spinnity knits

Emma socks :: done!

2011-02-28T10:01:00.001-08:00

Emma socks :: done!
Originally uploaded by spinnity

W00t! I finally finished my knee socks from last year's Sock Madness over the weekend. April 2010 to Feb 2011 - but now they're done. I adore the cable detail right where the little flag-thingies would be on kilt hose and I like the swoopy feet.

The wrinkling at the back of the heel is a reminder of why you should not make your heel flaps too long. Learn your lesson well from my example. But wrinkly ankles be damned - I have red knee socks!

A gift from Stitches West 2011

2011-02-26T15:12:00.001-08:00

2011 Stitches West: Tools
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi Knitters,

Went to Stitches last week - saw so, so many friends, took two good classes, bought bunches of books, and received a very thoughtful gift. Have a look at the photos on Flickr to see the detailed captions & notes on what I got and learned.

[list of photos coming in a sec]

Best surprise of all was the new ball winder that Bill secretively bought with the help of many advisers on the show floor Sunday. Anyone who already owns the standard blue-and-white plastic ball winder knows its limitations. Mine has been in use 20 years now, and tends to skip a few gears, making rather sketchy looking yarn cakes. The new ball winder is much sturdier, rests better on the dresser where I have it mounted, and makes a lovely cake.

I've employed it already to cake up one of my three hanks of handspun, so I can start swatching for a garter stitch sweater based on the Elkhart pattern and color-coordinated Kauni I got from the Ruhama booth. Thanks to everyone who helped make this purchase, especially to seltsame, for very sound advice on the choice. I guess it takes a village to buy a ball winder!

Emma knee socks, 11 months later

2011-02-12T13:30:00.001-08:00

SM4: Emma cable motif
By spinnity

Yes, knee socks. It's a lot of knitting, but not 11 months' worth. The decision making slowed me down. Here's the story:

These knees socks knocked me out of the Sock Madness 4 contest last year in ... May? I think? Sock Madness is a speed knitting contest, with a rule that the socks must follow the pattern exactly. I love the audacity of knitting these super-tall socks at speed, but my heart was not committed to all the design elements. The back-of-leg decreases in the pattern looked messy when I executed them and other knitters' photos of the feet raised questions about the swooping ribs and the fit of the toe. I was relieved to knocked out of the contest by a speedier knitter just as I arrived at the ankles, to be cut loose from strictly following the pattern.

After a suitable rest, I picked them up last summer, ripped out 8 inches of decrease to the cable motif and changed the decrease style to keep a nice straight rib down the center back. I also shifted to size 0 / 2 mm needles for a snugger rib. I made it down to the ankles, where I stopped to decide how to deal with the feet. And there they languished for 8 months. Poor Emmas.

SM4 : Emma socks, 11 months later
By spinnity

But spring and a new Sock Madness are in the air this week and I'm inspired again. Not to mention i need something cool to wear to Stitches West next week -- why not bright red knee socks?. Dug the Emma socks out of hibernation and took them to knitting guild, where my panel of experts agreed that the feet on other photos did not look easy to execute neatly.

Proposed solution: Use the feet from Cookie A's Millicent socks. I like the way the ribs move across the foot better and the fit of the Millicent toe looks better to me as well.

Now that I have a plan, I'm making good progress - 3 inches of ankle and heel flap in two days (working both socks at once). I have hope of finishing in time for my spinning class at Stitches. Six hours of treadling in bright red knee socks sounds like immense fun to me!

Hat, scarf, and a swirl of Christmas

2010-12-05T17:03:00.001-08:00

Handspun Aspen Leaf hat
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters!

Wanted to share a few recent knitted objects, since I have been so terribly absent from my usual knitting groups over the past six months. Since Thanksgiving, I've invented a hat out of my own handspun yarn, from a very sparkly batt by Susan's Kitchen called "Bananarama Two"

Knitting this hat feels pretty significant to me, since it was done entirely by my design, using yarn I spun myself. Whoa! I tend to balk at spinning with my precious, coveted, scarce handspun -- what if I get it wrong?? -- and I don't often knit out of my own head. Anyway, I did it! I had to try several different styles for the crown of the hat before settling on this turning-ridge and centered decreases approach. And I love the hat, with its sparkly yellow and green yarn. It's like a banana for my head. A banana slug for my head? With leaves! :-)

Oh, and big thanks to Margit Sage for both the original batt and the idea to put "something, maybe a leaf" at the top of the hat for a more unique look. It's so sweet that Margit was present at both ends of this project!

Mohair honeycomb

In another bold and unexpected move, I have finished a scarf from yarn bought at Stitches 2010 - and that has to be some kind of record!

Also this weekend, I added the stuffing and seamed up a new swirl ball which I will present at the December 2010 knitting guild meeting, this coming Thursday at 7 pm at Yarn Dogs Annex - it's all about the short rows!

And last on the weekend update... I also managed to scoot over to Bobbin's Nest Studio to nab a copy of Cookie's new Knit. Sock. Love. book, signed by herself. I'm so glad Janice posted about the book & the event - it's sort of thrilling to think of Our Old S-n-B Gang now as book authors and editors.

I've missed you all and I'm trying to extract myself from work so I can come to more of the Meetups and maybe even a Bobaknit or two. I *think* I will be at Meetup on the third Wednesday in Campbell. Hope to see at least a few of my long-lost knitting pals there or at the December 9th Knitting Guild session.

Tour de Fleece 2010 - my first sock weight yarn!

2010-07-14T00:54:00.001-07:00

Ready to ply
By spinnity

Hi knitters,

Been quiet on this channel - but I had to share my first sock weight yarn, plied this afternoon on Margot's sunny deck with vultures circling overhead.

