square socks

since i haven't had much luck with socks for myself lately, another pair for chuck seemed like a good idea. i grabbed a skein from his sock yarn stash (picked out by himself) and got started without thinking too much about it. after testing a couple needle sizes, i got a larger gauge than usual. that was ok, since the yarn seemed like a thicker sock yarn. it's not a very soft yarn, and the swatch felt extremely sturdy, but that was ok too. a sturdy gauge makes for a long-wearing sock. after passing the heel, there was an alarmingly small knob of yarn left. and it really did feel like it would wear like iron, only not in a pleasant way. to appease my growing suspicions, i looked the yarn up on ravelry, where it was clearly marked as a sport weight yarn. yup.

after i frogged that attempt, i moved up a few more needles sizes and got a fabric that might not scour the bottoms of chuck's feet. the first sock jumped off the needles in less than a week, and the second sock quickly followed suit. the pattern is a simple knit and purl texture, perfect for guy socks. standard vertical ribbing didn't work out with the stitch count, so i knit a few rows of horizontal ribbing as that matched the pattern better. the ribbing really flares out, both pre- and post-blocking.

luckily, there's no evidence of that when the socks are worn.



or maybe they just conform really well to chuck's skinny ankles and large calves...............

WIP wednesday: knitting retreat

last week, in anticipation of our local knitting group's yearly retreat, i indulged in some startitis. after all, who wants to run out of projects at a retreat? and not wanting to neglect knitting content, a WIP wednesday to show off progress seemed just the thing.

veil of isis

previously seen in its pre-blob state, the shawl is slowly but surely globbing along. its main weekly feeding is during church, with some snacks sporadically through the week. perhaps at its next check up, i'll measure the cone and try to estimate how far i've come. it's making steady progress through the Amorphous Blob phase and i'm pleased with its growth.

sauna mat

although the sauna mat has been lurking in the side bar, this is its first public appearance. it's knit with worsted weight cotton held doubled and rag strips knit as yarn for contrast, using size 13/ mm needles, and the log cabin construction in mason-dixon knitting. the actual knitting for this went very quickly. weaving in the rag ends, not so quickly. at the retreat, all the ends were woven in while i was distracted by great conversation. now all i need to do is cut more rag for the crochet border.....

spoked stash hat

one day when i wanted a fast, mindless project i grabbed a skein of swedish acrylic off the shelf, picked a pattern largely at random from a recent interweave knits, and cast on. after making bobbles on the second row, the hat is knit in ribbing for 8 inches. very mindless - a bit too much in fact. and not as fast as i imagined in DK weight yarn. so it got some enforced knitting time at the retreat as well and grew at least an inch.

blackwatch swing socks

i matched up a languishing skein of lorna's laces with the pattern sunday swing socks from knitty and had the cuff and one repeat finished before the retreat. the pattern calls for only 3 repeats length-wise before the heel but since this was a mere 5 inches, i added 2 more repeats for an 8" leg. the heel flap is just about done and i should be turning the heel in a day or so.

skewed space dust socks

a few months ago i was gifted a skein of socks that rock (colorway space dust) by a friend with a large STR collection who knew i'd been wanting to try that yarn out. that's right, this is my first time using socks that rock. all the crazy colors seemed perfect for a fairly plain sock but not wanting another easy project, i picked a pattern with an unusual construction. prior to the retreat, i got as far as swatching. at the retreat, i cast on, knit half a foot, frogged it and knit another half a foot. although the pattern is knit on the bias, it can be tried on as you go and, thus far, has been easy to customize. there is supposedly math involved with the heel, so i will try not to get too confident yet. the yarn is great, and although there are many individual colors that i dislike, they are very cheerful all mashed together.

and that's what i've been working on! the retreat was great - we were in a new location this year (touch of wilderness in healy) and it was very open and welcoming, good food, great atmosphere. i think we'll be back next year. it was one of those rare places whose online photos match the reality. we had some fun classes and just enjoyed sitting around talking about everything you could imagine and probably a little you couldn't. i've said it before, and i'll say it again, i love our knitting group. there's such a variety of personalities that there's never a dull moment. in our white elephant exchange (which is a total misnomer, as every package has desirable items) i acquired a smattering of exotic fibers. BFL, alpaca, silk and qiviut all bundled up in a ravelry project bag.

looks like i may have to get a spindle and see if i can make yarn.

