no black friday for us. i have nightmare memories of my mother waking up at ungodly hours to crowd through filene's for an extra 5% off. somehow it never seemed worth it.
we spent the day chillin with chuck's parents after waking up very late (we were up till 2.30 with chuck's mom). we're not adapting to the time change very well at all.
Xela's first sock is almost done, but i'm not sure i'l have enough yarn now. i made the leg a bit longer than specified, cuz i found that my pair were just a hair too short. even though they're not falling down, i feel like i should be pulling them up all the time. hopefully they're not too long for xela!
i worked on the FFF again, and got through the yoke (shoulder increases) and started the feather and fan pattern. it's looking pretty good, but i'm not sure about the size of the neck. i never made one of these before, so i'm a bit uncertain, but it almost looks kid-sized. since it's neck down i can try it on, but i want a bit more length to make sure.
chuck's parents are so funny when i switch projects. they've seen all 3 of them now, but when i switch their eyes get all big and they look at me in utter amazement, like they can't believe i'm doing another project. or like i did a magic trick and they're not sure i really was knitting on something different a minute ago.
we went to branson MO looking for some christmas light display. branson is like a mini-vegas, that i never heard of before. it's got a little strip and lots of shows. and traffic. first we couldn't find the display, and then once we found signs for it we missed the turns, so all we ended up doing was driving up and down the strip a couple times. i got to cuddle with chuck the whole time, so i didn't mind it a bit.
my favorite thing from the strip was a restaurant called the plantation. seriously. and i couldn't help but wonder - do they only have black waiters? cuz the word plantation just calls up images of mammy in the kitchen and the overseer whipping slaves out in the field.
we did talk a bit about racism in the car, cuz chuck's dad, well. he says he's not prejudiced, and then says he only ever knew 2 good blacks and tells us their names. i've always figured if you have to go around telling people you're not prejudiced, you've gotta be. every once in a while chuck's dad makes a derogatory comment and it shocks me. haven't we figured out yet that we're all just people? we'll talk to him about how every group has good and bad mixed in it, whether you're looking at race, sex, ethnicity, country of origin, economics or what have you. and he agrees. and then says they're all bad. *sigh* what can you do?
and a tip on Southern cooking: when they say fried eggs, they mean it. in at least half a cup of oil. somehow my tablespoon of butter doesn’t seem as bad now.
23 November 2007
22 November 2007
you can get anything you want at alice's restaurant
i hope everyone took a second to listen to alice’s restaurant today. that's my favoritest thanksgiving tradition. and remember, if you’re ever in a difficult situation, just walk into the shrink (wherever you are) and sing a bar of alice’s restaurant and walk out - it might not help any but you’ll laugh :D
oh, and look what i found while getting links (but be warned: it's 18 minutes long!) bummer embedding was disabled.
meeting all the in laws today went pretty good. chuck's the oldest, then comes linda. she was there with her husband gary.
all bad pictures are chuck's fault cuz he doesn't check to make sure they come out ok. sorry linda!
his brother john had long hair to everyone's (but mine, cuz hey, i never met the dude before) surprise. since he retired from the air force and has a outdoor guide-type job he figured he might as well.
we ate our feast at his sister debbie's (no picture of her by herself-oops!). she lives on the same property as his parents. her husband dean cut the turkey, and we had all the traditional things. nothing scary and southern that i never heard of. although we did have fake stuffing :( and i missed our traditional apple pie with cheddar cheese too.
and here's all the kids together with their parents (debbie's in blue to the left).
one of linda's daughters came by with her kids, and john's son was there so we got a pic of the great- and grand-kids too.
there was much telling of family stories, and i was being social so i only knit a little bit (still clocked in 3 hours), mostly on chuck's sweater. when my family gets together we always talk about stuff that happened, so it was cool to hear another family's stories and feel more connected to them. chuck's started working on his genealogy again, so he was asking questions about older family too. his family has some seriously crazy history, some of it tragedy. we showed pictures of chuck's kids and stuff we've done. so overall it was a good day, and everyone was nice to me (that's most important first time meeting the whole family).
after everyone left and we were winding down for the night i made up a chart for the FFF and worked on it a bit. i'm using dale baby ull, and it's such nice springy stuff. makes me want to use it again. for the provisional cast on, i thought i'd be a genius and use the working yarn, pull it out and cruise on. so i finger chained the crochet and picked up the stitches. except when i went to pull out the crochet, it wouldn't unzip since the first stitch was using the yarn. yeah. so i undid the knot and pulled it out backward. still worked pretty good i guess, just not as fast and clean as unzipping. oh well. now i know that.
oh, and look what i found while getting links (but be warned: it's 18 minutes long!) bummer embedding was disabled.
meeting all the in laws today went pretty good. chuck's the oldest, then comes linda. she was there with her husband gary.
