so it won’t get put together at least until I get back.

Here is what the Peace Fleece looks like now:

That color is just wrong. In real life it is much greener. This is going to be my Not-Really-An-Everyday-Cardigan cardigan. (Scroll down the page on that link to see it.) I purchased this as a kit a long time ago, but don’t really like the pattern that comes with it. It’s a bit too cropped for me, and the sleeve shaping has some issues, and I don’t like the way that those dropped sleeves look. And I don’t really like the roll neck, either. So I am using a pattern designed with Sweater Wizard software instead. It is a plain cardigan, crew neck, with set-in sleeves. It’s as basic as it gets, and I bet I will wear it to death. It’s also a pretty quick knit, given the heavy worsted weight and plain stockinette stitch.

We’re off to Georgia to visit John’s sister for the rest of the week. It’s been in the nineties there, so I’m not sure I’ll even bother to take the heavy wool with me to knit. Am I the only sick person out there, or do you all also think “I’ve got x number of hours just to sit on an airplane and knit”, when you contemplate a vacation?

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I keep forgetting to mention this in a post, but I separated out the “knitting medical types” in my “Blogs I Read” section. If you are a “knitting medical type” with a blog, and I’ve missed you, leave me a comment and I’ll get you listed over there.

Do The Puyallup!

Yes, we did it again this year. John’s kids and their kids have been visiting us this week, and no late summer vacation is complete without a trip to the State Fair.  Our trip this year looked much like the trip last year, except that the little ones are a year older and enjoyed the rides and petting farm more. It was also warm and not raining this year, unlike our visit to the fair last summer. We ate lots of junk food, rode rides, looked at cows and chickens. I missed the sheep again this year, except for the few in the petting barn. I think they showed them earlier in the fair. I also didn’t make it to the craft pavilion this year to look at the knitted stuff. We all just wore out and couldn’t have looked at another thing.

I think the grandkids favorite thing was the drumming contraption:

That middle picture is Sam, and the last one is Griffin. Yes, John’s grandchildren really ARE that cute in real life.

Here’s Penelope practicing being a fireman:

She’s cute, too. They’re all cute, did I mention that?

George and I appear to have started a tradition of riding the scariest ride at the fair. Last year we did the Extreme Scream, more or less on a dare. That was pretty scary, I might point out. We decided to branch out this year. After looking them all over, we decided on the Turbo Force. Here we are getting ready to go:

Here is what it looked like:

That is pretty much the most terrifying thing I have ever done. After you get swung around in a big arc about a million times, it pauses at the very top for a few minutes while they change the passengers in the bottom seats. Then you get to do the whole thing again for another million times. And they are right, you don’t get sick. You are just plain too terrified to even think of nausea.

Here’s the sock:

This doesn’t really qualify as Extreme Knitting, because there was just no way in hell that you could have peeled my hands off those safety bars to pull out the sock at the top. Maybe next year.

Here’s the kitchen packed with kids after the fair:

And me and Huck in a quiet moment. He’s even cuter than he was when he was born.

There aren’t many quiet moments in a house with six adults trying to make themselves heard over four children under the age of four. Pandemonium just about describes it. I have gotten some knitting done, even amidst the chaos. The knitting part of Rogue is finished, and all the ends are sewn in. It’s washed and on the blocking mats. All that’s left is to seam the sleeves and put them in, and then to do the hems.

While I’m waiting for that to dry, I’m already plotting my next sweater project. This is a stashed project from a couple years ago, and here is the yarn:

That’s Peace Fleece, in Kamchatka Seamoss. I’ll tell you what it’s going to be in my next post!

More Rogue, Again

But first, the baby! John’s grandson Huck was finally born Friday night. Here’s a just-born photo:

Even though he’s a respectable 9lbs, 2 ozs, the Jolly Green Sweater won’t fit him for awhile. I made his mom promise to get a picture of him in it eventually. He’s of course perfect, which makes four perfect grandchildren in a row for John. We’re all glad he’s finally here!

Here’s where I am on Rogue:

If that looks suspiciously like where I was a week ago, look again:

One sleeve down, one more to go. I had forgotten just how much fun this pattern is. I knit a row, and think, well, I really need to get up and do something else. Then I look at the cable chart, and think, well, really, I’ll just knit another row and see how it looks. This, despite the fact that I know how it is going to look, because I’ve done these very same cables on the body already. I’m easily entertained.

