Knitting kangaroos!

Okay, this is just so darn cute!

And now, back to the Moguls scarf. And Nature Cardigan Redux.

Terror and Joy

Terror: Must knit, knit, knit, knit, knit...until my fingers fall off or Xmas arrives, whatever happens first.

Have to finish the Moguls scarf for my 6' tall nephew, and the Nature Cotton cardigan for my great-nephew. The Moguls design calls for 360 sts/row @ 6 rows/stripe & 12 stripes. My mind balks at doing the math, even allowing for my arbitrary truncation to 310 sts/row (62" vs. 72" is perfectly acceptable in my mind).

So I am trying to turn this
into a completed version of this:
which right now does look rather like a demented, mutant ruffle, but holds the promise of actually being kinda cool, and semi-reversible. It is, sadly, a wee bit too unwieldy (as well as heavy) to wrangle during a morning subway commute. Thank GAWD that my office will be closing early this Friday. 8-1/2 stripes down, 3-1/2 left to go. Ack.

Oh yeah, Plymouth Encore Worsted on 9s.

And I am working on a variation of a previous Nature Cotton cardigan
I made for a friend's baby (still in use! yes!!) and adapting it for my great-nephew. Considering the gauge, it is just whipping along. I started this week, and have so far finished both front panels, and 1-1/2 sleeves.

Joy: Blogger is finally out of beta and now works in Firefox!

Detour in Yarntopia

From the stash:
2 lovely skeins of Lamb's Pride Worsted in Old Sage

Proposed project:
Double-knitted Xmas scarf for my nephew using a Knitpicks pattern from their aptly named Gift List Scarves booklet of 15 free designs, specifically, the Moguls Scarf

Verdict:
He would prefer another color. Oy.

Alternatives:
Well, I have lots of nice navy blue Puno alpaca from the Riot but nothing appropriate in the same gauge (20 sts) for the contrasting color. Also from the Riot, a bag of beautiful burgundy Reynolds Lopi (14 sts) but with the same problem re: contrasting color. Or...(whatever it is, see: lack of contrasting yarn, above)

And people wonder why I still wind up buying more yarn despite my insanely large stash.

To the left,
I have just 4 words to describe my fiendish plot for a friend:
Cincinnati Bengals jester hat!

To the right:
my completed Xmas scarf for my niece Kim being blocked, which used Rowan Polar in Silver Lining on 15s (hey, I knit really tight, okay?) Selected from my stash! hooray! and approved by Kim! Double yay!

Rudy & friends

They did it again!! The Bears took the Rams' kick return (did I use the correct term?) and scored a TOUCHDOWN! What the...?!? And apparently the defensemen have all left for the evening, as there is still 4:41 left in the 4th quarter and the score is 42 - 27. What the...?! It's almost like the scores for some Knicks games!


Coincidentally, I seem to have made football food for our Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer viewing. (Yes, Rudy & Herbie & Santa -- no, not Rudy the Sean Astin football movie.) Hmmmm...

Thanks to one of Paula Deen's sons, we had bacon-wrapped breadsticks dredged in parmesan (right) where the breadsticks did a fine, fine job of soaking up essence de oink-oink, and the ever-classic pig(let)s in blankets (above, top/left), rounded out with chicken wings a la Good Season (a last minute, panic-stricken inspiration when Fresh Direct forgot to pack the marinade). I also made apple cider and Alton Brown's recipe for fresh eggnog, and miraculously managed not to give anyone food poisoning (raw eggs, pork, chicken...so many ways to Go Wrong, bacteriologically speaking).

We rounded our evening of heckling (Santa and Donner are jerks! which won't stop me from watching again next year) and gawking (does Frosty need special ed or what?) with a "very special visit" to the world of the Star Wars Holiday Special. Oh. My. God. It does not improve upon repeat viewing. My friend Sam brought it and he and another friend were both curious so the rest of us humored them.

As my discerning sweetie said, "Even when I was 5, I knew it was a piece of crap." It's so bad that even George Lucas wants to hide it under a rock, though I do admire an IMDBer's exhortation to "in the name of all that is holy please watch this pile of crap!" My advice, however, is to watch it only in the company of like-minded friends and with large quantities of alcohol (or knitting) to deaden the pain.

