Fiber Surprise!

On Monday I delved into my Box of Surprise Spinning and pulled out one of the Big Bags. What can I say? After a weekend of completed spinning projects, I was feeling cocky.

Remember me from Monday? I knew you would.

Even though I packed the bags myself, and even though I thought I had an idea of what could be in it, I still jumped up and down a little and squealed "Ooooooo! Yay!" when I opened it.

It feels like sheepy clouds.

I should hide things from myself more often if I'm that easily delighted, is what I'm saying.

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!

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...

On the Path to the Land of Lace

So the other day I finished (but have not yet blocked) my Blueblood Island Shawl and skeined/washed an unknown yardage (somewhere between one and 2999 yards...) off a cone of yarn I ordered from Colourmart waaaaay back in 2007.

2/36 cashmere/silk in "Tussah." 2/36 means that 18 meters of this yarn = 1 gram. 3000 meters (1.7 miles) is 150 grams, which is about 1/3 of a pound. That's the weight of a hamburger patty.

I think I'm going to have to start entering the date in my Ravelry Stash so that I know how long yarns tend to marinate! Jeez. Anyway, the washing didn't take long even if it was a slightly odiferous business - spinning oils smell yucky and wet silk has a strange alien insect-y smell that is distinctly unpleasant. Then yesterday I knitted a swatch of Sharon Miller's Rosebud Shawl center pattern (101 in 1001 Craft goal #5!):

Top half: 2.75mm needles. Bottom half: 3.25mm needles

I KNOW. It's like you don't even know who I am anymore, what with this premeditation of projects and all the swatching! I tend to like slightly denser lace, so I went with the 2.75mm needles (US 2). Also the swatch is 35 stitches across and 8" with the 2mm needles. Just the center of this shawl is 117 stitches across, plus the borders and edging. It's going to be pretty big even on the smaller needles! This also proves my time-tested theory that I should just drop 2 needle sizes from the recommended size right out of the gate.

Lately I've had a hard time knitting and watching TV at the same time, so I decided to do my Shetland knitting while listening to audiobooks. Currently I'm on an Anthony Trollope kick, which dovetails nicely with the Classics Challenge and also makes me feel quite historical to be knitting a Victorian pattern out of English yarn while listening to a Victorian novel. We'll just ignore the part where I'm listening through a device made in China that holds 800% more information than the first computer...

I'm 2.5 of 11 repeats into the pattern and, as is usual, it looks like crap:

Unblocked Lace is Not Sexy

But at least I have my swatch to remind me how pretty it'll be... someday...

Many, many of my posts are going to involve this shawl for awhile. I hope you all like beige...

Uh-Oh.

I finished the center square of my Stonington Shawl and started on the first border. Somewhere around 2" into the border itself, I came to a realization: the construction of these borders doesn't allow for easy patterning because one is made differently from the other three. ARGH!

That's when it all came crashing down. My latent feelings that this particular garter stitch shawl was unsuited to the elegant silvery quality of the yarn, that my brilliant center would look stupid surrounded by miles of garter stitch, and that I really-and-truly didn't like it.

Behold, the sad remnants of my Stonington Shawl:

Then again, the yarn once again has potential, and it's tough to beat that.

I've been SO GOOD lately. The Lyra is coming along nicely, although it's not much bigger. The pattern is just complicated enough to allow me to listen to a good audiobook, but too complicated for TV watching. I've been adding a couple of rows every here and there, and it's enchanting. I think one of the reasons Niebling is popular with lace knitters is that his style is so different from traditional Shetland-style shawls. Both have their place, but I'm thrilled to see something so different from what I'm used to coming off my needles.

But back to being SO GOOD: instead of starting a new project for straight knitting, I've been trawling my Ravelry projects for unfinished TV-worth material. I've been working steadily on the [redacted], and even did the ripping out that was needed on my Salina sleeves. Oh, I didn't mention that one sleeve was a clear 2" longer than the other? And that the longer one is the one that fits my monkey arms? Grr. So I ripped back the sleeve cap and knitted the extra 2". Now there's just the sleeve cap to re-knit and I'm back to where I was!

