Tika 2012

2011 was pretty swell. I joined a roller derby league, traveled all over the place visiting old friends and making  new ones, and settled in to my (no longer) new apartment. I knitted not as much as I anticipated (a meager 6-ish miles) but nailed my goal of reading 75 books (29,060 pages!!) and revisited spinning.

Like years before, I didn't finish my crafting goals. This seems to happen to me more often than not; Largely Unrepeatable is full of "I tried this and failed, then I tried THAT and failed, and now I'm doing this with no real hope of success given the time frame! Go me!" In regular conversation, that's often called overstretching oneself or delusions of grandeur, but I feel strongly that goals and challenges aren't always meant to be met, especially if they're truly challenging. They're also a way for me to figure out what is important to me. If you've been around here for awhile, you're probably aware that I'm not very fussed if I can't knit through 11 or 12 miles of yarn in a year, but it was important enough to me to complete the goodreads challenge that I picked up books when I might have occupied myself doing other things. Goals (and the revisiting thereof) give me a chance to focus (and refocus) on what I like and who I want to be. And who knows? Maybe this year is the year I complete the 12-Mile Quest; after all, it's right there in the date.

Becoming part of Sacred City's family of hard, confident, passionate women has helped me to find the steel, confidence and passion I misplaced somewhere along the road. I've thought a lot over the last few days about when I was happiest in 2011, and the answers were fairly simple: I was happiest when I was cheering for my team, listening my niece tell me that "T is for Tika," and laughing so hard I cried - most recently over my own inability to add two coins into 35 cents.* At none of those times was I taking myself too seriously or worried about How Things Appear to Others, and there's a lesson there if I can only grasp it.

So with that in mind, Tika 2012 is about focus.**
I will focus on:

- Reading 100 books 

- Maintaining the relatively healthy agenda I've been following since October (hello waist! Nice to see you again!)

- Working diligently through the sometimes-oppressive amount of yarn and fiber at my fingertips, with the addendum of keeping incoming purchases to a reasonable incoming/outgoing ratio
- Finding employment
- Finishing my Master's degree
- Applying for PhD programs

But above all, I want to focus on:
- Making good and thoughtful choices


That's a lot of gerunds.





*Feel free to remind me of this next time I'm crowing over being Sooooooo Smart.
**Or, if you'd rather join me in my already-oft-repeated 2012 mantra, "pay the fuck attention, T!"

Finished Objects: 2011

1/1 - Green Vanilla Socks - 316 yds.

3/10 - Composition Scarf - 420 yds.

4/10 - Spidey Blanket #2 - 1738 yds.

5/13 - Hera Mountain Shawl - 1760 yds.

6/19 - Blueblood Island Shawl - 705 yds.

7/9 - Chantilly Lace yarn - 220 yds.

8/19 - Moderne Baby Blanket - 1603 yds.

8/24 - Shetland Shorty - 380 yds.

9/1 - Bright Fig Yarn - 716 yds.

9/5 - Be-Bop-a-Lula Yarn - 960 yds

9/10 - LD Experiment #1 - 48 yds

9/17 - Prairie Lady Yarn - 132 yds.

9/29 - Sacred Scarf - 652 yds.

10/6 - High Seas Shawl - 920 yds.

Check It!

Lookie what came in the mail today!

BOOKS!

These are the s-m-r-t books about women's lives in Regency, Victorian, and Georgian England. I also got a couple of mass market fantasy novels to read while I'm in Mexico this month, season 6 of How I Met Your Mother, and season 1 of Big Bang Theory; but those aren't quite so important-looking so they didn't make it into the picture. They also already had places on my shelves, while these need a solid foot of room next to one another. Did I hear someone say "more bookshelves"?

I've been thinking more about knitting a sweater this month, and I've pretty much decided against it. I have a lot of knitting already going on that I'd like to finish in order to complete the 11-Mile Quest, and it's already the fourth of November! Plus there's the wedding coming up in early December that I'd like to knit a shawl for if possible. I've been on a finishing kick over the last couple of days; the nearly-finished items sitting on my coffee table finally banded together and glared at me hard enough that I pulled out my darning needle and went to town:

Day-Glo Socks, Regia and Araucania Solid, 263 yds.