I choose to believe that my laptop exerted executive privilege when it refused to play the rest of the movie after an hour...which felt like 8 hours...but was actually about 37 minutes before it ended, according to IMDB. So although we got to watch the oddly pornographic wookie dream sequence (eeeeeeewwww...) with Diahann Carroll, we did not make it to the bit where Carrie FIsher sings some Life Day ditty.

Sam, however, owes my boyfriend BIG TIME, as watching the whole thing (again) was like fingernails on a chalkboard for him. So Sam -- who does not follow football at all -- will find that he will be watching the Super Bowl with us. Heh!

A lid, a li-wu, and a lotta fluffy yarn

So I unadopted and rolled back to Firefox 1.5.0.8 but it doesn't seem to have made a difference: I still can't log in to Blogger Beta. Dammit. I am stuck with Internet Exploder 6.0 apparently. Grrrr....

On the bright side, I...um...went back to the Yarn Riot and bought some more of that nice rose-colored Wool-ease (in case I had the urge to double the yarn, that would only bring the ENTIRE cost of the sweater up to a whopping $32), and another bag of the turquoise-multi Bernat Sox (Hippi Hot, $10 for 10 sk) for my mom, as she has been eyeing my Cervinia Calzetteria from last year's Riot, and I know I will not be wanting to give up MY bag of Sox.
Believe it or not, I did actually manage to finish a project in the midst of this orgy of yarn buying. What my sweetie jokingly calls a lid -- finished in the nick of time, considering the beginning of true winter weather is about to make itself felt -- is made from a ball of Lion Brand Wool-ease Thick & Quick which I unwisely bought years ago. You can't really see the seed stitch around the brim, even if you click to enlarge the pic, and you will mercifully probably never see the pompom I was contemplating adding from the scrap yarn.
I had also made about a foot of progress on my niece's Xmas present, using the Berroco Air, Caribbean Scarf pattern, when I decided I didn't like the pattern...(You can swatch for gauge, but not for design, and if unless someone else can think of a way to do THAT, I'd love to hear it.)
So I ripped out the entire thing (ribbit...) and instead replaced it with a design of my own combining seed stitch and and "relief" pattern of a diamond. (Click on the photo to see an enormous enlargement...) You do not want to KNOW how many times I ripped this scarf out before I gave up and stuck with this pattern on the right.

Oh, and "liwu" means gift in Mandarin Chinese.

RIP, P and S

Well, 'tis a sad, sad day, but after years of ominous mutterings, P-and-S Yarns is finally closing. Their building has been sold, and their mailing was a bit ambiguous in terms of possible relocation, but considering the price of Manhattan real estate, I'm dubious.

My co-worker went Thursday night, the first night of the customer liquidation "pre-sale" and reported that it was INSANELY crowded. You would have thought it was a free toilet paper giveaway in the Soviet Union. All that craziness for (drumroll, please) 10% off. Sheesh. Glad I missed it.

Considering today's yucky weather and the lame discount, my mom and I decided to skip it. I am tempted, however, (assuming my neck isn't doing a pretzel imitation) to lure my mom to the last day of Smiley's Yarn Riot on Saturday. Even SHE admitted 10 balls of superwash for $10 was a deal.

In the meantime, I am severely peeved at Blogger Beta, since they seem to have killed off the option to FORMAT my postings in IE and Firefox still gives a 502 error (which they acknowledge on their homepage -- yes, the problem is THAT bad). In addition, now I cannot use ampersands (WTF?!) in my posts. There's supposed to be a scheduled outage Saturday which will theoretically fix the 502 error. We'll see.

And now, to soothe myself, I think I will go start on my niece's Xmas present (the now sadly discontinued Rowan Polar in 646:Silver Lining, knitted up in Berroco's Caribbean Scarf pattern). I'd started it last night at my mom's but ripped it all out as we decided that I needed to use 15s (!) instead of 13s. Their pattern calls for using 2 contrasting colors, but I don't see why I can't use a single color instead. (Oooooh...I used a double negative, a grammatical no-no I still remember being scolded for in the third grade. Oh well.)

