New Year's Eve Eve

I was going to use today to reminisce about 2007, but I must have been a naughty girl, because Santa thoughtfully left me a cold for Christmas. In exchange, he took my brain, so I have been pretty useless around the house, have got barely 3 hours of billable hours done in 6 days, and any knitting that requires counting higher than 8 is out of the question. Going back over the calendar and remembering what happened this year is most assuredly beyond me at this time.

However, I do know certain things...

I am thankful for having a loving and wonderful husband, many loving and wonderful friends and family, food on my table, a roof over my head, and enough yarn to keep me knitting for quite some time even if I never set foot in a yarn store again.

Party safe on New Year's Eve - they don't call it "Amateur Night" for nothing. If you're in our neck of the woods and think you've had too much to drink and don't want to drive home, call us. We'll come get you and you can crash on our futon.

I did get some knitting done, even with the above-mentioned 8-count limit. The blue hat is Foliage from knitty.com, done in di.Ve Autunno fine merino wool (lovely yarn - hat's a little big so I'll probably full it a bit).

These orange hats are made from Malabrigo's Gruesa in Cadmium. Do not adjust your monitor; they really are Cheeto-yellow. The one with the holes is my own eyelet unvention; the cabled one is Harlot's Unoriginal Hat, modified to 3 repeats instead of 4 to accommodate the extra chunkiness of the Gruesa.

Another Gaggle... Gathering... Confluence...

The knitters descended today, some to do last-minute holiday knitting (or quilting, as the case may be), some to schmooze, some to just knit with no deadlines. (Photo courtesy of CG, taken with her new iPhone, a Christmas present to herself... which I'm glad she had, because I totally forgot to take pictures with my camera!) When the picture was taken, I think we were all trying to figure out how to Kitchener the two sides of EV's scarf, hence our intense focus at that end of the table.

We also had a gift swap where there was a surprising amount of non-stealing going on... Some sock yarn, circular needle tags (my score!), and someone's de-stashing all got swapped, but the others stayed with their original pickers.


And food... oh boy was there food! A marshmallow tree, rare fruits, homemade bread, bite-sized cheesecakes, chips and dips and Clementines and soup and mulled wine... "Food, glorious food...!"


A good time was had by all.

In Which I Realize I'm a Dolt

Duh. Look!

Christmas is nigh!

In Which I Realize That Time Marches On

Holy moley... two weeks since my last post. Pathetic. But I've gotten a lot done! I've made a... um. Well then there's the... er. Hm. Oh! There was that... damn. The things I remember that I did I can't talk about because they're holiday gift-related... and the things I can't remember, well... I can't remember.

Well, here are some things I know I did in the last 2 weeks that I think I can show without spoiling anyone's holiday gift surprise...

Psychedelic Tiny Purse:
I took my own pattern and went hippie with it. Wheee! (BMFA STR lightweight carried doubled in Fire on the Mountain... left over from my Jaywalker socks, which fit PERFECTLY.)

The World's Most Expensive Washcloth:

This stuff is nasty to work with. I washed it to see if it would soften up, but it would still serve fine as a sloughing cloth for the shower. Or a pot scrubber. (Reynolds Garden Tweed; hard cotton, silk, and some other things. Very strandy.)

A swatch made of clouds:

Misti Alpaca Handpaint Chunky. *sigh* I'm in love all over again. I adore alpaca. The row of purl stitches towards the bottom is to indicate the size needle used. 10 purl bumps, size 10 needles. (Like that one? I got it from Diane at Yarn Place in Sunnyvale, who got it from Lily Chin. Genius!)

Heavy Question of the Day, and Why Ravelry is Bad

So it's not really "to tat or not to tat?" but rather "what to tat?" (And by 'tat,' even though it is a fiber craft, I'm not talking about tatting with perle cotton, and shuttles or needles... I'm talking about tattoos... but I guess you do tattoo with needles, too...)

At least for me, it's true what they say about getting a tattoo... you can't get just one. So I've been mulling over what my third one should be. I'm leaning towards a yin-yang symbol where the two inner 'balls' of the symbol are yarn balls. But I'm also liking the idea of just one yarn ball that has a strand that kind of winds down a body part (depends upon where I put the yarn ball). I've seen some really nice ones on Ravelry, but (a) I don't want to copy anyone else's, and (b) most of them are too busy for what I prefer. Mulling will continue.

Speaking of Ravelry, there are just sooo many things that make it bad:

• - I don't keep a paper knitting journal any more, so I've now got a collection of yarn snippets and ball bands that haven't got an entry in my book.
• - It allows me to find all the above-mentioned tattoos and covet getting another one.
• - It shows me, in real live numbers, how many projects I have on needles, how many I keep saying I'm going to work on, and how much lovely yarn I have that I have no idea what to do with.
• - It makes me want to knit more. And different. And better.