See how good I've been? Not that starting 500 projects at once is bad. It definitely works for some people. But I get overwhelmed and irritated when I have nothing finished to show for myself, so keeping my works-in-progress down to about 5-6 is optimal for me.

Or it was, until these showed up:

Those are 2 Hazel Rose Looms, modeled after the super-popular Weave-it looms from the 1930's. There are three total in my set, measuring 2-, 4-, and 8- inches square. You see, I have always wanted to quilt, but fabric is NOT my medium. So I am trying out a compromise: flat weaving. Here are my efforts so far using leftover sock yarn that you might recognize:

3-way traditional warp, single-ply, following directions exactly (for once...)

Plain weave warp, single ply

3-way traditional warp, double ply

I like the look of the plain weave the best, but the double-ply was definitely quicker and I like the result almost as much. I'm going to play around with slightly heavier yarns and see where that takes me!

Progressing Apace

Hmmm, let's see.

I am done with school except for the waiting-for-grades part, which is the real bitch of the matter. I will know my fate on the 28th, but until then I am going to assume I'm done for reals this time.

ManCandy and I spent the Memorial Day weekend at my mom's house, where we ate ourselves sick twice in a row. Delicious marinated steaks, corn-on-the-cob, ice cream cake, lemon tarts and (with the exception of the corn) nary a vegetable to be found. While we were up there, my Aunt C showed up with her ex-daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and a cat. The last was a "gift" for my mom; back when my mother was trying to qualify for a cat from the Ragdoll Rescue Shelter, she couldn't because one of our kitties snuck outside - it's a FARM for chrissake! - and got bit by something or other, abscessed and died. So the shelter, instead of giving a cat a loving and honest home, rejected my mom because she occasionally leaves the house door open. Aunt C responded by applying and lying through her teeth about how she never lets cats outside and would never feed them anything except fresh meat or some such nonsense, and of course was rewarded for her falsehoods with Sugar nee Nicole.

Since then, my mother has acquired a purebred Ragdoll named Pierre, of whom I like taking silly pictures. Anyway, all of this happened about 3 years ago. Since then, Sugar has been an inside/outside cat and perfectly happy, until about 6 months ago when Aunt C got a second miniature pinscher who thought of Sugar as her own personal chew toy. Sugar promptly moved out of Aunt C's house and has been MIA up until last week, when she arrived bedraggled and half-starved. Aunt C brought her to mom's this weekend because she knew that Sugar would have a home where she was safe and cared for and unmolested by dogs the size of a small Doc Marten boot.

Mom put her in the room I usually stay in for the introduction period, and within a day she was grooming her fur - or what is left of it after removing all the mats - and cuddling with me and ManCandy. On Sunday night I stayed in Rocklin with THB while Sugar worked her wiles on both ManCandy and my stepdad, earning her the new moniker of Jezabel.

I would have brought her home myself, but the dynamic of the house is shaky enough between Darcy and Panza, and I'm afraid that another kitteh - even a sweet, timid loving one like Jezabel - might permanently disrupt the balance. Mom is worried about the same problem, but she got stuck with the 9/10ths rule. Ahh, well - ManCandy can visit the little hussy when we go to see my mom.

In terms of knitting, I have nothing to show. The Super-Secret Project is about 3 hours from being done - I blocked it this weekend and need to add the embellishment, then send it off an wait for it to be received, then I can show you all pictures. I'm really quite proud of it, and it'll add a hefty chunk to my 12-Mile Quest.

In addition, the Girasole is also nearly done. I have 10 more rounds until I start the knitted-on border, and just a hair over 2 balls of yarn left. I stopped by Fibers up in Grass Valley this weekend to see if I could match the colorway, but decided against any yarn at all in favor of just hoping I have enough. If worse comes to worst, I can always have them ship me a ball of the current dyelot, which isn't different enough that it will matter much. I am simply trying to avoid ending up with extra yarn, and who knows? Those 2 balls might be plenty. Snerk. Also, it currently looks like a gigantic cherry red sea urchin. I'm hoping it blocks out.