Here’s my newest knitting spot:

We have more or less finished this phase of the remodeling project, and have most of it straightened up. That used to be the kitchen, where there was a traditional kitchen table and chairs. As we have a dining room table about ten steps from here, we decided to do away with the kitchen furniture and put in comfortable chairs for people to sit in. Everyone always ends up in the kitchen standing around and talking, so we decided to go with this. It’s a lovely place to sit with a cup of tea and the newspaper, or a glass of bourbon and my knitting, depending on the time of day. We have a new sofa for the living room on order (to replace the one that is ancient and cat-trashed), and I’ll show pictures of that room in its finished state when it’s here. We’re pleased with the whole thing, though my spouse has that look again, so I’m thinking that if I hold him off on more projects until next spring, I’ll be lucky.

A month or so ago I mentioned knitting while getting my hair colored. Someone dared me to post pictures, so here they are, Laurie.

Yes, that’s glop on my eyebrows, too. Here’s what it looks like done:

Yes I know, I forgot to smile. And yes, it’s redder than it used to be. If I choose to believe that this is the color I was born with, so be it. My husband hasn’t quite decided if he wants to be married to a redhead or not.

And last but not least, my favorite Bush-bashing photo of the week. What can I say, he’s so easy to poke sticks at.

Huck’s Hooded Sweater

The model is not yet born, so here is Sweetpea as the stand-in:


Project Details:

Pattern: Daisy, by the Yarn Harlot, pattern at Knitty.com

Yarn: Butterfly 10 mercerized cotton, in the color Hydepark, from handknitting.com.

Started: late August 2005, finished September 8, 2005.

For: John’s newest grandson, Henry, AKA Huck, not yet born, but we’re waiting patiently.
Gauge/Needles: 20 stitches to 4 inches, on 5mm needles. This yarn would look a little better knit at closer to a sport weight gauge. It’s a little floppy at worsted weight.

What I learned from this project:

This pattern has front bands that are knitted right along with the sweater body. The first three stitches of the front edge are knitted in seed stitch, creating the bands as you go. This has always sounded like a good idea to me, and I’ve wondered why more patterns don’t do this. Here are the reasons: First, they don’t lay quite as neatly as bands that have been picked up and knitted after the body is done. Second, in some pattern stitches, the gauge would be a bit different for the band pattern and the body pattern. You might need to use a smaller needle for the bands unless you wanted them to flare out. For a three-stitch seed stitch band, on a baby sweater, this all doesn’t really matter.

I also learned to look at my buttonholes when I space them. These came out unevenly spaced, but I didn’t notice until I sewed the buttons on. They are staying the way they are.

Yarn Notes:
I really liked this yarn. The colors are rich and vibrant. I washed this in the sink in cool water with a bit of Kookaburra Wool Wash*, and then tossed it in the dryer till it was nearly dry. A few  hours pinned to the blocking board, followed by a session with the Rowenta steamer flattened the bands into submission.

*This is my favorite hand washing solution. It is great for wool and all hand-washable fibers, and has tea tree oil so it smells great. If you don’t like the smell of tea tree, don’t use this, as it is pretty pronounced.

Green Giant Sweater

The baby sweater is finished. The baby is not. John’s daughter is still pregnant, two weeks overdue now. They had a false alarm the other night and spent the night in the hospital, but then got sent home. Since I don’t have a real baby to be the model, here’s my stand-in:

It doesn’t fit Sweetpea very well, but it was the best I could do. Here’s another picture sans bear.

Project Details:
Pattern: Daisy, by the Yarn Harlot, pattern at Knitty.com
Yarn: Butterfly 10 mercerized cotton, in the color Hydepark, from handknitting.com.
Started: late August 2005, finished September 8, 2005.
For: John’s newest grandson, Henry, AKA Huck, not yet born, but we’re waiting patiently.
Gauge/Needles: 20 stiches to 4 inches, on 5mm needles. This yarn would look better knit at closer to a sport weight gauge. It’s a little floppy at worsted weight.