RIP problem children

several projects have been in and out of hibernation for longer than i like to admit. the last month i grabbed the bull by the horns and evaluated each of them, attempted solutions and made a final decision. sadly, many of them jumped in the frog pond.

sunshine socks

after several attempts at making a heel big enough for my feet that didn't stretch the cables beyond recognition, i reported success. that was what the knitting trolls were waiting for. the foot finally fit perfectly - and the leg is way too short. by inches, plural. more than 3.

here compared with a sock in the same yarn, a sock that i tug on all day because it's just a little too short. that pair had an accidental trip through the washer and dryer that i blamed for the shortage. turns out shibui doesn't have the most generous yardage. and it was on the way to being one of my favoritest sock yarns.

sigh.

the sunshine yarn will eventually grow up to be a very plain pair of socks, knit toe up to maximize every inch. and some day when the sting has faded, i'll dig in the stash for some other sock yarn with more yardage for that cabled pattern. because, unbelievably, i still like both of them. they just weren't meant to be together.

gryphon socks

these socks have also gone the way of the dodo. the pattern has an intriguing construction - and a nipple pucker on the heel.

the linen stitch on the sole uses more yarn than a stockinette sole, and despite buying the recommended yarn, there's not much yardage left for the leg......after several incarnations in which the heel never fit quite right, i still got a very short sock. this yarn is in the same boat as the sunshine yarn. it will grow up into a very plain, toe up sock, hopefully with a decent leg length. the pattern will be abandoned to the four winds to survive on its own.

tahoe sweater

this sweater was a fast knit, with a painfully slow finishing process. in the year (exactly! how did i do that?) since completion, i've worn it about 5 times around the house and that's it. it suffers from pattern and user issues, despite its innocent look.

the pattern has a loose and drapey gauge, with swingy sleeves. i measured the schematic against a cotton shirt of the same style, that i like and wear often. lesson: what works in cotton does not necessarily work in yarn. those sleeves were soooo annoying, and got folded over about 4 inches the few times i wore the sweater. i worked the button bands a few times to get the stitches evenly distributed. laying flat, they look fine but once on they pull up like an upside down V. while i like the lilac color of the yarn, it turns out to be a bit hard to match with shirts and would be happier as a pullover.

the yarn itself (elann incense) is wonderful and cozy to wear. it even tolerated ripping better than i expected. due to the gauge, the yardage is less than standard for pullovers in my size. enter the fall edition of interweave knits and the cover sweater, a brioche rib pullover in the exact same colors and matching yardage. once the yarn (and my ego) have rested for a few months, i should have a pullover to show off.

chuck, of course, thinks i'm crazy for ripping anything out, and even more for demolishing a completed sweater. it was a wonderful feeling to accept that those projects weren't working and stop them from smirking at me from the workbasket. now i have yarn for three new projects, free of charge. hopefully they we will be happier in their next incarnations.

chuck ribs and sunshine

i took a break from my complicated, ill-fitting socks and knit some plain old ribbed socks for chuck. they're a simple 3x2 ribbing, with a short row heel. i have to recommend opal for its yardage - it keeps going and going. when i asked chuck how long he wanted the legs, he replied 'as long as you can make them.' groan. the total length is 12 in/30.5 cm from the bottom of the heel and go 2/3 of the way to his knees.

they seemed to fit well, although i noticed after our photo shoot that the heels look a bit loose. there's no way i'm redoing those long legs though. chuck was all smiles once they were on his feet and didn't want to take them off. he sure knows how to make a girl want to knit him more socks.

i recalculated one of my problem socks, the sunshine socks, measuring both stockinette gauge and cable gauge. the first sock is just past the heel as of sunday and really truly fits well. at last.

they will progress more quickly now that they are the main socks on the needles. i love the pattern and the yarn, it's a relief to finally get the fit right.