Did you notice what I said up there? I got out of Fibers without buying anything. There is no bank record whatsoever that I was ever even there. How impressed are you? Mom was so impressed that she told everyone at the bbq that afternoon. Aren't moms great?!?

I did, however, get my KnitPicks order just before I left for The Farm. In it were 3 packets of stitch markers (lace, here I come!), 2 pairs of size 7 needles, and a few skeins of lace yarn. Four were the Gloss Lace in natural so that I can kettle-dye them (the colors only come in solids), and 3 skeins of Shadow yarn in Cattail Heather:

It's a weirder green than in this picture - I've been having color trouble with the snooty camera lately, but in this case it's just because this particular green is so awesome it defies photography. I'm going to knit it into a something-or-other in time for a Very Awkward Conversation that's coming up - something from the deep dark past that needs to be exorcised (and nothing to do with ManCandy, so don't worry). Come to think of it, you guys might have some good ideas. I need a stunning, gorgeous-yet-simple "oh, yes, I DID make this, and yes, I'm very talented" sort of stole. It should also say "oh, this old thing?" if at all possible. Perhaps something by Anne Hanson? Something in which I can wrap myself against any emotional onslaught - self-generated or otherwise - and be safe. Suggestions are welcome, although I begin to suspect that a well-cultivated air of je ne sais quoi might help immensely. I'll get right on that.

In the mean time, I'm going to go finish the Super-Secret Project so that it can be revealed!

Title-free and Proud

Today's blog post is brought to you by the few remaining brain cells I have left.

Last night, my good friend Nadia and I headed up to San Francisco to have dinner and drinks with an old friend of mine from New York City. General Leigh and I dated for about 3 seconds, five years ago, and have been good chums ever since, so when his work brings him out to the Bay Area, we make a special effort to get together. We have great fun re-hashing the Good Ol' Days (tm) and swapping ridiculous compliments - the more ridiculous the better, and to the most ludicrous goes the prize. It's always great fun, but I always wake up the next day exhausted. Thus do we begin to show our age.

But the blog roll goes on, and I have a few things to tidy up before I move on to bigger and better things. Or knits. Or whatever. Remember, we're operating on fewer cylinders and less coffee than normal.

First, here is an only slightly accurate photo of the Papa Socks, which I sent up to Alaska on Tuesday:


The blue part is about right, but the brown declined to show up. I have no idea why. Here is a more accurate photo via The Loopy Ewe.

I also finished my Scarf #21 and blocked it in time to wear it out last night!
Scarf with Insert #21 (etc.) from Victorian Lace Today
Schaefer Anne, "Autumn," 560 yds.

And it's only slightly off it's blocking from last night's festivities!

I'm excited to have finished a lace project for ME. There is something about being swathed in lace I've made myself that makes me stand up straighter. It's a lovely feeling.

Speaking of lace, I'm still plugging away on Big Red. I made it to the last page, but I've also finished the final increases to 640 stitches, and it's suddenly taking a LOT longer to finish a round! I'm also slightly concerned about the shedding factor of the Frog Tree Alpaca I'm using. I can't think of anything I'll be able to wear it with that won't also show off the shed fibers once I take it off. This one might have to become a chair shawl, but I love it too much to quit, rip it out, or put it in time out. And there's plenty of time to decide what to do with it after I've finished knitting.

In other news, a big virtual cookie for Brie! You're totally right, I did finish my Infernal Ribbi Cardi! Well, actually Mom finished it for me. When she was here in February for Stitches, she pulled it off the shelf and demanded to know why I hadn't worn it yet. When I answered that it needed a zipper, she stuffed it in her bag and took it home with her to complete. And while I was up at her place a couple of weeks ago, she did indeed finish it for me. It's slightly big all around - it turns out I'm closer to a 36 than I thought, or perhaps closer to a 36 than when I first made the sweater - but I still like it and it's garnered many excellent compliments. I'll take a picture in it one of these days.