This is a cool pattern. It’s easy, fast, and I love this yarn. It’s a little splitty, and if you have to rip back the yarn plies come apart, making it even more splitty, but the colors are vibrant, and the stitches came out unbelievably even. Yes, I know that those freaking buttons aren’t spaced evenly. I swear, that is the way the pattern is written. I’m calling it a design feature and leaving it at that. What I really love about this sweater is that the button bands are knitted together with the sweater. I probably would have to think a bit before I did this with an adult sweater, because they don’t lay as flat as bands that are picked up and knitted on after the body is done. For a baby sweater though, it’s a great way to do this. That is of course, unless you space the buttonholes unevenly and don’t notice it for some bizarre reason until the buttons are on. If they were picked-up button bands, I probably would feel obligated to take them off and re-do them.

Complete project details here.

I’m also working on Rogue again now that the weather is a bit cooler. To get you up to speed, I’m done with the body, and just have the sleeves left to do. I got mesmerized by that cable pattern again last night and stayed up until 3 AM knitting. No, I don’t have to work today. I popped in the second Lord of the Rings video last night, which was loud enough to keep me awake, and just happily stitched on into the wee hours.

Here’s a close-up:

That rolled-up mess at the bottom is the hem. It’s a knitted-on twisted stockinette hem that you turn up and stitch into place when it’s all done. I dislike the way it looks now, but I suspect that it will eventually submit to the Knitting Doctor Rowenta Steamer Torture, and lay flat if it knows what’s good for it.

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I’m not finding much that’s amusing this past week, but this cartoon made me laugh:

Have a good weekend!

Overdue

That baby, that is. This is a good thing for me, not so good for the mom-to-be. If your name is Jen, and you are about to give birth any minute, now is the time to step away from the computer. You should be off packing your bag to go to the hospital. The rest of you can read on.

I have finished all the pieces to the baby sweater:

Now I just have to sew them all together, and do the collar finishing. This is Stephanie’s Daisy pattern from Knitty. I have plenty of yarn left over, so I think I will put the hood on as well. I am making this in the middle size, to fit a larger baby. I figure all new babies get a ton of cute infant outfits that they wear once before they grow out of them. This one will fit him when he’s more like 8 months old. With the sleeves rolled up, he can wear it while it’s too big, and the wearing season can be stretched for at least a couple of months.

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I’m off to watch the Weather Channel. With the weather being so calm and lovely here today, it’s hard to fathom that New Orleans is about to get pummeled to the ground. My thoughts are with all the people of the Gulf Coast region; here’s one way we can all help:

Donate to the Disaster Relief Fund. Here’s the deal: I’m not going to volunteer to keep track of knit bloggers’ donations, Harlot-style, because, well, I can’t even balance my checkbook.  But I challenge you all to donate to the RC, and to put that button on your blog when you do (save it to your server first, of course). You are on your honor, and you don’t have to blog the amount that you have given. $5, or $5000; it will all help.

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Addendum:
Go here. Margene and Susan have set up an official blog page to inspire you to donate to the Red Cross. If the Red Cross doesn’t suit you, Angela has a list of other ideas for charities to send your money to. Give what you can.

Katrinareliefthankyou

Prescription for the Blahs

If you want a good laugh or two, go to Cara’s post from a few days ago and read all the jokes in the comments. Thanks, Cara!

It seems like everybody is talking about the blog doldrums. I have them, too, I guess. It’s not that I’m not knitting, because I am. I’m tired of talking about the same old projects, though. The lace scarf is a few inches longer, the sock looks about the same, and it’s been too warm still to sit with a pile of Rogue wool in my lap. The remodeling is nearly done, and the hand is pretty much where it’s going to be. So what to write about?

Shopping, that’s what! Nothing like a good shopping spree in the lace yarn section to get those creative juices flowing. Have any of you noticed that most brick-and-mortar yarn shops don’t carry much in the way of lace yarn? At least the ones around here don’t seem to. The internet comes to the rescue again!

First up is this little collection, all from The Knitter.com. This is a good store, by the way. Lots of yarn choices, reasonable shipping, and the site is pretty well organized. My only complaint is that the little tiny photos of the yarn colors are a bit hard to see. I ended up going to other sites that show better, bigger yarn photos to choose the colors. Oh yeah, the colors. Here they are:

There is Zephyr, in Vanilla and Dianthus, and Misti Alpaca in Sea Mist.

Next up is Alpaca Cloud in Tidepool, from Knitpicks:

I also bought this, though not online.

I already have her Knitting On the Edge, and couldn’t resist this one. I discovered a disturbing thing while in the bookstore browsing the knitting section: It’s finally happened, I have more knitting books than Barnes & Noble.