These are the three bobbins of merino superwash which I spun from roving dyed by Janice Kang for my birthday. It was some of Janice's very first dye work, and now it has been plied into my very first sock-weight yarn. I *think* it's both soft enough and firm enough to count as sock yarn, and I'm tempted to knit socks out of it. Janice - I hope you like the yarn I made out of your fabulous, generous gift of your very first creative work in color!

I spun these bobbins over the last 10 days as part of the Tour de Fleece, which is a spinning challenge that asks spinners to spin something every day that the Tour de France is riding. I've missed two days so far, but spinning 8 out of the last 10 days is way above my normal production - hence the three full bobbins!

My plan for this yarn was to divide the roving lengthwise into three sections, and then strip down two of the sections into about 20 width-wise strips each and spin the third one in just four strips. This should give a 5-to-1 beat of the thinner strips (which make shorter spun lengths of color) against the fatter strips, and in theory might turn out sort of interesting. Right?

In the photo at the top, the outer bobbins are the thin strip bobbins and the middle one shows the long color runs that came from my widest strips.

Plied!
By spinnity

Here's plied yarn (iPhone photo... focus was not great this close up in the sunset light. More photos coming from my hostess!) You can see that there are quite long stretches of one color - orange being the most visible in this view - and the other plies dance around making different color relationships to the long run color.

Next up on the Tour de Fleece, I invited Margot to come over tomorrow and see my fleece sorting & washing in progress. So I guess there had better be some fleece sorting by the time she gets here! And the next lot of fiber I want to tackle is a gift from the Fiber Fiend of a wild & crazy batt she bought from an indie dyer / carder in yellow with sparkly things in. Tune in next week for more news of the Tour de Fleece chez spinnity.

Edited to add: Margot took some photos of me plyiing, including much better photos of the yarn in progress - have a look at my Flickr Tour de Fleece set.

The Madness that is March

2010-03-30T13:11:00.001-07:00

Spring Beans with a friend

Hi knitters!

It's March (what? It's still March, until Thursday) and there's so much going on.!

Somehow after a lull in January and February, the stirrings of spring seem to kick everything into sudden high gear. This month I've managing to fold at least four kinds of madness into my schedule - Sock Madness, the NCAA tournament's March Madness, preparations for Easter and "scouting" for our 2010 Birdathon. Along the way, I have been knitting some *amazing* socks that I just have to share.

Sock Madness was the first form of madness to spring up. This is the third year I've competed in the Sock Madness. I never do very well, but I enjoy the challenge. The idea is that 4 "brackets" of sock knitters receive a brand new pattern at the same time and try to speed-knit the socks according to the pattern faster than the other members of their bracket. There are multiple rounds of sock patterns released, and smaller numbers of sock knitters are allowed through on each round - sort of like the basketball tournament, though you are not competing one-on-one. It's more more like the Olympic qualifying runs, where winning in your group lets you through to the next round.

Crazy like a Fox socks

In the past, I've sometimes managed to make it to the third round of Sock Mandess and I've knit some of my very favorite socks doing it.

This year, for Sock Madness 4, we "played in" by knitting the first pattern to prove we were serious - and I got to knit these beautiful side-to-side socks knit in Crazy Zauberball, color 1702 "Little Fox", using borrowed US size 0 needles from Dee Dee (thank you, dahlinks!)Pattern is "Simple Side-to-Side Socks" by MtMom and it took me 13 days to knit both socks. Slow, slow, slow!

Spring Beans and moss

Round two is a delightful pattern called Cool Beans by the Yarn Yenta, Heatherly Walker. I am using one of my very, very favorite yarns - Hazel Knits Artisan Sock - using springy green Euphorbia for the background and rich, flavorful Chocolatier for the beans. I'm calling mine "Spring Beans"

We started Round 2 on Friday, March 26 at 2 am. Well, I didn't. I started at 9:30 am and have been knitting away. Over the weekend, the sock-in-progress got a tour of all my other kinds of madness.
First, there was late-night basketball (thank you, Tivo!) on Friday.

On Saturday, we loaded the birding gear into the car and went off to explore the wilds of south Santa Clara County to look for sandpipers, pilieated woodpeckers and rufous-crowned sparrows. I even took the sock to choir practice on Sunday morning - no photos there, though.

Madness @ Uvas

The best photos came from hauling the sock from one county park to another on Saturday. I love the one at the top of this post where we managed to pose the sock with a denizen of the local hills - the Banana Slug! Go back & look at how slimy he is. Eeewww! But my favorite is this command-performance "Sunset & sock knitting at Uvas Canyon Reservoir" photo by Bill Walker

For this shot, I asked for a lot. I wanted a photo that showed me, knitting my sock, at the lakeshore, leaning on the trusty Subaru, with my birding regalia visible AND the lake, the hillside and the moon in the sky. Hah! Bill came through, as always. I even like the way I look in this photo. It's the perfect momento of the Sock Madness blending into the Birdathon Madness.

Spring Beans - one sock done

I'm still working away on the Spring Bean socks - number one is fnished and I have to knit like the wind to stay in the competition, while birding, Easter, and basketball all swirl around me. Let the Madness continue!

Sweetgrass @ Cinequest in San Jose tomorrow night

2010-02-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

Hi Knitters,

Have you seen the preview for Sweetgrass? Sweetgrass is a documentary about shepherds in Montana driving their sheep from the winter pastures in the valley up to the sweet grass pastures in early spring. It's just gorgeous and anyone who likes a sheep will like this movie. Check out the trailer & see if you aren't in love!

This beautiful movie is showing tomorrow night as part of the annual San Jose film festival called Cinequest. I happened to see the trailer in a theater two weeks ago & put it on my "must see" list. I thought we were going to have to organize a trip up to Berkeley or SF in a couple months to see this, but Cinequest has two showings Sweetgrass at the Camera 12 Cinema in downtown San Jose --

Wednesday, Feb 24 at 9:45 pm.

