Late again

I've gotta knock off this month-between-posts stuff. My online presence has been far too lacking lately! This is due in part to being rather sick and spending half my time sleeping that off, and also in part to the fact that my laptop is off for repairs, so therefore I can't laze around on the futon while simultaneously using the computer.

I can, however, knit!



First Twisted Flower sock, done!

I also made these for one of my mom's very pregnant co-workers:



Because, come on, how can you resist little Converse booties? I hear they were well-received. Hopefully I'll get pictures of the little recipient wearing them once he's born!

Other than that, I'm afraid there's not much to report. Life has been slowed to a crawl with the illness-and-resting bit, leading me to watch more House and play more Facebook-based Tetris than is probably healthy.

On the upside, all that time on Facebook led me to discover Paperback Swap. How cool is a site that lets you get rid of the books you never read (or bought in error...yeah, that never happens to me *innocent whistling*) in exchange for ones you actually want? It's like a library, only far, far more vast. Very cool, in my opinion.

Now for more of that "resting" stuff. Illness does go away at some point, right?

Mood: tired
Music: Iron & Wine - Naked As We Came

Arctic knitting

It's 8:15am, it's freezing ice cold out, and I'm curled up on the futon, drinking Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper. I realize that, given the weather, this may be a tactical error, and that there are much warmer things like coffee and tea at my disposal, but man...cherry vanilla.

I have also finally been jumped by the cold that's been trying to get me for weeks, and have thusly been rendered lazier than usual. Alas, after I post this, I'm going to have to venture out into the arctic air to do the grocery shopping, because it's very hard to eat food that we don't actually have.

But, as I was saying to a couple of friends last night, I knit, therefore I have wool things, and thank God for that!

Speaking of wool things, I am once again on a sock kick. Trystero is done:



And I've begun Twisted Flower, which is a simply gorgeous pattern:



(The yarn is Trekking XXL in color 329. Nice, no?)

Also on the needles is a pair of Broadstreet mittens for my mom, but given the pattern's tendency to run large and the fact that I'm substituting a yarn with a different gauge, it's mostly trial-and-error at this point (i.e., I did the ribbing, convinced that I had all the stitch counts right, and it turns out I need to rip it all out and go one size smaller with the needles).

So there's wool on the needles, wood in the stove, and blankets easily at hand. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to try not to freeze while buying produce and such.

(P.S. Is anyone else massively excited about next Wednesday?)

Mood: cold
Music: Ani DiFranco - Napoleon (Canon version)

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

I haven't a clue how it got to be after Christmas already. Surely some sort of quantum weirdness--a freak wormhole, perhaps--is responsible, because there is no way that 2008 could possibly have passed this quickly and shuffled us all into the tiny space between Christmas Day and the dawn of a new year.

I understand that some people like New Year's. I don't. When it comes to a new year, that "brand new start", I am not a glass-is-half-full sort of person. I am a "how the hell did the old year go so fast, and how did I do such massive amounts of nothing?" sort of person. I think part of the problem is that it's a human tendency to look at other people's accomplishments and measure our own against them. This is, of course, one of the greatest follies of humankind, since what we accomplish is unique to each of us, but I think a great many of us do it anyway.

Maybe that's why we take stock at the end of the year. The advice to count our blessings may not be as cliché as it sounds.

In lieu of any sort of "this was the year, this was what happened, wasn't it grand?" sort of blogging...let's move on to the knitting.

The cardigan is finally, finally done!



I checked my Ravelry queue...that thing had been on the needles since July. July! I knew I'd taken a few little breaks here and there, but I had no idea that it had been quite that long. But it was worth the wait. The yarn is great, the adaptations I made to the pattern worked out just fine, and it looked perfect as it was sitting there, blocking.



After blocking, it fits like a dream. It's rare that a women's pattern has the proper armhole and sleeve sizes for me, but between the pattern and the cooperative nature of the yarn once it was wet, everything worked out great!





Modifications: only one, which is the obvious one...no hood! I was using this yarn for another pattern at one point and, due to a miscalculation of gauge, ran out before I finished. I was afraid of the same thing happening with this, so instead of adding the hood to the left and right fronts, I bound off, then added cabled edging around the neck, picking up stitches as I went. It was the first time I've ever knitted an edging onto a finished piece that way, and I think it worked out well!

All I have left on the needles is the second Trystero sock, and then I'll be ready to pursue new and exciting patterns! And also make a pair of Broadstreet mittens for my mom, because she loves mine and thinks it's a great idea.