Plain k3p1 rib socks over 56 stitches. How about that neon, huh? Wow.

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock "Chocolate" and Lisa Souza Hardtwist Merino Petite "South Pacific," 414 yds.
(Large white paperclip for scale)

This was an experiment that I'm quite pleased with! I held both yarns double throughout, and ended up with only 3g total left over. How's that for using up half-skeins of yarn!?! I got the idea from Brie, who regularly doubles up her huge Palette stash to make sweaters with unreal yardage and thus achieves her mileage goals much more often than I do.

Karabella Aurora 8 "Ocean," 159 yds.

I was tickled pink to find these wooden buttons in my button tin last night! I don't remember buying them or even whether I had a specific project in mind for them, but I'm thrilled with how they contrast with the blue of the cowl. They're anchored in the back with random 3/4" buttons so that they don't pull against the yarn itself.

I just realized that none of these 3 projects ever even made it to my Ravelry projects page. That's how scattershot my knitting has been lately! For the end of the year, I'd like to finish my Tide Pool Pi and Rosebud shawls, as well as the Verbena yarn and perhaps the Sacred Tempest if it can stop driving me crazy. I have an idea about re-knitting the sleeves from the shoulder down so I can try them on as I go that might make it worthwhile.

But first, a project I've been sitting on for FAR too long.

The Progression

First I got a lovely skein of yarn from a friend.

Gifted Helen's Lace, original color

It sat in my stash for a year - or three - and then I got the brilliant idea to overdye it because the colors are just a little too variegated for my taste.

Helen's Lace, overdyed with Jaquard Sapphire Blue

It goes from looking like autumn in Vermont to storm-tossed seas, which inspired its use in a lace pattern called - appropriately enough - High Seas. Then came the inevitable "looking like bubble bath stage."

It is at this point that I always have to go back through my knitting photos and remind myself that I am not screwing up the pattern and to soldier through it. Then I get to the end and I gleefully drop it in a bowl of water to soak; pull out my blocking mats, wires, and pins; squeeze the shawl as dry as I can; then lay it out on the mats to pin.

At this point I usually get "help."

I stretch and pin and stretch some more until the lace creaks. It's a delightfully creepy sound, and it always rides that line between glee and terror that some thread will snap and all my hard work will be for naught. (Homophones are funny! Work with me here.)

Then I chase the cat out, let the piece dry, and get to my favorite part: pulling out the wires and pins. The shawl just stays where I pinned it, all openwork and flat where hours before there was a curled up, bumpy mess.

"Rafting on the High Seas," Helen's lace overdye, 920 yards.

Then I give it to my cousin for her wedding, we go hang out on a boat in the San Francisco Bay, and the whole family gets delightfully sauced while watching the Snowbirds fly overhead during Fleet Week.

Mom, THB, Skye (BFF of the bride), and me. 

On second thought, that last bit might be my favorite part.

Like So Many Things...

I didn't succeed in finishing 7 miles of knitting by October first. I really like lofty goals, especially because when I don't meet them I'm not overly fussed. I really, really would like to finish the 11-Mile Quest by December 31, though. For reals.

I did manage to churn out a bunch of knits, stay project-focused (mostly), and rekindle my love of spinning. I also managed to not buy any more yarn.  I made a very successful Yarn Trade with Spilly Jane in which I gave her my poor unloved Kauni and she gave me some Mad Tosh Merino Light and some Knit Picks Shadow - I'm pretty sure I won that round, but shhh! The overall yardage in was higher than the yardage out, but at least it's yards I'll actually end up knitting. My last September finished knit is my Sacred Scarf, which I cast off and sewed the ends into almost exactly as my train from the Bay Area pulled in to Sacramento yesterday evening. I'm quite pleased with it and will not be giving it away no matter who asks. Unless it's The 4 Closer, because she's effing incredible and I would bribe her with knitting to be my friend if I thought she'd let me. 

Regia Silk/Wool and Cascade Heritage Silk, 652 yds. total

But anyway. 