Friday, Feb 26 at 2:15 pm

Buy tickets online

In case you are interested in film in general - check out the whole festival, which opens TONIGHT and runs until March 7th. The festival preview article in the Mercury News last Thursday says there will be something like 100 films, many of them from other countries, many of them area or national premiers. It's a chance to be exposed to a LOT of great film. There are also many side events, like happy-hour type soiree gatherings before many of the evening events and lots of different tracks of films - drama, documentary, family-friendly, etc.

And let me plant this little thought... sending the Significant Other off to the movies is a great way to keep him or her busy while one is off gallivanting at Stitches West this coming weekend. They'll be so dazzled by exciting new films & star-sightings, they may not even notice the WEBS bags in the hallway on Sunday night.

Knitting Olympics :: A Debt of Honor

2010-02-16T21:11:00.001-08:00

Cobblestone sleeve #1
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters, How's your winter going? I've been pretty scattered, dividing my energy into too many things to do any of them really well. (As anyone who looked at my UFO Smackdown photo could have told you. Final score: 3 of 8. Not a passing grade. And the Fiber Fiend's Corsica [Rav link] is moving into the final stages slowly, slowly.)

I see two issues holding me back from actually finishing stuff: "judging" my work to be less than what I want and plain old follow-through. I get these ideas, but then they don't turn into action. I think that's why I got such a thrill when I saw that the Yarn Harlot is running her Olympic challenge again this year.

For you non-knitters, the idea is to take on a personal challenge that will be tough for you to complete in the 17 days of the 2010 Winter Olympics and then work intensely on that one thing until it is done. Great chance to really sink into one thing and make it happen. And the timeline means you have to get past the judging and just *do* it .

I had planned to knit a sweater for myself - and I had a couple of patterns picked out as possible candidates. But two weeks ago, I realized that I could use this challenge to honor the man who encourages me in everything I do. I am knitting a Brooklyn Tweed [Rav link] for my dearest husband. Because there is no one in the universe who appreciates a hand-knitted gift more than Bill.

I have a total of 17 days to finish the challenge - 12 left after today. Cobblestone will take 13 balls of yarn to finish and I've knit three so far, using the long holiday weekend to make a good start on the project. The Cobblestone starts with manageable sleeves, which are small tubes knit on DPNs, and I'm nearly done with that bit. [And Bill has enthusiastically tried those sleeves on over and over again. So far, they fit!]

Tomorrow I'll be moving into the long rows in the middle of the project, where I expect slower progress for about 4 or 5 days until I get into the yoke part, where the shorter and shorter rows will send me rushing towards the finish line. I still think I can hit the mark and finish in time for Olympic gold, but even if this sweater stretches on past the closing ceremonies, the finished object will be loved by the recipient and I will have discharged at least part of my debt of honor to my beloved.

Scarves & BSJ's

2009-09-10T04:58:00.001-07:00

Squeee! It's a BSJ!
Photo by spinnity

Hi Knitters,

Hey, is August over already? It's getting sort of chilly around the house and I'm starting to change into yoga pants instead of shorts when I get home from work. (Yes, like Mr. Rogers, I have indoor and outdoor clothing.)

The end of August was my deadline for a pair of Baby Surprise Jacekts I am knitting. What was it Douglas Adams said? "I love deadlines, I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

So it's true - and predictably the deadline whooshed by last week and my two sweaters are not totally done. Boy BSJ is nearly there - as the photo demonstrates. There's just a bit of cuffery, I-cord and buttons left. Girl BSJ is only a little bit behind, with about 2/3 of the I-cord bind off and the shoulder seams left plus the same cuffery and buttons.

Both are knit in Socks That Rock Mediumweight - Star Sapphire for the Boy and Quilla for the Girl. The I-cord edging on both is Colinette Jitterbug in Copperbeach and the buttons are as yet fictional.

The twins they are supposed to clothe are now scheduled to arrive next Monday - about 2 weeks earlier than I planned for them to arrive. Guess what I'm knitting the rest of this week??

[missing a photo of the Girl BSJ - watch this space]

I'm thinking of nominating the the BSJ as The Perfect Knitting Project for an All-Day Meeting, as soon as someone invents an award for that. I think it will win because it's all garter stitch with like 4 rows where you have to pay attention to anything other than the two marked increase / decrease spots. You can drink in a lot of projected Power Point slides while knitting these puppies.

Herringbone lace scarf
Photo by Bill Walker

Truly, I got started on these two little sweaters because of the all-day meetings. I decided that knitting at work could be excused if I was knitting *for* work, so I latched onto knitting twin baby gifts in solidarity with two newer knitters in the office who are knitting up Big Bad Baby Blankets for our collegue's impending twins. I think the ruse / tie-in worked perfectly, since several people asked how the knitting was going in follow up phone calls after our meet-a-thon.

And helping the newer knitters is turning out to be a big boost to my "non-work" knitting progress as well. Last night, one of the two blanket knitters came over to learn about retrieving dropped stitches, weaving in ends, and "blocking" your knitting. So mysterious, that blocking.

Nothing like an audience to help get things done, I always say. Showing my work buddy how to block knits got me to wash up the Texture Argyle Vest in progress to check the fit, the "bag" part of the Buddy Bag, my Chai Herringbone Rib scarf, and a lace alpaca scarf in progress. The scarves are both lacy and served to demonstrate pinning out lace to open the pattern. The other two items just got patted into shape & left to dry. A good lesson, no?

Alpaca lace scarf with owls
Photo by Bill Walker

Bill took photos of the two scarves this morning - the finished one clocking in at 74" long and the work-in-progress a puny 8". I'm thrilled with the results of the blocking - both scarves look fabulous. But a run rate of 8" of scarf produced from 8 grams of alpaca predicts a very short scarf.