For those of you who can manage it better than I can...Happy New Year. :)

Mood: disappointed
Music: Savage Garden - Promises

Personal accomplishments

Holy foop, I can't believe that I haven't posted since Rhinebeck! I guess I haven't been in a bloggy mood. That, and my body has been demanding more sleep than I feel is strictly necessary, so my usual online night-owl activities have been kind of lacking.

But I'm back now! I am here, I am alive, and I have been knitting!

First, though, one other reason that I haven't blogged much: this year, I once again participated in the insanity that is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. And I wrote about...wait for it...knitters! Well, knitters and quantum physics, but knitting was a big part of the story. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with it, but I am proud to say that I worked hard enough to be able to display this here:



I feel strangely less accomplished than I did last year, maybe because I wrote a great majority of my novel in bizarre chunks using Write Or Die, an online application that gives you a variable grace period after you stop typing before it starts playing annoying sounds at you. Yep, annoying sounds like squeaking violin practice, noisy goats, and Hanson singing "MmBop". It's amazing. If you suffer from writer's block at all, I highly recommend giving it a try. It gets you typing, and I found that I was more inclined to roll with my crazy ideas rather than spend inordinate amounts of time debating about whether or not they would work.

Now for the yarny stuff. Remember that multicolored merino I got at Rhinebeck?

The blue stuff is yarn now.





I think I've mentioned that I love spinning merino. I'm a compulsive predrafter, so once I'm done with that, the roving practically spins itself. This spun up into a beautiful blue-purple two-ply with occasional slubs of yellow.

And, due to a silly incident that wasn't comical at all and which left me with only one glove, that yarn became these:



Broad Street, from the young days of Knitty.



I gave them a test run last night, and I have to admit that I don't miss my old gloves at all.



(They're less purple and more blue in real life.) I'm still not sure if I'll sew on a button to keep the mitten flap down when they're open, or just skip it. For now, they seem to work well without one.

Other things that have been giving me those little moments of joy lately: the Twilight soundtrack, hot cinnamon spice tea, and Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. Plus I'm knitting another sample for the local shop, and finishing the mittens gave me a big boost of energy with which to attack my other WIPs. All in all, knitting and life are good right now.

Mood: decaffeinated
Music: Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth

Defying (financial) gravity

Remember how I said something about probably not being able to go to the Sheep & Wool Festival because of budget?

Well, I was industrious. I spent weeks not buying anything that I didn't need, and letting things that could wait, wait. And today I brought home a nice haul from Rhinebeck (for a relatively small amount of money)! I rode out with the lovely Stephanie and her friend, Tomi, and we had a wonderful day.

First, the non-fiber stuff:



Eucalyptus, chai tea, and choco-mint soaps from Merriweather's handmade soaps. Holy cow, do these smell good! I love natural, hand-made soaps.

And, though I missed Franklin's book signing because I couldn't go yesterday, this



miraculously turned up in the hands of someone I met while futzing around the author building. He was just browsing, and kindly handed the book off to me to buy. Dude, I owe you one! This book is a gas.

Now, for fiber! Yes, fiber. I tried to stay away from yarn this year mainly because I still have yarn from last year that I haven't gotten around to, and my stash is fast outgrowing its plastic tubs. I figured that I couldn't go wrong by procuring some stuff to spin, since I don't spin a ton but get a great amount of enjoyment out of it when I do.

I wish I could remember which vendors all of this came from, but alas, I don't have cards from all of them. So here it is, in all it's fibery glory. And to all you fiber dyers/sellers out there, you rock!



Six ounces of pretty, solid-color merino. I'm not sure exactly how I'll handle it when I spin it, but I thought the colors would go nicely together.



Multi-colored merino! I looked at a lot of this stuff today, but finally decided on these two. Blue and blue-themed colorways are usually what I go for (in case you couldn't tell), so I added the brownish one instead of another blue one I was eyeing. I thought it'd be fun to mix things up a bit and spin something in a color I don't already have tons of in other projects.



The "I bought this, want to touch it? You know you want to touch it," item of the day: bamboo! I was too afraid of messing it up to buy more than a couple of ounces, but it is so, so soft. You know how kids imagine clouds should feel? Yeah. That's what this stuff feels like. It might be destined for the drop spindle, after it's served some time in the stash, being petted at random intervals.

And yes, I did buy yarn. I'll admit it. But the yarn I bought is all...drumroll please...sock yarn! Yes! Yarn I might actually use up before next year's festival, yarn that won't sit in the stash until I'm 105 because I couldn't find the time or the right project or the stamina to use it up!