Yarn Riot!

Yes, it's THAT time: Smiley's Annual Yarn Riot! Oh, the temptation...where's Robot when I'm REALLY in danger?? The prices really are INSANE, as Crazy Eddie used to say. Words fail me in trying to describe the delirium that seizes determined knitters upon seeing an entire hotel ballroom of massively discounted yarn. Luckily, other people are not at such a loss as I: I came across SistahCraft's blog describing this year's craziness, and her experience(s) last year

Although I lured a coworker and 2 friends to the riot, we miraculously each escaped without breaking into the triple digits. In fact, with the kind help of my friend Marci, I even managed to resist some incredibly gorgeous hand-dyed wool...

You can't really see it in my photo, but the orange/pink/purple tints of Filatura Lanarota Luxury Hand Dyed Wool's Tropical Heat are delicious and best seen on the Smiley's Yarns site.

Marci succumbed to a bag of the turquoise and I bought an assortment consisting of Lion Brand Wool-Ease (sweater for Mother's Day), 2 bags of Bernat Sox (sweaters for baby great-nephew and actual potential adult socks), Lion Fun Fur (scarf for friend who was eyeing similar items at Yarntopia), another Knit-Chek, and several $4 Susan Bates circulars (which feel like the more expensive Inox).

Better living through modern chemistry

I just LOVE the miracle of modern medicine! Thanks to a quick late afternoon trip to my doctor (he squeezed me in @ 3:45...oh joy) and a not so quick trip to Duane Reade afterward (do they have the slowest staff in the city or what?) I am moderately pain free courtesy of the wonders of Methocarbam and good old ibuprofen.

Of course, this might have made me a little overambitious, but I started working on a Lion Wool-ease Thick & Quick seed stitch brim hat for myself...which will require some judicious plucking afterward (what is UP with the weird shreds of sawdust in the brown wool?? just because it's a color called Wood, doesn't mean it has to HAVE it!) which I have adapted from the Lion Brand Just Hats book (thanks LQ!)

Okay, my left shoulder is starting to cramp, so I think it is time to knock it off for the night.

A Pain in the Neck

I fear that all of my diligent knitting has literally caused me to have a pain in the neck. Either that, or falling asleep on my couch in weird positions has finally caught up with me. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. OW!

Not even some Vicodin leftover from an emergency room visit this year seems to help. And I invariably wake up 4-6 hours after downing whatever painkillers I can grab, writhing in agony...migraine, neck cramps, etc.

And unlike most muscle aches, this has not gotten better after a few days. In fact, it has gotten worse. So I took today off work and will be going to see my doctor this afternoon. Hopefully, he can give me some relief. Or something. The ER is not somewhere I want to revisit.

The single upside to being unable to sleep from the pain was seeing this sunrise this morning, which was quite pretty. Something to console myself with, after being awake since 5ish.

Danger, Will Robinson!

So...ummm...as my friend Jane said upon seeing my stash, "You never need to buy yarn again!" She is: So Wrong. She is also not a knitter. Ahem.

This is after I dragged her, oh so "unwillingly" (er, did I forget to mention that she crochets?) to the new yarn store in my nabe, Yarntopia, which just opened on Black Friday. They don't seem to have a website yet, but the local BID has published their store hours, and The New York Observer's real estate column wrote a piece on them too, complete with photo.

Their selection (which is still being unpacked, I think) seems pretty reasonable and not weighted toward insanely expensive stuff (hello? would I be living in this neighborhood if I could afford $36 hanks of yarn?) as evidenced by their selection of Lamb's Pride for one thing.

Just what I need: a nice LYS a mere 4 blocks from home. (Cue visions of Robot from Lost in Space, shrieking "Danger! Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!")

Firefox 2.0 failure...alas

Warning!

Beta Blogger (ggrrrr......) seems to not display ANY images from my blog when I look at it in Firefox 2.0, and if I click on the links that would normally take me to the image, I get a 404 error. ARGH!

However, much as I hate to say it, the page works (mostly) properly in IE 6.0....except for some alignment issues.

Sigh.