another work in progress, designed to stave off sweater knitting pangs, is the veil of isis shawl. it's a free ravelry download from bad cat designs, simple with elegant results. after a rough start with picking a gauge (the pattern doesn't specify any gauge) and misreading the chart, the pattern has grown on me and i only look at the chart for transitions. it started out on 4 dpns and grew onto 8,

then transitioned right onto a 40" circular needle, where it will progress through the Amorphous Blob stage before growing up into a lovely square shawl. i've no idea how large it will end up, i'm going to see how far a one pound cone of laceweight takes me.

a flower and some ugly socks

thank you all for the comments - i'm glad you kept me in your feed readers. 2009 was a busy year, just a lot happening, and while i don't think of it as a bad year, i don't think it was a favorite. although the hard bits tend to fall out of memory with time, so maybe i'll just remember it as the year my brother graduated college, i got to know my stepson better, and my frog nephew was born.

one thing i forgot to put in my bullet post was this horrible illness i battled the whole time i worked in delta, for six long months: internet deprivation. oh, it was scary. i couldn't check emails, my feed reader was so full it deleted blog posts unread, and of course, writing my own blog posts was well-nigh impossible. bills did manage to get paid on the weekends, but that was about it. since i stopped working i've been going through a recovery program and am almost back to full internet working speed. i'm only a week behind on reading blogs, so i may even start commenting again! emails will be written! (och du står först på listan Lasse!) it's a beautiful thing.

and most importantly (because there's a good chance of working in delta again this coming summer) i've got something on hand to cure any internet deprivation that may pop up: an iphone. it replaced a phone that was 4 years old and i'm loving it. easy to use and more intuitive than the other touch screens i looked at (the full keyboards didn't appeal to me). my very favoritest thing though, was discovering i could set the whole system to swedish. talk about options. for now, i'll stick to blogging from the computer, but having a backup option feels great.

being home has given me more time to focus on knitting projects, and i'm actually making progress. 2009 did not see the completion of very much, maybe because i worked on a couple sweaters but mostly because there just wasn't that much time for knitting. it feels great to see something grow in weeks rather than months. one project i've been focusing on is a doily pattern turned blanket, from the second book of modern lace knitting. it's called daffodil, and i couldn't resist knitting it in yellow.
the first rows flew by (it's knit from the center out) with all the changes. watching the pattern develop really keeps me knitting, i want to see the next bit take shape. now i'm less than 20 rows from finishing, and each round takes almost an hour. ugh. it's much harder to see progress, but i'm plugging along. the daffodil motif is actually visible now.luckily, the other project i'd been focused on got finished last week! there's almost nothing like the exhilaration of completing a project - except maybe picking what to start next. this project was a pair of socks for chuck. amazingly, i started them way back in december of 2008. i switch off sock projects to keep myself engaged and my gauge constant (if i knit 2 socks in a row, the second is always slightly larger for some reason). the first sock was finished sometime in the spring, i think. then i knit a sock for myself and finally got around to starting the second sock in december - almost a year after starting the first one.the stitch pattern is a herringbone stitch from one of the walker treasuries, done more for my sake than chuck's. he likes his socks pretty plain but i wanted something to make them interesting to knit. the herringbone worked well with the color changes. speaking of color, chuck picked out the yarn (online supersocke) and he's very satisfied with the socks. however, the overall brown tweediness of the yarn with the black and grey stripes is about the ugliest combination i've ever seen, which prompted me to dub them ugly socks. luckily chuck isn't offended by that, and was just happy to see them finished.in the meantime, some malabrigo that i was gifted in my local knitting group's christmas swap was begging to be made into a hat...............

i've been a bad girl

besides the virtual pile of photos and the stories rolling around my head going back to may that i haven't posted yet, i am behind in the public displays of appreciation department as well.

podcasts are still a strange new world to me, fascinating but wildly overpopulated. discovering them rather behind the curve makes navigating through the hordes of knit podcasts to see what i like tricky, and i haven't dared cross the threshold to other topics, like music or books. especially because i want to be able to listen and quiet me-time for that is awful limited. so i haven't gotten very far, to be honest.

with one exception. the most wonderful podcast in existence (i am convinced, despite it being my first and only) is faery knitting by erin. erin reads and discusses a (public domain) faery tale (with voices and clever asides), then talks about yarn and gardening. brilliant! it's a perfect mix, and so fun to be read a story, discuss the background and underlying messages, then hear about planting and knitting and raising alpacas. and to top it off, she has little contests with book, yarn and gardening prizes.

