Beating the winter blahs

My knittyboard secret pal sent me a great package a few weeks ago - I already showed the yummy yarn, but there were many more goodies in the box:Dark chocolate with a kick! Notecards in tropical hues! A sheep scrubby! Some sweet smelling soap! And a handy carrying case!! Of late, my purse has taken on black hole like properties, so this is being used to store all the items that usually settle on the bottom - like pens and keys. Thanks Somerdaze!! A few months ago, I bemoaned the difficulty in finding a suitable place for my ballwinder and swift. I realized that the solution was sitting right in front of me: This chair has the added bonus of being unsteady enough that the cats won't jump on it when I am winding yarn. This weekend I wound this funky yarn (dyed by the woman behind Knitwerx.com, which sadly seems to have gone offline) Aren't the colours great? And look at the nice short colour intervals (is there a more technical / elegant term for the distance between colour changes?) I think that this yarn is crying out to be knit into Monkey Socks - the perfect antidote for the grey and brown colour scheme that is also known as the month of March. I'm on call for the ICU right through February 29th, so once I wake up/get home from the hospital on March 1, I'm casting on!

Oh B-have!

It's Been over a week since I last posted (I am a Bad Blogger). Tomorrow is the deadline for my B themed post, and even though tomorrow will be spent at the Better Breathing conference, Blog fodder will be lacking. But I do have a photo of Big trees against a Blue sky. Speaking of Blue skies: My knittyBoard secret pal sent me some Beautiful green alpaca yarn (Blue sky alpaca Brand)! And here's the latest pair of socks that I completed - das Boot/Blueberry apricot. Yes, I am such an overachiever that rather than develop Second Sock Syndrome, I will soon Be in the throes of Third and Fourth Sock Syndrome. But I will Be working on socks 3 and 4, Because socks are much more portable than the sleeves of my Brooklyn tweed scarf inspired lines in the sand sweater - Besides, having to untangle the skeins at the Beginning of each round makes for Brain-numBingly slow progress.

Stash update

For some reason, my body decided to wake up super early today. What better use of the extra time than taking and uploading stash photos to Ravelry? This is a very belated photo of the Silk Mountain that I got from my supergreat SP 11 Secret Pal. Small world - her upstream was Rochelle, who I know through GTA knitting activites - most recently I been semi-regularly attending a SNB that she belongs to. Some weirdness that I just noticed this morning: Check out the Japanese yarn content listing - what is the 13% it refers to? Vegetable fibre content? This yarn is to be knit into gloves to match a winter coat I just picked up at a local consignment shop: Which brings me to a pet peeve - fingerless gloves. I hate them, or at least the concept of them. If it's cold enough to wear gloves/mitts, I want to cover my whole hand, thankyouverymuch. Think about it - what part of your hands has the largest surface area/size ratio? It's not your palms! And the argument that they can be worn under mitts doesn't convince me - because you are still leaving your fingers with less coverage! Now I am generally a live-and-let-knit kind of person; if you want to spend all of your time and energy knitting dishcloths, or shapeless/matronly sweaters, or representations of internal organs, then you go ahead and do just that. However, the Ravelry pattern browser (which is my knitting pattern source of late) is not sophisticated enough to give one the option to exclude a particular type of garment - so when I search "gloves", I end up having to scroll though dozens of fingerless glove patterns. Although I was quite happy to stumble across these instructions for converting a sock pattern into mittens, because even though my hands are large, mittens are still much faster to knit up than socks, and I am more apt to get lots of wear out of funky mittens than funky socks, or to knit mittens up as a gift for someone else.

Some things never change

When I was young and foolish, I had a boyfriend who was really into music. He would buy a record (because I am old enough to have purchased vinyl records in my youth), tape it, and then we'd listen to the tapes. But he firmly believed (somewhat irrationally) that fast forwarding was hard on cassette tapes. So frequently, when I would suggest we listen to an album, he'd reply "We can't; it's not wound", meaning that we couldn't listen to side A until we had listened to side B. Drove me nuts. Fast forward 23 years (Oh God, I am old!), and I am in the throes of startitis, trying to decide what to cast on next. Kaleidoscope - damn, all 3 sock yarns are still in skeins. Lady of the Lake jacket - Mission Falls wool is ready to go, but the Lorna's Laces is in skeins. That groovy sock yarn that I thought of knitting into Monkeys - skeined. Handspun for Candleflame shawl - skeins. Laceweight for Tuscany - big hank o' silky goodness. Everything I want to knit right this very minute - I can't. It's not wound. Drives me nuts. Yes, I do in fact own both a swift and a ballwinder, but I find winding yarn kind of tedious. Partially because I don't have many convenient surfaces of the right width to accomodate the swift/winder clamps, so I end up with all sorts of weird arrangement, including holding the winder in my hand. Plus I always end up with one end of the yarn hanging free, and it wraps around the winder pole, and then Somerset wants to get in on the action...My life is sooooooo haaaaaaard! But speaking of hanks o' goodness: This is the great laceweight that my awesome Blogger Secret Pal sent me Isn't it lovely?

