last day

YAY!

today is the last day for NaBloPoMo.
I can hear the collective sigh of relief.

I did this to see if I could do it. and I could. but I'm not really happy with the results, in order to have content I needed to pull a lot more from my personal life than I really wanted too, and I STILL had a lot of sad one or two lined posts made at the last minute.

ah well.

I learned a lot and I now know that that I can indeed actually post more than I did before and still have an interesting blog. just maybe not post quite as much...

I'm probably going to take a few days off from posting now (besides tomorrow's Saturday sky) and come back with some actual knitting content later in the week.

actual knitting content

Christmas knitting is going well, I've finished a lot of dishcloths and I think I finally have enough.



I really should move on to finishing the snowflakes I want to put in peoples cards, but instead I have decided to knit a beret.



The slouchy cabled beret

I have never worn or knit a beret (or tam) before. but I really liked this pattern, and hey, you gotta start somewhere! I can be picky about the hats that I wear, so if I don't like it I know my cousin probably would, so I'm not too worried about it finding a home.

the pattern was written with DK yarn and size 5 needles, but I couldn't get the specified gauge (5 sts per inch, no listed in the actual pattern but is listed on the ravely page) so I switched out worsted and size 7 needles instead. otherwise I'm sticking to the pattern.

nothing to see here

move along.

today has been filled with gruesome sights, and I'm having trouble thinking about knitting...

first there was the gutted dear the the gas station on the way to Watertown, then there was the gutted mole on our living room carpet when we got home.

eeeewwwww.

new favorite Book

yeah, I went straight from catching up on web comics to reading my new favorite book: Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller

I ordered this book way back in September, and it just now arrived, I chose the free super save shipping, and the shipping estimates were all over the place, and I see now that amazon isn't even claiming they have it in stock.

no matter, because I finally have it in my hot little hands, and besides a trip to knit night last night I have been sucked into it's pages gleaning all I can about traditional Shetland lace knitting.

*Cue Evil Laughter Here*

Seven things meme

I got tagged for this via NaBloPoMo, but it's not really an official thing, so I'm not going to tag anybody else, especially since this had gone through most of the blogs I read already, if you want to do it, go ahead.

I wound's usually do a meme like this, but Bill did it a while ago on his blog too, and has been poking me to get around to do it as well. So I guess I really should now eh?

"Tell seven random or weird things about yourself"

1) I have flat feet and my leg bones are twisted so that my feet point out perpendicular to each other instead of straight ahead. I'm hard on my shoes in places most people aren't because of the way I walk, and it makes certain dance steps very dangerous. On the plus side I can really freak people out by turning my feet around to point behind me while standing.

2) I'm a classically trained vocalist and took piano and flute lessons for several years as a child. I held one of the highest reading levels in my class in high school and have two associates' degrees, one of them in Math/Science - one of the more difficult degrees and the one with the fewest women graduates at my college. Despite all this I work as a line cook at a seasonal restaurant and am unemployed for half of the year. But I am incredibly happy.

3) When I was very young, - either first or second grade - I threw a small wooden heart at my teacher, both making my parents proud, and upset at the same time. See, our class was decorating ornaments for Christmas time, girls were given little wooden hearts, and boy little wooden stars, and we were given paints, girls red, boys sparkly blue. Now I wanted to paint my heart sparkly blue, but the teacher wouldn't let me, because blue was a BOYS colour. This upset me greatly, and no matter how much I insisted that things like boy colours and girls colours were stupid, the teacher just would not let me paint my heart sparkly blue. So I got very, very angry and threw my heart at her. My parents were happy that I was standing up against stereotypical gender rolls and colours so young, they were not happy that I did it in such a fashion that ended up with me in the principles office.

4) I like cauliflower, could live off of broccoli, and fancy a brusselsprout or two now and again, my husband insists that this is very weird.