all bad pictures are chuck's fault cuz he doesn't check to make sure they come out ok. sorry linda!his brother john had long hair to everyone's (but mine, cuz hey, i never met the dude before) surprise. since he retired from the air force and has a outdoor guide-type job he figured he might as well.we ate our feast at his sister debbie's (no picture of her by herself-oops!). she lives on the same property as his parents. her husband dean cut the turkey, and we had all the traditional things. nothing scary and southern that i never heard of. although we did have fake stuffing :( and i missed our traditional apple pie with cheddar cheese too.and here's all the kids together with their parents (debbie's in blue to the left).
one of linda's daughters came by with her kids, and john's son was there so we got a pic of the great- and grand-kids too.there was much telling of family stories, and i was being social so i only knit a little bit (still clocked in 3 hours), mostly on chuck's sweater. when my family gets together we always talk about stuff that happened, so it was cool to hear another family's stories and feel more connected to them. chuck's started working on his genealogy again, so he was asking questions about older family too. his family has some seriously crazy history, some of it tragedy. we showed pictures of chuck's kids and stuff we've done. so overall it was a good day, and everyone was nice to me (that's most important first time meeting the whole family).after everyone left and we were winding down for the night i made up a chart for the FFF and worked on it a bit. i'm using dale baby ull, and it's such nice springy stuff. makes me want to use it again. for the provisional cast on, i thought i'd be a genius and use the working yarn, pull it out and cruise on. so i finger chained the crochet and picked up the stitches. except when i went to pull out the crochet, it wouldn't unzip since the first stitch was using the yarn. yeah. so i undid the knot and pulled it out backward. still worked pretty good i guess, just not as fast and clean as unzipping. oh well. now i know that.
21 November 2007
surprise!
at the start of our last flight, from chicago to little rock, the pilot tells us the weather in little rock. mid 40s and cloudy i think he said. we stepped out of the airport into a humid summer day. it was like 70. whew. that's a 50 or so degree difference for us. we were glad we didn't bring our coats.
our drive up to harrison went pretty fast, and when we were about 15 minutes from his parents' house, chuck calls them. he's talking to his mom, and she starts (naturally) asking about thanksgiving. and me, i could have deflected her easy, but chuck has no idea what to say. he tells her what his kids are doing, and that we'll crash someone else's dinner so we don't have to cook. hehe. but then he tries to get her off track by talking about our trip to MA for christmas. and she wants to know, why aren't we visiting them? ummmm............wait a few minutes and we will. chuck got his way out of it somehow (i thought he was going to wait until we were closer to call in the first place, but....what can you do). he's talking to his dad when we pull up, and he tells him to come let us in cuz he's tired of talking to him on the phone. and here we hit a totally unexpected snag: his dad doesn't think we're really there, so why should he go to the door. he does though, and "just about jumps out of his britches" as chuck says.
it was a good surprise. at first they seemed kind of blasé about it, but they were still in shock i guess, cuz after about an hour they realized they hadn't hugged us. they were all excited though, because chuck's brother that lives in missouri was coming down too, and it was the first time all their kids had been together for thanksgiving in like 20 years. so that was pretty cool.
despite having overnight flights, i did get a fair amount of knitting done between yesterday and tonight. Xela's socks are just zooming along. check em out
gotta love that larger gauge. i've got chuck's sweater and FFF along too, they got some attention but the progress isn't as noticable as socks. maybe i'll take some shots at the end of the week.
our drive up to harrison went pretty fast, and when we were about 15 minutes from his parents' house, chuck calls them. he's talking to his mom, and she starts (naturally) asking about thanksgiving. and me, i could have deflected her easy, but chuck has no idea what to say. he tells her what his kids are doing, and that we'll crash someone else's dinner so we don't have to cook. hehe. but then he tries to get her off track by talking about our trip to MA for christmas. and she wants to know, why aren't we visiting them? ummmm............wait a few minutes and we will. chuck got his way out of it somehow (i thought he was going to wait until we were closer to call in the first place, but....what can you do). he's talking to his dad when we pull up, and he tells him to come let us in cuz he's tired of talking to him on the phone. and here we hit a totally unexpected snag: his dad doesn't think we're really there, so why should he go to the door. he does though, and "just about jumps out of his britches" as chuck says.
it was a good surprise. at first they seemed kind of blasé about it, but they were still in shock i guess, cuz after about an hour they realized they hadn't hugged us. they were all excited though, because chuck's brother that lives in missouri was coming down too, and it was the first time all their kids had been together for thanksgiving in like 20 years. so that was pretty cool.
despite having overnight flights, i did get a fair amount of knitting done between yesterday and tonight. Xela's socks are just zooming along. check em out
gotta love that larger gauge. i've got chuck's sweater and FFF along too, they got some attention but the progress isn't as noticable as socks. maybe i'll take some shots at the end of the week.