I treated myself to some Socks That Rock in lightweight (Basan) and medium weight (a nice dark colorway, one of their Rare Gems):



And I picked up the Poseidon sock kit by Tsarina:



It took a while of looking at display socks to decide on this one. I was initially drawn by the Vintage kit, but this caught my eye even more. I love the dolphin pattern on the leg!

I also picked up three patters by the astoundingly talented Cookie A.: Trystero, Stricken, and Twisted Flower. I've been eyeing the Twisted Flower one for ages, and snapped it up when I saw it. I have a feeling that I'll be having a lot of fun with these!

And last, but certainly not least, the social stuff! Because there most definitely is a lot of that going on wherever knitters and lovers of fiber gather.

I waited in line to get a book signed and say hello to the ever-amusing Yarn Harlot again this year:



and was privileged to meet and hang out with geniuses of Ravelry at the Ravelry meetup.



I met and hung out with a bunch of other fun people, Ravelers and non, and had a wonderfully relaxing day. It never ceases to amaze me that, despite my hatred of big crowds and being around tons of people for long periods of time, there is always a certain peace to being in a place where everyone loves the same thing. There is always a common ground, always something to talk about, and always something to learn about each other and people in general. It's a great way to disconnect from all the craziness that goes on in the world every day, and reconnect with the way the world ought to be.

So that was my day at Rhinebeck. If I met you there, hi! If not, hi anyway, and I hope you had at least as much fun as I did.

Mood: fibery
Music: The Frames - Denounced

Comfort food

It seems that, like on a real diet, a knitter on a yarn diet craves "comfort food".

I'm on both, and it sucks.

I've been on the food diet for 10 days, and it's going okay, except that counting calories is driving me nuts. Due to lactose intolerance and other various factors, I'm having a hell of a time 1) getting enough calories every day, and 2) getting the right balance of calories. Adding healthy fats without being able to consume much dairy has been an interesting challenge.

I've been on the yarn diet (mostly) since June, when I bought that KnitPicks lace sampler. I've bought a bit of sock yarn here and there since then, but have made no significant yarn purchases and have been knitting solely from stash or working on UFOs. And now...I'm sick of it.

I want to buy a bunch of nice, comforting worsted weight--since all I've been working with is lace, fingering, and sport--along with a nice, comforting pattern, sit my ass down, and just knit all day long. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, I can't afford to do any of these things, so it's back to the UFOs while startitis stalks my brain.

In this quest to tackle knitting without actually buying yarn, I did finish the socks Glen Hansard lent his awesomeness to:



I love the colorway (Berocco Sox 1426) and would have no problem knitting with it again in the future. I've already made some very tiny socks from the leftovers as a dangler for my key chain. 18 stitches on size US1 needles makes for one adorable little accessory.

As far as comfort knitting goes, I'm in the mood for something big, warm, and cabled. Something like the Dickinson Pullover, or the Must-Have Cardigan. (I'll admit to being in love with that cardigan ever since the Yarn Harlot blogged her way through knitting it a while back.) Even Camden is looking pretty good right now. I just want something that feels comfortable to knit, looks great to wear, and is just plain fun. The macaroni-and-cheese, or mashed potatoes, or big-bowl-of-ice-cream of the knitting world. (I haven't had any of these foods recently, either. Mac & cheese makes me sadly ill, mashed potatoes are a bit out of season, and even with a calorie count leaning toward "not enough", I haven't managed to sneak any ice cream in.)

Alas, I crave all these things without the current budget to support them. I'm still wondering how I'm going to manage the Sheep & Wool Festival this year (hint: it's looking like I won't be able to). Although I suppose it's all for the greater good. Ending a diet with a binge isn't that great of an idea, right? Even a yarn diet.

Right, I'll try to justify it that way.

In the meantime, Anne Shirley is looking promising as something that could be satisfactorily knit from yarn I have on hand.

Mood: decaffeinated
Music: Gillian Welch - By the Mark

Necessity

In pondering life, I occasionally come up against something that seems impossible to resolve without causing a paradox when its principles are applied on a broad scale. No matter what angle I look at some things from, it seems that there's no way to settle on an agreeable explanation that makes sense in every situation. So often is the case with important matters.

In the midst of this, I've come to one definite conclusion: there is only so much that each individual person in this world can care about. And yet, in realizing this, it's also important to remember that, just because we don't all care about the same things, the things other people care about are not less or beneath the things we care about. Everyone cares about a different subset of things because there has to be a balance. If we all tried to care about everything that needed attention, the world would come to a screeching halt.

The point of saying all of this is to declare that I'm going to try my hardest to stop feeling guilty about the things I care about. I'm going to try and appreciate the time and energy that goes into and is required by the things that are important to me. I'm going to stop minimizing myself.

