Winna, Winna, Chicken Dinna

Folks, the random number generator has given us a winner! Congratulations to Amy, aka knitterofhats on ravelry. Amy, I'll PM you on rav and as soon as I get your address, your copy of Sweater Quest will be winging its way to you. Many thanks to everyone who entered the contest!

I'm especially happy to be able to spread a little cheer today as this is my last day of the spring semester. As of tomorrow, I'm free, free, free...for the next 6 weeks, that is. Still, a half-summer vacation is better than no summer vacation at all, and by the time I have to get back into the classroom at the end of June, the sweltering heat will be just about ready to kick in and I'll be grateful to be out of the house and into the air-conditioned coolness of the office. Till then, I'll be home with the kids, playing in the garden, pulling weeds and generally enjoying myself. Aaaaaah, good times, they are a-comin'.

Hopefully, I'll be able to squeeze some knitting in along with all of that. Most of my knitting time comes during my looooooong commute. With a month and a half off, I'll have to try and figure out when to knit here at home. I still have my Multnomah to finish, and after the problems I've had with the feather and fan border, I don't want to put it down for too long because I might not want to pick it up again.

I think I've worked the kinks, or at least most of them, out of the project, so once I'm finished posting I'm going to sit down and try to get a few rows into the pattern. I still love how the knit 1 below patterning looks on the main body of the shawl; I can't wait to see how the feather and fan will look paired with that.

Will post photos once I'm a bit farther along....

It's a Small Internet After All

I'm not about to tell you my age. I will, however, point out that I earned spending money in college by typing papers for a buck a page on my state-of-the-art Brother electronic typewriter, the kind that had a double ribbon (one half black ink, the other half white-out) and a memory of about a single line of text. Goof up your spelling and catch it in time, and with a touch of a button that clever little machine would go back and blank it out so you could type over it and no one would be the wiser. Much, much better than the old cast-iron Underwood I'd learned to type on in junior high. Screw up with that thing and you probably wouldn't even be able to manage to line your text up again after smearing liquid white-out over the offending error, resulting in anywhere from a single letter to a series of words hanging half a line above or below the rest. Ah, technology.

I mention all this as a preface to why, when I glanced at my April 22 post, I was taken completely by surprise to see that Adrienne Martini had left me a comment.

Adrienne Martini, in case you don't know, is the author of Sweater Quest, a very clever and entertaining book that I happen to be giving away in a blog contest. Now, to my knowledge, almost no one reads my blog. As of today, I have exactly four followers, at least one of whom I suspect must have clicked the "follow" button by accident and then not known how to take it back. And yet somehow, the author of this book managed to find out that I'm giving her book away as a contest prize, and she was gracious enough to publicly thank me for doing so. According to my reckoning, it took all of three days for this to happen.

Back when I was banging out my junior-high typing class assignments on that noisy old Underwood, the only way to touch base with a favorite author was to write an honest-to-goodness letter -- on paper and everything! -- and, after scrounging up both envelope and stamp, mail it to a publishing house, hoping it would get forwarded to the author in question. Whether that author would give a crap enough to answer fan mail was anyone's guess. (Incidentally, while I never took the step of writing a favorite author, I did receive a very handsome photo of President Gerald Ford in response to a letter I wrote while in elementary school. I'd just like to say a belated "Thank you, President Ford." I do believe I still have that photo somewhere at my mother's house, tucked away with the other treasures of my childhood. Nothing's quite as sweet as getting an answer to a letter, especially when it's from someone famous who sends a publicity shot along to boot.)

It still amazes me how much the Internet has changed, not only how we communicate, but the very dynamic of communication itself. That a published author could find out that little ol' four-person-reading blogger me is giving away a copy of her book is marvel enough. It goes hand-in-hand with the very fact that I can even give a copy of her book away to a total stranger with just a few clicks of my mouse. Put a note on my blog, post an announcement on ravelry, and the offer is out there for anyone to see.

No, the larger change here is the dynamic between author and reader, seeker and sought after. Authors who, in the past, would have been as static as their books to a typical reader such as me, unreachable and unknowable beyond those words they committed to the printed page, are now instantly accessible in half a dozen different ways. Got a question about how to turn a heel on a sock? Message Cat Bordhi over on ravelry and get the answer straight from the designer's mouth. Sounding off about how much you love -- or hate -- somebody or something? Better watch out; far less than six degrees separate us from those we choose to discuss online, and we never know when our words may come back to us. For better or for worse, the famous and the completely not-so are talking more than I would ever have dreamed possible back when I scrawled my little letter to President Ford and was giddy with surprise months later to receive a heavy manilla envelope from the White House in return. What an amazing world we live in.

All of this to say, did you notice that Adrienne freakin' Martini left a comment on my blog? My blog!

How. Cool. Is. That.

Thank you, Adrienne. You made my day.

Modified Multnomah

Have you ever struggled with a skein of yarn that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up? Well, I'm working with one right now. Meet Matuey the Cat:

Matuey came to live with me via a rav swap well over a year ago. I was in a sock yarn phase, and I was swapping for just about anything indie that I hadn't yet tried, just to see what was out there. These are definitely unusual colors for me. I have nearly no white in my stash, far preferring jewel tones and black or otherwise dark undertones to a white base. But, like I said, I was swapping for new stuff, and I'd seen Dashing Dachs before but never scored any. This skein came up on swap, and I jumped.