Distractions

In the opposite of spring fever, I tend to get distracted by the view outside my window during autumn foliage season. While the first new shoots of spring are welcome after a long grey winter, to me the fall foliage is much more interesting visually.




And it's a good thing I took those photos last weekend, since the trees are now considerably more naked. Instead, the cloudscapes now pique my interest. (Yes, I have been accused of being an ADD knitter.)


And of course, a large gaggle of us went to see to the James Bond movie, Casino Royale, on opening night, and it was FANTASTIC! The Times in London had an interesting article comparing box office openings of Bond films adjusted for inflation. (Why do most news articles forget/not think to do that?! Argh.) It's amazing what's possible when you hire actors who can actually ACT. And since Ian Fleming's novels described Bond as someone who looks cold and faintly cruel (someone who you're supposed to believe can actually be a ruthless killer who's not worried about disarranging his coif) I had always thought that Daniel Craig was a believeable choice to play him, unlike everyone besides Sean Connery (of course), and a young (key word: YOUNG) Roger Moore, a la The Saint. And the villain was also darn creepy. Normally, I don't pay to see movies twice in a NYC theater (@ $10.75 a pop, they are usually not good enough to pass muster) but for Casino Royale, I think an exception can be arranged, and I know that my boyfriend and his coworkers are up for it too. Maybe The Ziegfeld Theater next time...

However, believe it or not, I did actually get some knitting in during the week and over the weekend (ah, the joys of football time with my sweetie) so my endless afghan and cacti have been slowly growing, even though each block of the afghan requires 4 strands: 2 chenille, 2 cotton. I find that knitting with only chenille annoys me visually, since the finished result has absolutely no stitch definition. At least with the cotton, spiderweb thin though it is, there's a hint of stitch def. To compensate (well, not really -- but that's my rationalization, and I'm sticking to it) I'm not binding off each edge, as per the traditional log cabin design. I'm merely putting the edge on a holder to await the next round.

Hmmm...now that I see it onscreen, I am a little uncertain about this particular color combo, but it's a little late now. Oh well.

And I stopped at the thumbhole for the 2nd cactus sometime during the Colts - Cowboys game, since I discovered that I had left my pattern at home. Oops.

I just HATE beta software

So okay, since they will be forcing us to move from regular Blogger to the "new and improved" version in a few months anyway, I thought I'd just go ahead and do it now -- stupid, Stupid, STUPID. Now for some reason I can't use Firefox 2.0 and if I had WANTED to use frakkin' Internet Exploder all of the time, I would have done so already! Argh.

(breathing deeply...)

On the bright side, my sweetie and I spent the afternoon watching the Jets sliding around the muddy turf of the Patriots' stadium. (Those boys could be the poster boys for a Tide commercial.) The Jets won, but only after much yelling at the TV from both of us. I'd forgotten how stressful watching sports can be, since I find baseball boring (and therefore don't watch) and watching the Knicks is an exercise in masochism. Sigh.

Anyway, all of that football watching has at least yielded some progress on the chenille afghan which is going to be an extemporaneous variation on the Mason Dixon Moderne pattern, I suspect. The worming will probably drive me NUTS by the time I finish the thing (my friend gets to say "I told you so") but at least the #11 Knitpicks Options needles are making my life easier.

Football angst update: I just watched one of those "I can't make this stuff up" moments where the Bears took the Giants' field goal attempt and ran with it ALL THE WAY FOR A TOUCHDOWN! So instead of narrowing the score by 3, the Giants are now behind by 10! For all I know, they're even further back now, but I chickened out and switched the channel. (Both teams also look remarkably CLEAN, after spending hours watching the Jets-Patriots mudfest.)

On to more cheerful news: I must give a shout out to all of my publishing friends for plumping up my knitting book collection, especially my friend LQ, who just helped me out with 3 new books, and during a very stressful time for her at work too. They are Melissa Leapman's [Cables Untangled], Barbara Albright's [Odd Ball Knitting], and Suss Cousins' [Home Knits]. More detailed info (courtesy of Amazon) is available in my Knitting Library.

I've also managed to add about 4 inches to the 2nd Blue Cactus.

And now, I suppose I should go to bed, as this is a school night, so tomorrow, I go off to earn money for my yarn habit.