I have a bunch of things with a good amount of yardage knitted into them already. My High Seas shawl has only 60 rows and the edging to be done, the Tide Pool Pi is less finished but it's been TV knitting, which has to share time with TV spinning (and you know how well that's been going! Yay!). My Rosebud Shawl hasn't seen much action, but a girl can only focus on so many things at once, right? Plus I haven't quite figured out Fleegle's no-purl garter stitch method, so there is a LOT of purling. Ick.

And then there are the bebehs. I'm going to a joint baby shower with two of my good friends on October 29th. They're besties and of course are due right around the same time, but in a fit of pique that can ONLY be aimed at me, one of them refuses to figure out the gender of her baby until it's born. I ask you, how am I supposed to knit matching baby outfits if I don't know whether or not I can make this adorable baby dress?

Evelyn thinks this is SO RUDE. 

And then there's a wedding on December 10th in Arizona that I have to go to, and my Awful Ex will be there so naturally I need to look smashing and have something I can throw over my shoulders that exactly matches my dress and I can say, "Oh, this old thing?" Because that's how you do when you see your Awful Ex at a wedding and you're the only single people there. My secret weapons are: a Groupon for 6 weeks of CrossFit and the 2 weeks I'll be spending in Mexico in November.  And some killer shoes.*

Well, it lacks 50 minutes to October first, so I think I'll plug myself back in to Pride and Prejudice and see if I can knock some of those rows out of the High Seas shawl. I could conceivably finish it tomorrow, and then there would be pictures! 

*Whether they slay him or kill me first is up for debate.

The Long Draw

I've decided it's time to learn how to spin.

"What?" I hear you say. "Isn't that handspun in your last post?" Well, yes, it is. And I spun it, which means I know how to spin already.

What I mean is, I'd like to know that such-and-such a fiber would be best spun such-and-such a way, to be able to spin multiple thicknesses of yarn on purpose (as opposed to varying degrees of thin), to spin fluffy yarns or tight sock yarns as I choose, and to spin stuff like this for fun:

Sparkles! Flowers! So cheerful! 

Puffy! The orange reminds me of a certain favorite Sister of the Art for some reason...

Basically, I want to be the boss of my spinning.

Now that my desires have been established, let me take you back to the very early days of my current knitting career. I learned to knit English style, with the working yarn in my right hand. In its infinite wisdom, the Internet informed me that this was not, in fact, the only way to knit! I found a video, watched it a mazillion times, cursed a lot, and learned to knit Continental, with the working yarn in my left hand. It was, to say the least, an interesting experience to take something my muscles already knew how to do and try to change it.

Learning to spin long draw is much like that experience. Here is my first attempt, rudely chain-plied and completely unstable, unstructured and not really good for anything:

48 yards!

Still, it's finished, and I learned something. For the next attempt I dug into my Copperpot Woolies bag and pulled out 5.1 oz of the Prairie Lady colorway. I don't really know why I bought this one, although I suspect the wool fumes may have something to do with it. The colors aren't my favorite (what gave it away?), so it was first in line to become Long Draw Experiment #2:

132 yds., sport-to-bulky weight

This one worked out better, although I still have some serious kinks to work out with the next experiment, which will happen when I come back from Portland next week.

In the mean time, I've revived a project I started back when I was still living in San Jose. I haven't done a lot of spinning since then so I have no idea why it's easier this time around, but it is. When I started spinning this Falkland from Pigeon Roof Studios, it immediately spun very fine. I've never really encountered a yarn that "wanted" to spin at a certain weight, but this one definitely does. With a very little fluffing and pre-drafting - which might account for it being easier to spin now - it wound onto the bobbin at a very satisfactory rate.

I don't have any illusions that this yarn will be finished before October; I got 2 braids as a gift from my friend Colleen that weight in at 232 grams, of which I've spun... 32 grams. It'll make a lovely addition to my spun yarn total by the end of the year, though!

UFO Files: Be-Bop-a-Lula Yarn

I woke up this morning convinced that my calves would be abominably sore; after all, I plied roughly 8.5 ounces of yarn last night!