(Okay so maybe that last point isn't technically 'bad,' especially the 'better' part.)

For those of you not on Ravelry, and not close enough to see my now-incomplete knitting journal, here are the latest FOs. The first three (felted thingys, drop-stitch scarf, tiny purse) were all done for Bobbin's Nest Studio. I'll be holding three "QuicKnits" sessions (Wednesdays in December, 6:00-7:00 pm) to learn how to make them. They're EASY, they're QUICK, and they take one skein/ball of yarn or less.

These next two are 'real' things. The first is a hat for my brother. He asked for an ear-flap hat, so this is what he's getting. It desperately needs a blocking, and I desperately need to learn how to do colorwork better. As DK pointed out, "he won't be wearing it inside out." Good thing, too. The socks are my toe-up Jaywalkers, finally done! I'm very pleased with them; they fit like a dream. I think they're the first stocks I've made that fit me correctly. :-)

For Debbie - Progress!

Lookie! The heel of Crystalline Lattice sock #1 is done! It looked wide and short before I started, and it looks wide and short now, but, remarkably, it fits pefectly! Like the others, it will benefit from a gusset above the anklebone, but that's no problem (well, except for trying to keep the pattern across the instep...).

Here is my first attempt at fair isle. Don't ask about the back; it's craptastic.

Hope you're having a great time; miss you - see you when you're back!

Big Things to Give Thanks For, Little Things to Make Me Happy

Hope everyone had a nice, and safe, Thanksgiving, spending it with loved ones. (I was about to say something pretty snide about families not necessarily being 'loved ones,' but that's not really in the spirit of the season. So nevermind.)

I am thankful, as always, that my family has always thought that I could do no wrong, and stood beside me and loved me, no matter what bonehead thing I was about to do, or had just done. I'm thankful for my 'family of friends,' the friends who live nearby who act as my surrogate family and have the added benefit of giving me in-person hugs when I need them. They may not think I can do no wrong, but they are here beside me (well, some of them may be behind me, looking at my butt... you know who you are... and I think you for it!) I'm also thankful that, although it took me three tries to find him, KW is in my life, at my side, together where we belong. Yes, still madly in love. *sigh*

As for the little things that make me happy, take how yarn is displayed in a yarn store. Back when I first learned how to knit, a friend took me to a LYS in a nearby town (names will be changed or not mentioned to protect the silly). I was whacked out by the collection, which was all over the place - messy, disorganized, only the owner seemed to know where anything was. I bought some novelty yarn (mostly because I didn't know any better) and swore I'd never go back there again. Turns out, that was a pretty common assessment among knitters. (BTW, the store has since moved, and I still haven't ventured to their new location. I'm a'feared they brought their organization 'system' with them...)

Even the other LYS known for its randomness, the one I used to work at, treated the yarn with respect, and we tried to keep like things organized with like things, but many people don't like the arrangement, the sense of messiness, the randomness of the hours it's open. The other 'growed up' stores have varying ways of organizing their stash-for-sale, and a quick glance as you walk through the shop is all you need to find what you're looking for or be an informed browser.

So there's one yarn store in the area that stood out from the rest - Madonna Needle Works. It's a lovely store, mostly designed for needleworkers, but with a separate petting zoo (yarn room) for the knitters and crocheters among us. There is just one teensy little bit of weirdness about it - the yarn was arranged by color. She carries good stuff - Cascade and Reynolds and Crystal Palace, among others - but there were multiple bins of blues and multiple bins of greens, and god help you if you were looking for a teal - was it in the green bins? Was it in the blue bins? Most importantly, could you find enough skeins to make a sweater from it? Who knew?

A lot of the regulars who hang out there love the store's personality, but we often found ourselves shopping elsewhere (just not at the other LYS in town - we'd go 20 miles to *not* shop there, but that's anohter blog) - and I even teach knitting classes there. We hated to go somewhere else, but we just couldn't find what we thought we needed or wanted. The idea of arranging yarn by color was pretty cool, but only until we actually wanted to buy something. Then, the novelty of the arrangement became frustrating, since it was really hard to find enough yarn for a multi-skein project.

Well, Teri (the store owner) agreed to change the organization, and it's been converted from being arranged by color to being arranged by brand and type of yarn. I stopped by today for the first time since it was done, and thought I had walked into a new local yarn store. It made such a difference, seeing the yarns arranged by brand and type! Now, I don't have to restrict my thinking to embellishment yarn or one-skein project yarn; the prospect of shopping there for projects and patterns has now opened up. Plus, she just got a boatload of new yarns in - and now you can see them!

See? Little things make me happy, like a sense of organization.

Other little things that make me happy? Taming chenille. That tangled mess hanging on the chair? Well, I did have to cut it - but only once. Now it's in two nicely wound balls, and as soon as I figure out what it wants to be, I'll start knitting. Maybe.

Chenille, before :-( Chenille, after :-)