Upon arrival, Matuey was not what I'd expected. Well, that's not exactly true. I suppose I hadn't "expected" anything except a new and different sock yarn, and this certainly fit that bill. What didn't fit, however, was the construction of the yarn itself. First of all, it's a very light fingering weight -- 560 yds in 4 oz. Second, it's 100% merino; there's no nylon to help strengthen this very thin yarn. Finally, it's a two-ply. The notes on rav say it's a 4-ply, but god help me, I can't seem to find those other two plies. No, this is definitely a 2-ply, and I far prefer a 3-ply for socks.

So, I puzzled. What to do with this yarn, now that socks seemed out of the question? The colors seemed too wild for a lace shawl, which is what this somewhat fine 2-ply seemed best suited to. What, then?

Knit One Below, that's what. I bought the book not too long after it came out and was intrigued enough with the technique to cake up Matuey and start to play around. I thought maybe a pair of kid-sized socks for my daughter, who at that point really wasn't up on her feet all that much anyway. I could experiment, she would get a new pair of socks, and by the time she managed to wear holes in them, they would be too small anyway. I figured the wild variegations in Matuey's colorway would blend nicely with this dropped-stitch technique.

What I neglected to note as I started the sample sock pattern from the book was that the author recommended using a sock yarn with some elastic since the K1B technique is all stretch with no snap back. A couple of inches into the cuff, I realized that these socks would never stay on a human foot, and certainly not on a human toddler's foot. Annoyed, I put the cuff in time-out along with the now-caked-up Matuey.

Fast forward. I've completed an Aran cabled vest. I'm most of the way through a dropped-stitch scarf, and I'm contemplating what to start next. Another sweater or top, while tempting, still feels too long-term; I'm in it for the quick fix now. But this drop-stitch pattern is killing me. It's so simple I can't wait for it to be over. I know I want more of a challenge.

That's when I start thinking shawl.

Not a heavy-duty, serious lace shawl, mind you. I've had one of those -- beaded -- on the needles for the past couple of years, and I'm sure it will be there a couple of years from now. No, I mean one of those shawls that people seem to knock out in a couple of weeks. A small one that can be worn as a stylish shoulder scarf instead of a full-out granny wrap. Something that would get that freakin' caked Matuey out of the stash and into my closet once and for all.

I decided to try a Multnomah. I picked it because I'd heard a lot about it fairly recently, and while I never seem to get on the bandwagon until the band has packed up and gone home, at least with this one I could still hear the lingering echoes of music in the air. Also, it's a simple garter-stitch body (quick-n-easy; no years-long project, this) edged in feather and fan, which is excellent for wildly variegated yarns because it seems to break up pooling nicely.

Here's what my Multnomah looked like at about 100+ stitches across:

And, guess what?

I hated it. Hated it! Why, dear lord, why did it look so muddy, so bleh, all the colors sort of bleeding together and weird with the greeny-blacky streaks, and where had all that white gone anyway, it all looked yellow and I look horrible in yellow and maybe it will look better if I just keep knitting but, really, when is it time to cut your losses and call it quits and damn, I wonder if I can ditch this yarn on anyone else now, shit.

Matuey was turning out to be one great, big, pain in the ass.

As I gritted my teeth and prepared to frog my Multnomah, I started thinking back to that cuff I'd knitted. I'd liked the way the yarn had looked; I'd only frogged it because of the fit. How had the yarn looked so good in the cuff if it looked like such crap now?

And that's when it hit me: knit one below.

Here's what my Multnomah looks like now:

Isn't she purty? I'm working her using K1B techniques, which produce a non-curling edge and help prevent unsightly pooling. I'm so pleased that I keep stopping after every row just to stare at the colors. It's somewhat slow going as I'm now purling back every other row, plus all that knitting below tends to take the steam out of a good knit, but no matter. I lovelovelove how this looks now.

Let's just hope it stays that way.

Yarn Review and a CONTEST!

Exciting things have been happening here at Maison du Splinarella. First off, I've finished something! After spending over 3 months working on my Cabled Aran Vest, I needed something quick and cute that I could whip on and off the needles, something springy that I could wear right away and enjoy.

I picked the Drop Stitch Scarf, by Christine Vogel. And I knew just the yarn I wanted to make it with: Tess Microfiber Ribbon.

I'd been hearing about Tess Microfiber Ribbon on The Knitmore Girls Podcast for months. Jasmin had been raving about the stuff, saying it knits like water and is perfect for cool and comfortable summer tops. I had, therefore, been delighted when I won a skein of it in the Knitmore Girls' "Do Some Good" contest earlier this spring. I could hardly wait to finish my aran vest so I could cast on my scarf.

So, here are a few details about the yarn:

It comes in generous 150g/333yd skeins for $25, although today the website shows them on sale for 25% off -- get 'em while you can! The colorway I used is #832411, a rainbow blend that transitions from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to purple to pink and back to red again. The colors are bright and vivid, a riot of tropical flora. The yarn itself is a true ribbon yarn with a width of about 1/8"/3mm by my measurement.

