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.

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.

2010 in review

looking back, i am impressed with myself. i thought i only posted once last year, but there's 3 whole posts up! 2010 was similar to 2009 in many ways, which is why we have a huge round up post rather than shorter, more regular posts. so, the last year in review, if not in chronological order:

• in the spring, chuck changed jobs, then got fired, and now drives a school bus. that was a whole mixed bag. he was looking for less work stress, which he now has. he's also been wanting to get out of banking, which he has. the initial job switch let us use part of chuck's retirement to pay off a huge debt (with one tiny click. i savored that moment). we're now down to almost a third of the debt chuck had when we got married. not having that $900 monthly payment and several small miracles helped us through the 3 months of unemployment before the bus job and makes it easier to live on the lower income.

• archy work was very short this year, a measly 3 months. i worked in delta again, with all the fun side effects of living in two places that i noted last year. the work and crew were great though. site monitering is where it's at. you hike out to a known site, relocate surface artifacts, make sure the military hasn't blown a hole in anything, take some pictures and notes, then repeat. i loved it. still wish there was a good option for winter archaeological work up here........

• about the same time chuck started driving buses, i started working part time at a yarn store. work has tapered off, so i ought to look for something else, but it's been tons of fun helping people with their knitting and picking out yarn.

• i played more with homemade stuff. we haven't really bought bread since 09, and i've made my own tortillas and english muffins besides sandwich, french and flat breads. our garden gave us lots of potatoes that we're still eating, along with squash. everything else we ate as it ripened. i wish we could grow enough tomatoes to put up. we gathered blueberries, most of which we froze, and lingon (lowbush cranberries), that were turned into cranberry sauce. i also made spruce tip jelly, which has an interesting spicy sweet flavor. next year i want to try rose petal jelly from all the prickly rose in the yard. Homemade mustard and barbecue sauce are in the fridge, along with homegrown (homelaid?) eggs, some of them blue. chuck raised broiler chickens again, so we haven't bought chicken for 2 years. he also raised a turkey that grew to 25 pounds and barely fit in our tiny oven on thanksgiving, and we have 6 laying hens. they average 4-5 eggs daily, more than we can eat, so we trade them for moose and caribou meat. i even made laundry detergent too! seems we buy less and less at the store. mostly i try stuff out for fun, and because i like knowing how to make my food and what's in it and changing things to suit my taste. none of it took very much time (the jelly was a small batch) and costs very little. i made soft cheese, but for the cost of milk vs the lower cost of cheese and considering the ratio of milk to finished cheese......we will keep buying cheese.

• we bought season tickets for UAF hockey while we had money in the summer, and now the games are like free dates.

• i apparently knit a storm through the year, ending up with more large projects (shawls and sweaters) than before. i also experimented with some new things, knitting with wire and making small toys.
  that doesn't count anything started but not finished of course. i knit more for myself - it makes no sense for me to not have enough socks when i'm the one knitting them. out of 25 finished projects, 11 were for myself, almost half and a definite improvement. mostly i knit from stash, since yarn was not really in our budget this year. sweaters were probably the most satisfying projects while socks were not my friend all. year. long. fitting issues. hopefully to be fixed in 2011.

• the fairbanks knitting group just gets more awesome with time. they're a great mix of people with very different tastes and backgrounds and opinions, yet mostly we manage to encourage each other and have intriguing conversations. if we moved, they would be the people i missed.

• we got lots of yardwork done while we were unemployed together. the raised flower beds i built in 07 have been slowly but steadily eroding and we had started building boxes for them in the spring. we finished those and planted rhubarb, a red currant plant, daffodils, tulips and crocus. ever since living in sweden i've wanted crocus of my own to peep out from the melting snow. we even cleaned out the prickly rose from the raspberry bushes and raked leaves! not all of them, but more than normal. i almost like our yard now.