20 November 2007
i'm leaving on a jet plane. . . .
(obviously i didn't get this posted before i left, but what can i say. better late than never and all that. one more postdated post won't matter)
monday i got another day ofbabysitting teaching math. good to have another day of work, but boring as all get out. i ran across some of my sunday school kids, and they said hi, which is always cool.
today was a no-work day, getting ready for arkansas. my biggest worry before trips is not what clothes to bring, but which books and knitting projects to bring and how many. there's all those hours on planes and in airports, the 3 hour drive from little rock to chuck's parents' house.......all those boring hours in between listening to family talk........i can't stand to have nothing to do.
and the very worst thing of all? make sure you're sitting down and all that: they don't have internet. that i'm worried about. but i'm going to be a good girl and take progress pics and write posts on my computer and put them up once i get home.
although i think for the FFF shawl, i'll take pics and post them all at once at the end. do kind of a start to finish post on it. but i'll still talk about it, you'll just have to imagine what it looks like ;)
for a really cool faroese shawl, check out the raven one at knitspot. wow. the yarn (from blue moon fiber arts) is a new line with all these raven-esque names, awesome black with slight tones of other colors. irtfa'a was designed to actually look like a bird, with feather patterns and this awesome feathery edging. i have so got to buy me that pattern. some day. when i've caught up to my queue - if i can wait that long. like after christmas maybe.
the green man collection was very good. i didn't quite get through all of the stories before the book was (over)due, and it's one of those awful books with references to more cool books, so i'll have to get it back out again later. cool forest stories, i really liked them.
last night we had potato soup in an effort to use up our milk before leaving. we had some kielbasa so i threw that in too, but then the dill that normally goes in potato soup didn't seem quite right. so i put in some cumin and coriander. mmmmmm, that was good. you should try it sometime.
speaking of food, we had a thanksgiving dinner at church last week. i brought stuffing, the real kind. with sausage. everyone else that brought stuffing did the fake stuff. it just doesn't taste as good, and real stuffing is dumb easy to make so i haven't ever figured out why people make the fake stuff. since stuffing is one of my favorite bits of thanksgiving, i asked chuck if his parents would make real or fake and he didn't know. *sigh* if i knew, i'd offer to make stuffing for them. i wonder what kind of food we'll get there anyway, since they're in "the south." could be interesting. . . . .
anyway. . . . 4 books, 2 knitting magazines and 3 knitting projects later, my packing's done. and you know what? i'm still worried i'll finish it all and be bored stiff. silly. huh?
monday i got another day of
today was a no-work day, getting ready for arkansas. my biggest worry before trips is not what clothes to bring, but which books and knitting projects to bring and how many. there's all those hours on planes and in airports, the 3 hour drive from little rock to chuck's parents' house.......all those boring hours in between listening to family talk........i can't stand to have nothing to do.
and the very worst thing of all? make sure you're sitting down and all that: they don't have internet. that i'm worried about. but i'm going to be a good girl and take progress pics and write posts on my computer and put them up once i get home.
although i think for the FFF shawl, i'll take pics and post them all at once at the end. do kind of a start to finish post on it. but i'll still talk about it, you'll just have to imagine what it looks like ;)
for a really cool faroese shawl, check out the raven one at knitspot. wow. the yarn (from blue moon fiber arts) is a new line with all these raven-esque names, awesome black with slight tones of other colors. irtfa'a was designed to actually look like a bird, with feather patterns and this awesome feathery edging. i have so got to buy me that pattern. some day. when i've caught up to my queue - if i can wait that long. like after christmas maybe.
the green man collection was very good. i didn't quite get through all of the stories before the book was (over)due, and it's one of those awful books with references to more cool books, so i'll have to get it back out again later. cool forest stories, i really liked them.
last night we had potato soup in an effort to use up our milk before leaving. we had some kielbasa so i threw that in too, but then the dill that normally goes in potato soup didn't seem quite right. so i put in some cumin and coriander. mmmmmm, that was good. you should try it sometime.
speaking of food, we had a thanksgiving dinner at church last week. i brought stuffing, the real kind. with sausage. everyone else that brought stuffing did the fake stuff. it just doesn't taste as good, and real stuffing is dumb easy to make so i haven't ever figured out why people make the fake stuff. since stuffing is one of my favorite bits of thanksgiving, i asked chuck if his parents would make real or fake and he didn't know. *sigh* if i knew, i'd offer to make stuffing for them. i wonder what kind of food we'll get there anyway, since they're in "the south." could be interesting. . . . .
anyway. . . . 4 books, 2 knitting magazines and 3 knitting projects later, my packing's done. and you know what? i'm still worried i'll finish it all and be bored stiff. silly. huh?