Caught in the act by a fruit-sniffing Beagle...

We arrived in Toronto at 8:30 PM last night, which for our bodies was 4:30 AM. Just after we left the plane, The Gambler tossed the 2 apples out of his backpack that we hadn't gotten around to eating. Since I knew that we had eaten the 2 bananas that were in my bag, I didn't give it any further thought. As I was standing there somewhat dazed as The Gambler grabbed our baggage from the luggage carousel, I saw a woman walking a beagle through the luggage area. I noticed that the beagle had a little doggie vest on with the initials CBSA. She looked to be doing some type of training, as she put a bag down, and rewarded the dog when he sniffed at it. "I didn't realize that they use beagles to sniff for drugs" I thought. Then the beagle made it's way over to where I was standing, and started to sniff at our backpacks. The woman asked me: "Do you have any food in your bag?". "Not any more, but there was some in there recently", I said. So she unzipped The Gambler's bag and lo and behold there was nothing in the main compartment other than 2 books. So she opened my bag - on top was my knitting bag, which had yarn, and needles, and a water bottle, and underneath was my Clapotis. She dug further, and it turned out that there was a pear at the bottom of my backpack - I had forgotten that I had grabbed it at the breakfast buffet. I was told: "You could face a $400 fine for this", but she decided to let me off as long as I tossed the pear right then and there. Then she and the dog proceeded to bust an elderly couple. But enough about my inadvertent smuggling. I had packages waiting for me when I got home My final SP9 package: Some Somerset coloured sock yarn (which will probably get knit up into Cat's Face Lace Socks) A Montego Bay scarf (knit out of handpainted yarn) Patterns And assorted goodies of Portland origin. However, I haven't figured out my SP's knitty identity yet - please let me know who you are!! I also received a Ravelry Birthday swap package from Tammy: 2 different sock yarns, And more goodies! Don't forget the lemon cookies! (Even though I am a chocolate fanatic, there's something about lemon cookies that makes my mouth water!) And there was a surprise package from Janis: BTW Janis - it totally didn't occur to me that you were asking for my address because you intended to send me something - I can be quite dense sometimes!

Now, with actual knitting content!

I thought that it was safest to not try to bring my clap with it's metal needles on board the flight to DC, so on the way down, I knit a few Hats for Alex out of a skein of Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora yarn (which is wonderfully soft and fuzzy without being too furry - I'd love to knit myself a sweater out of this. It would probably end up becoming the weekend at home uniform, meaning that it would eventually be very furry thanks to Greedo and Somerset) I am amazed that there are babies out there small enough to fit the wee little hat. I deal exclusively with adults in the hospital, and it blows my mind when one of our nurses who also works in the NICU describes how tiny some of the babies are. I've eaten steaks bigger than some of those kids. And while I was in DC, I was able to give the hats directly to Pam/Trillian42 : We went to Stitches DC, and had some great Cuban food (Thanks again, Pam!!). I managed to find some souvenir yarn: Hotaru is the Japanese word for firefly. The little white cotton bibblies reminded me of cherry blossoms (although in retrospect, they look more like pussy willows), so it struck me as being the perfect yarn selection. I'll use it to create a Sakura Salix Scarf one day. Either way, the scarf will be a reminder of Spring - when I was growing up, the tradition at our church was to give out Pussy Willows rather than Palm leaves on Palm Sunday. I'm not sure if that is a Ukrainian thing, or a Prairie thing. By the way -a question for Ravelry members - what colour would you pick to describe this - White? Neutral? Pink? Brown? Why is there no option to choose 2 or 3 colours to describe a yarn? I have to get my final package together for my knittyboard Secret Pal within the next week (in addition to about a million other things). My pal enjoys yoga, so I am knitting her a pair of yoga socks (which Somerset snuggled up and napped next to) The yarn I am using is an orphan skein that I picked up in the basement at Romni during the last TTC Knitalong. I managed to lose the label, but I do recall that it is superwash and 100% wool, and it feels like a light worsted weight to me. The grey parts are actually a pale green, as you can better see with the flash: I vaguely recall that the yardage was less than that of Silk Garden, but judging by the weight of the first sock, I should have enough to complete the second one. Or else I will have to cry. And then frog both of them back and re-knit it with 2 or 3 less rows on the top section. (I was NOT impressed when I originally weighed the skein - it was 45 grams! 10% underweight!! It's a good thing I got a 20% discount on it!) It's a nice quick knit (I started it yesterday at the airport), and would be a good last minute gift. A good way to use up those orphan skeins of yarn, too!