• my wisdom teeth were pulled dug out in the spring. i was a bit worried, from the horror stories told to my body's high tolerance for medication to getting an IV and being put under for the first time ever. my mouth felt crowded though, and the new teeth were trying to push aside other teeth. so it had to be done, and in the end? not so bad. i almost wouldn't mind doing it again. the IV took a couple tries and hurt more than anything else. the dentist had to give me two hits of anesthesia to knock me out and as i came to, he clearly asked is she waking up already? that didn't make me feel too good, but they were almost done. there was a bit of swelling, and i got a cool ice pack band to wrap around my head. made me feel like i was in an old time war movie.
  i took the (huge) aspirin they gave me and nothing else and was back to work on monday without missing a day since the surgery was on friday, my day off. the pains from crowded teeth were gone and i was happy. although i'd've been happier if i could have kept the teeth for souvenirs..........

• we signed up for the rosetta stone online through the military. i'm reviewing spanish, and filling in some everyday words missing from my vocabulary, while chuck is learning swedish. i love hearing him learn, it's more exciting for me than him i think. he's improved in every lesson and i can't wait till his vocabulary is large enough to have conversations.

• i read lots too, although i have no idea where i fit it and the knitting in. according to goodreads, i read 45 books this year. that's almost one a week, not too bad. some really good ones were: Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by patricia wrede and caroline stevermer, a lighthearted, funny fantasy with sequels to follow. stieg larsson's girl who.... series was a fascinating mix of mystery, journalism, crime solving, and political corruption set in sweden. they were gripping reads, and had fairly accurate descriptions of swedes. the only downside was the sexual crimes against women, but i suppose that was the point. the latest additions to the vlad taltos series, jhegaala and dzur, by steve brust added more depth to vlad's character. despite being quick reads, they kept me thinking long after reading. in defense of food by michael pollan made an interesting analysis of our current food culture and how traditional food culture has been manipulated for commerce. an extremely well-written and highly creepy fitcher's brides by gregory frost i would recommend for the writing and morals but won't re-read. i'd like to sleep at night, thank you very much. another non-fiction book i really enjoyed was the paradox of choice by barry schwartz. he delves into the unconscious and conscious factors that go into all our choices, big and small. the book was not as dry as i anticipated and points out a need for us to limit our own options to make effective choices. an interesting concept.
  
  annoyingly less good were: water for elephants by sara gruen, which a few of us in the knitting group read. the story just seemed to descend into melodrama and ended in an unlikely series of events. it started well, but i felt cheated at the end. name of the rose by umberto eco has sat on my shelves unread since high school. now it can sit on someone else's shelves. the long involved story of medieval religious heresies and dissidents is mixed with murders at an abbey. when revealed, the motive for the murders seems absurd and superficial. cheated again. wuthering heights by emily bronte confirms that british female romance writers are not for me. a bunch of whiny noble people make bad choices which have bad consequences and i think i'm supposed to feel sorry for them. um, nope. sorry. think i'll avoid the bronte's along with austen from now on.

• the week of thanksgiving it rained. this just doesn't happen in interior alaska. the warm weather made the foot or so of snow on the roof slide off, which normally happens in april. the fall compacted it all and made normal shoveling impossible. when it started coming off the deck in solid square chunks, what could i do but make a wall? crenelations and archer slits possibly to be added later.

• since summer, chuck has been working on painting the kitchen cupboards (the ones he took the doors off the summer before). the kitchen has slowly transformed from a dark green and gunky yellow 70s combo
  
  to a much brighter white (inside), blue, and yellow.
  
  the colors remind me of sweden and make the kitchen a thousand times brighter. i love it. the cupboard doors have been materializing the last couple weeks, and after a year and a half without doors, it feels odd being unable to just reach in and grab what i want.

• we watched more than a few movies in 2010, but not many made it to our favorites list. we really enjoyed blind side, ondine and the A team remake. oddly enough, tv on dvd was much more popular with us (we don't ever watch any tv shows on tv). a random series of events introduced us to the 2005 season of doctor who. september and october were a haze of the 5 recent seasons. it's a crazy, unpredictable, upbeat, funny british sci-fi space/time travel show and if you haven't seen it, do. you never know what will happen and yet only a few times is the story so outlandish that it seems impossible. we're waiting anxiously for next season to start, and have infected the grandkids with the addiction. we finished watching the dollhouse show, joss whedon is my hero for interesting tv. it's a bummer his shows have such short runs.