I knit up my scarf on US size 8 Knitpicks Options, the nickel-plated tips. At first, I found the knitting fiddly. I almost never knit with ribbon yarns, so that alone took some getting used to. The yarn is quite slippery, and for the first few rows I felt as though the project were in danger of slipping right off the needle tips. As the scarf grew longer, the weight of it was just enough to pull the yarn down onto the needles and get rid of that slipping feeling. The ribbon tended to twist and kink as I knitted it, which may just be a function of ribbon yarns and not a reflection of this particular brand. Fortunately, any twists that found their way into the knitting straightened themselves out in the finished product with no effort on my part. The yarn is so slippery that the twists just seemed to fall right out as soon as I lifted the scarf. I found myself frequently poking the tip of my needle into the ribbon (again, my inexperience with ribbon yarns was the culprit), but even though the Options tips are somewhat pointy, they never actually managed to pierce the ribbon. I did, however, snag the ribbon on just about anything that was remotely snaggable: a slight crack in a fingernail; the rough skin at the edge of a finger. In that sense, it was very much like working with silk. I would definitely recommend a good sugar scrub before taking up the Tess.

Overall, I liked this yarn. Except...I found a knot in the skein.

I debated about whether to even bring this up. After all, I received the skein as a prize in a contest. Free is free, and who complains about free, right? I can certainly understand a dyer wanting to provide prizes from mill-ends or seconds, and knots are part of that territory.

But.

After I found the knot, I checked the label thoroughly. It's not marked second, or mill-end, or anything else to indicate that it's not a first-rate, grade A skein of yarn. Now, I find knots in big-box yarns all the time. I don't like it, but kind of like mill-ends, I also figure it's just part of that territory. Big-box is big-box for a reason, and part of that reason is price point. A knot or two finding their way into the occasional skein, while not desirable, is probably unavoidable.

But, I expect more from high-end yarns. Again, price point is an issue. If I'm going to pay $25 for a skein of yarn, I want that skein to be just that: a single skein, not two mini-skeins knotted together. Then, there's the issue of this particular yarn. It's a microfiber ribbon. The instructions on the label say "Use fabric glue such as Fray-chek to seal ends & fasten." Not only is it impossible to join ends in a somewhat invisible manner (via a Russian join, spit splice or the like), but the yarn is so slippery that it needs to be knotted and then glued together. You better believe I want as few knots as possible in my project. Finally, this isn't a big-box production employing hundreds or thousands of employees in factories worldwide. It's a small producer who, I assume, must take a fairly hands-on approach to the production process. I would hope that a knotted skein would be pulled aside, labeled as a second or mill-end and priced accordingly. Ultimately, I would have to think twice before paying MSRP for this yarn simply because, if this is an indication of what can be expected in a first-rate skein, I'm not sure I would be willing to spend quite so much on it.

So, there's my review. I like the yarn, I love the way the finished product looks, but that knot really bugged me. Finding a knot in any skein of high-end yarn bothers me, which is why I almost never knit with Noro. But that's a story for another day.

And now, on to a CONTEST!

I just finished reading Sweater Quest, by Adrienne Martini. Adrienne tells the tale of her quest to scale the knitterly equivalent of Mount Everest by knitting Alice Starmore's Mary Tudor sweater over the course of 12 months. I won't say much except that I really enjoyed it, and now I'd like to pass my copy along for someone else to enjoy.

Entering the contest is simple: Leave a comment on this post by next Thursday, April 28. Tell me about your own knitterly equivalent of Mount Everest. I'll pick one winner by random number generator. Please include your ravelry ID in your post so I can contact you by PM if you win. And if you're not on rav...why aren't you? Go sign up: www.ravelry.com. I'll wait. Or, if you insist on remaining rav-less, please do make sure I have some way of contacting you in case you win. I'd hate for you to miss out on your prize because my mind-reading skills aren't up to snuff.

If you like what you read on my blog, sign up to follow me -- there's a box in the sidebar where you should be able to do that. And if you feel extra inspired, please feel free to make a small donation to the Spina Bifida Association of Northeastern New York. My younger daughter has Spina Bifida, a birth defect that affects approximately 1 in 1,000 pregnancies and is the most commonly-occurring, permanently-disabling birth defect in the United States. SBA of NENY does a great job providing families like ours with support and advocacy, and every penny they can raise is both important and needed.

Finally, if you're a woman of childbearing age, the United States Public Health Service recommends that you should consume 0.4 mg of folic acid daily to help reduce the risk of having a pregnancy affected by Spina Bifida or other neural tube defects.

OK, public service announcement over. Go play with some fiber, check out the links on this post, leave your comments and keep your fingers crossed. One lucky winner will be announced next week!

Bugga!

Rav can be dangerous for lots of reasons. For one thing, it's a huge time suck. I love it, mind you, but time spent there is time not spent knitting, spinning or otherwise playing with fiber.