I'm thinking seriously about swatching for the Faux Russian Stole from A Gathering of Lace. Or maybe something from Knitted Lace of Estonia. I have a mess of Malabrigo Lace singles that are burning a hole in my stash, and we can't have that, can we?

That's about it for knitting news. We're headed out tonight to drool into our popcorn over Wolverine. Mrowr!

Put Some Spring in Your Step

Well, my lovelies, it's here. Spring, as they say, has sprung. I realized it this week on the first truly lovely day in a while when I looked out into the R-N's backyard and saw a veritable flood of tulips. I actually remembered to bring the DSLR to work the next day, and took a bunch of photos of just flowers.

I do love flowers, especially spring ones. They remind me of my mom, who has a thumb so green she just looks sideways at a plant and it grows. I think they're afraid of her.

I, on the other hand, can barely keep lucky bamboo and ficus alive. It's really rather pathetic.

However, I must say: I am proud of the garlic that is growing in the former-rose-cultivating pot. Did I not tell you about my exercise in rose cultivation? Well, ManCandy bought me a dozen gorgeous white roses for my 30th birthday in the beginning of December. After Christmas, they were still going strong in the vase, and were actually putting out new growth along the stems. Gee, I thought, wouldn't it be awesome if I could clone a rose bush or three and know exactly when I got them? Thirtieth birthday roses, how cool!

So I trotted out to Home Depot late one rainy night and - after a scare in a quiet aisle that involved a cat-sized rat, me, and a staring contest - bought rooting hormone, a pot, rose food, and dirt.

I carefully trimmed the roses like Candy recommended, put them in rooting hormone, and planted them. Then I covered them in a greenhouse of plastic wrap and put them in the warmest window in the house. Someone up there must have transposed some letters in my prayers, because within 3 days they were all rotting instead of rooting. So much for my career as a horticulturist.


For the last couple of months, the pot has sat on my kitchen counter, waiting for me to plant something brilliant in it. About a week ago, I thought it might be funny to plant a few cloves of sprouted garlic and see what happens:

Rampant growth. Garlic must be a weed, because historically, that's all I can grow.

A Small Tally

Books Currently in my Knit Picks Cart:

Knitting in Plain English by Maggie Righetti

Sweater Design in Plain English by Maggie Righetti

Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson

Folk Shawls by Cheryl Oberle

Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting by Marianne Kinzel

Things I Have Cast On in the Last Week: 4

Things From Above Tally That Are Viable Knitting: 1

Skeins of Yarn in my Knit Picks Cart: 0. You read that right, zero. So hah!

I am waiting on my student aid check to come in and then those books will be mine, all mine. In the mean time, I continue to truck away on my Seamless Yoke Sweater. Miles of stockinette in the round are soothing, but not necessarily good photo fodder for the blog. So lest you think I am neglecting you, dear reader, allow me to set your mind at rest. There have been pictures. And I shall show them to you.

First, Jasmin and I went lens shopping this Saturday. I got an inexpensive low-light lens for my Canon Rebel XT and I am loving. it. Here are a few shots:

A friendly game of Settlers of Catan, in which I kicked everyone's butts. Just sayin'.

The skein of Pagewood Farms Denali sock yarn in "Forest Camo" that has been haunting my dreams - and is now mine!

I bought the Pagewood Farms yarn on Sunday at what I'm pretty sure will become a new Mecca for me: Bobbin's Nest Studio in Santa Clara. The owner seems to have a palette similar to mine, so I like a lot of the colors she chooses. After knitting there for awhile, we had to take off - except there was this fountain that looked SO cool in the setting sun. So we pulled over, hopped out and snapped some pictures in the spirit of our 2009 selves:



I also got back into spinning this week with a well-placed kick in the pants from Jasmin and her devilish ways. She showed me her new Golding spindle, which I tried and loved. Those things spin forEVer. And then, because I am maybe a masochist and might lean towards spinning cobweb lace on spindles, she showed me this little beauty:

Magpie Woodworks "Maggie" spindle, 30 g

Apparently Maggie and Jasmin never got along, but we took to one another perfectly and I've been messing about with some of the Crown Mountain Farms BFL I got in May. It's so nice to have a spindle that just spins and spins. I'm trying very hard not to engage in grand illusions about how much spindle spinning I will really do, but it's difficult to be rational when you're in love.