• we got a couple camping trips in. we took the bratlings camping in denali in the spring and hiked with them all day with no complaints from grownups or kids.
  
  chuck kidnapped me to paxson lake for a relaxing weekend in the summer, complete with canoeing and a beautiful sunset.
  
  we also finally hiked angel rocks together. we've been saying we'd do that for years. the trail starts out on the valley floor and climbs to the ridge top
  
  where granite tors are eroding into cool formations and caves.
  which of course we had to explore a bit, crawling into that hole behind us that opens into some small caves, then out the other side.

• on the winter solstice, we saw the total lunar eclipse. apparently the last time one happened on the solstice was in the 1600s. the moon wasn't totally blacked out but looked shadowed, like seeing it through a black curtain. very cool phenomenon, but we couldn't get a photo that didn't look like a black sky.

• after the very long break i've had in blogging, i have a clearer idea how i want to blog, a way to balance my content. several blogs i read manage to have good, varied content in short posts and i think i have learned from their good example. i suppose this next year will be the test. my iphone was no replacement for the internet and so there are still podcasts and blogs being caught up on.

all in all, 2010 was a good year. i never got tired of being home with my husband. i'm grateful for my friends, talking to family over holidays, and all the little miracles that keep me going every day. i'm thankful i can do so many things that i enjoy and are meaningful to me, which luckily tend not to be very expensive. reading my summing up post on 2009, i must have got something right in the balance department this year. the year was equally disruptive, busy, and i still worked out of town yet i feel as if i did more in most areas of life and feel more peaceful and happy looking back. i have to keep doing that.

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.

in which we discover thumbs

when the weather couldn't decide if it wanted to be warm or cool, and the office as usual was even more indecisive, i made a pair of handwarmers in a weekend. a lazy weekend at the end of may, which fit perfectly with the pattern name - aprilmay. they have a simple eyelet lace pattern that looks kind of wavy.the first mitt i made according to the directions (and used some stash yarn - whoo-hoo!), but the thumb was too tight. through a ravelry search i discovered there are all kinds of thumbs, and this one was a peasant one (or afterthought or any number of other names that i forget now).

you can see how it pulls the rest of the hand material, distorting it. basically a peasant thumb is where you leave a line of stitches somewhere on waste yarn and pick them up later to make the thumb. apparently i have noble thumbs though, because the mitt was pretty uncomfortable. it felt like someone was pinching my thumb.

that ravelry search led me to an awesome group with a thread all about thumbs, in which i learned all thumbs are not created equal. i followed some links to one very helpful blog, knitting in color, with a series of posts on different thumbs (they're listed down on the sidebar). a thumb gusset sounded like the way to go, actually increasing along the side to make room for the thumb. i compared a bunch of free patterns to learn how they made thumb gussets, and then made up the math for my stitch count and gauge. they came out pretty good.

no more distortion! and they were way more comfortable. i must just have fat (meaty?) thumbs, because i had chuck compare the two thumbs, thinking guys have bigger hands and all so he'd prefer the gusset. oddly enough, chuck liked the fit of the peasant thumb better. huh. at least i know for whenever i get around to making him gloves, right?

in making the gussets, i tried to have the increases grow with the pattern - 2 different ways. the second try came out a little better (the lines are cleaner), but after frogging the peasant thumb mitt already, i didn't care enough to take out the first one and redo it.an interesting side effect of the gussets was actually using less yarn. i expected the opposite, but it must be because the afterthought thumb stretches out the hand, so you need more material to have enough length. i knit fewer rows for the main body of the hand with the gussets to get the same length. so not only are gussets more comfortable (for me), they use less yarn! yay! now i just need to make a more utilitarian pair that i can layer over gloves for work.....

making babies

not me, silly!

someone at church did though, one of the few couples who can look past the surface disparities and see me and chuck as people. we like them so i made a couple small things for their new girl.although the color would suit a boy as well, if they had another. it didn't hurt that i had an extra ball of baby ull dying to be made into something. for someone else obviously, since firetruck red's not my color.