one of which i won, ever so far back now. a little package with pole bean seeds, a book mark and cool chinese print card were waiting for me on my return from our MA trip. yes, in may. i told you i was bad. thanks, erin!

sadly, or perhaps luckily, the seeds did not get planted this year. the very little that did get planted was very late, and due to lack of sun (it's literally been raining for a month straight), hasn't grown much at all. the seeds would have been wasted. they'll spend the winter in the freezer and next year we'll see how they do in an alaskan summer.

roxie, of sanna's bag, recently held a contest for her 600th post. rather than picking one or two winners, she generously picked everyone! almost a week ago now i was the ever-so-proud recipient of a skein of bamboo hand-dyed by Teresa Ruch from the portland handweavers guild.
it's got the loveliest dark blue and purple shades, highlighted by surprising green and magenta streaks. i love it - thanks roxie! now if i only knew what to make with it........

one of chuck's daughters (also in oregon, hmmm) has an etsy shop selling pendants she designs. apparently she's done well enough to be copied now, frustrating as that compliment is. she had promised way back when the gift of whatever pendant caught my eye. finally i looked through and made my choice, which arrived last week, along with an extra ladybug design (for chuck's nickname for me).the pendants were larger than i expected somehow from the etsy pictures (not that this was a problem), and i've got the smallest size. her designs are so simple that they enhance the natural wood of the pendant. the dark woods were really my favorites. thanks val!

while i am publically confessing my failings, i may as well add another. last weekend we went to the tanana valley fair, which after solstice, is practically the highlight of the summer. it is THE thing to go to. why, i'm not sure. back home we had the eastern states exposition, called the big E. that lasts 3 weeks, and you could spend all day there and still come back for more. the tanana fair on the other hand, takes about 2 hours if you walk slow and look at everything twice. my first summer, we'd heard so much hype from locals about it, our expectations were rather high. when i went with some friends from work, we walked through at work-speed and were done in a half hour. then stared at each other, saying, that's it?

now chuck and i go, and take our time. there's a couple food booths we always hit, the fried dough one (called elephant ears here, very appetizing eh?) and the homemade french fries & potato chip booth. there are artists galore up here, photos of mount mckinley and the northern lights being very popular of course, and some of them are very talented. we always walk slowly through their booths, trying not to drool or whip out the credit card. we might not have succeeded at that last one this year.

the really dangerous to me booth this year was a new one, offering hand-dyed and hand-spun yarns, along with stained glass items. oh, and spindles and roving. i held out against the spindles, and the hand-spun and dyed quiviut, but i was no match for two 1/2 pound hanks of hand-dyed merino, one lace weight and the other fingering/sock weight, or the hank of handspun merino dyed that mellow yellow i've been fascinated with lately. chuck was no help at all either - even he knew at $35 a skein it was a good deal and made me buy all three.*sigh* there goes my resolution to only buy yarn as needed. i have no idea at all what i'll do with those. i'm sure i'll figure something out.

and, again with chuck's encouragement, i finally signed up for a sock club. they've always sounded like fun, but seemed very pricy. now, i don't know if the fearless fibers one i signed up for is just a good deal, or if i've been buying more expensive sock yarn, but it seemed very reasonable. maybe it being only three months long helps too. i've been watching anne at knitspot make all kinds of socks and shawls from fearless fiber yarn, and wanted to try them out. here i go! each month's yarn comes with a pattern, and i get to choose the colors i want. so it's not quite as adventurous as most sock clubs, but it'll be a good start for me.

apparently falling off the yarn wagon hits pretty hard. linking photos to this post, i discovered some other recent additions to the stash (we won't talk about any possible internet orders that haven't arrived yet). while waiting for the fair to open, we stopped by a LYS in the neighborhood i'd only been to once. they have a rather random selection of books and yarns, along with spinning and weaving supplies. a skein of bearfoot jumped at me and wouldn't let me leave it. chuck insisted (i suppose we could say he was being a bad boy too?).and we had stopped by the LYS we visit most a couple weeks ago, and grabbed some opal on sale.

