Ready...Set...GO!

Yes, I have been knitting like a crazy woman. No, I haven't finished everything that I said I'd finish...and I only have 10 days before I need to be back at school. Ack! Where did the summer go?!

But, I need to cast on for the Ravelympics 2008!

Project: Cardigan to Love by Lynda Cyr
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Green Line Worsted
Color: Dusk (purples!)
Gauge: approx. 18 st/4 inches
Needles: size 8 for the lace, size 9 for the stockinette

But a spectacular equipment failure has set me back several hours already!

I swatched last night at Purlescence's Knit Night. The yarn was a little stiff and it felt like a lot of lanolin or spinning oil was still in it. But I thought it was okay to work with. After a brief water bath, it was soft and supple and I was pretty close to gauge.

But this morning, after an early morning rise (no, not 5 AM for the opening ceremonies), I started. But after finishing 2 repeats on the lace, I realized that I was heading for an injury if I continued to use the yarn in this form. The more I knit, the stickier the yarn felt.


And, take a look at this! See the dye on my hands? It only took a couple of rows worth of knitting to get my fingers this color. (It's very hard to take a picture of your hand stretched out in front of you - sorry!)




Into a water bath all 5 skeins went! Now I'm waiting for it to dry so I can wind it and re-swatch.








Meanwhile, there really has been other knitting:

Exhibit A: Adult-sized hat to match the scarf that The Hubby knit
This one is a seed stitch rib (thanks Sandi!) in the round. The scarf doesn't exactly match (Broken Rib stitch), but it coordinates quite nicely.
Yarn: Fiber Fiend's worsted wool
Color: Woodland
Needles: Size 9




Exhibit B: Socks (in progress) - this is my "purse knitting" that comes out whenever I have a few minutes.






Exhibit C: Twist (really!), 98% finished, just waiting for the collar to be knit, a full blocking, and some pewter clasps.

But - runs outside to check how the yarn is drying - I want to work on my new sweater NOW! (This way I'll have 2 new sweaters for the beginning of school.)

Doesn't hurt that The Hubby and The Dork are heading to family camp tomorrow AM early and won't be back until Wednesday night. I can stay up and knit as long as my hands hold out!

Oh, and speaking of The Dork, Mari gave me this awesome T-shirt the other day! Thanks, Sis!

Okay, gotta go check on the yarn again!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

There has been so much going on lately, that this week's vacation from school has often consisted of me staring off into space and not able to wrap my head around knitting. My Valentine's Day was also non-existent, due to a) Hubby is in Minnesota right now, and b) I tried to pack too much into the day today. Actually, The Hubby did get a Valentine's gift for me last week - only he didn't know about it before I arrived home last Thursday, wearing these!

Stacie wrote about the faculty retreat that we had last Saturday. She gives me a lot of credit for teaching others to knit, but quite frankly, she's also a very good cheerleader for knitting. She was the one, a couple of years ago, who was anonymously "scarfing" staff members with wonderful scarves that she knit. She claims that she was using the scarves for learning new stitches, but I know for a fact that she created a lot of smiles around our campuses.

My baby's birthday was 10 days ago (that long already...?!). Sweet sixteen and never been kissed - at least by a girlfriend! For his birthday, we took him and a friend to see Kooza. My boneheaded move - I forgot that we had gotten 4 tickets with the intent to take one of The Dork's friends. Forgot until 11 PM the night before, that is! Thanks Sandi, again, for sharing your daughter at the last minute! It was a fabulous show, and if you haven't seen it, it is highly recommended by the aforementioned teenager and his parents!

Honest, there has been knitting happening! I finally finished the scarf that The Hubby took to Winter Camp yesterday. He's currently in Minnesota, and this handspun and handknit scarf will be auctioned off as part of a fundraiser.

Details:
Fiber - Crown Mountain superwash merino, Tobacco Road colorway
Yarn - 433 yards of 3-ply worsted weight.
Pattern - Yarn Harlot's One Row Handspun pattern
Size - 7" x 96"

Finished the fronts and blocked my Twist. No pictures, though, because the camera got packed into the car this afternoon, (Dork was going to do some photography) and I was running late. With any luck, I'll get the sleeves done this weekend, in time for Stitches West next week.

After the Tobacco Road scarf knitting was finished (during the faculty retreat), I needed another mindless project, so I started another scarf with the same pattern stitch, but this time in Malabrigo worsted weight. I love the color, Velvet Grapes! The color in the photo is lighter than the true color, which is a deep, rich velvety purple with hints of lavender.