Proto-yarn! 

I actually laid in bed and stretched experimentally for a few minutes before I realized that roller derby had given me a gift in the form of Calves of Doom (not to be confused with the Ass of Doom or the Thighs of Doom, which generally follow the Calves in short order. Oh, derby.).

When I was preparing to go to Coal City last summer I weighed out a bump of Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino fiber from my (extensive) collection. I wanted a 3-ply, so I divided it into 3 smaller bumps by weight and took it with me to Illinois, where I got through about 2 2/3 bobbins before I came back to sunny California.

The singles have sat in my Loet Victoria bag ever since, waiting patiently for their revival.

After finishing the Bright Fig yarn on Friday, I pulled out the Vic and finished up the singles on Saturday, then spent the bulk of yesterday plying on the Schact while watching the last few episodes of The Tudors on Netflix.

Bobbin #1: 3-ply marl

I wound the yarn off the bobbins this morning, soaked it, and dried it on a rack outside my back door.

Ooo, kinky. 

One skein is a traditional 3-ply, as I had planned, and the second is a chain-ply. They are both bouncy and cheerful and the pictures don't really do justice to how green the yarn is. I was worried that it would be over-plied and kink up all over the place like the picture above, but after a soak and dry, it's perfectly balanced! Hurrah!

3-ply, 510 yds.

Chain-ply, 450 yds.

I'm not a huge fan of the marled look of the first skein - although it's growing on me in all the delight of LOOKIT WHAT I MADE!! - so I tried the chain-ply to see if I would like it better. I'm not certain that I do, but if looking through pictures of handspun on Ravelry has taught me anything, it's that going from fiber to yarn to finished garment can completely surprise me. Perhaps I'll knit dueling baby sweaters and see which one comes out the victor!

Next up: learning to spin long-draw with some ancient Copperpot Woolies bats from The Stash! But first, what mystery fiber does this bag contain?

Something AWESOME, I have no doubt!

In Which I Make Yarn

I always have a nagging suspicion that making my own yarn is ridiculous, especially given how much commercially-spun yarn I already have. On the surface, it's a no-win situation: the fiber costs just as much as yarn that's already made, it takes for-ev-er to create, and in the end I'm left with yet another material as opposed to a finished product.

But spinning is more than that, somehow. It is meditative in a way that knitting often is not. That isn't to say that knitting is not meditative; it's just a different kind of meditation. One that recently has involved a disproportionate amount of swearing, in fact. Not being able to count tends to hinder proper knitting.

The meditation of spinning comes in the rhythm of treadling and the quiet whirr of the wheel; on my cherry wood Schact it sounds like rain and sometimes I can almost smell wet earth.

For a long time I've neglected my spinning for one reason or another. Some of those reasons are pretty small - as in less than 10 feet - but they make a difference and I'm suddenly interested again. For this project I wanted to try lining up the plies of a 2-ply to make a self-striping yarn. It's more difficult than it looks because unless your spinning is perfectly even, there's bound to be some differences in thickness.

Clearly my spinning is not even.

In retrospect I probably should have done a simple, straight-up spinning project first to remind my muscles how this whole process works and to iron out my singles. That pile of wasted singles definitely took some of the meditation out of plying, even if I did have a disc of Fringe season 1 to keep me from shrieking obscenities at no one but myself.

All in all, however, I'm pretty chuffed with the finished yarn:

Girl on the Rocks 100% merino in "Bright Fig." 716 yards, 2-ply, 101g. 

I'm looking forward to winding it into a yarn cake and showing you all how cool it looks. Now I just need to find a pattern...

UFO Files: Shetland Shorty

Last spring I started making the Shetland Shorty pattern from Knitty Summer '08. I used some black Panda Silk that I've had in my stash forever - I think I bought it in San Jose when Commuknity went out of business.

I made it through the garter stitch ties, the honeycomb lace body, and the 3-needle bind-off before the ends began to unravel from under the sleeves. It turns out that a yarn made of bamboo and silk doesn't stick to itself as well as a yarn made of wool; go figure. It's been in Time Out ever since with a vague impression of "UGH re-work ends..." attached to it.