the vine lace hat used maybe half a skein, and took only a couple hours. it looked so small i was afraid it wouldn't fit, but it does!the magic slippers looked even tinier, but were actually a bit loose on the girl! and they are perfect for using up sock leftovers (exactly as claimed by the pattern) except i didn't have any other superwash leftovers.so they ended up with a matching set. and i've still got a half a skein to use on something....maybe a baby shedir hat. that way i make a pattern i've been wanting to (but smaller and faster), and have a random baby gift on hand!

a very merry unbirthday to me, to me

those endless days are slipping by me so fast it'll be fall before i know it. but i pushed the pause button for a half hour to sneak in a post.

ages of endless days ago, my contest yarn got here. yarn in the mail always feel like a present, doesn't it? lucy has some pictures on her blog of the actual spinning, but here's what it looks like after its trip across the country.mmmm, blue angora. i've been eyeing it since it got here, and finally swatched it this weekend. i knit it up at 4.5 stitches per inch on US4s and i think i'd still go up a size. this is my first time knitting handspun (and angora), and it was so fun to roll it up and see the variations in thickness and color. according to ravelry it's only 170 yards, but looks like way more rolled up. it's 2 ply (i think) and silky and smooth. something visible and against the skin, not to mention lacy, would be perfect for it. and there the dreams and dithering decision making start.

any suggestions?

around the time lucy's yarn came in, another yarn present came in the mail (even though i paid for it, it still feels like a gift when it comes. maybe because of our still-kind-of-tight-budget, or because i forget about it, so it's a surprise by the time it gets here).this stuff's destined to become a tahoe, one of those nice 'throw it on as you go out the door cuz you're too lazy (crazy?) to wear a coat' sweaters. i been needing one of those. like all winter. it was almost irresistable, but i put off swatching and casting on until the FFF shawl was done, and one of chuck's sleeves. the yarn is lovely, soft but with an underlying feeling of substance (that would be the wool bit of it, i'm thinking). i did cast on and knit a few inches before the hem started bugging me.the pattern makes a sewn hem by casting on, knitting like nothing, making a purl flip row and just sewing it together when the sweater's done. sewing - yuck. this was not attractive. so i did a provisional cast on and knit the hem together, but i must have messed up my row count cuz it was flipping. we don't like that. so i frogged it back and i'll start it again sometime, with a smaller needle for the rows that end up on the inside. and pay better attention to the row count.

a bonus: a small project finished somewhere in there (i am still working on those stash-busting, project-finishing goals of mine - although we'd still better not talk about the striped turtleneck sweater. or the silk cami. anyway. the small project.) the building block slippers from socks, socks, socks. they were kinda fun to make, fast and origami-like. does it get any better than that? maybe if you don't use chunky yarn. they're a bit sloppy, and since i ran out of the red and blue yarn ends, one slipper has (oh, horrors!) some orange. mostly on the bottom where i (luckily) can't really see it.the second one is more true to the pattern with more seams, and that slipper is not quite as sloppy. but they're for the house anyway, so who cares. right?

and that's today's half hour break. *sigh* back to the blur.

in which we learn another disadvantage to having a fake christmas tree

it doesn't die. (i know you thought that was one of the advantages, but hang with me) since it doesn't die, there's no needles piling up on your floor and it doesn't ever turn into a fire hazard. which means there isn't any real urgency to take it down, if say, one were to travel an inordinate amount in december and january, so that one might not actually get the tree down until the day before superbowl sunday.

ahem.

i haven't been on such a traveling rollercoaster since i was a project-hopping archaeologist. you get home, unpack, wash your clothes, catch up on a few bills, maybe talk to a couple people, squeeze in an email (hej lasse!), pack and repeat. ojojoj.

two weeks after getting back from MA we went to anchorage for a long MLK weekend. chuck had bank training mon and tues, so we went down fri and stretched it out. i came to the conclusion that if you're not shopping for something, there's not much to do in anchorage in the winter.