This one isn't "due" until Christmas, I ordered a second skein of Golden Crown Suri Alpaca from Windy Valley Musk Ox this evening. I sure hope the new skein will match - I have pretty good hope that it will & if it doesn't, at least the colors will be in two balanced halves.

Veggie box tonight: Skillet beans & orange salad

2009-07-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hello knitters,

Not much to report on the knitting front lately - I've been working on a new pair of midnight blue Reversai socks with just the second toe left to complete the pair. They are a thank you to our friends who put us up in June when we were out of our house for a week due to "work being done."

In honor of the Tour de Fleece, I've been trying to spin on days other than our montly Spin-In. I'm working on a 210 g bump of moorit Shetland with just 25 left to spin. I'm hoping to finish my Tour de Fleece with plying on Sunday.

Ok, that's it for fiber.. and now it's time to celebrate veggies.

I love my weekly veggie box from Two Small Farms. And I'm so very proud that we are winning the Veggie Box Game this week, for a change.

See, every week when the box arrives on Wednesday, I make an inventory of the existing veggies and then check in the new arrivals. The list goes on the front of the fridge for awareness. This week: 26 "veggie units". Units are things like 2 pints of strawberries. 3 torpedo onions. A 2 lb bag of red potatoes. Two small heads of cauliflower. In other words: a lot of veggies for two people to eat up!

The goal of the Veggie Box Game is to have fewer veggies after the next checkin than you have today. When life intervenes (theater tickets, weekend wedding in LA, band rehearsal night), we get bad marks.

To increase the success rate, I've hatched a new plan, tentatively called the Veggie Box Dinner Cooperative. We met for the second time Wednesday. The Cooperative will alternate dinners at the Fiber Fiend's house and mine, with Ms. Seltsame graciously joining us increase our odds in the Game. The hosting household does a main dish, the other participants brings a salad or side.

Last week at their house: Cauliflower & tomato sauce for pasta, greek salad & an amazing plum crisp made with plums from the yard. (Home: 3 veggie units, visitors 1)

This week at our house: Zucchini Ankara, sauted spinach, and a beet / walnut / egg / romaine salad. (Home: 5, visitors: 2)

Well if we can cook for 5 or 6 adults (and mind you, Randall definitely counts for two adults at dinner time) on a weeknight, whipping up dinner for two on Friday shouldn't be any trouble right?

Tonight: Cajun Skillet Beans from the Moosewood Cooks at Home and a fabulous red leaf lettuce and orange salad. Rack up 4 veggie units consumed & nibbles into the onions & celery. And it was one of the best meals I've eaten in months. So fresh, so delicious!

For those of you scoring along at home: 26 - 5 - 4 = just 17 veg units left to go for the week. Let's see... strawberries & waffles on Saturday, repeat tonight's salad for Sunday lunch... and then my secret victory plan... invite out of town colleagues for dinner Monday night!

I'm queuing up tandoori chicken (with red onions & cilantro), a salad of romaine / peaches & basil, rosemary potatoes and grilled baby bok choi. Plus a melon for dessert. That's SEVEN at one blow! In your *face*, delicious, healthy vegetables!

What I did on my vacation + Rosemary shortbread

2009-05-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

Hi Knitters!

I've been "away" lately. Managing my contractor work life @ Symantec has been a big learning curve for me since October and I don't expect that to change much now that they've hired me as a regular employee, starting May 18th. Church choir meeting on Wednesday nights this year means I'm missing all the Santa Clara Knitting Meetup nights and I even missed a knitting guild last week. Booo!

So what *have* I been doing? Well, May 9 thru May 17 spouse-man and I were on walkabout with our very good friends from Milkwaukee. We drove north to the far northeastern corner of California (no, there there really isn't anything there - it was great). From there, we headed into Oregon for a visit to the High Desert Museum and a weekend in Ashland at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Phew! Our friends sent me a thank-you note that I am blatantly stealing from their note to tell you what we did:

... This was our longest vacation to date - it had everything, too: mountains, waterfalls, theater (second row!) duck (live and on plate), more theater, falafel, prairie falcons, jalapeno cheese curls, Sid's Water Hole's fried chicken and JoJo's, early morning birding, veggie box greens, moving furniture, high end shopping, business socks, modern architecture, badger petting, red naped sapsuckers, lava beds, petroglyphs, jazz piano + bass, Vietnamese food, lots of life birds, way too much cheese, late night discussions, Star Trek, wine flight, rainbows, microbreweries, sock knitting, Shakespeare, mosquitoes, kitties, Dr. Horrible, Ave Maria, fava bean puree, vast changes in climactic zones, post-theater discussion and, well, being with y'all!

Oh yes, S&R, it was a fabulous week. Thank you so much for coming to California to make it all possible!

Honestly, it was a startlingly successful vacation for the amount of planning that went into it, AND we got to spend 10 days on the road with our friends, meeting up with AWiz & the Wiz knitter in Ashland to top it all off.

Meanwhile, the thing that finally drove me to post on the blog today was the crazy search I go through every time I want to make rosemary pine nut shortbread. Well, this time, I'm getting SMART. If I post the recipe here, then I won't be able to lose it anymore. Hah! I'll fix your wagon, Internet! Just try messing with me again! Hmm.. maybe I shouldn't have said that.

Anyway, here's the rosemary pine nut bars, a recipe we found in our Two Small Farms CSA newsletter in June 2008. Quick & easy - try it!

Tuscan Rosemary and Pine Nut Bars,
here is that old recipe from the L.A. Times Food Section 8/11/99—Julia
¼ cup pine nuts, roasted
½ Cup butter, cut in 10 pieces
½ cup powdered sugar
1 TBS chopped fresh rosemary
1 cup flour
Melt butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, rosemaryand pine nuts. Stir in flour to make dough; it will be stiff. Pat dough evenly into ungreased 8-inch square baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees until golden and firm at edges, about 20
minutes. Cool pan on rack about 2 minutes, then use sharp knife to cut bars into 16 squares. Let cool in pan at least 10 minutes before removing with small spatula

ONE Tropical Mer-tini...