That yarn will all be shawls at some time in the future. I have patterns for several shawls, and have a master plan to work up from simpler to ridiculously challenging.

Here, last but not least, is the ridiculously challenging:

What hooked me on the Wedding Ring Shawl was the little disclaimer on the website “Once gone, this design will not appear in print again before 2010”. There are only 500 copies that will be sold, and I got Number 37. Don’t even ask what possessed me to buy these, since I’m having trouble with a small lace rectangle in fingering weight yarn. All I can say is that lace knitting appears to be like crack for me. Go to the website, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You also might want to put a protective cloth on your keyboard to keep the drool off.

The Joy of Naps

I just had to lead off with that picture. We went out for pizza for lunch yesterday, then everybody in the house took naps. I woke up about three hours later with two cats draped around me on the bed. When I went downstairs, these two were asleep on the sofa. All in all, a productive afternoon.

I did actually accomplish some knitting this past week. It was a work week, so I didn’t get much done besides work, sleep, and eat. I managed a few rows however. I started a new project for somebody in the family about to have a baby. Hey, I’m planning ahead; she’s not due until this Friday.  I wasn’t planning on putting this on the blog, but John spilled the beans that I’m knitting something, and I suspect with a toddler at home, and 2 days from d-day, she’s not reading my blog.

It’s hard to tell what it’s going to be from that, and I’m just not telling, in case she really has nothing better to do than snoop around here. The yarn is Butterfly Super 10 cotton in the color Hyde Park. This is quite nice to knit with, and though I’m not a huge fan of variegated yarns for things other than socks, the colors in this are surprisingly subtle. That is, if you can use the word “subtle” to describe something this bright green while keeping a straight face. That picture really doesn’t do it justice. In real life it sort of screams green. I’ll post details about what this is once she delivers. By the way, in case you’re thinking that this looks a little big for a newborn, this girl gives birth to toddler-size children, so I’m not taking any chances this time.

The other knitting project I’ve worked on this week is that lace scarf. Here’s where I am. And yes, it is bigger than last time I put a picture up here.

I am slowly learning the finer points of knitting lace. One thing I learned this week is this: Don’t come home after a very cranky day at work and pick this up at 11 PM thinking you will just knit a couple of rows to wind down so you can go to sleep. I’ve also discovered that once I have totally screwed it up at 11:30 PM, that I can’t just put it down with plans to fix it the next day. I have to fix it before I go to sleep or in fact, I won’t be able to go to sleep at all. I’ve also discovered that I don’t count very well at 11 PM.

I’ve also discovered that lace and bourbon apparently don’t mix well. It didn’t stop me from trying.

And finally, I got those squares mailed off yesterday to Annie. Here they are, just so I can milk these one more time as a finished project.

Finished is finished, even if they’re only eight inches square.

Baseball & Blocking

We did get to the Rainiers game on Friday. The morning started out cool and drizzly, but by afternoon it was sunny and warm. The home team lost, the game was sort of a snore, but it was still a great way to spend a nice summer evening. Why is it that hot dogs taste so good at a ballpark, when you would probably never eat them at home? We splurged and bought tickets for box seats, almost right behind home plate. At a minor league game, this means we spent all of 12 bucks. What a deal. Here are the photos:

The pre-game conference at home plate.

Me knitting my sock:

Here’s the sock enjoying the action in a later inning:

And that same inning without the sock:

And best of all, the fireworks after the game:

I finished the second of the squares for the Blanket Project. Here they are after a wash, on my new blocking board (well, one square from my new blocking board). As soon as they dry, they’ll be off in the mail to Annie.

And the sock, trying to get in on the action:

I’ve gotten a lot of comments on the foam mats. So far they are working great. The pins will leave tiny holes, so if that bugs you, don’t buy these. I bought them just for blocking, so the holes are OK to me. There is a link in my previous post as to where I found these online, but you can find them at a lot of carpet/flooring dealers as well. They are primarily used as flooring in kids’ play areas, so are durable and just wipe clean.

I’m off to work on some lace. It’s still too hot around here to work on Rogue; sitting with a pile of Aran weight wool in my lap is not my idea of fun when it’s in the 80’s (high 20’s-low 30’s for those of you in the rest of the world). I start my 7-day work slog tomorrow, so I plan on thoroughly enjoying today!

Squares

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

Here’s the first one:

And the second:

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

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

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

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

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

*I ordered the mats from here.

Five Things I Miss From Childhood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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