The spinning bug also encouraged me to pull out my neglected Sonata, and since Sunday I've finished one of three plies of some more CMF, this time in the super-wash merino colorway "Wish You Were Here." Those will be some cheerful socks, itellyouwhut.

Lastly, I cast on another pair of No-Purl Monkey socks in Fleece Artist's 2/6 sock yarn. They are also very cheerful:


I've also been working on my Marvelous Mingus socks, but they're not much further along than last time you saw them, so I'll let them marinate a little longer before I show them off again. Note the lack of finishing going on. Fear not, gentle reader. I'll get there.

OH! Brie, here's the shot of the Salina sweater from Rowan Vintage Knits. I think this purple would look FAB on you. Jasmin's mom is contemplating a KAL for this one - I'm trying to talk her into the purple as well.

Mine will be cooler than this with vintage buttons. And also it's green.

Until next time, remember. Be the water.

Mutability

Time it takes to get a bowl of cereal: 30 seconds

Time it takes to haul myself away from reading the internet in order to get the bowl of cereal: 3 hours

***

Today we're heading up to hang out with my ex and his lovely wife. The four of us used to live together in perfect harmony - the Ex and I broke up on extremely good terms - and we haven't spent any time together since my birthday, so this will be a fun evening. 

I finished the EZ Maybe It'll Fit Someone hat yesterday. Low and behold, it fits the Elder Relatively-Normal and also looks adorable with her Mexican cornrowed hair. I'm going to wash/block/weigh it this weekend and give it to her on Monday. 

This leaves me with a quandary as to which yarn to use for EZ's next project. I am remembering my dislike for crew-necked sweaters, but I think I should be able to skip the last set of decreases and make a cowl neck instead. The only issue is the stranded yoke - I haven't bought sweater yarn in 1-ball quantities, so I'm at a bit of a loss. However, Little Knits has the Crystal Palace Creme on deep sale, so I may be able to mix and match.I already have 10 skeins of it in my stash, so it won't count against me in the Social Pressure Experiment, which is extremely nice given the yarn acquisition that happened in December and the first week of January.

Anyway, I'm off to swatch and measure. And maybe practice my stranded knitting. Bloody floats.

Terminal Morning Sickness

I am not a morning person. 

This simple fact has been corroborated across the years by my mother, father, brothers, sister, friends, and subsequent boyfriends (ahem) - pretty much anyone who has ever tried to wake me up before my internal clock was ready. One of the first lessons I learned at college was that 8am was no longer a viable time for me to expect to be at class, followed shortly by the more do-able but still dubious 9am during my Lost Theatre Years. 

Mornings do strange things to me. In my house, pre-caffeine statements are treated much like the statements of an alcoholic on a binge, and it's not unusual for ManCandy to refuse to speak to me entirely until I've had a cup of tea or coffee. 

All of this could be chalked up to laziness, a love of warm beds and cuddly cats, or simply a refusal to join the workaday world, if it weren't for one thing: the morning sickness. 

I've never been pregnant and don't ever intend to be so - the particulars of which we can go into if you like, but really, my mind is pretty made up after 7 siblings, growing up in my stepmother's daycare and being both a teacher and a nanny - but if there's one thing I understand, it's the vertigo and nausea of morning sickness. If I get vertical before the sun is high in the sky, the contents of my stomach are as likely as not to end up elsewhere.

Coffee is a shaky bet. Tea less so, but generally have to I warm up with a simple cup of hot water before moving on to anything that makes me marginally human. Food of any sort is strictly verboten - even Gigi's cure-all yogurt - for a minimum of an hour or two. It's a chore being me before 9 in the morning; I suppose it's the price I pay for being this fabulous the rest of the day.