For another thing, there are way too many paths toward enablement. There are the ever-popular destashes, the messages detailing the latest and greatest yarn sales online, and of course, there's the CPA (Completely Pointless and Arbitrary) swap group.

A year or so ago, I was swapping about $20+ a week in shipping costs. That was maybe 7-10 packages a week sent out. My local PO thought I had an ebay business. DH threatened to add "yarn shipping" as a category in our monthly budget. And I spent waaaaay too much time hunched over the PC swap stalking.

Then, we heard DH's job was not secure. After the initial panic subsided, I decided to stop swapping until things were all worked out. And so, I did. Cold turkey.

It wasn't as bad as I'd thought it might be. I still stalked the swaps, but I didn't claim. Brand-new, gotta-have-'em yarns came and went and came again. I slipped swiftly out of the loop, sitting on my stash and feeling virtuous for not buying yarn for most of 2009. I loosened the purse strings in the beginning of 2010 only to find that DH's job situation is now at its least secure yet. Ugh. So, back to the no-yarn-buying plan, which is actually OK since I'm pretty stash-happy these days (and, quite frankly, could probably clothe a small community if I managed to kit up all that I've got on hand).

And yet...I've really, really wanted to try Bugga! This is the sock yarn from The Sanguine Gryphon that's part merino, part cashmere, plus a touch of nylon for a bit of strength amid all that softness. Bugga! is notoriously hard to score during updates; popular colors sell out fast, and it's pretty much a free-for-all.

But today, I read on rav that The Sanguine Gryphon is picking a different colorway for each update and making it available in unlimited quantities for one day so that people can order as much as they want. The yarn will then all be dyed at one time and sent out to fill these "pre-orders." So, I went to the website. And, lo and behold, the colorway of choice today is "Twice-Stabbed Lady Beetle," which actually looks far prettier than it sounds. It's a deep, dark purple with flashes of muted fuschia that looks like it will knit up beautifully.

So, I ordered a skein. I also ordered a skein of Skinny Bugga!, a lighter-weight version of Bugga!, in Cowkiller, which is also a dark, rich, purply-browny sort of color that I'm looking forward to seeing in person.

All together, I spent around $58 on the two skeins, including shipping. If my mother ever knew the amount of money I spent on socks that I have to make myself, she would pass out. And I was hesitant to spend the funds that I really should be saving for a rainy day.

But, honestly, I couldn't resist. I've wanted to try this for a long time; these were colors I loved; and I've been so very good for so long, not even spending my birthday money "just in case." At the end of the day, I'm ok with it.

Now to stalk the mailman until my yarn arrives.

One Down, 11 to Go

Sunday was Big Girl's birthday party. She turned 5 last Thursday, and we celebrated with nearly a dozen of her friends at our house. They ate cake, played outside, and in general had a riproaring good time.

I, however, came down with a cold.

The last kid had barely left the house when I felt it come on. That first sneeze told me I'd better break out the neti pot and honey, which I did in short order, all to no avail. So now, in addition to the thrown-out back, the injured leg and the torn something-or-other in my heel, I have a killer head cold.

The only upside is that today, in between bouts of fitful sleeping, coughing, sneezing and neti-potting, I managed to finish my Aran Accent Vest from the Patons "Cables" booklet:

I must admit, I'm very, very proud of myself for reworking the pattern to do it in the round with steeks. I followed Eunny Jang's tutorial for crocheted steeks, and they turned out marvelously well. The inside is so neat and tidy! In the end, the vest is just a tad large at the shoulders. I probably should have followed the size M instructions for the front but the size S for the back. No matter, though. It's good enough and I'm wearing it as-is tomorrow when I go back to work.

It's my first of 12 completed for IntSweMoDo 2010, the KAL on rav that's a takeoff on the writing competition where you write a novel in a month. Only for this, you knit 12 sweaters in 12 months.

It's April, and I've just finished my first of 12 sweaters for the year 2010.

There might just be a chance that I won't get them all done in time.

Legs

I am easily influenced. Not in the usual ways, mind you. As a teen, I just said no to drugs, much to several friends' chagrin. I don't smoke, don't drink, eschew carbonated beverages and limit my caffeine intake to whatever is in chocolate (preferably dark, just in case, you know, you're thinking of enabling me). I avoid much pop culture by choice, which is one of the reasons we don't have TV in our home. In short, I like to do my own thing.

Except when it comes to knitting.

I just hopped over to the Yarn Harlot's blog and read this post. It's about legwarmers. Deep green, cabled legwarmers that she knitted for her sister. In the obligatory blog photo, the legwarmers are shown on legs (Stephanie's sister's, one guesses) clad in skinny, dark-blue jeans that end in the most violet pair of cowboy boots I've ever laid eyes on.

Now, I am a Yankee through and through, a city kid whose only use for cowboy boots would be to pry them off a sexy young cowboy for my own nefarious purposes. And I loathe the color green. So why is it that I suddenly want, no need, a pair of purple, high-heeled cowboy boots and some dark green leg warmers? How can I even envision myself wearing them like the skinny legs in the photo, leg warmers over the outside of the jeans and covering all but the heel and toe of the boot, purple leather barely peeking from beneath dark green cabling? What am I, crazy?