Holy tostitos, Batman! (a/k/a My Knitting Library)

So okay, I thought I'd take stock of how many knitting books I had and holy frak! (as they would say on Battlestar Galactica) Jeeeeez...

Despite what the button says, I already own these books, and simply decided to use Amazon's Wish List feature for good instead of evil. (Repeat after me, Peter Parker: "With great power, comes great responsibility...") You can click on the icon above and follow Amazon's link to [Purchased Items] to see the listing, or search on Amazon's wish list registries for Squirrelette's KnittingLibrary.

Bear in mind, this list does not include my various Rowan, Jaeger, Leisure Arts pattern books, yarn samples, hardcopies of downloaded patterns, or any of my umpteen knitting magazines. Sheesh.

I guess this is the logical nexus of obsessive librarian + obsessive knitter (or at least, knitting researcher...my backlog of WIPs and UFOs is shameful).

The Blue Cactus

So okay, I finished one of the wrist warmers for my friend (a process which has made me think of knitting socks with interest instead of DEEP FEAR, incidentally) and it reminds me of nothing so much as a blue cactus, or a speckled turquoise cactus if you're being picky. (It actually looks more normal when it is on someone's hand, natch.) Now I just have to cast on the 2nd one (hopefully avoiding the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome) and tote it around with me on the subway, as it is indeed a nicely portable project, and my commute to/from the office is 30 min.

I have also started a new baby cardie project (yes, I am surrounded by pregnant women) which uses this random hank of Plymouth Fantasy Naturale Multi that I had lying around, along with an oddball of Knitpicks Shine Sport in Violet, and some teal cotton yarn I bought in Shanghai this summer (oh there will be MANY words in a future posting devoted solely to My Adventures in Chinese Yarn Shopping...) which the shopowner indicated should be knitted on the equivalent of #1s or #2s. (I now have the appropriate 14" bamboo dpns for that yarn, also from the same shop. They look like they should be used by a villain in a Rambo movie, or a New Guinean headhunter. Yikes!) The colors actually match more closely than my photo shows. I may have to double the teal in order for it not to look too unequal in gauge. We'll see.

Ribbit...
And finally (sigh) I have massive amounts of frogging in my future, as one of my earliest projects turned out way, Way, WAY, WAY too big (a/k/a why you should check your gauge while knitting -- ack!) and I have finally been able to face the thought of killing all that work. On the bright side, I really love the yarn (Tahki Willow, a cotton/linen blend) and the color. Luckily, (a) I have extra yarn and (b) it's already in garter, so that should give me some extra yardage when I use stockinette in my possible replacement tank top.

[Sidenote: I don't care WHAT Yarndex says about Willow. Tahki seems to indicate that they no longer produce it! Well, at least my first (and only) experience of the "Oh CRAP! I need to buy more of this yarn to finish my (increasingly expensive) garment!" trauma -- resulting in an odyssey across all of the yarn shops of NYC -- has yielded a safety cushion of extra yarn.]

The original intended pattern was from the Spring 2003 issue of Family Circle Easy Knitting (pictured on stick girl with the hat, on the right in the photo) but I may either use the aqua-colored Lapel T-Top from the August 2004 issue of the frequently hideous Knit 'N Style (their current, Dec-06 issue seems to indicate that they are starting to Get A Clue, however) or the Front Slit Yarn Girl Tank from Interweave Knits.

Hmmm...Upon looking at all of these photos, I see that I have a fondness for colors in the jewel tone family. Well hey, at least I'm consistent.

Hiding from Halloween

So tonight, I ran into my sweetie on the subway while transferring @ Columbus Circle on the way home. As with most hardcore NYC commuters, I had mentally locked myself in a bubble while surrounded by gazillions of other New Yorkers, yet somehow I looked up to see my boyfriend sitting in the same subway car. He was very amused (I seem to generate this reaction a lot amongst my friends) and was wondering how long it would take me to notice him.

It was a nice way to start the evening, as he and I had previously agreed to flee the vicinity of his apartment in Greenwich Village. Now while it may sound wildly exciting to live along the route of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade ,in reality, it's frustrating enough to make your head explode: stampede-density spectators, most of whom are drunken non-natives, cops who demand ID to let you onto your own street, and sheer unrelenting noise...are you starting to get the picture? (Yes, I know -- I sound cranky, don't I?)