And one of the things I care about greatly is (big surprise) knitting. And yarn.



My first attempt at using Jacquard acid dyes! I was going for more balance between the yellow and green, but I'm still quite happy with the way it came out. It reminds me of early-to-late spring when the new leaves have just come, and everything is getting green again.

I dyed this at my grandmother's house, which is in much more of a city setting than I'm used to. I'm a country girl at heart; I grew up and still live in a place where it takes ten minutes to get to the post office and longer than that to hit a grocery store. My grandmother, on the other hand, lives a hop, skip, and a jump away from just about everything, from banks and grocery stories to soft-serve ice cream and Chinese takeout. It's interesting to spend any length of time down there. It's a really different world for me.

Her house also has a couple of things mine doesn't that make yarn dyeing that much easier: 1) a full basement with surfaces on which to lay out yarn and other materials, surfaces that have never and will never be used for food prep; and 2) a giant, two-sided metal sink with its own taps, perfect for wetting out and rinsing out yarn, and also for hanging yarn to do its initial drip-drying. I had a great time dyeing this yarn and hope I can do some more in the near future.

Because of the colors and where I dyed it, I've dubbed the colorway "Springtime in the City". It's for sale over at my Etsy shop if anyone's interested!

Now that I've waxed personally philosophical, and rambled about yarn in true knitblogger fashion, I'm off to play with the new Sims 2 expansion. And knit. 'Cause Sims is awesome like that.

Mood: depressed
Music: Michael Nesmith - Back Porch and a Fruit Jar Full of Iced Tea

I've done some blog-worthy things over the past few weeks.

I made a hat:



(An important hat. More on that later.)

I made a pie:



(An unusual pie. More later.)

But I'd say the most amazing thing that happened (possibly in the whole of the summer) was this:



That, ladies and gentlemen, is Glen Hansard.

GLEN. FREAKIN'. HANSARD.

WITH MY SOCK.

Needless to say, knitting socks at the Saratoga Music Fest was a very, very good idea. Glen's music, with the Frames and with Marketa, has had such a huge impact on me over the last year...meeting him was wonderful. I can only hope I didn't make too much of a fool of myself.

I am now eternally indebted to the Yarn Harlot for starting the "hold my sock" thing. I suppose you can only hope that the person you ask to hold your sock is a good sport--and Glen was. He didn't even ask why a sock, or "You want me to do what?" He just held the thing. And, as a friend pointed out, it kinda matches his eyes.

This picture is now 8x10 and is on my wall. Framed. Is that silly? Because if it is, I'm silly and proud of it.

I really hope I can find some audio or video from the performance yesterday. Technical and sound issues were, regrettably, cutting into people's set time, none more so than Glen and Marketa's, and it really upset Glen. But then he covered Van Morrison, which he does so well that he actually manages to be better than the original recordings, and just rocked the house. He made more noise with just himself and that wonderful guitar with the extra hole in it than the entire, full band that had played before. It was truly a moment that captured the essence of Glen and what he means to me musically.

Onward to knitting!

The cute little red hat is the Emily Hat, a pattern I found via Ravelry's pattern browser. I made it for the one-year-old daughter of a friend of the family as a sort of cheering-up present. The poor girl is having absent seizures, and her family hasn't been able to get a concrete reason as to why yet. I wanted her, and them, to have a little bit of comfort, and I'm no good with verbal condolences, so I dug through the stash for some cotton yarn and made this.

As for the pie, guess what's in it. Go on, guess. I'll give you a hint: it's not fruit.

Give up?

Zucchini. For serious.

Now, I like zucchini in things like quesadillas, and as a side dish with pasta, but I had no idea it was possible to make a pie out of it. No idea, that is, until I bought this cookbook. I had flipped through it before, and decided to pick it up the last time I was at Borders.

I'm so glad I did! It has some amazing recipes for most of the vegetables my family grows in our garden, as well as things that are easily available at area farm stands. Zucchini is one thing that we always end up with far too much of, no matter how little we plant, so I was glad to find that the book has a large section devoted to zucchini-based recipes. Apparently, if you cook chopped zucchini in lemon juice and season it like apples for a pie, it makes a very apple-like pie.

Guess what? It really does. It's nearly impossible to tell that the pie isn't an apple pie. If you love produce, I highly recommend this book.

I am now off to try another amazing recipe: seasoned sweet potato fries, baked in the oven!