5) My husband and I met over the internet, we lived only a few miles away from each other, so we got together, dated, fell in loved and got married, and I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. When I was preparing for our first date, I was telling my mother about him, she was worried that he may be some kind of weirdo psycho killer. I told her not to worry; he was no weirder than I was. For some reason this did not reassure her.

6) I grew up with cats, and when I was a little girl, when one of the cats would die or run away my parents would tell me that they got a letter from them saying that they had fallen in love and run away to get married, and that they were very happy.

7) I love baking, I love making new types of pies and cakes and muffins, and all things sweet, and really bad for you. Unfortunately nearly all my family (on both mine and my husband's sides) are either diabetic or at very high risk of becoming diabetic.

I got nothin'

yep, nothing.

My parents came over to visit yesterday, and that on top of my obsessively catching up on Schlock Mercenary, I've done practically no knitting, and really should get off my but and do some, because I have a bunch of dishcloths to make for family, and I really wanted to make snowflakes for cards.

argh!

Saturday Sky

Sorry this is so late, i actually took it this morning. I've been catching up on several years of Schlock Mercenary and it has been a major (but fun) time suck.

Also? it's been snowing all day, so the sky isn't allt eh exciting. ah well.



Saturday Sky, taken Saturday November 24 2007 sometimes in the late morning/early afternoon, out front of the Platypus Nest.

Post thanksgiving fish?

I hope everybody had a good thanksgiving, ours didn't exactly go as planned, the freezing rain and snow conspired to keep us home.
So instead of dinner with family we stayed home, ate tofurkey sandwiches drank hard cranberry lemonade and watched Serenity.

And I knit fish.



Yes fish.



As you can see:



Esme was quite happy by this.



The pattern is my own, and I plan on selling the extras in my Etsy store

So, you know, no selling of products made from this design yada, yada.

Felted Catnip Fishies:

Materials:

• Small amount of worsted weight wool
• Size 10 1/2 DPNs (or long circulars for magic loop)
  
• Darning needle
• Poly Fill
• Catnip
• Cat

CO 30 sts, join in the round, careful not to twist.

Knit 1 round

Tail:
R 1: (K2tog, K11, SSK) x2
R 2: (& All even) K
R 3: (K2tog, K9, SSK) x2
R 5: (K2tog, K7, SSK) x2
R 7: (K2tog, K1) x6

Body:
R 9: (K1, M1, K4, M1, K1) x2
R 11: (K1, M1, K6, M1, K1) x2
R 13: (K1, M1, K8, M1, K1) x2
R 15: (K6, M1, K6) x2

R 16 – 18: K

Head:
R 19: (K11, K2tog) x2
R 21: (K4, K2tog) x4
R 23: (K3, K2tog) x4
R 25: (K2, K2tog) x4
R 26: (K2tog) x6

Break yarn, thread tail through remaining sts, felt, dry, stuff with poly fill and catnip, sew up tail, give to cat and enjoy!

gobble

Happy US thanksgiving y'all!

we're going to my parents today, so I don't have much time to write, theres a Tofurkey calling my name!

see ya!

stash

I talked about reorganizing my stash the other day, so here it is:



The drawers hold most of my yarn, the 70's style bag with the license plate cover holds my spinning, behind it are a couple boxes of crochet and tatting thread, under it is some embroidery stuff, the patchwork looking bag-stand-thingy on the right holds my kitchen cotton, and above that is some embroidery floss and a few of my quilting things. The black binder holds all my printed off the internet patterns. The soy garden container on top of the tallest pillar of drawers holds my tatting shuttles and work in progress. Beside it is an old set of BOYE interchangeables under my Tupperware full of blocking pins. To the far left are my blocking wires.

Before I go any further I have to make a disclaimer: I did not buy the majority of my stash, three relatives over the past five years have passed on and left me their stashes, I am sad to have lost them, and hope to do their supplies justice by creating as many beautiful things with them as possible.

Let's take a look in some of the boxes and drawers shall we?





leftmost box is mostly size 10 crochet thread, rightmost box is full of size 70 tatting thread, top box holds some embroidery things, next to it is a bag full of embroidery floss, the things on the bottom right are blank hankies ready to be embellished.