2009-04-03T13:55:00.001-07:00

ONE Tropical Mer-tini
Originally uploaded by spinnity

... is not a pair. Round 1 of the Sock Madness closed yesterday, and I've been so busy with work that I didn't even manage to knit the assigned pair of socks in two full weeks of life. I finished both up to the heels within the contest period, but work interfered with finishing the heels by 3 pm Thursday. Sad, sad, sad.

But they are still nice socks, so I am marching on to finish them. I wanted to share this photo of the first sock all finished, so I could show you the unusual heel flap.

In this sock, you knit the entire tube of the sock, close up the toe, and then come back to fill in the great big empty triangle where the heel goes. The last move is to take live stitches from the sole and live stitches from the heel and graft them together!

The pattern was fun to knit and creatively designed. It definitely fit the bill for sock madness, by making us excecute several unusual maneuvers (German twisted cast-on, the large chart, a modified toe, and the dreaded afterthought heel flap heel).

I think it could be refined by graphing the quilt pattern on knitter's graph pape to make the Drunkard's Path quilt blocks come out square instead of rectangular. I bet that would also soften the tendency of the purl sections to pooch out around the ankle a bit.

Anyway, that's it, I'm booted out of the Sock Madness and I'm liberated to go knit other things. Bill has an owl kit next on his knitting docket and I'm responsible for the wing parts. And I think I could maybe get my Early Spring socks finished to wear to Easter services. Green, the color of hope, right?

March 14 - 20: the week in photos

2009-03-21T17:40:00.001-07:00

First veggie box of the year!
By spinnity

It's really feeling like spring around here. And it's not just the weather -- so much is going on, it's like everyone's energy has woken up after the long winter sleep. These photos give you a flavor of the week.

First up: The veggie box is back! The Two Small Farms CSA made it's first delivery this week: flowers, fennel, kale, carrots, napa cabbage, parsnips, beets, spring mix, parsley and green garlic. The flowers were the most beautiful bouquet we've ever seen from the CSA and the fennel, orange and arugula salad was a fabulous first receipe on Wednesday night. On Friday, we munched up half a head of napa cabbage in Sesame Noodles with Napa Cabbage. Mmmm, peanutty.

And of course, as I mentioned last week, Spring means Madness: March Madness & Sock Madness.

Abandoned Mer-tini
By spinnity

The first Sock Madness pattern, called Tropical Mer-tini, came out very early Thursday morning.

The design is inspired by the Drunkard's Path quilt block and comes with a photo of a nice blue martini-style drink. I wanted to stick with the blue theme and I had some great yarn in stash to work with. Socks That Rock mediumweight, in a great color called Star Sapphire

I knit 4 inches of cuff using my first choice of yarn, and decided it was just not going to work. Too big, too floppy. Curses! And to rub salt in my wounds, Illinois lost their first round game to Western Kentucky. Grrrr!

Sock Madness 3, Round 1
By spinnity

Friday, a full 36 hours after the pattern came out, I cast on again - this time with a thinner yarn and size 0 needles in another lovely blue - "Pacific" Artisan Sock yarn from Hazel Knits. I knit through the evening basketball games - two squeakers featuring Big Ten teams (Go Wisconsin!) and I've caught up to my first sock. Sigh.

I'm way behind the fastest knitters in my division at this point. But this is the weight of yarn and the size 0's are the right choice and the new yarn is beautiful. You can look to see whether I make it into the top 40 knitters in my division here on the Division 2 - Great Knitspectations - scoreboard.

Rock Star gets a new keyboard
By spinnity

The last update on the week - the Roger Steen Band, featuring our very own Janice and my multi-talented spouse-man, Bill Walker are playing TONIGHT at the Quarter Note bar in Santa Clara, just off Lawrence Expressway near Central, at 9 pm. To get ready for tonight's show, Bill sorta casually "picked up" a brand new Nord Stage EX to extend the range of available keyboard sounds.

[EDITED TO ADD... ]Whoops - I nearly forgot spin-in last Saturday! We had 4 wheel spinners, 2 spindle spinners, 2 knitters, and 2 onlookers at the spin-in, which was a great turnout on what had looked like a slow day. I had met a needleloca from Sunnyvale at Stitches & invited her to join us - and she brought delicious artichoke fritata to keep us energized all afternoon, mmmm! Around 5:30, we had a real treat when Seltsame & her fiance M. stopped by. M. tried a little bit of spinning - with terrible fiber I offered him.

Emy plies!
By spinnity

And just *look* at Emy's plied yarn, in perfect Emy purple! Spindle spun, spindle plied and look how happy it makes her. Way to go, Emy.

There you have it. A busy week of veggies, knitting, basketball, music and spinning. Oh, and work. And not enough sleep!

Jeni was here!

2009-03-21T16:55:00.001-07:00

Can you spot the crazy one?
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Here are a few photos from the March 5th Bobaknit - The Return of Jeni. Anyone who has knit much with Noro will recognize the crazy gleam in her eye caused by the kinks building up in the yarn while making a 450 st crochet chain. Talk about fun!

It sure was nice to see Jeni and the Bobas, who I don't get out to see often enough. And I wasn't the only long-lost boba to show up:

Time for the Madness

2009-03-12T10:26:00.001-07:00

Oh March, how I love you.

In one week, on March 19, both the NCAA mens's college basketball tournament and the annual Sock Madness competition will begin. And there I'll be: watching basketball, knitting, possibly even drinking a beer.

Not familiar? Let me explain.