especially when the hotels don't have internet. between traveling for work, and chuck's random training meetings, i'm getting good at sizing up hotels. i've noticed something odd: the expensive hotels have gold framed mirrors and fancier looking sheets but they actually offer the same amenities as cheaper hotels - for a fee. so you're paying more . . . . for less. the midrange hotels tend to have free breakfasts, free internet, microwaves and fridges. and, well, i like those better. i'm paying less for a room, and getting more services with it. the marriot spring hill has my votes.

so, without internet to catch up on blog posts and emails, what's a girl to do?

go to yarn stores and title wave of course.

title wave is a gem among book stores. it beats out barnes and noble any day. they sell new books and used ones in really good shape, plus out of prints and hard to find books. chuck gave me 50 bucks to spend (cuz if i decided the amount who knows what it'd be) and i walked away with 13 books and a dollar to spare. whoo-hoo.

i found some forgotten realms books (used to read them pre-high school and lately have been having urges to revisit some of those stories), a couple of l'engle's austin family series that i missed reading somehow, a cookbook on herb vinegars (so i could use those herbs i dried out this summer), sword singer by jennifer roberson, zel by donna napoli (awesome retelling of rapunzel), dawn by elie wiesel and a wild card never-been-read winter queen by devin cary. i was quite satisfied.

even though chuck promised to go with me to the yarn store (far north yarns, web site out of service), i went ahead by myself to set him up for the kill scope it out. sweater yarn was on the list, but somehow the fiber and the colors refused to match up for me. except for this one yarn, ooooo, it was tempting. sulka from mirasol, merino, alpalca and silk. felt wonderful, and they even had colors i liked. but.....the price was a bit much for our checkbook. and i sure couldn't figure out a 2-3 skein project for myself. darn.

since sock yarn doesn't count, and they had louet gems, one of the few sources for solid colored sock yarn, we grabbed a couple skeins of that. (before my resolution by the way - i think)

blah color for chuck, blue for me. merino wool, machine wash, and solid colors. i've been wanting to try some, and it does seem a crime to walk out of a yarn store empty handed. i sat and knit with the staff for a bit. it was so nice to be in a yarn store and feel comfortable. the one i normally frequent in fairbanks has an odd atmosphere that i haven't ever felt comfortable in, no matter how much i've spent on yarn there.

we squeeked back into fairbanks in time for knit night, where i discovered i had my first ravelry convert. whoo-hoo! she signed up after the last knit night, and got in that very day. her eyes widened and shined with that ravelry-struck gleam, as she said, "i only looked up felted patterns and there were so many. . . . .ooooooo that place is bad"

things are starting to quiet down as we get settled back into life. between work and catching up, knitting time has been at a premium. as in practically non-existant. i guess those cushy subbing jobs spoiled me with extra knitting time, not to mention slightly shorter work days. still i'm plugging away at everything, without any miraculous advances. and trying to ignore the itch to cast on something new.

my book stack has been neglected lately too. i'm trying to borrow less books from the library at a time, so i can actually read them before i have to return them. elie wiesel's memoirs are going slowly, cuz it's january's choice for a dying book club, and i didn't want to finish it way before we met and forget my thoughts on it. but we still haven't met, so i'm going ahead and finishing it. i made it through trickster's choice and trickster's queen though, both excellent books more on the sneaky spy side of fantasy then the other tamora pierce books. i've got the first book in the protector of the small series, first test, and beka cooper in the stack too now. sometimes i find an author and i want to read everything they've written. i did that with elie wiesel about (ouch) ten years ago, and now i'm in the mood to go back and re-read some of his works and digest them some more.

this weekend we finally bought a proper snow shovel (archaeologists can be picky about things like shovels) so i can start chipping away at the melted hump on the deck. it appeared during a thanksgiving warm spell when the snow slid off the roof onto the deck, where it froze up again before we got back. mildly dangerous, and starting to get on my nerves. now i can do something about it! yay! (i'm one of those rare and odd people that like to shovel, so i actually am glad)

oh, and if you need to do your weekly shopping, and it just happens to be payday weekend and superbowl saturday, um, don't. cuz there might be some lines. across the whole front of the store, down the frozen aisle,
and past the milk cases.and we weren't even the last people in line.

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.