I get this way whenever I see good knitting. I want to make shawls that I will rarely wear. I desire sweaters that will neither fit well nor look good on me. I yearn for knitted skirts that will make me resemble an overstuffed pork product, sexy tanks that will spotlight my upper-arm deficiencies, and accessories either many years too young or too old for me. In short, my knitting eye, while able to recognize and appreciate great knitting when it sees it, is completely and utterly deluded about what an appropriate knit for me would be.

No matter. It's spring, the time of year to throw caution to the wind and start new things. Maybe high-heeled cowboy boots will be just the thing to spice up my staid wardrobe. Maybe I'll wear green cabled leggings and somehow manage to avoid embarrassing flashbacks to my '80s youth.

But maybe I'd better pour myself a good, stiff drink first.

Snip Snip

Well, I finally got up the nerve to cut the steeks in my Aran cabled vest. And you know what?

Cutting your knitting is the coolest thing evah!

Here's what it looked like before:

With a close-up of the first (and smallest) of the 4 steeks that I cut:

Post-cutting:

And, of course, the obligatory in-the-bathroom-under-awful-fluorescent-lighting shot:

I've just finished picking up 112 stitches around one armhole to finish it off with a few rounds of 1/1 ribbing. I'm so close to the end I can taste it! I'm especially happy that this thing actually fits. I gave myself a slight bit of heart failure today as I read other people's notes on rav about how this vest knits up waaaaay large. How had I missed this the first time around?? But, since I had no way to try the darn thing on without cutting it first, I just took a deep breath (OK, I took a few hours' worth of deep breaths), broke out the snips and had at it. And it worked! Unless I wake up tomorrow morning and find the entire thing has spontaneously combusted overnight, I've actually successfully cut my first real steeks!

Ah, Spring....

Today was my first "real" day in the garden for the year 2010. Meaning, of course, I overdid.

The results:

• A whole mess of day lilies relocated. I'm not sure they'll take in their new spot, but at least they're out of their old spot, where they were doing nothing but wreaking havoc. Score one point for me.

• One leg injured.

Yes, I managed to trip over a small concrete statue and slam my left leg into it hard enough to make me weep. DH offered not once but twice to take me to the hospital, that's how much of a baby I was being about it all. Seriously, though, it did hurt like a sonofabitch. Score one point for the garden.

• Once case of poison ivy, acquired.

If there's one thing I hate more than hurting myself in the garden, it's accidentally getting myself tangled up in poison ivy. I spent much time today pulling raspberry canes and wild roses, and darn it if there wasn't some poison ivy mixed in with all that. I've been hoping against hope that I just managed to scratch my arm up some and get an itch from it, but now the fingers on my left hand are itchy, too, and I'm facing up to the fact that I may be starting a course of steroids in the near future. Bummer. Score one for the garden.

Final score: Garden - two, me - one.

When will winter be back?

My Day in Pictures

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Actually, here's what I did after my summer vacation:

The vacation album! Just finished it tonight, and only seven months after the fact. Hooray for finishing!

Knit More!

Today was a double victory. First, this:

That's right, BGM's rainbow afghan is finished, only 13 days after it was begun. I still cannot get over how quick crochet is compared to knitting. Too bad I love the look of knitting so much, or I swear all I'd do is crochet just to finish projects.

The next victory happened awhile back, but the prize just arrived today. Behold, my award for being one of the winners of the Knitmore Girls' "Do Some Good Contest":

How cool is that? A gorgeous skein of Tess' Designer Yarns Microfiber Ribbon, the yarn that Jasmin of the Knitmore Girls is always raving about. And how appropriate -- it's in rainbow colors! Plus they were kind enough to send a Verena Knitting magazine, a sample of Soak, and a whole bunch of Knitmore Swag. Sweet!

Now I'm sort of in a quandry. I still have a bunch of WIPs that I really should finish. Mom's blanket jumps right to the front of that list since it was supposed to be her 80th birthday present...this past September. All it needs is the rest of the seaming to be done, and then the burying of the million and a half ends. I am never, ever using my little 4-inch square Weave It loom to make a blanket again.

Since the blanket isn't portable, I suppose I'll go back to my cabled aran vest for my train knitting. And, of course, there's the Sand Dollar pullover that I really need to finish seaming. Oh, and if I get tired of working the needles, I can always pick up the vacation scrapbook and finally do the last 6 pages. I feel like I'm so close to the end on all these projects, but the siren song of the new is always beckoning me away. (I'm looking at you, Tess Microfiber.) What to do, what to do....

Almost There

I'm so close to finishing BGM's blanket that I can taste it! After dance class tonight (did I mention I bellydance?), I sat in Starbucks with a couple of friends over tea and just powered through the second-to-last colored stripe. Now I have about a row and a half of white to go, then four rows of my final color and a finishing three-row stripe of white and I'll be done, done, done.

To tell the truth, I can hardly wait.

It's not that I necessarily have project that I'm dying to get back to knitting on. I'm still working on my cabled aran vest from the Paton's Cables booklet, but even though it's lots of fun, it's something that I'm fine with picking up and putting down; it's not a siren song but more of a steady drumbeat kind of knit. No, I think I just want to finish some things, and this is about as close as I am to finishing anything right about now.