Thoughts to ponder...

So how do you figure the average Airport Security person will respond to me bringing along a digital scale on the plane? You see, I need to weigh my clapotis once I get to the end of the increase section so that I can be sure that I will have enough yarn left for the decrease section. A perfectly good explanation, right? But considering the fact that Ron Reagan Airport has its own separate baggage handling conveyor belt, I have visions of having to explain this to some big guy wearning a polyester uniform and a permascowl. I'm guessing that not alot of Customs/Airport Security staff knit - although maybe they should; it might mellow them out a bit. Although, come to think of it, if a Customs Officer was a knitter, answering the question "What are you bringing back with you?" with "Oh, just some yarn" might not get you off lightly. Actually, come to think of it, I went to medical school with a girl who used to work as a Customs Officer; she once told us how during downtime between flights they would screen imported videotapes for "obscenity". She's a psychiatrist now - which kind of makes sense in a weird way. And with our recent "Sorry, the plane was too heavy so we left your baggage in Las Vegas" experience, I am not crazy about putting any necessities (i.e. knitting stuff) in checked baggage. Which reminds me - I don't think I ever shared the story of Crazy Lady on the Flight to LA. Background - I am 5 foot 11, The Gambler is 6 foot 4. So we ALWAYS try to get either exit row or bulkhead seats when we check in ahead of time. When we checked in online, we saw that in the DEF portion of the exit row, only seat F was taken. So we took D (The Gambler) and E (Me). As we walked down the aisle towards our seats, I saw that someone appeared to have an entire picnic lunch, and all of the worldly belongings strewn across the middle and aisle seat beside them. Wouldn't you know it, it was the exit row; those were our seats. I smiled at the woman sitting in the window seat and said "Hi. We are sitting there.". She glared at me and announced "This seat doesn't have 2 armrests, so I am going to have to use your armrest during the flight." Whatever. She managed to pack away the remainder of her 3 course meal and stow her 5 (I am not kidding - FIVE) carryon items under her seat and in the overhead compartment (which, of course, filled the entire overhead compartment, meaning that we had to put our stuff somewhere else). I sat down in my middle seat, buckled in, and pulled out my knitting. We listened to the spiel about opening the door in the event of an emergency landing, and got ready for takeoff. Crazy Woman was twisted around, looking behind her. I thought that maybe she was looking for another empty row so that she could move there once the plane took off. The flight attendants had just finished "securing the cabin", the engines started to warm up, and Crazy Woman decided that she needed to get up. OK, I thought - maybe she wants to move to the other seat right away. The Gambler and I undid our seatbelts, got out of her way, and she walked towards the back. A minute later, the pilot announces overhead "Could the person who is in the lavatory please return to their seat? We cannot take off until all passengers are in their seats. Please do not leave your seat until the seatbelt sign is extinguished". Minutes pass...people are starting to wonder if perhaps this person has collapsed in the lavatory...finally, Crazy Woman emerges, saunters up the aisle, stops to retrieve something from her overhead bin stash, and waits for The Gambler and I to let her pass by. But that wasn't the worst of it - the worst part (other than her repeating the bathroom trip during an episode of turbulence) was the fact that she felt it necessary to not only lean her whole arm on the armrest (to the point where I was routinely jabbed by her elbow), but that she managed to do it while somehow sitting diagonally, so that her feet were sticking in front of me so far that she could almost rest them on my purse (which was under the seat in front of me). So I ended up hunched up against The Gambler. But we did get a bit of revenge when the plane landed. As we were standing up waiting for people further ahead to deplane so that we could get into the isle, Crazy Woman announced to us "I want to get out now". She was quite short, and easily able to stand up straight without going into the aisle (not the case for The Gambler and myself), and The Gambler said "Madam, I'm pretty sure that nothing would make my wife happier than for you to leave immediately, but you're just going to have to wait." On a totally unrelated note, My Super Awesome SP 11 Secret Pal sent me some yummy drink mixes and 2 skeins of Noro Silk Mountain today! (Photos later). It's a boucle-y type yarn in red with gray and black bits, and is just begging to be the cuffs and collar of a nice sleek black sweater. Or the contrast on a pair of gloves and matching hat. Many Thanks!!!