NCAA tournament: college basketball teams, including my beloved Illinois, travel to distant venues to compete in a field of 65 teams to become national champions. The tournament takes three weekend to go from the first game to the championship. On the first two days, 64 teams play 32 single elimination games, then over the weekend, they play 16 more games. Dudes, that's a lot of basketball on TV. A.k.a., knitting time!

Sock Madness: A friendly competition in a field of 200 knitters to see who can knit their socks the fastest. Signups closed a week ago and the divisions were posted yesterday. I'm in Division 2. Last year, I made 3 great pairs of socks during Sock Madness, but I was out in Round 3 and sat on the sidelines while the remaining knitters battled it out. In May, MKSmiles eventually won the contest in Round 7. The patterns were really fun last year -- I'd still like to go back & knit some of those socks from last year's contest.

But now it's 2009 and time for Sock Madness 3 and a whole new set of patterns. My plan is that the combination of basketball on TV and the goad of the competition will result in 3 new pairs of socks this spring. Because in spring, a knitter's fancy turns to thoughts of socks. Wish me luck!

Check it.

2009-02-27T00:24:00.001-08:00

Stitches 2009 : The Thursday night haul
by spinnity

Look! A lot of unplanned purchases obtained Thursday night at Stitches West. Best items: Felted owl kit selected by Bill for us to knit together and Malabrigo sock yarn in multiple colors -- for testing knitting a Janice design.

Here's a closer photo of the garter ribbed mitts I'm working on -- bought the yarn at 7:30 and by 8;30 I was knitting away at dinner with my knitting pals, Jo, her mom Joyce, she-who-is-not-named, Ms Mel, and Bill the knitting spouse.

Village Spinners & Weavers - quick mitts>

Getting up early tomorrow for Cotton Spinning

Honk if you love Stitches!

(Emy -- that's your shirt under the haul. Call me! Or tell me where to find you Friday.)

Expedition plan for Stitches

2009-02-25T16:12:00.000-08:00

Following Janice's lead, as I do in so many things, I'm mapping out a plan for my four days at Stitches West. You've heard of Stitches, right? The big knitting conference? Starts tomorrow, right here in my home town? Yeah, I thought so.

Of course we've been preparing for months now -- we signed up for classes in October, bought our homework supplies and did our swatches (you *are* done, right?). We printed the marketplace map & circled our favorites. And of course the local knitting guild hand-crafted Sheepy Shirts just for the occasion. Mine's pink!

And now we are Down To It! Just 24 hours left until the excitement begins. My Stitches West 2009 plan includes:

Thursday night: Market Preview! Starts at 5, but I'll be late, coming straight from work. I'm excited that my newly minted knitting husband and our out-of-town guest, Ms Mel of Stick Chick Knits, will also be perusing the market with me. We're headed to late dinner at Tomatina when the market closes at 8.

Friday: Classes! My first is an all-day event: "Spinning Cotton for Knitting" with Eileen Hallman - something I've never tried! I wonder if they sell used charkhas at Stitches? In the evening, I'm supporting the Husband Hobby by eating delicious Cajun food and knitting through his jazz gig at the Gumbo Jumbo in San Jose. (I am *not* responsible for their tragic web site. Food's good,though!) Music starts at 9 pm.

Saturday: Being helpful! I'm working in the the Fiber Fiend booth #832 all morning. In the afternoon, I'm off to "Beyond Basic Buttons (and other excuses for playing with yarn)" with Christine Bylsma.

Sunday: Creativity! My classes wrap up Sunday morning with "Designing Embroiedery on Knitting" with the prolific creative genius of embellishment, Nicky Epstein. In the afternoon I get to see my beloved sis-in-law, who has been extra busy with family caregiving this last month and deserves some yarn therapy to restore the soul. We'll be in the market from 11:30 until close.

My class list is lighter than usual, and I'm feeling sort of unsettled, like I'm missing something. I'm especially wondering why I didn't sign up for that Danish Skrå-trøjer class. Two whole days of Beth! What was I thinking, turning that down??

I guess I'll have to fill the void with extra shopping! It's all about the smaller vendors and getting to touch that beautiful yarn in person. Mmmmm, yarn. I tried to find vendors I wanted to see that weren't on Janice's list... but she's pretty much got it covered (plus links to the maps, the $2 off coupon, really, a whole Stitches Survival Guide. go have a look!).

Hope to see you at the show!

omg, omg, he made me a hat

2009-02-18T00:44:00.001-08:00

He made me a hat
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Knitters, look! My spouse-man made me a hat for Valentine's Day!

Here's the story. In November, Bill asked me to teach him how to knit. So I found a random yarn from the stash with a sort of manly look and figured out how many stitches it might take to make a hat in man size. i showed him how to cast on and how to knit and got him started knitting in the round.

I love a hat with a rolled edge and I think this type of project is a perfect beginner knitter. There's a long cast on, longer than a scarf, which gives them a fighting chance of remembering the motion later, and a good long section of Nothing But Knit. Ok, there's a bit of trauma at the end, but the finished product makes up for the drama.

By the time the hat was done, Bill had practiced

long-tail cast on
knitting in the round
changing colors (when we figured out that the yarn would run out before the hat did)
slip-slip-knit decreases
using double pointed needles
threading a needle with yarn (HINT: fold the yarn over the eye of the needle & pinch it tight. Slip the needle out and you have a nicely folded sharp edge which should go through the eye easy as pie.)
and weaving in ends

The only kvetching came in the last 6 rounds when we had to switch to DPNs. Yes, it's true, I made my husband knit on DPNs for his first knitting project. Not only that, but I concealed the looming inevitability of DPNs from him for, lo, five full inches of knitted hat. He was a bit honked off about those size 9 sticks, and let's face it, they are awkward at that size, but he pushed through and made perfect decreases.

Somewhere around the stripe we figured out that the hat would not turn out man sized, after all. Like everyone else in this family, Bill turns out to be a tight knitter... at least for now. He says when I handed the needles back to him after fixing something, it always felt much looser. Anyway, tight gauge means a smaller hat, which means I win!