I did manage to pull out my photo album from ::ahem:: last August and get a couple of more pages squared away. I'm trying something new and experimenting with scrapbooking. Honestly, it's not really my thing. I love the finished product, but I'm just not visual enough to make everything hang together as nicely as people who really get into it do. The vacation book is coming out nicely enough, but it's a shitton of work and I just want it to be done with. I was hoping to get it all finished over this week's spring break, but that was just not meant to be. Still, I've gotten a bit more done, and more importantly, I've taken the supplies out of the back closet where they were hibernating, so at least they're out in view and therefore more likely to be worked on. Once I finish the blanket, I think I'm going to concentrate on getting this book done.

Then, of course, I need to finally seam up my Sand Dollar pullover. It's only been more than a year since I finished the knitting up. Why, oh why, aren't all sweaters constructed in the round??

If I can get these three projects out of the way by the end of the month...well, let's face it, if I manage that, I will also have managed to squeeze an extra week into the available 31 days of March, so we'll just see how that goes. But at least I have goals.

Right now, I'm off to work on one of them.

Getting Phat!

I can only wonder what my foremothers would think of the fiber "sellout phenomenon." I'm sure there's a more official name for it, though I have no idea what it is. I'm talking about the way certain sellers (like Wollmeise) or certain product lines from certain sellers (like The Sanguine Gryphon's Bugga!) barely have time to hit the virtual shelves before being snatched up by eager buyers, many of whom don't even bother checking the colors that they get in the excitement of getting something, anything at all.

It kind of reminds me of my first trip to Rhinebeck, when I saw the line snaking from the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth past at least half a dozen other sellers, practically to the exit of the showroom. I asked one woman whose arms were filled with skeins of Socks that Rock yarn what was happening. I honestly thought the yarn must have been free to generate such a line. No, she replied, we all just love STR. No special show discounts, just the chance to see colors in person instead of online. People walked away with bags full of the stuff, paid in full.

I went through a period when I bought yarn at least in part for the phenomenon factor. Much as I adore Ravelry, I find it all too easy to hear about the latest and greatest yarns there -- the fiber must-haves that I then suddenly decide I must have, too. I've stalked Wollmeise at 3am, bought colors of yarns that I didn't even like because I knew they had good "trade value," and generally built my stash the way some people build their stock portfolios.

Then, I stopped.

I think I sort of burned out on keeping up with the Joneses. I had a metric shitton of yarn but relatively few FOs; yarn stalking does take time away from actually using said yarn, yanno. I was also worried about DH's job situation and decided that cutting back in general was a good idea. So, I quit cold turkey.

I stopped hanging out on the Ravelry swap boards, which made a huge difference. I don't think I bought yarn for over half a year, maybe longer. I actually didn't mind. I didn't feel like I was missing out, like I was denying myself anything. When events conspired to keep me away from Rhinebeck for the first time in 3 or 4 years, I was down for a bit, but ultimately I was glad not to have spent the money I was sure to have dropped had I gone.

Oh, I've bought yarn and fiber since then. Some special pretties at excellent prices mostly, stuff I love that also happened to show up on sale or on a particularly good Rav destash at a time when I felt I couldn't pass them up. I've done a bit of trading, too, to get yarn I want for specific projects. And I treated myself at the start of the year to my very first spinning fiber club, from Crown Mountain Farms. But, in general I just passed on the phenom yarns. Just a few days ago, in fact, I had 3 skeins of Bugga! in my cart at The Loopy Ewe -- I'd caught a note on Rav about an update just moments after it happened -- but I closed the window without buying because I couldn't see spending nearly $90 on three skeins of yarn that were okay, but nothing spectacular. Trade value or no, I just didn't love the yarns enough to want them that much, so I didn't buy.

But tonight, I finally succumbed to a phenom. I bought a Phat Fiber box.

Honestly, I'm not quite sure if it will be worth it. I've been intrigued for awhile, and I've even tried scoring one before but with no luck. I was always the kid who loved the surprise packages from the mail-order catalogs, after all; it's only natural that a surprise box of fiber would appeal to me. I picked a Fluff box figuring that I could do more with a bunch of samples of spinning fiber than I could do with short sample lengths of yarn. And I do have high hopes. If nothing else, it will be something different, out of the ordinary. I'm calling it a little birthday present to myself.

And if I wind up loving it, all my ancestors can watch from the great beyond in bewilderment as I hover over the computer next month, competing with thousands of other fiberistas from around the globe for the privilege of spending my money. Who would have ever guessed?

The Borrowers

When I was a kid, I remember reading a book about these teeny, tiny people called the Borrowers. They lived in people's houses and took things. They weren't mean; they weren't even stealing. They were borrowing. Whenever people went looking for their stuff in the place where they'd left it but it wasn't there, it meant that the Borrowers had taken it.