Today I pulled it out along with a bottle of Fray-Check, that incredibly useful sewing glue, and set to work.

Dear Reader, you may imagine my amusement and irritation when I tell you that it took literally fifteen minutes to finish the garment. A spot of glue here and there, a re-knitting of 3 rows of sleeve, and a bind-off were all that was left. After fourteen months of avoidance, a mere fifteen minutes sufficed to take the (admittedly tiny) weight of this project off of my mind.

Better pictures to follow, but for now it's blocking:

Crystal Palace Panda Silk, Black, 380 yds.

Instinct tells me that it will grow a bit, which is fine since I made it a little snug in the first place. The yardage gives me a bit of breathing room on the 11-Mile Quest, as I'm finding it difficult to knit 126 yards of lace per day even though I started a Pi Shawl for relatively easy, low-pattern knitting.

Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud, "Tidepool" 1760 yds in stash.

I may have to branch out and start some sock-weight projects!

For Those Who...

The Rosebud Shawl is an "audiobook knit." That is to say, I can't knit on it and watch TV - no matter how cerebral (or not ::coughBuffycough::) that television may be - but I can listen to an audiobook and make fairly regular progress.

So for TV watching and mileage-increasing purposes, I pulled out the Moderne Baby Blanket (pdf link!) that I started back in 2009 when Evelyn was the size of a can of beans in her mother's womb. In true knitterly fashion, the blanket is finally finished in plenty of time for her second birthday!

Knit Picks Comfy yarn in Blackberry, Planetarium, Honeydew, and Cashew. 1603 yards.

I really liked not needing to block this or wash it or ANYTHING before it was considered finished! I'm toying with the idea of knitting another one; I've got 5 skeins each of off-white and chocolate brown Comfy in my stash, so it would only require two more colors (or 1.5 more colors since I have almost 2 skeins left of both the Blackberry and Planetarium). For those who care, I followed Kelly Petkun's advice of doing an applied i-cord edging instead of a garter stitch one. I like the finished look much better, although if (ok, when) I end up doing this again I'll probably do both a garter stitch border and an i-cord edging for extra contrast around the block pattern.

Alas, my Knitting Schedule has reared its ugly head and I don't have time before my deadlines to knit any more simple garter stitch projects. Or maybe I do... ::looks at the list of babies due in the next 6 months::

For those keeping track (me), there are 44 days left until October 1st, when I would like to have finished knitting and/or spinning 7 miles-worth of yarn. There are 5,558 yards left to complete, so that makes 126 yards per day. YIKES! I gotta go...

A Little Night Maths

October first is 61 days away.
October first is also the day I'd like to click over the Mile 7 mark on my 11-Mile Quest.

I am currently 121 yards short of the Mile 4 mark.
Therefore, I need to knit (1760x3)+121 yards to hit Mile 7.

5401 yards / 61 days = 88.5 yards per day, not including spinning singles for plied yarn. Singles yarns have never looked so attractive.


I'm going to need a wrist replacement by the time I'm 40.

It's Time to Re-assess

It is amazing what effect a small change can have on my crafting. For example, I recently moved my spinning wheel from one side of the sofa to the other:

Not pictured: spinning wheel.

Now it lives between my computer desk and the sofa, and I use it much more often! The sticking point was that my sofa is too low to comfortably spin from it, so I have to use my desk chair. When the wheel is within a 3-foot scooting radius, it gets more use. Geometry at work! 

Before I went to Disneyland I managed to finish the first half of the Bright Fig roving:

The yarn will be so pretty!

And since then I'm about 1/3 through with the second bobbin. I'm trying to spin it evenly so that the 2 plies will match up through most of the yarn, but we'll see. 