But this semester, which will hopefully be my second-to-last for some time, I'm taking 9am classes. And in order for this to be my second-to-last semester, I need straight A's - none of my usual half-assed attempts to attend class followed by a slow decline into only showing up for tests will serve. 

Just the thought is making my head swim. Maybe I'll just get a bartending gig and go back to bed; education can't be that important, can it?

Me Make Fire

Have you ever held up a finished item and done a little cave-woman style dance? You know the one - it involves some foot-stomping, some hooting, and not a little embarrassment when your ManCandy/roommate/mother/husband/etc. comes in the room and gives you The Eyebrow. Then your embarrassment evaporates as you get to tell the walker-inner that you've just had a Finish. Good, I'm glad I'm not the only one, because that would be awkward. And get your mind out of the gutter.

I got to do the Finishing Dance twice yesterday. The first was when I bound off the last stitch of the Black Forest Shawl with about 1.5 yards of yarn tail. After the dance, which the cats observed with a mild amount of interest, I quickly Soaked and blocked it on the TV room floor. I toddled off to work, and got to do my favorite part of lace making when I got home.

I use blocking wires and T-pins, and I love them. Lurve is actually a better not-word, but anyway. All the stretching and pulling and measuring and protractoring is, I know, necessary to make lace go from cygnet


to swan. Yes, I use a protractor. Shut your face. Anyway. The thing of it is, if you take away the wires and the T-pins while the shawl is still wet, it sproings back into the cygnet stage. Our intuitive knowledge of inertia - or something - tells us that this will continue to happen even when the garment is dry, because when you stretch something it rarely remains stretched. So when I get to unpin and un-wire lace, it's a reverent treat. First, I take out all the T-pins and hide them from the cats in the box under the coffee table. Then I carefully pull out the wires, trying to leave the lace undisturbed. A miracle! It hasn't reverted to bumpy, weird-looking knitting, but remains serenely upon the old sheet I use to block upon.

There is a moment in a ballet dancer's life when she feels both part of the sky and rooted in the earth. Her feet seem to move three inches below the ground, so solid is she, but if you look at her chest, arms, and face, she appears to be floating away. She is no longer a mere human, but a Being. This is the state my teacher called "expanded," and I strove for it every day with every fiber of my being until my body gave me an ultimatum I couldn't refuse. The moment I pull out the wires and survey the work of my hands, I feel expanded. I cannot dance on my own two feet anymore, but I can dance with my hands, two sticks, and a bit of string.

Black Forest Shawl, handspun merino/silk, 383 yds.

Zug zug.

WWKIP Day

What will you be doing at WWKIP day?

I will be knitting at a garden wedding. 

The wedding of my ex-boyfriend to my very good friend, at which another ex-boyfriend is the best man and the girl sitting next to me at dinner will be my ex-boyfriend's girlfriend-before-me. I will be wearing a white dress that belongs to the bride, who loaned me the dress because a) she is wearing cherry red, and b) we thought it would upset the ex's Aunt Michelle, who all three of us girls agree is a witch.

This shawl might just end up wine-stained at the end of the day. It's called Black Magic.

The Siren Song of Television

So lately I've been avoiding the knitting. Like Jas, I've been on a spinning jag, which is good considering that I just acquired a significant portion of my body weight in unspun fiber. But avoiding or not, Elizabeth's wedding is a week from yesterday and I need to finish her shawl before the bocce ball reception on Sunday morning. So I did what any self-respecting knitter with sass would do: I started a new project. 

I wanted to start the Persephone scarf from MimKnits, but both the Perplexed yarn and the pattern thwarted me. So instead, I whipped out the Black Magic yarn and the Forest Canopy Shawl pattern and went to town. It called for sock weight and size 8 needles; I'm using roughly DK+ weight and 8's. It'll be larger than originally intended, but I'm okay with that - in fact, I'm looking forward to it. 