But then, Purlescence got in some new Malabrigo, Silky Merino. It's a DK weight, 50% silk, 50% merino wool. LUSCIOUS! I had to get some - honest, it leaped into my arms and asked to be taken home, no - demanded to be taken home! Then, it demanded to be knit, RIGHT NOW! I found the perfect match for it, one of AlisonH's patterns, the Blue Jay shawl, from her book Wrapped in Comfort. Mine is the Plum Blossom colorway, and I can't stop knitting on it! Okay, there are too many exclamation points in this paragraph, but that's what this yarn is demanding.

I even knit on the shawl while waiting for Rockapella to take the stage at Cupertino High School. Amazing show - lots of laughter and fantastic music. We've been going to their shows for at least 10 years. Remember "Where is the world is Carmen SanDiego?" Love you guys! (post-show autograph session, bad cell phone pic).

The Dork and I are driving down to Southern California for a fencing tournament this weekend. With any luck, I'll get some good knitting time in the hotel tomorrow night and at my parents' house Saturday evening. Cross your fingers both for him and for me!

And if you've managed to read all the way down to the bottom of this loooonnnnggg post, Happy Valentine's Day to you! I hope your day was filled with love from your sweetheart and your family and friends -- and lots of chocolate too!

Another rainy Friday!

This is how mine started out -- only I didn't discover it until I was already at school. [Okay, quit laughing!] Luckily, it was Pajama Day, to celebrate the donation of pjs and books to The Pajama Project, and I got to wear my slippers most of the day. Actually, no one noticed until I pointed it out - then they all fell over laughing...

Once again, it rained all day, but luckily, not as much water and without the vicious winds of a few weeks ago. But when I left school this afternoon, water was backing up in the parking lot again. I'm glad if I had to be at school, I could at least be comfy in my pjs!

Three goals for this weekend:

1) Finish spinning & ply up the Tobacco Road roving

2) Tear out the neckline shaping on the right front of Twist and redo it. I had decided to make a larger size for the front than for the back, and need to make the appropriate adjustments to eventually match the back at the shoulders. It's only a couple inches, and shouldn't take very long.

3) Finish grading 3 sets of papers that I need to hand back to my students. Hmmm, I think I'll go spin first...

This is a friend's dog, a chihuahua mix, who loves to carry shoes around. The command is "Chew!" and she runs for the indicated object and hauls it around. She made me laugh, so I had to share!

Anyway, I hope your weekend is full of laughter and snuggly stuff!

Busy, busy, busy!

Well, there WAS forward Twist progress...until I realized that I had mucked up the left front by one stitch when I had done the set-up row after the ribbing. You'll have to imagine that you can see it, because the left front is frogged back to the ribbing. No wonder the shoulder looked a bit wonky in the decreases! The awful realization hit when I started the cable pattern on the right front and realized that the cables lined up very nicely with the ribbing, unlike on the previous try.

That's okay though, I realized it before I bound off! I wasn't happy with those decreases, and wanted a 2nd opinion on it, so I left the remaining stitches on a holder until I could show someone, then started the other front.

At least the knitting and reknitting has kept me sane this week. Besides a wild work week trying to shepherd 3rd graders through their first big research project (note-taking, paraphrasing, bibliography), all 3 of us are doing the asthmatic cough thing. [Yep, it's bad when a storyteller can't tell stories...]

I took The Hubby over to the health clinic Monday night after he complained of light-headedness and tingly fingers after a hard coughing fit. We now own a nebulizer for breathing treatments, but he's also dealing with another sinus infection. I've not paid attention to my breathing because I was trying to deal with his, and it spiraled out of control. Yes, I went to the doctor today! Love the codeine cough syrup for night, and my Robitussin for daytime! Then The Dork decided to skip fencing this weekend because he's got a headache and cough...

Not sure whether I'll end up knitting at Purlescence this weekend. I don't want you all to hear the cough, and I can't talk very long without coughing, so typing may have to do. Sleep would be nice too...

How was your weather day?

Just so wrong to look out of the windows yesterday at work and watch trees swaying way past where they usually sway and rain blowing sideways for hours. If you opened the door, you found yourself with a face full of rain, which at one point blew about 3 feet inside.