Since I've been on a Shetland Shawls kick it feels like my 11-Mile Quest has slowed down considerably. Lace knitting takes longer than sock knitting (but apparently not as long as sweater knitting ::coughSalinacough::), so I'm trying to find projects that are half-finished - like the Great Bebeh Project (a KP Shine Moderne Baby Blanket) - that are somewhat mindless. I'm also thinking about overdyeing a bunch of my sock remnants to make a log cabin blanket of some sort, but I haven't come to any conclusions on that yet. I am nearly finished spinning the third bobbin of singles for the Be-Bop-a-Lula that I was working on in Coal City last summer, so once the Bright Fig is finished I'll be pulling that out and finishing it up. 

My tentative goal is to be at 7 miles by the beginning of October. That's roughly 4 miles worth of knitting/spinning, which is *ahem* more than I've accomplished in the last eight months, so it'll be a challenge indeed! 

Chipping Away

Despite not participating in the annual Tour de Fleece this year, I have been reading many blog and forum posts about the progress of other people's Tour de Fleece goals, and it's been causing me to give my poor neglected Matchless the side eye.

Those of you with long memories for my personal spinning goals will remember my leap onto Spindlicity's Stashdown 2011 bandwagon. (For those of you who don't, here is a link. I won't judge you if you click it.) I must have done something wrong since it took me less than a month to tumble off of that particular vehicle, and the Matchless has sat in a corner of my living room with 1/2 of January's project on it for 7 months. I admit that every time I considered the Tour de Fleece I made myself look at that bobbin full of singles and cringed a little inside.

But on Wednesday I decided to (literally) dust off my wheel, give it a coat of lemon oil, and do some spinning. Halfway through the second bobbin of singles I remembered that my derby friend Bite Size had a birthday this weekend, and I decided to give the finished yarn to her. This is not as random as it seems; she is an avid crocheter. Yesterday I plied and this morning after derby practice I skeined, soaked, and set the final project out to dry:

Copperpot Woolies "Chantilly Lace," 220 yards.

It came out squishy and soft and more the purple-ish of the first picture. She was THRILLED and couldn't believe that I'd made it myself, which I found a little hilarious considering that she's an artist! But I'm pleased as punch that this yarn went to someone who will make something out of it relatively soon; I tend to hoard my handspun much like I hoard my yarn and fiber, despite knowing in my head that even if I ruin it, there is always more wool in the world.

But don't cheer too loudly for my stashdown progress yet; back in April I fell down and ordered some Polwarth from Fat Cat Knits, but I made a deal with myself that I couldn't open the package until the current project was off of my bobbins. Well, that day is today, so I opened it! (See? Sometimes I have self-control. Just don't get used to it.)

It was worth the wait.

"Curry," 4 oz.

"Magnolia," 6 oz.

I fell in love with the Magnolia colorway after perusing thing4string's truly amazing Flickr stream. That woman is not only an excellent spinner, but she's also prolific! I wonder if those two things go hand-in-hand? Hmmm.....
Although I'm certain that I've missed the Stashdown 2011 bandwagon entirely by this time, I did go and pull out another brown paper bag with a mystery fiber in it. Inside was a pleasant, cheerful surprise:

Girl on the Rocks "Bright Fig" merino,  4.3 oz

I bought this at Color: A Fiber Festival back in 2008(!!!). I wonder how long it'll take me to spin it up? Maybe I should go start now. After all, between the Chantilly Lace (5.5 oz) and this, I'd be very close to net zero fiber input for 2011, which I'm fairly certain hasn't happened since I discovered spinning back in 2007.

That's what I call Progress.

Blueblood Island Shawl: Blocked and Finished

Final Stats:

97 grams

705 yards

Completely charming.

No Cookie, But Plenty of Yarn

The mailman has been busy knocking on my door for the last few days, dropping off packages from my recent knitting supplies ordering spree. I am now the fascinated owner of Heirloom Knitting, which is more knitting bang for my book buck than I anticipated. I grabbed a used copy for around $40 on Amazon and it is worth every penny!

I've also put my new blocking wires to work today:

Blueblood Island Shawl, Jade Sapphire Silk/Cashmere

I'm quite pleased with them! They're a little thinner than the wires I had previously, but that doesn't seem to have any bearing on how well they work. Really, this invention makes my life SO MUCH easier. Between the wires and the mats, I am thoroughly happy.