Mood: ecstatic
Music: The Frames - Your Face

It's not about that, is it; it's about you and me

I'm not particularly happy about anything right now, which is a dreary state to be in at the start of what's left of the summer. But I suppose I--and many people--hit this point at some time during whatever season they find most promising. To me, late spring and early summer hold great promise, the promise of long days to come, of productivity and fun with friends. And it's not that I've done nothing this summer. I've done a great deal of things that have been a lot of fun. I just haven't done as much as I was hoping, and that always leaves me feeling somewhat depressed.

My knitting hasn't been at all cooperative or helpful on this front.



This will be the back of A Cardigan For Arwen. It's perfect mindless knitting for watching movies, knitting by the light of the monitor while RPing, or reading long books, but as a "sit down and knit happily away" project, this part is lacking.

As for the North Star scarf...



I'm rather tempted to dub it an impolite seven-letter word with the way it's been going. It was moving right along for a while at a pace I was happy with, and that was reasonable for the amount of concentration it takes. Now suddenly, as I'm approaching the halfway point, it has decided to rebel on me. Things aren't lining up, stitches are disappearing, and I often wind up undoing most of the progress I've made, trying to find where things went wrong. I'm beginning to doubt my decision to knit lots and lots of lace in the coming months.

These circumstances have conspired to start up the startitis again, and even as I knit these things, my mind is casting about for what to cast on next. I have some sock yarn that I bought at Knitting Needles in Newport last week, but that needs to be saved for the big awesome concert I'm going to on the 17th. (After much deliberation, I decided that, yes, the best thing to knit while basking in the awesome that is The Swell Season is, indeed, socks.)

Another unfortunate aspect of my current discontent is health. Mine isn't necessarily bad, more that I'm rather bad at managing it. I have trouble sticking to an exercise plan, because I just plain don't like structured exercise. I find it boring. And I love food. This, as you can imagine, leads to arguments with the scale over what it should say I weigh vs. what it actually says, which never end well. So it's back on the diet and exercise train for me, a train that I always wind up getting off of before my scheduled stop. Maybe it's time to start considering knitting as therapy?

Music: They Might Be Giants - Contrecoup
Mood: blah

Moving right along

After being kept up until 4:30 in the morning by an RP thread that was far too interesting to abandon, today has been a decidedly lazy day. Pretty much all I've done is eat, poke around on the internet, and read through another life of Captain Bluebear. Knitting will no doubt figure into the day somewhere, but silly me, being away from home this week, only brought lace. Nothing mindless at all. Which means I watched a great deal of Teen Titans yesterday without having anything for my hands to do. A dangerous endeavor, indeed!

Remember how I said that I needed to have a talk with the stash? Well, that's begun.



The stash used to have a free reign of the closet, and of the corner of my bedroom that houses my book collection (which is another growing "stash" in and of itself). This was unacceptable, especially since the closet stash was beginning to cause my laundry hamper to launch itself out of the closet whenever the door got opened.

So the stash and I had a little chat, as part of my ongoing summer project to tame the mess in my bedroom.

Yep, this is the same stash. Same stash, same yarn, tamed and organized into a lot of Ziploc bags, grocery bags, and two clear plastic storage tubs, which are now stored in the closet and have made stash diving a whole lot easier.

The circus sweater is in there, too, albeit no longer as a sweater. I was finally forced to admit to myself that I couldn't live with finishing it, and into the frog pond it went. Which leaves me with a lot of dark blue DK weight and several single skeins in very, er, vivid colors. Kaffe Fasset, anyone?

In addition to taming the stash, I've done something that it seems most knitters vow to do, but never quite get around to: I've begun knitting from it. Well over a year ago, I started knitting Jarrett with some Schachenmayr nomotta Extra that I'd gotten on sale at Wool 'n' Word. Problem being, I didn't think hard enough on the fact that changing the gauge would also change the amount of yarn I would need for the project.

Feel free to laugh.

...

Okay, you can stop now.

Anyway, that sat and sat and sat, unfinished, one lonely skein in the bag with the project, waiting for partners to finish the sweater with. Partners I could never find, at least not in the color I needed. So Jarrett, too, eventually hit the frog pond.

Then I discovered A Cardigan For Arwen. Again, not something that's supposed to be knit in sport weight, but I have a couple plans for modifying the pattern which ought to mean I'll wind up having enough yarn to finish. Until I get to the bits with cables, this will be my mindless knitting. 18.75" of stockinette for the back! That'll get me through a lot of summer DVDs (Monk, anyone?) and summer reading! I'm sure it'll also prove extremely useful when my mom and I go on vacation next week. Yey oceanside knitting!

Off I go to track down some food and read more about the lives of Captain Bluebear. If you're looking for some interesting summer reading, Walter Moers rocks!

Mood: hungry
Music: Almost Awake - Third Street