Why do it the easy way...

I'm about to start knitting another Clapotis (I joined the Second Wave Clapotis KAL), and intended to use some Fleece Artist 2 ply Kid/Silk Blend. However, the 2 skeins total 400m, and the pattern as written calls for 750m. The 2 ply is discontinued, so while I was at the Kitchener Waterloo Knitter's Fair last weekend, I picked up some handspun, planning to intermittently using 2 rows of the handspun as filler. As you can see, the handspun (in the middle) has flecks of different colours rather than being solid black. In order to maximize my yarn usage, I'm thinking of dividing the handspun into 2 equal parts, so that I can use equal parts in both halves of the scarf. Of course, if I decide to be super precise, I shouldn't use any of the extra yarn in the increase/decrease section so that I can weigh the yarn used more accurately...but I am more likely to get blocks of colour in the increase/decrease section, so that is a good place to incorporate the handspun...or I could do a solid block of handspun in the centre...or I could use the handspun at the very beginning and the very end... Argh! As always I am amazed at my inability to decide my way out of a paper bag on issues that really have no significance in the grand scheme of things. By the way - does anyone else have the same hesitation that I do in winding a pretty skein of yarn into a yarn cake? Because when it's all nicely skeined it's perfect and the project that it will be used for will look beautiful, and fit like a dream and will knit up almost by itself (not to mention that it will NEVER, EVER pool in an unattractive manner)? And once you wind it into a cake, it still looks nice, but a bit of the magic has disappeared? But let's move on from my little quirks - to my kick ass Knitty Secret Pal and the latest booty I recieved: I love this groovy card, and dark chocolate is always welcome...but the best part was:A needle roll!Complete with sock sized Knitpicks needles! And iron-on labels! And here's the spooky part: She sent me some groovy nailpolish colours...which seem somehow very familiar... ...now where have I seen those colours before?

Hooray for Norway!

Guro was my Secret Pal during the last knittyboard exchange. There was some fantabulous mixup and the last package she sent me went on a little holiday before arriving back at her door. After something like 8 weeks. So she re-sent it to my new address, and it arrived last week. I'm planning to get a dressing table, and this placemat will sit on top of it. She correctly deduced that I don't have a subscription to IK. This was the latest issue when she first sent the package! Lovely pink pearl stitch markers and 2 brocade zippered bags for notion storage. Some herbal tea which contains an ingredient that translates to "Cat's paw" It smells scrumptous! And of course, there was yarn. I wanted a white background to shoot against, so I used something at hand: This is a long colour repeat marled yarn which is black/grey/teal, and similar to the Autunno I bought in Las Vegas. I might use it for the cuffs and collar of the Chelsea Sweater, or I might use it to knit the Rainbow Scarf from Last Minute Knitted gifts with any yarn remaining from the sweater (it calls for 2 different colourways of Silk Garden) A nice teal silk/wool tweed - which inspired Greedo to relocate to the front window. Mandarin yarn, which might end up being used for a baby knit. And a shawl's worth of Mulberry Silk. Now in the running for being knit into Tuscany (it has an advantage over the cone yarn because I know what the yardage of this is!) mmmmm....mulberry..... Many thanks Guro! Takk skal du ha !!!! And now... It's Saartje Bootie Time! I joined a knitting race on Ravelry - everyone was supposed to cast on at the same time Sunday (around 11 AM in my time zone), and see who could finish a knitting a pair first. I knew I would still be at the hospital then, but thought "Well, maybe I can get away by 2 or 3, and work on them all evening"... ...and the on call gods laughed. Ha ha ha ha!! I finally cast on for them on Monday evening. This is an orphan skein of Regia 4 ply. I'm also going to knit a Norwegian Baby Cap to go with it. We have friends who are expecting a baby boy in October. And I managed to pick up some buttons (as well as some other great things) at Value Village today!