Since it was clear by now that the hat was for me, what better plan than to finish it up for Valentine's Day? Bill ran the finishing yarn through the last stitches on Saturday after the monthly gathering of spinners. After conquering the final decreases on DPNs, he threaded his needle & wove in the ends. Ta-dah!

The hat is a tad small on me, but I love it, of course. After all, the yarn came from *my* stash, right? And who doesn't love a hat knit by the spouse??

Bill and I did the calculations for a mirror image hat - orange with a thin blue stripe - in his size on Saturday, but he hasn't started yet. Next time you see him, ask him how his own hat is coming along!

Big smoochies, dahlinks, thank you for the hat!

The January That Was

2009-02-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

Hi knitters,

It's time for one of those summary posts where I jot down notes about what happened over the last month, since I didn't blog each event as it happened. Don't worry -- it's a summary, so it won't take long!

Jan 4: Saw The Arabian Nights at Berkeley Rep on a double date with my brother & sis-in-law. Fabulous stories, inventively, dancingly staged, with a bleak reminder of how many of those stories took place in Baghdad. It slew me.

Jan 6 and 7: Had a birthday and decided to ditch choir rehearsal so I could attend the first Knitting Meetup of the year and lots of new members showed up, like these two:

Jan 8: Saw Beowlf: 1,000 Years of Baggage on its final Bay Area performance. Loved the dancing girls, the Dragon and poor unaware Beowulf. The on-stage orchestra was fabulous, though I thought the sound mix was not quite right. Wish everyone in our group had liked it as much as I did.

Jan 10: Had our first spin-in of 2009 and ate our fair share of Appleflappen to placate the Alpine goddess Perchta, who comes in the dark of the year to inspect your spindle, to make sure all your flax has been spun off. Took some photos to represent our 2008 spinning output, in case Perchta needs extra proof. Love you, spinners!

Jan 8- 13: Worked on a larger sized version of The Fiber Fiend's Corsica sweater - I've posted a lot of notes at ravelry, if you are curious. Here's a sleeve -- and I think even the photo showing how soft & snuggly this sweater in Rowan Cocoon will be:

Jan 19: You already know about the Sheepy Shirts we made for Knitspiration knitting guild, from my previous post. I finally finished painting the extra shirts about two weeks after the guild night. Here are the four shirts I painted - one for me, one for my mom, and two are surprise gifts:

(Don't worry, Lisa... I don't have a photo of your shirt, but it *is* black.)

After that, I think work must have intervened. I can't remember any cool events to report on, so I'll close with a sneak peak at February....

Feb 1: While the rest of the nation ate nachos and watched the Steelers win their sixth Superbowl... I was here:

(see those white sheep waaaay in the background?) looking at this:

That's a pretty good month, eh?

Sheepy shirts!

2009-01-21T00:15:00.001-08:00

Stencil sheep
By spinnity

Oh, hi there... is it 2009 already? A month past my last blog entry? Two weeks past my birthday? Inauguration day already (Can I get a witness!?!)?

Wow, time flies. There are so many serious, funny and relevant things I could have blogged about, but instead: "Look, sheepy shirts! Awww!"

These two shirts, and seven more I might be able to find on the 'net, are the output of our 8 knitting guild participants stencilling their hearts out Monday night. Our goal was to create shirts we can wear at Stitches West next month to represent the Knitspiration knitting guild of Silicon Valley.

It was our first guild meeting of the new year and our very creative Amy / spinalcat gave us all instruction in how to make contact paper stencils. We stencilled the sheep design onto shirts - old shirts from home and new $2 t-shirts from Michael's. I don't think any of us except Amy had ever stencilled before, so this was a fun and easy stretch beyond knitting for us.

If you are interested in stencilling a one-off shirt, Amy has a nice tutorial on her blog about how to make your own design into a stencil. The supplies for this project cost about $2 (for a new t-shirt) plus $1.50 per paint color plus the price of an Xacto knife and some grubbing around in the recycle paper box for cardboard. You can save the $2 by using an old shirt in your collection.

Knitspiration Guild a-stencilling
By spinnity

Besides the shirts, there was another big payoff for me and my musical spouse-o. We cleaned up the garage so the knitters would have space to mess with paint. You do *not* know how amazing this is. It has been 4 solid years since we last parked a car in this garage.

All it took was a bunch of trash removal, some stuff dropped off at Computer Recycling, and a Goodwill run, Bill can now reach the Hammond organ stored in the garage. It might be time for an actual garage band experience here at Chez Spinnity.

Special thanks to Jasmine, Pam, Amy & Janice for helping cut out extra stencils for members who could not attend. Janice couldn't make Monday's meeting, so she came over tonight to paint her shirt -- I love how it came out and I'm sure she'll have photos soon.

Squeeeeee! I'm in knitty!

2008-12-10T10:34:00.001-08:00

Ardea twined mitts
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Oh knitters, I'm wagging my tail like crazy today. My first published pattern appears in the Winter 2008 Issue of knitty: Larus and Ardea fingerless mitts in twined knitting.

This turns out to be another thing I'm grateful to the Knitspiration knitting guild for... if I hadn't taught the lesson twined knitting this summer, I wouldn't have developed this original pattern and Janice wouldn't have nudged me to submit it to knitty.

So thanks, guild members, thanks Janice. Thanks, of course, to Bill who shot all the photos. And thanks to knitty for publishing it! Working with the technical editor to get the pattern ship-shape was really helpful. I can't wait to see if anyone knits these and whether it's a challenge to learn twined knitting from the online resources available.

If you'd like to see all the photos of the mitts in one place, I've posted a photo set at Flickr

Squeeeee!