19 November 2007
miracles do happen
usually when i swatch, i end up going down at least one needle size, sometimes more. since i have both metric and US needles, it can take a while to figure out which size i want to go with. but last week i decided to swatch for a pair of broadripples, using (almost) the yarn specified in the pattern. and you know what? i used the needle size they said and got gauge dead on the first try. wow. how cool is that?
(on the left the overexposed pic, on the right the truer to color but too dark pic)
the broadripples are for (my brother) adam's girlfriend xela. she liked the pattern and picked out yarn ages ago, sort of for fun. but since i have some time before christmas (and lots of travel time coming uup) i thought i'd make her some socks got christmas. cast on yesterday, and you know, i forget how fast knitting can go if you have less than 6 stiches per inch. after just a few hours, i've got about 6 inches. these won't take long.
even though xela picked out the yarn, i'm not convinced she'll like it. the colors are a bit different than the website showed (it's elann esprit print berry garden colorway), a little darker. and they're not all colors that i would pick out for myself. but then chuck pointed out if she doesn't like them, then i won't have to make any more socks for her! an excellent point.
as of friday, the thujas are all done. (hence the new projects) i haven't got a good picture though. doesn't seem to matter what kind of lighting i try, they come out as black-looking blobs (despite being navy blue) *sigh* i'll keep trying and post good pics once i get them.
i was brave and finally ripped back the hederas. the one oversized, and the other past the heel. i figured if i was going to rip it out i might as well add an inch or two to the leg. before i start working on it again i'm going to have to do a swatch, just to make sure i know what i'm doing this time. augh. i'd rather swatch and be sure, but it's not my idea of fun knitting.
last week i even took time to be social on top of all that knitting. chuck got tickets through work to the top of the world classic, the first session on thursday. there were two games, the first was the UAF nanooks against the tennessee state tigers. that one was not too exciting, but the second was colorado state against oregon state, and that was more competetive. it's an invitational tournament, but there aren't very many well-known names that come. still, it was a fun night out, and free to boot.
today i finished up the FFF (Feather and Fan Faroese shawl) swatching. the silly pattern says 4-5 stitches per inch is best, and row gauge is the critical bit, but then they don't say what the row gauge is. duh. so i think i swatched 4 different needle sizes (remember that whole US-metric thing? yeah) and somehow got 6 stiches per inch for US 5/3.75 mm through US 7/4.5mm. how that works out i don't know. finally i said screw it and cast on with the one i liked best (they did look looser as i went up in size, but somehow the stockinette measurement stayed the same). after a few rows of seed stitch for the neck border i measured and it was 5 stiches per inch on the US 5. *sigh* swatches lie. trust your instincts.
(on the left the overexposed pic, on the right the truer to color but too dark pic)
the broadripples are for (my brother) adam's girlfriend xela. she liked the pattern and picked out yarn ages ago, sort of for fun. but since i have some time before christmas (and lots of travel time coming uup) i thought i'd make her some socks got christmas. cast on yesterday, and you know, i forget how fast knitting can go if you have less than 6 stiches per inch. after just a few hours, i've got about 6 inches. these won't take long.
even though xela picked out the yarn, i'm not convinced she'll like it. the colors are a bit different than the website showed (it's elann esprit print berry garden colorway), a little darker. and they're not all colors that i would pick out for myself. but then chuck pointed out if she doesn't like them, then i won't have to make any more socks for her! an excellent point.
as of friday, the thujas are all done. (hence the new projects) i haven't got a good picture though. doesn't seem to matter what kind of lighting i try, they come out as black-looking blobs (despite being navy blue) *sigh* i'll keep trying and post good pics once i get them.
i was brave and finally ripped back the hederas. the one oversized, and the other past the heel. i figured if i was going to rip it out i might as well add an inch or two to the leg. before i start working on it again i'm going to have to do a swatch, just to make sure i know what i'm doing this time. augh. i'd rather swatch and be sure, but it's not my idea of fun knitting.
last week i even took time to be social on top of all that knitting. chuck got tickets through work to the top of the world classic, the first session on thursday. there were two games, the first was the UAF nanooks against the tennessee state tigers. that one was not too exciting, but the second was colorado state against oregon state, and that was more competetive. it's an invitational tournament, but there aren't very many well-known names that come. still, it was a fun night out, and free to boot.
today i finished up the FFF (Feather and Fan Faroese shawl) swatching. the silly pattern says 4-5 stitches per inch is best, and row gauge is the critical bit, but then they don't say what the row gauge is. duh. so i think i swatched 4 different needle sizes (remember that whole US-metric thing? yeah) and somehow got 6 stiches per inch for US 5/3.75 mm through US 7/4.5mm. how that works out i don't know. finally i said screw it and cast on with the one i liked best (they did look looser as i went up in size, but somehow the stockinette measurement stayed the same). after a few rows of seed stitch for the neck border i measured and it was 5 stiches per inch on the US 5. *sigh* swatches lie. trust your instincts.
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