Enough rain came down that this was the view of part of the parking lot:
Don’t know if you can tell, but the water is at the sidewalk level. Basically, the concern was about the amount of water and how fast it arrived. And that was just one of the flooded parts. Include 2 other drains not draining and a couple areas of the streets around campus.


I watched 3 kids following their parents through the parking lot make detours right into the water (and none of them were younger than 8).

Soaked kids (but so far, no soaked books), flooded parking lots, one tree down, two short power outages, early dismissals, all after-school activities cancelled — oh, and 6 classes of wet third graders beginning a biography research project, plus the regularly scheduled 1st grade classes.

The decision was made to hold the 1st grade classes in their homerooms so the kids didn’t blow away on the trek down here. Good thing, because at one point, one of the more diminutive faculty members was almost blown off her feet.

Yes, I know that Californians can be wimpy about the weather, and that those of you who live elsewhere with "real weather" scoff at us, but this was a pretty extreme storm. The last storm that I can remember of this magnitude was when I was a kid visiting relatives in Houston and catching the edge of a hurricane. My one memory of that storm was literally hiding under a couch and hearing the wind pick up the potted plants and blowing them across the patio.

There is knitting involved in this tale!
After carefully driving to the fencing club with the Dork last evening, and seeing the southbound freeway traffic backed up during rush hour (3 lanes closed for emergency freeway sinkhole repair), I elected to just stay at the club. After finishing some grading, watching a few teenage boys try to play ping-pong with hard candy (the last ball was broken), I knit for about 2 hours on the left front of my Twist. I'm almost to the bind-off for the underarm. It's still a very addicting project! Hopefully, I'll finish the front by the end of the weekend.


Today - blood donation (finally, I've had to postpone 3 times), tow truck is picking up my old car (I'll miss it, but moving it out to the street last night made me realize how bad the engine had gotten), and go to the hardware store for fencing blade covers (3/4" PVC pipe).

Drive-by post

Merry Yule, Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas (and a belated Happy Chanukah) to all my friends!

Even though there has been a lot of knitting during this holiday season, very little is meant to be gifted during the holidays, which took some pressure off me. I finished the Natalya wristers, except for weaving in the ends (made from Cascade 220 superwash on size 7 needles, but knit only 3 inches before the thumb gusset) and started on Dashing. Did all 3 cable rows and realized it was going to be too tight, so that was ripped and restarted in the larger size. Going to try for a scarf out of Charcoal Cascade 220 superwash soon. Oh, and I really want to get back to my Twist! Pictures soon, I promise!

This is a drive-by post because we need to leave for Orange County soon, but I think we're going to hit traffic in the LA area at this point. Typical trip down to visit the parents: straight down Hwy. 101, stopping in Santa Barbara for either Mexican or Cajun food. Quick stop at my in-laws' place in Buena Park, then another 1/2 hour to my parents in Lake Forest.

Back Wednesday!

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Whoops! I actually forgot to post this before we left! Have safely arrived in Orange County after a fantastic cajun meal at The Palace Grill in Santa Barbara. Jambalaya, yum!

Busy December

It's been a pretty crazy couple of weeks around the Purple Castle. Teaching children anything between Thanksgiving and Christmas is impossible. The Hubby is sick (sinus infection), which sets off his asthma and coughing. Dork Boy is ignoring huge hints to get off the computer and go to bed...what else is new!?

We made a last minute decision to take The Dork to a Junior Olympics qualifying event up in San Francisco last weekend. I guess it helps if you check your spam email folder once in a while, because I missed an email from his coach notifying anyone who was interested. Anyway, he didn't expect to qualify, but thought it would be nice if he did (and a trip to North Carolina for JOs in Feb.). He placed 8th out of 10 epee fencers, and had some very good bouts. He almost won his 2nd direct elimination bout, except that time ran out. That one was against the young man who was seeded 2nd after the pool rounds and who ended up with the silver medal (and IS going to NC). The kid with the orange shoes on the right is mine. Some parents I talked to were very complimentary about The Dork's fencing style. We were going to go back for the foil competition, but when he woke up, he said that he was very tired and that he wouldn't do very well. No problem - there's always next year.

On the knitting front, Nathania had a baby shower on last Thursday, and I really wanted to make Baby Boo something special. Let's just say that baby stuff and I weren't getting along. I cast on 3 different projects, and none of them cooperated with me. 2 baby hats, one with extremely unattractive pooling, and one was cute until I started the patterning on it. One baby sweater - wrong size, not even close! So, Baby Boo received lots of books from me instead!