Anyway, instead, we spent a delightfully quiet evening at my apartment, scrounging up an Atkins-friendly dinner (for him) and anything else appealing (for me), reading (him), watching stuff on my TiVo (both of us: "Cheeeeeeese, Gromit!"), converting an old alumni e-mail account before it evaporated tonight (me), and of course, knitting (um, who do you think?).

Actually, I made some progress on the gargantuan moderne log cabin afghan I foolishly decided to give as a gift. Hooray! I think I will cheat, however, and not bind off every edge, as picking up stitches is not one of my favorite activities.

The brown/burgundy chenille is from Numei.com via eBay, doubled on #11s, with a strand of Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim Aran. The olive-y patch is also chenille from eBay, from that monster batch I posted about previously, doubled, with TWO strands of cotton yarn from School Products.

So okay, I may go crazy with the other blocks and triple the yarn or something, as these are not as thick as the first block. The remaining chunks of burgundy/wine will be combined with Lily Sugar & Cream, as the Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim Aran was merely an oddball I had left over from my apple hat, which had gone to the first child of the friend who received my log cabin blanket for her second child.

Time travel: new, old and unfinished projects

So now that I've started working on the wrist warmers, the idea of socks doesn't fill me with fear the way that it used to. Therefore, I have started to eye the remnants of an unfinished project from my sock class at Downtown Yarns from [an unknown number of] years ago.

These are (still) on the original #4 dpns I bought for the class. Oops.

And yet, I can indeed finish projects (really!) when properly motivated (i.e., black hair in the summer sun = solar heat collector) and so, with some guidance from my friend Jackie, voila! Bucket hat using Reynolds Saucy Sport cotton yarn.

In the meantime, I feel like an afternoon of watching football (Tampa Bay Bucs @ Jets.. no, wait! Giants! I meant Giants! 3 - 17 to the best of my recollection), searching Blogger for info on how to change default font formatting (aaarrrgghh!), and then watching a couple of episodes of the House marathon on USA (thank you TiVo, for letting me skip the commercials), has left my brain fried to a crisp. Gah!

So okay, I am perhaps avoiding the beginning of my new gi-normous afghan using the Mason- Dixon moderne log cabin pattern (which for some unfathomable reason, is currently available as a free pattern on Amazon's website) using my new Knitpicks Options circular needles (#11s w/ a 40" cable -- yum!) and vast quantities of chenille (boo!) I had accumulated from ebay binges.

Ironically, of course, I wound up spending more money in an effort to match the various colorways I had previously bought on ebay, with additional chenille (more ebay, see photo on left) and cotton cones (School Products). I'm nuts. This blanket is going to cost me a fortune.

My rationalization is that it's for a friend, who's at home convalescing from a stroke. And yes, there is a distinct possibility he will finish rehab before I finish the afghan. (Actually, that would be great! I think you know what I mean.)

Here’s an actual finished log cabin baby blanket in garter stitch, using a combination of fluffy Reynolds Cabana and Schulana Supercotton. It’s been shipped off to my friend in Canadia, er, I mean, Canada, where her son is currently drooling all over it. Heh.

My boyfriend (who observes my knitting obsession with amused anthropological interest, and the occasional helpful suggestion) helped me realize that the brown yarn, which otherwise didn’t really fit with the color scheme –- but which was also in the sale room of Seaport Yarn along with the other balls of Reynolds and Schulana –- would work well as a border, especially when one considers sticky/jam-covered little infant fingers.

Woe is me: at a mere 3 blocks from my office, Seaport is my LYS –- I am DOOMED.

Uh oh...(a/k/a they told me so) and..football (!)

So...um, there are 2 particular things which leave me pondering at the moment:

(1) I knew that creating a blog about my knitting would interfere with actual knitting, since I can only do one thing at a time...ack! Must...put...down...laptop!