how can i explain myself? it calls to me, chuck enables, it comes home. at least we'll never run out of socks - once i make them all. hehe.

among the virtual photo stack are finished knits that i'll save for another day with one exception. in a draft started in the dark before summer, i discovered my finishing up notes on the anastasia socks. the finished photos never were posted for them, so here they are.they're very comfy cozy squishy and soft. the shibui seems to be good yarn, i machine washed and dried them with no ill effects. i'm lucky it's not sold locally or i might have another public confession to make.

livengood to point hope...and back again

livengood is an old mining town just a couple hours north of fairbanks (and not pronounced "livin' good" but liven like "enliven"). i went there in may for almost a week. people still mine there, and we were doing a little survey. the little we found was historic (technically anything over 50 years old is considered historic archaeology) and mining-related: rusted out cans, a metal box rigged up as a stove or refrigerator (it's covered by sod and goes back a couple feet),and a rotting log cabin,but mostly mining ditches that diverted water. some of them still held water.but the very coolest thing we found (people are always asking what THE coolest artifact i've found is - such a difficult question to answer, but easy this time) was a shovel some miner hung up on a birch branch and never came back for.another thing i discovered was a new term - niggerheads. alaska has lots of bogs, and in these boggy areas grow tussocks. basically clumps of grass growing in a kind of mushroom shape above the rest of the ground level. makes for very difficult walking at times, because you don't want to actually walk on them, but between them (where water is usually lurking too). anyway, apparently a common name for them back in the day (and i'm not sure how far back we're talking) was niggerheads. a coworker told me about it while we were hiking through some muskeg, and although i never thought of it before, they could look like dreads. it was funny and appalling at the same time. the term was accepted enough that offical names on US geologic surveys included it, like niggerhead ridge.

this was bad enough to my way of thinking (niggerhead's not exactly a compliment, right?), but after the coworker explains that some politically correct black guy (in the 70s?) got the names changed (and only to blackhead ridge instead, not much of an improvement, i'd rather call it dreadridge), both he and my other coworker express their opinions that they should have stuck to the original niggerhead. um, hello? they said "nigger" wasn't an insult, and referred to mark twain calling huck's slave friend "nigger jim." uh, yeah. i think mark twain was recording southern culture and mocking it, not saying that black people weren't offended by the term. this time i was appalled and not amused. i'd like to see them go shout nigger in the middle of a ghetto and see how many people take kindly to it. there wasn't much i could do but shake my head and let it go.

after a couple projects closer to town, i had a fun adventure 2 weeks ago. i went up to point hope, which is way up north (farthest i've been so far in alaska) and almost in tomorrow.

View Larger Map
(that point farthest south is fairbanks, with livengood just above it. point hope is way out on the edge there, if you zoom in you can see it's just this little spit going off into the ocean.)

i was hoping to somehow (magically) see russia, but the point was fogged in the few days i was there. the point is just a gravel beach built up by the sea over time, and the village moves every 20 years or so.there's not really any soil there. and yet these tiny tundra flowers find niches to grow in, making small clusters barely rising above the ground. i was fascinated by the variety and maxed out the macro function on my camera. most of those came out pretty well. the pebbles in the background of those flowers are maybe half-dollar sized. it's great how nature fits prettiness in wherever it can.

despite being the middle of june, the temps were only in the upper 30s F (2-4 C) and everyone still had their winter coats on. my first glimpse of the arctic ocean (from the ground anyway) looked like this:ice floes that apparently came to town a couple days before i did. they even moved like in the movies, chunks drifting silently in opposite directions on the current swirls. it was mesmerizing, and a bit eerie with only a creak or an occasional drip of the melting ice to break the stillness.

last week we were back in livengood for a dull, and very dusty, survey along one of the wonders of alaska: a gravel highway. the best thing about that trip was being able to stay at the same company camp from before (even though we weren't working for them this time). all the people there are extremely pleasant, and the atmosphere is very positive. plus the cooks are great. the most adventure we had was when we were almost home. we'd just turned off the highway onto farmer's loop in fairbanks, when we heard an odd sound from a rear tire. a sort of rubbing sound - but it couldn't be flat because the truck was still level. that lasted maybe two minutes before the truck suddenly wasn't level anymore. because of this

at least we were back in town. changing a flat on the dalton would not have been fun, what with the gravel and dust and tractor trailers zooming by. well, if you can call an exploded tire a flat. that's what happens when your boss puts an unbalanced camper on the work truck. the tires obviously didn't appreciate it at all.