I've also been fiddling around with my Sacred Tempest Sweater, hoping to get it to fit right so I can have it off my UFO list and also have something to wear in the chilly summer California evenings.

Which is good, because the postman has been bringing more than just accoutrements. 

3.3 miles in the door. I have no self control. 

The first 6 photos are of Madelinetosh merino light, which I fell in love with when I knitted this up for my master teacher, Rachel. The next 2 are Regia Silk 4-Ply (obvs.) and were bought together because they are burgundy and pink (also obvs.). The last 3 are super-fine yarns from Fleegle at The Gossamer Web - first Tribble, then Sheherazade, then an orphan yarn that Fleegle allowed me to adopt on account of my unparalleled ability to take wayward yarn into my home. Yes, I realize I just brought in more yardage than I've finished knitting this year, and no, I don't feel (very) guilty. After all, that Blueblood Shawl can't take much longer to dry and I've a fingering-weight sweater nearly seamed. I wonder if I can get it done before I land in Philly on Thursday...

Philly?

Yes. This weekend I got derby-drunk (and maybe a little actual-drunk) and bought a ticket for the East Coast Extravaganza in Philadelphia! I can't wait. I show up on Thursday and get to spend a whole day with Brie - including meeting her kiddos and a tour of the local yarn shops - then meet up with the Sacred Sacrificers on Friday evening for a weekend of derby insanity. It's going to be epic. I'm taking the Tempest to finish (hopefully) and the Rosebud Shawl to work on, plus loading up my iPod with a few more classics. In addition to derby madness, I might even crank through some solid knitting yardage while I'm away!

Welcome to Summer!

Today is officially the First Day of (My) Summer. I turned in my final grades to my master teacher last night, and this morning I didn't bother getting up to an alarm for the THIRD DAY in a row. It was quite nice. Tomorrow I'll start setting the alarm for 9am and trying to get moving by a reasonable hour (for summer).

The last couple of days have been a kick in the proverbial pants. Saturday I took THB to see a show at Broadway Sacramento:

It. Was. Fabulous. When Mary flew across the stage for the first time, I definitely welled up a little bit. THB was equally happy. I was shocked to discover that this was his second "real play," especially since I went to college for 3 years in Ashland and went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival practically every weekend! Next season of Broadway Sacramento includes Wicked (his first real play), West Side Story, and Mamma Mia!, so he was all excited to get season tickets. Given the disastrous finale of the first - and last - time I bought season tickets to a production company, you can bet that I'll be asking a few very pointed questions of the Box Office before we actually purchase seats...

But in the meantime, we're excited!

Yesterday I sat down to read my Ravelry forums over morning(ish) tea and got sucked into the Rabbit Hole of Shetland Lace. By the time I'd made it back out again, I'd ordered a used copy of Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting and two skeins of lace yarn from The Gossamer Web that I've been thinking about for ages. There is a note in my list of Summery Stuff to Do to pull out and catalog all the cones of yarn I've ever ordered for such lacy endeavors, which should probably happen today if I'm going to continue looking at stuff like this. And this. It's photos like these that make me want to drop everything I'm doing and go study 19th century lace on the Isle of Shetland. ::le sigh!::

I also made myself sit down and finish the last hour's worth of knitting on the Blueblood Island Shawl:

Rock Island Shawl by Jared Flood. Jade Sapphire Silk/Cashmere, Blueblood Red

I'm not going to weigh it for yardage until I've blocked it, and I won't be blocking it until my new blocking wires come in from knitsomuch on Etsy. My old blocking wires went missing in the move between San Jose and Roseville, so it'll be a treat to have some again! In the mean time, after I toss the lace cone stash, I'll be starting this poorly photographed but very pretty bit of knitting. Shetland lace, I am now your bitch.

Lastly, LOOK AT MY GARDEN!!

Well, a part of it anyway!

Yep. That's a real, honest-to-goodness TOMATO growing on my own vine. And in the background is another one! I'm tickled pink by this completely natural and to-be-expected development. There will be tomatoes this summer, my pretties! Beer and Caprese Salad cannot be far behind. Ahhh, summer.