I was reminded of this last night, as DH and I frantically ripped apart the entire house looking for this:

No, not the Stitch doll. The Baby Surprise Jacket. The one I spent two weeks knitting for DH's colleague, whose baby boy is due in less than a month. I'd finished the jacket, sewn on the (functional) snaps and (decorative) buttons, draped it around Stitch for a photo shoot...and promptly lost the thing. I swore that I'd folded it up and put it back in my project bag, but when I pulled the bag out to wrap the jacket, it was empty. I searched all my project bags, my sock yarn dresser (yes, I have an entire dresser full of nothing but sock yarn; perhaps I have a problem), the little hanging shoe racks behind the hall closet door...but, nothing. At least, no jacket.

DH and I continued to search together. I may have implied that the jacket got lost after DH commented, upon my showing him the end result of all my hard labor, that now I could "wrap it up nice and pretty, m'kay?" Clearly at that moment, DH, usually a sensitive and intelligent man, was not at his best. Understanding soul that I am, I chose not to wrap the jacket up inside his anus, as I had very briefly considered doing. Instead, I simply lost it. The jacket, that is.

When the jacket finally turned up, it was in the least likely of places: inside my younger daughter's dresser. Now, my younger daughter is 2. She can't even reach her dresser, much less care about putting clothes into it (pulling everything out, however, is a different story entirely). I didn't put the jacket in there. DH didn't put the jacket in there. Cue the creepy music: the Borrowers must have done it.

But, all's well that ends well, right? DH gave the pressie to his friend at work today, and it was received with all the joy and appreciation that I could have hoped for. Meanwhile, I'm now free to go back to work on DDM's ripple blankie.

Now if only I can find where I put that crochet hook....

I {HEART} CROCHET

I came to the fiber arts through crochet. My mother taught me when I was so young that I don't even have a clear memory of being taught. I do remember spending hours making crochet chains, trying to see how long I could get them before I grew too bored to go on. As I got older, I moved on to thread crochet. I made doilies and fillet crochet picture-squares before realizing that I didn't like them enough to display them, which (in my mind) made the making rather pointless.

Mom had taught me to knit as well, but when I picked it up again as an adult it quickly supplanted crochet as my fiber art of choice. Crochet seemed so hopelessly old-fashioned, so 70s acrylic, all granny-square kitsch with none of the smooth sophistication and flair of knitting. I put my hooks aside.

But recently, my older DD has been asking for a blanket. She dearly loves all my handmade gifts, and since I realize that this will not last forever, I want to capitalize on it while I still can. If the girl wants a blanket, then a blanket she will get.

I decided to pick a crochet pattern because, like it or not, crochet does work up faster than knitting. I looked up free crochet afghan patterns on Ravelry and let her choose the one she liked best; she picked the Easy Ripple Afghan. We then went to Michael's and I let her pick her colors of Cotton-Ease, whichever she wanted. She chose "rainbow," which meant we went home with seven more-or-less primary colors plus white. I cast on two days ago. Here's what I have so far:

Unbefrickinlieveable, isn't it? Two days of easy double crochet and I've got a foot of blanket-width fabric to show for it. The rhythm of the pattern is soothing, and it feels good to wield a crochet hook again. DDM (formerly Baby M, though with her 5th birthday fast approaching she's hardly a baby any more) has already said she loves how the blanket looks, and at this rate it will be done in time for her birthday in just a few weeks. While I love the look of the knitted afghan I've been toiling over for the past few years (on size 4 needles, with the end nowhere in sight), there's really nothing like a crocheted blanket for a fast, satisfying project that produces BIG results in little time. Yay, crochet!

The Pioneer Life

I used to have this little fantasy. In it, my family and I were pioneers circa the mid-1800s. We would live in a cozy log cabin that my husband, "Pa," had built with his own two hands out of nothing but materials from the land around us. While he was out trapping or hunting or fishing to put fresh game on the table, I -- with the help of my daughters -- would knit and sew and preserve the bounty of the garden we would plant ourselves using nothing but the most basic of hand tools. It wouldn't be an easy life, to be sure, but it would be oh so rewarding in its honesty and simplicity.

Then, last week, I got to live my dream.

The power went out at around 10pm on Thursday. We really shouldn't have been surprised; over 2 feet of snow had fallen, and trees were bound to be coming down all over. But, in over 10 years of living in our house, we'd never been without power for more than a day and a half. We headed to bed, secure in the knowledge that the lights would be back on the following afternoon. Evening at worst. In the meanwhile, I would indulge in my Little House on the Prairie daydreams.

I got up on Friday morning, raring to start a fire in our wood stove. Of course, we hadn't used the stove since my older daughter had been born nearly five years earlier, which meant the only wood we had was a termite-ridden pile that was currently buried under nearly a yard of snow. Undeterred, I brought in a few soggy logs and set them up at the back of the stove, behind the pile of crumpled newspaper and junk mail that I'd scrounged up in lieu of actual kindling. My inner pioneer just shook her head sadly.

Fifteen sooty, smoky, fire-less minutes later, I finally remembered the lone Duraflame log I had tucked away in the downstairs pantry. At last, success! A fire roared in the stove, and I hastily piled wood as close as I felt I could without setting the house ablaze in an attempt to dry it off. Night fell with no power in sight, and we all realized we were in it for the long haul.