(2) I succumbed to the brainwashing @ the Internet Librarian Conference and upgraded to the new 2.0 release of Firefox. (I still need to upgrade to XP/IE6.0 SP2 before I can upgrade to IE 7.0...one tech imbroglio at a time.) My boyfriend is amused each time I run into something that doesn't quite work right -- like the lack of a session saver extension for 2.0 -- and wishes me much happiness in my early adoption. Sigh. I might revert back to FF 1.5 since 2.0 still doesn't seem to like forms in webpages. We'll see.

Oh! And FF 2.0 doesn't seem so happy with Blogger either, at the moment. Doh!

Well, in order to at least remedy part of problem #1, I've discovered a great tactic to both (a) get time with my sweetie, and (b) crank out yardage: Sunday football viewing !

He is patiently teaching my the finer points of football strategy (TiVo is great for freeze frame tutorials! heh) since I basically knew only about the 4 downs...he also gave me Watching Football (now only $2.99 on Amazon) by Daryl "Moose" Johnston so I can differentiate between all of the butts, uh..I mean, ends, and backs, and why the refs are so yellow flag happy, etc., etc. Although, like last year, my boyfriend has offered to forgo football on Sundays, I decided to use that time to my advantage (ha! see [a] and [b] above).

Also, reading Michael Lewis' engrossing new book, The Blind Side whetted my appetite, and this from a football ignoramus. Then again, this is the guy who wrote Liar's Poker -- he could probably make paint peeling a gripping read.

It fits!

Eureka! Here is my great-nephew, Thomas, in the sweater I made from Knit Picks Simple Stripes yarn for his baby shower in February. The free pattern on their site was a bit whacked, but I improvised, and it seems to have turned out okay.

I must admit, he is looking cuter as he gets older -- there seems to be someone home, if you know what I mean. Very young babies either (a) look like Yoda, and/or (b) don't really have a lot of personality yet (though they do make cute sighing/baby sounds).

So okay, maybe this might -- just might -- motivate me to work on that Lion Cotton Denim Swirl cardigan. I am guesstimating the cardigan measurements based on the raglan baby cardigan pattern I found on knitty, with the addition on a collar, which the knitty pattern does not have.

I did finish one in peach cotton -- 3 skeins of Bernat Love Bug from my Smiley's Yarn Riot stash -- for a friend who is due next month. (Well... almost: I just have to [ugh] weave in the ends and oh yes, make the ties.) I used the knitty pattern as a basis for reverse engineering the pink Lion Cashmere baby cardigan (Pretty in Pink: pattern # 50678) from their new fall/winter 2006 catalog.

Hmmm...so I see that my laziness in using the camera in my cellphone yields a weird pinkish ring around the edges of all of my photos. Oops.

Sticks on a plane

So okay, on the way out to lovely Monterey for the conference, I must, simply must have a project for what turned out to be a 10 hour trip. And a good thing I was so obsessive too: AA 0003 sat on the runway for 1:45 before even taking off, which meant, of course, that I missed the connecting flight to MRY, thereby leaving me stranded at LAX for 3 hours. And then there was the prop plane to MRY...it was time to bite the bullet and begin to use the dreary Lion Cotton Denim Swirl I bought years ago. (Well hey, I do have a great-nephew now...)

On the bright side, I came up with a new use for those fancy fabric shoe bags from ritzy hotels.

Not surprisingly I got very bored with that project (gee, can you tell that I don't like the yarn?) so on the way back (a mere 6 hour trip) I switched to a different project with some yarn I really DO like.

This is the beginning of a pair of Whistler Wrist Warmers for a perpetually chilly friend, enabled by my day of hookie at Monarch Knitting on Tuesday, where I bought some Inox 2s and another Japanese brand of 2s which I'd never seen before (I had brought dpns with me, but forgot how much I hated using them).

And now, time to go have dinner with my sweetie.

Taking the plunge

Well okay, after various comments by my friends, seeing that said friends (even the non-techie ones) could do it quite easily without the HTML heavy-lifting from days of yore, and -- yes, I must admit -- a week at this year's Internet Librarian Conference I'm finally giving this a whirl.

What the hell I'll talk about, I dunno.

I must admit however, (knitting geek alert!) that I am eager to finally get my FO photos organized into one aesthetically pleasing journal.