Of course I took my projects to the fencing competition, and was >thiiiis close< to binding off the back of Twist when I realized that my pattern was missing because I had left it at Purlescence. Oops. Got it back, but still haven't worked on it since then because I decided that the fencing club is so cold that the coaches and office manager need fingerless gloves (by Friday) and that my hair stylist needed a scarf. So much for "not knitting anything for Christmas!

I'm partway through turning the heel on the 1st Midsummer Night sock for The Hubby. Purlescence received the Raven collection from Blue Moon, and The Dork is getting socks from the Korppi colorway.

I decided that I needed to clean off the couch of accumulated yarn, which led to stash reorganization and major purging. There are 4 large bags of yarn that are heading out to Goodwill in the morning. I'm not offering it up to any of you, because most of it is cheap acrylic that was my preferred yarn for baby blankets several years ago. However, I've found different sources for wonderful baby blanket yarn - trust me, you don't want this old stuff. 4 miles worth of old yarn -- gone! Feels good to reclaim some space in my yarn bins for stuff that I still want to use, instead of having it all over the couch.

What's next this vacation? Cleaning the bathroom so the plumber that's coming tomorrow to fix a shower leak won't think I'm a horrible housekeeper. Okay, never mind the rest of the house he has to go through to get there...

Hitting my head against the wall

Okay, I am such a doofus!

Turns out I have 8 skeins of the Classy , not 6 as previously stated. More than enough for Twist. Which is good because my row gauge is also way smaller than the pattern gauge!

But in looking closer at the stash, I still spend a lot of time trying to match up patterns with existing yarn. When it doesn't work the way I want (not enough yardage, can't get gauge...) then I often buy more. No wonder the stash has grown to the proportions that it has!

California Thanksgiving:


Followed by a 2 hour nap!

Pattern search continued...

Emy said in yesterday's comments:
"Pattern: Go to the Patterns tab, and under that search box, click "try the pattern browser". On that page, you can narrow down all of the patterns within Ravelry by a couple of things, including weights and categories (blanket, pullovers, shawl/wrap, etc.). You can also click multiple items in each section - lace AND DK weight, baby AND blanket, etc.)"

Thanks - that's a partial answer to what I want, and I spent some time looking through what other people have done. I think what I'd love to find is a database where you could input the gauge you're getting from your yarn & needles AND how much yarn you have (and the size you want to make) to narrow down your choices.

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Example: I have 6 hanks of the Classy (1500 yards). Ballband gauge is 4.5-5 st/in. I like the fabric at 5-5.5 st/in (size 8 & 7s, respectively) I don't like it at 4.5 (size 9)- waaay too floppy for me.

I thought that Twist would look really good in the Classy. And I have enough for what the pattern calls for in my size, 1430 yards (with collar) However, my inability to get gauge (4.75) is driving me nuts. If I make the next larger size with my slightly smaller gauge, MATH says that I ought to be in my target size. HOWEVER, it will require more yarn (1650 yards) and that I don't have!

I do know that I'll save some yarn by virtue of the fact that I'm short and have short arms, and will adjust accordingly, but will it be enough? Should I chance it only to discover I need more than a few extra yards?

**********

Then, I contemplated my stash database, which I could sort by total yardage, and in looking over my choices that have enough yardage, I realize that only 2 are worsted weight, and neither are suitable for this pattern. I guess that's what I get for buying yarn first and trying to match it to a pattern later!

Yes, I'll be at Purlescence Yarns' Pajama jammie jam sale tomorrow, but I don't want to add too much to the stash, especially not a full sweaters' worth.

Other updates:
The Dork has new shoes, found at Nordstrom Rack, similar to these these . They're flat and flexible and he liked the fit, so I bought 2 pairs.

New dishwasher is on it's way and will be delivered tomorrow! The sales clerk at Western Appliance said that the day before a major food holiday is when they get the people with unrealistic expectations. "Could you deliver and hook up my new gas stove on Thanksgiving so I can cook?" That wasn't me!

While I was shopping for the dishwasher, The Hubby ran the heater and only set the alarm off once. This morning, it was 64 degrees when I got up, and I'm not wrapped in multiple layers. Thanks sweetie!

Off to make cranberry sauce and prep the other stuff for the yummy feast tonight. Happy Turkey Day to everyone!