i worked on a pair of diagonal rib socks for chuck in point hope and the last trip to livengood. the first one was cast on in JFK airport on our way to MA in may. my gauge was a bit tighter than the pattern called for though, and the ribbing was standing out more than the diagonal mock cables, which was not the effect i was going for. so i ended up frogging half a foot, and adding a couple extra stitches to the fake cables. i was much happier with the results. i was working on the heel while waiting for the flight out of point hope, and talking with a couple guys who'd been working there. finally one of them asked if i was making socks for myself (i was impressed he knew what it was, so many people have to ask). after i told him they were for my husband, he said,

"i wish my wife would knit me some socks"

that gave me a nice warm glow. the first sock was finished sunday, and as soon as i cast off and chuck tried it on, he said "i need another one."

sigh. there is no rest for the weary. but rather than leaving (again) this week, i have a reprieve and can actually go to knit night! and do some laundry, and buy some groceries maybe. but probably (still) not bother with the cobwebs.

reflections on the black hole that was february

today's temperature of 40F was a pleasant reflection of the -40F weather we had about a month ago. comparison does make all the difference - those 80 degrees makes +40F feel like short weather.

february was a long, busy, boring month that somehow went by really fast in retrospect. i stayed home a couple days when the temp hit -47F (it sounds impressive but after -20F you can't feel the changes in the cold except by noticing how fast you lose feeling in the extremities), and even got a bunch of knitting in and took pictures of it.

although somehow actually getting the pictures up never happened. *sigh*

remember the 3F shawl? that i ran out of yarn on? at the end of 3 skeins it was still just an inch or two shy of elbow length. arg. and then i went for more yarn, and they actually were sold out of that color. is that allowed? so they put it on order for me. the break was probably a good thing, cuz the shawl and me were getting tired of each other.

while i was at the store, i wandered around a bit (of course). the owner must have had an epiphany because there was all kinds of new yarns in there. louet gems, koigu, noro, more solid color sock yarn (yay!), and mirasol, the very yarn i was drooling over in anchorage a while ago. there's a hat i've been wanting to make, and chuck said i could get some mirasol sulka for it. so i was just waiting and waiting for that baby ull to come in. which it did last week.and that's the hat yarn. black, with some blue highlights, and super soft. hopefully it doesn't pill awfully. amazingly enough, the baby ull colors are a perfect match again. i can't believe i'm on my third dye lot and there's no color change line in the shawl. although i didn't actually start working on the shawl again yet, so i might still be surprised. but so far i've got to say that baby ull is the yarn to run out of.

some other things have been distracting me. lots of frogging, a couple (relatively) quick projects, and life.

i frogged the anastacia sock i had started. then the wound was too fresh to cast on right away, so i started an irish moss sleeve instead. sleeve rows go way faster than front and back rows. although i haven't worked on it for a couple weeks now, so who knows if chuck's sweater will be done before the snow melts. luckily here i've still got till april. maybe may.

the half clessidra i had got frogged too. the pattern got too fiddly with the yarn i substituted, but i will try again sometime with normal sock yarn (and thus no fiddliness). and i've been pondering the silk cami tent i made last summer with knitpicks shine. . . . .lovely yarn, nice drape. . . .i think it would make awesome curtains :)

there's a candlelight lace pattern in barbara walker i've been wanting to try, which would be a good match with the yarn for our bedroom windows. i'm not totally decided yet, but chuck won't let us go curtainless in the bedroom cuz he can't sleep in the summer for the light. but all we've got are the super-fugly 70s curtains we inherited with the house. if i gotta have curtains, i might as well have fun with it.

one of the life distractions was the yearly Air Force awards dinner, a banker affair. i don't mind the banker affairs so much except for dressing up. but even with a skirt on i was underdressed there - the people not in uniform were decked out in prom dresses. so everyone's all fancy fancy, and then they start calling out the award winners.