Pictures? Okay. But just this once. 

I put a couple more repeats into it last night after Elizabeth's bachelorette party. We lingered deep into the wee sma's over a bottle of delicious port and talk of video games - the perfect end to a lovely day.

Forest Canopy Shawl from I'm Knitting As Fast As I Can

Black Magic handspun, ~383 yds.

I had an interview with a family today, and the mom wants me to come back to speak with her when her children are away so that we can have a conversation that's not punctuated by offerings to see the playroom/backyard/favorite stuffed animal. That's a good sign, right? They live nearby, which would save me a not insignificant sum in gas money every month, so we'll see. I'm cautiously optimistic, about both the job and the mojo.

And now, Tim Gunn, popcorn and the Sonata are singing a sweet tune of spinning and fashion madness. Au revoir, ma cheries. 

P.S. - the Mint Crisp M&M's are secretly filled with crack. Don't buy them, and for god's sake don't eat them. Consider yourself warned.

Feeling Craftsy

Ok, 13 months between postings is just too damn long. I've never been good at keeping a diary and I'm equally bad at taking pictures; I've always justified it under the Mae West clause: "Good girls keep journals; bad girls don't have time." And while I may not be a "bad girl," I certainly don't keep up very well with journaling my life. Anyway, one of my "101 in 1001" goals is to keep track of my craftsy activities, so I may as well do it in a blog form. More on the 101 in 1001 later.

I blame my mother for my obsession with craftsy things. Yes, it's a deliberate mis-spelling. Move along. Mom loves textiles and stamping and hobbies that require a lot of stuff, so I picked up the tendency from her. Our craftsy hobbies dovetail nicely together: she quilts, scrapbooks, sews and stamps while I knit, embroider and (occasionally) paint. My point here is that when we're together, we tend to egg eachother on. We'll go to a yarn store and she'll pick out something for me to make for her, then because she's in a craftsy mood we'll stop at the fabric store "just for a minute" and I'll find something I want her to make for me. It's a vicous cycle and ends up with both of us hiding our purchases in the back of the van so my stepdad doesn't give us The Face. Inevitably he finds out we've been shopping, but I try my hardest to make it after I've left for home instead of while I'm there - that way I get The Voice instead, and it's much easier to justify my cravings via phone.

Lately I've been knitting. Like most craftsy things, it looks difficult but is actually easy. Unlike most craftsy things, knitting is easily portable and doesn't take a lot of set-up time. Plus, it makes useful stuff! Sweaters and hats and bags and wee bitty baby booties with matching wee hats in all the colors nature invented (and some she didn't). So far I've collected enough yarn to fill a small set of drawers, planned roughly 50 projects, begun 7 of them and finished 2. I was going to crow over my admirable restraint - smugly picturing my mother's craft room - but then I realized that it's about par on the golf course of my crafting existence. I have roughly 50 embroidery projects, 8 of them started, and 2 completed. So much for being restrained.

I snagged Jer's snooty camera and took pictures of the knitting that's on my needles right now, but for some reason the camera cable isn't working so I'll have to wait for Lizabeth and him to get home from Tahoe to make him fix it. For now, here's the list of projects I have started and plan to finish in this lifetime:

1. Scarf for Papa for his birthday on 3/1 (finish by 2/24)
2. Scarf for Mom for Mother's Day on 5/13 (finish by 5/7)
3. Baby hats and booties for Jenny's baby (Finish ASAP!)
4. Stole for Nadia's Ammi (Mother's Day?)
5. Ravenclaw Scarf for Sioux (someday...)
Everything else I haven't allowed myself to start yet, which is actually admirable restraint on my part, thankyouverymuch.

I need to get one of those nifty little bar graph things that shows the % completed for each project, and maybe learn how to set up a blog a bit so I can put the % bars in a sidebar. Hmm... so much to do, and so little motivation. I think I'll go work on the baby stuff, since I missed Jenny's baby shower yesterday. "I'm sorry I didn't show up" is so much easier to forgive with a hand-made gift accompaniment!