Saturday morning, I headed out to find that not only had all the generators in a 20 mile radius been purchased the morning before (and, really, a generator? who needed a generator? we were pioneers!), but so had all the Coleman lanterns, camping stoves and firewood. I stocked up on Duraflames, bought a three-pack of battery-powered headlamps and headed for home. When I got there, I found that in addition to having no heat, no way to cook food and no telephone, we now also had no water. I began to wonder why people referred to the past as the "good old days."

By Sunday, we sent the girls to stay with my in-laws for the duration. DH and I melted snow to flush the toilets and heated it to bathe. Do you have any idea how long it takes to heat a big pot of water on a wood stove? I could have licked myself clean, cat-style, faster.

Monday, I woke up to find dishes, including the coffee pot and oatmeal pan, in the sink. Not usually a problem, except when you need to boil water to wash those pots and pans before you can actually cook breakfast. So, while DH slept, I fed the fire (started this time from the prior night's embers -- Pioneer Me was so proud!) and spent 2 hours collecting, melting and heating snow, all so I could wash the freakin dishes in order to dirty them again immediately. When Pioneer Me pointed out that this is why the dishes should never sit in the sink, unwashed, overnight, I wanted to slap her.

The power came back on again late Tuesday. DH and I celebrated by taking hot showers, eating takeout Chinese and staying up past 9pm. Pioneer life had been pretty exhausting, and quite frankly, I was delighted to be done with it.

I have a new fantasy now. In it, my family and I live in a cozy A-frame with heat, hot water and light, all available at the touch of a button.

Oh, wait a sec...that's my reality.

At least, until the power goes out again.

A Fresh New Look

Over on Ravelry, someone commented that she'd checked out my blog and wondered what had happened with my life after I stopped blogging. She mentioned that I should pick up the blog again, and I'd been thinking the same thing myself. So, here I am.

I've cleared away much of the old crap that I had in the sidebars, header, etc. Feels like a fresh start is in order.

I stopped blogging because life got busy and dropping out of the blogosphere was easy. But more than that...I think towards the end of 2007, right before Baby Z was born, I wound up developing a somewhat uneasy relationship with my blog. There was so much strife leading up to Baby Z's birth, and I put some of that strife down in the blog. And then I just wanted to forget all about it. It was too hard, too painful. I'd cried my way through every ob-gyn appointment from 20 weeks onward, and I really, really wanted to leave that behind. And so, I left the blog behind as well.

Things are very different now. Baby Z is no longer a baby, she's a full-fledged toddler. She is an absolute joy, so full of life and so very healthy and wonderful, despite her disability. She walks...no, she runs most of the time, keeping up with her big sis who will (unbelievably!) turn 5 in just a few short weeks. She talks nearly nonstop. She managed to dodge so many of the typical SB (spina bifida) bullets that I'm still in shock. My gratitude to the vagaries of the universe knows no bounds.

I'm ready to write again, although I don't know how frequently or about what. Bear with me. I'll do my best.

Free Pattern: It's All You Baby Doll



Materials:
approx. 2 oz sportweight yarn in your choice of color for doll's clothing
approx. 1 oz sportweight yarn in your choice of color for doll's face
embroidery floss in your choice of colors for doll's hair, eyes, nose and mouth
ribbon
lace trim (female doll only)
polyfill (for stuffing)

Gauge:
Unimportant. Pick a needle size that gives you a fabric you like. It should be tight enough that you can stuff the doll without the stuffing leaking through.

Determine the number of stitches per inch your gauge is giving you in stockinette and cast on in clothing color (using dpns, two circular needles or one long circular needle) enough stitches to make a tube approximately 3-4 inches in circumference, unstretched. Join, being careful not to twist, and knit until tube measures approx. 6 inches in length. Change to face color and knit for an additional 3 inches. Do not bind off. Break yarn leaving a 12-inch tail. Using a tapestry needle, run yarn through all live stitches and draw tightly closed. Tack tightly down (any small bump will eventually be covered with doll hair).

Stuff tube with polyfill and sew bottom of doll closed with matching yarn as for top. Stitch on doll's hair and features with embroidery floss as shown in photo. Using a small amount of matching yarn, run a vertical line of stitches approx. 1 inch long about 1/4 inch from either side of the doll's body near where the body joins the head to indicate arms (see photo). Thread ribbon around doll's neck and tie in a bow. For a girl doll, sew lace edging over top of head for a bonnet.

Un-Raveled

Well, I'm finally picking my head up after my total immersion into the knitterly crack equivalent that is Ravelry. I have to say, if nothing else, participation in Ravelry has inspired FOs galore, if only to have completed projects to add to my project page.



























































This is Baby Z's Coming Home Outfit: a Mason-Dixon Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimono, a pair of Elizabeth Zimmermann Baby Longhies, and a Heart Hat, also by Elizabeth Zimmermann. All are done in Knit Pick's Swish, a lovely, soft, but splitty superwash merino.

I've also started an Elizabeth Zimmermann Wishbone Sweater (Knitter's Almanac, December) for DH; no photo as of yet.

And I've collected a whole bunch of patterns for later knitting -- my Ravelry queue.

AND...only 12 more days and counting till Baby Z makes her appearance....