suddenly i was re-living a high school assembly. the cheers were an odd contrast to the otherwise high tone of the evening. my very favorite moment was when both of the two MCs used the phrase "best of the best." MIB anyone? i would have laughed out loud except everyone was so serious so serious for that part. i love how will smith mocks the military guy at the beginning of men in black, i would watch the whole movie just for that one scene.

speaking of watching movies for one little thing, we went and watched national treasure 2 just so i could see riley. darned if i know the actor-dude's name, but i love his character. he makes watching nicolas cage bearable. he's smart, hot, and funny - if i wasn't married to chuck i'd go hunt him down and marry him. just like that. seriously.

and (spoiler) why oh why did they have mayan gold in the dakotas? the mayans didn't even get into texas. my archaeology self wouldn't let me enjoy the end of the movie with the ridiculous hordes of clearly mayan artifacts thousands of miles away from their natural habitat. at least in the first national treasure they explained how the templar treasure made its way to america. ajajaj. it was too implausible, even for the movies. lesson: you just can't trust hollywood.

between work (very busy and very dull, but still not as bad as subbing) and life i really haven't got much knitting time in. it's a horrible bummer, my fingers itch to do it and it just seems wrong not to knit in the dead of winter (february always feels like the dead of winter). while i added an inch here and an inch there, i was dreaming of the next project. awful, isn't it?

tahoe is already up next for sweater project, once chuck's sweater is done (and i finish that turtleneck, but i always manage to gloss over that bit when i dream). my delaying strategy is wearing thin though. the yarn is all picked out for it, the persian violet incense at elann.com. i was waiting for the checkbook to say i could buy it, but chuck got our tax return done already, so the checkbook's given the go-ahead. i'm trying to hold off, cuz once the yarn is in the house it'll be much harder to resisit casting on. if all my knit thoughts added inches, all sorts of things would be done already.

one project that's made it through the black knitting hole of february was the dark mark scarf for sara (the second project is blocking as we speak). it's been so long since i made a scarf, i forgot how fast they go.first time illusion knitting, and i love it. way easy, even with following charts, and i love seeing the pattern emerge. i almost wish i wore scarves, i'd keep this one for myself. but sara will give it more love than me, so it'll be heading off to her this week. the back is almost as cool as the fronti (accidentally) knit an extra inch between charts, and left off the fringe, with very little yarn left over. the pattern almost exactly uses both skeins, especially if you have fringe, and still makes a decent length scarf.doesn't chuck look cute in it? i call that his scary joker face.

and as long as we're on harry potter topics, if you're not sure which camp to join, why not this one?not sure if it's pointed at a specific candidate, but it made me laugh. why can't i ever find the stores that are selling these things???

helpful hint

don't measure your gauge in dim-lit air force hotels. you might measure 9 stitches per inch and not realize till after you've knit the heel on your toe up sock and tried it on, that hmmm, the sock is a bit large, and after re-measuring in your well-lit living room discover you're actually knitting 8 stitches per inch. which means you didn't have to muck about with the pattern either.

arg.

of course the genius of toe-up socks is supposed to be that you can try them on as you go, but i can't really tell if the foot fits proper until after the heel myself. unfortunately.

ribbit ribbit.

vacation crumbs

the candy bar's all gone, but there's still some crumbs left. small crumbs. honest.

our last full day in MA, we squeezed in a yarn store trip. finally. my idea of vacation is finding yarn shops and checking them out. unfortunately, that's not chuck's idea of vacation. after possibly some pouting on my part, we went to webs. chuck was suitably impressed by the size of the store - until a worker reminded us to "not forget the warehouse."

chuck's jaw might have dropped. he might have broken out into a sweat, thinking of how the checkbook would yell at us if he let me loose in a yarn warehouse. then again, maybe not, since he practically forced me to pick some yarn before leaving the store. seriously, he gets this "you will buy something for yourself while we are here" glare in his eye. he spoils me rotten.

we ended up with sock yarn for me (left), and some for chuck (right). they had all kinds of luscious yarns, but alas, i'm the kind of girl that forgets to bring all the details for the sweater(s) i want to make. and doesn't dare guess on the quantity, cuz i just know i'll run out. *sigh* we got some yarn for sara's dark mark scarf though,

that i'll be making her for christmas. after the fact, obviously. notice that i actually got the yarn specified in the pattern, please. aren't i a good girl?