Kitchen cotton, the bag holds mostly ombres and prints, the basket mostly solids.





Bottom rightmost drawer: needle felting supplies and novelty yarns.





Bottom leftmost drawer: Acrylic, acrylic and more acrylic.







Middle leftmost drawer:
On top:
Leftover sock yarns, wooly nylon and blank sock yarn to be dyed.
Underneath:
Sock yarn, acid dyes, and in the far back, Lion brand wool ease (wanted to keep it separated from the 100% wools)







Top drawer:

On top:
Grocery bag in back leftover lace weight, Purple gossamer on right, to the front is bare lace weight from knit picks, bag in the middle is leftover knit picks.
Underneath:
Random wools the purple skein and the brown and whit skein in front are the only two full skeins, leftover from last year's NY sheep and wool.

out of the hermitage

Yesterday's knit night went really well.
I talked about the sock class some more, (it's half full already!)
there were two new women there who we were trying to teach how to knit, it was interesting, one got it right away and was knitting and purling right along like crazy, the other as having a little more difficulty, but we got her going eventually.

Overall I had a great time, I don't get out of the house much, especially during the winter, both Bill and I get quite hermit like with the cold weather, but it's always nice to go out and spend time with other women that share the same interests.

the measurement of heat lost or gained

calorimetry

I needed a new winter hat, but I have long hair, calorimetry sounded like the perfect solution.

At first I couldn't get gauge with recommended needles, at least I don't think I could, what the hell does "slightly stretched" mean? Why can't people just give gauge in stockinet?

Anyways, went down to size 6 and also used only 100 stitches, as my head is not 24" around, more like 22"

And it fits perfectly! I braided my tails instead of weaving them in so that I wouldn't have to use a button. I don't know how everyone else manages it, but I would never be able to wear a button there without my hair getting hopelessly tangled in it, a nice simple knot works much better, and I like the way it looks.

Yarn!

A funny story about his yarn: The other day I decided I wanted to dye some yarn, so I soaked the yarn, mixed to colours, and while I waited for the yarn to finish soaking I decided to read my friends list on LJ. Where upon I saw that one of my friends would like to receive some sock yarn for Yule, and her favorite colours just happened to be the exact colours I had mixed up!

Since I didn't really need any new sock yarn right now, I decided that I was meant to be and will be sending it too her as soon as I get an appropriate box.

I hope she likes!

Saturday Sky

winter is on it's way, it's definitely getting colder out, all the puddles were frozen today, and there were patches of frost in the grass.





Saturday Sky, taken Saturday, November 17, 2007, at 8:00am, form the lawn out front of the platypus nest.

Yep, hand still hurts, but that's ok, I have balls

Wow, hat sounded wrong. But it's true!

See, my hand still hurts which makes it difficult to knit on Tasha's socks, because the tiny needles just make it worse.

But that's ok, because my brand spanking new ball winder arrived in the mail yesterday!
I've been very busy winding all sorts of balls last night and today.

It has given me a very good excuse to sort through and re-organize my stash.
Now everything fits neatly into its drawers and I have a better idea of what I have. But then I don't exactly have a huge stash, I have the sock yarns I brought home from Rhinebeck, a few worsted yarns left over from last year's Rhinebeck still to find a suitable project, and a whole lot of partially used balls of random wool or wool/acrylic blends.

I also have a full drawer full or random worsted acrylic yarns. Most of which were half un-wound, so I spent a lot of time re winding the acrylics and deciding what would stay and what would go, since I hardly every use acrylic anymore. So I placed the few full skeins I had up on Ravely for trade or sell, and I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest.

I have also decided I really need to think of a stash busting project to use up all the partial skeins I have.

I'm not quite sure what to do yet, a lot of it is feltable, but not all of it, and I don't really think I have enough feltable yarn to make anything very big or interesting. Lots and lots of felted kitty toys? Well, Esme would be happy...

If you have any ideas let me know!