since i finished up the christmas knitting, i've been swamped with ideas mulitplying faster than rabbits - and definitely faster then i can knit them. i don't really do new year's resolutions, since i make goals as i trash achieve them, but finishing up a bunch of projects around the same time made me kind of reflective.

i've really got the sweater bug. socks are good (portable, fast, mostly mindless and inexpensive) but i'm just itching to make sweaters. my normal knitting habit is to have a couple smaller projects, and one large (ie sweater-like) project going at the same time. in an attempt to quell the sweater bug yet not freak out the checkbook (it's kind of touchy this time of year), i came up with a plan. simple, brilliant, time tested. rather than splurging on 1-2 skeins (usually sock yarn) cuz i feel like i can afford it, save up for the sweater yarn. and knit from the sock yarn stash (since i won't be splurging on the sock yarn).

my stash is not very big at all - it covers maybe two bookshelves - but it's starting to bother me in the anal organizational sort of way. it just sits there. that we cannot have. some of it is sock yarn, which will obviously become socks, but there's a couple skeins of random yarn. i'm sure i had something in mind when i purchased it, but it's long gone now. so i've got to figure out some small projects to use them up. which is not the easiest thing in the world when all i hear is sweaters calling my name.

along those lines, temptations like ravelry and knitty have been luring me with loads of free patterns to neglect the knitting books that i actually have. in my ravelry library, where you can see what books you've used, i think i've only used 2 books that i own. gulp. why am i ignoring them? so i'd like to knit at least one thing from each book i own. to justify buying them and all.

that was as far as my reflections took me. simple plan: knit from stash, knit from books, only buy sweater yarn. it sounds good, don't you think? i hope it works.

in the meantime, i'm working on what's on the needles already. mostly. the priority list keeps playing musical chairs. the FFF shawl should have been done weeks ago, so that's at the top. i may have only half a skein left to knit. if it behaves itself. once that's done, i'll start sara's dark mark. last sunday i cast on a pair of socks,anastacia, in the lovely new yarn from webs. it looks a bit dark here, but that's what it looks like in real life too.

my plan is already set in motion, using a pattern booklet i bought last year (reynolds #82390), with some stash yarn (knitpicks telemark), and a 3mm needle (i figured with the rest of the details i might as well throw in the needle and look like i know what i'm talking about), i cast on for thisnot the actual hat, since hats are too hot, but a headband, cuz my ears still freeze, using the main snowflake pattern from the brim. i figured it was just wide enough. and small enough to try out color stranding - and use up some of those random stash skeins. you know what? it's not so bad. i did knit a couple rows before remembering i could use one color per hand. duh. when i sneak in a row or two, i even like it. who knew?

and the project left without a seat is: chuck's sweater. all i need to do is make some sleeves, but this FFF(ing) shawl past its deadline is pushing it out of the lineup. not to mention the other projects pushed on the backburner for When I Have More Time To Think About Them - and really, when will that be? they're part of the plan too, finish finish finish. so they won't be hanging around, clogging up my sidebar, and besides, i get more knitwar points if i finish them too.

that wasn't too bad for finishing up the last morsels from vacation, now was it?

except for two, itty bitty more things.

i had brought a couple recipes with me to my mom's, just in case i was asked to cook. and i really noticed for the first time that some foods chuck and i eat regularly, my family had never eaten. like jambalya (which adam made very well) and anything curry.

i had a leftover food dream from my mission in sweden that i finally fulfilled - banana curry pizza. sounds really gross, but it's sooooo good. mostly going off memory, i took a basic curry sauce recipe, threw in mushrooms, chicken, and banana and put it on a pizza crust. there was only one hitch: i forgot i was using my mother's measuring cups, which are english. while the recipe was metric. oops. no wonder the sauce was more watery than normal. but still good. my mom even liked it.

and, last of all, next time i buy a house, i'm buying one with stairs. my mom had us in the attic room, so we were up and down 2 flights of stairs all day. oj. my thighs may have been feeling it for the first couple days.