All thanks to knitting guild

2008-12-04T23:46:00.001-08:00

Spiral Cable Chemo Cap
Originally uploaded by spinnity

About 10 days before Thanksgiving, Margit Sage, the Fiber Fiend, came to teach our Knitspiration knitting guild how to move cables across the surface of a fabric, using her latest design, the Spiral Cabled Chemo Cap.

Yesterday, I noticed that spinalcat had posted a photo of her finished hat (she picked the one with bobbles) and it reminded me to post mine, too. And here it is - the Morfar hat.

I am just thrilled with the way this pattern looks with my own super bright green yarn. The yarn was dyed at the Fiber Fiend studio during our October guild meeting. Two guild months, two cool new experiences.

In fact... I learned a lot in 2008 and pushed myself to do new things because of the guild. Our calendar of topics definitely influenced my knitting, so I'm taking a moment today to be thankful for the guild.

Because of my local knitting guild, I tried out some new slip stitch patterns, practiced several new lace cast-ons, and dyed my own very bright colorways. (Next time, I should sign up for "Add sophistication to your color choices").

I also taught two of the lessons - one on twined knitting and one on slip stitch patterns used to combine different weights & types of yarn into interesting and subtle fabric.

This was my third year in the guild and my third year as an officer. In November, we elected new officers and I am not one of them. This is a bit hard for me, since I was really enjoying organizing things, but I'm really excited to have energetic new officers taking over. I'm really looking forward to our next two topics -

December 15 - Will your Dream Sweater Fit? Will it flatter?
January 19 - Make your own stencils

I can't make it to Fit Night, which is too bad. Sweater fit is a real issue for me. I'm hoping Lori will give me private lessons as I work my way through Corsica over the coming month. But I'm really keen on the stencils and another year of guildiness.

Trip report: Olema knitting retreat with BBR

2008-12-01T18:45:00.001-08:00

Scottish Gloves

Two weeks ago, Bill and I spent a long weekend in Olema at the Olema Inn, from November 12-16. I was lured to the Inn by their knitting retreat -- a series of classes with Beth Brown-Reinsel. Bill spent the days out in beautiful Marin county fall landscapes, taking photos of birds. At night we dined together with the rest of the knitters on organic, free-range, and delicious comestibles at the Inn. Can you say, "perfect vacation"? I sure can.

Wednesday and Thursday, Beth taught a two-day class on Scottish Sanquhar gloves to seven knitters, all engaging and capable companions. Friday we had a day off for sight-seeing (well... birding, if the truth be told) in the Pt. Reyes area. Saturday the knitting was back on with Norwegian mittens and Sunday we learned techniques for designing and executing Seamless Arans.

Between the knitting, we were served breakfast, morning snack, lunch, an afternoon coffee break, and dinner by the Olema Inn. That was a *bunch* of delicious calories. I will call special attention to the green leaf salad with duck breast, the breakfast selection of fruits and cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery, and the grilled cheese of gruyere on brioche.

I've got a bunch of photos to show you, but first I have to spend a moment going goo-goo eyed over Beth Brown-Reinsel, who taught all 4 days of the retreat.

What I love most about Beth is her ability to turn any form of ethnic knitting into a set of building blocks (Legos?) so we lesser mortals can assemble edgings, motifs, knitting techniques, and color choices that are within a related ethnic context. If anyone has read her wonderful book Knitting Ganseys, you know that book is exactly like a toolkit for designing your own gansey through a series of lessons on a mini-sweater. That's her genius: breaking a knitting tradition down into learnable bits.

Of course, once you learn the techniques, you can assemble them however you want, but knowing what makes an Aran an Aran, or what makes a Norwegian mitten Norwegian, and not Latvian is hugely useful.

The handout for the two-day Sanquhar gloves class, for instance, tells how to knit a swatch on 3 needle sizes, cut it open, measure the gauge and determine your cast-on (divisible by 4, since the multiple ribbing options are all 4 st repeats). That was our homework. In class, we learned that most gloves have a salt & pepper band separating the rib from the hand, where you can insert initials or a date. Then we chose two pattern motifs from three sizes of boxes based on gauge and hand size. We learned the traditional counts of boxes for each row of the hand and how to make the cutest possible gusset for the thumb. By the end of the second day, we were knitting our three-sided fingers. (Or casting on the second mitt, for the one knitter who elected to make mitts instead of gloves. See the cute edging she added to finish off her maroon & grey Kauni mitt? Gorgeous!)

The point is: having gone through this class, I could make any number of gloves, or mitts or mittens, all different, all in the right sizes, all very traditional-looking... or I could use the same techniques one or two at a time to spice up an entirely different mitten. This is the kind of class I love - a toolbox completely focused on one aspect of knitting which can be unpacked and reused elsewhere. The handouts, the preparation, the way she led us down the path... these are the reasons I love taking classes with Beth Brown-Reinsel.

I hope any of you locals here in Santa Clara who get the chance will take some of Beth's classes at Stitches West (Feb 26 - March 1, 2009) where she will be teaching Norwegian Purl, Fair Isle Tams and 12 full hours on the Danish Skrå-trøjer.

And now... the rest of the photos. Except I can't find the Norwegian mitten.

Sanquhar glove in progress - check out the cute gusset for the thumb and the little pyramids for the finger tips. I'm itching to finish the last two fingers and wear these for real:

Seamless Aran mini sweater - a sampler of Aran stitches and seamless assembly techniques.

Door prize! I forgot to mention the door prizes - we all got to choose from a smorgasbord of prizes. I elected to play the role of yarn ho and grabbed this basket of hand-dyed yarn from the Coastal Artisans shop in Bolinas.

And here's a question for the audience. What *is* this? This weird carving was on all three pieces of the bedroom set at the Olema Inn. I have given this shape a name... I'd love to know in the comments what you would name this, if you found it over your head at night.

The only thing that would have made the weekend better was knowing one of my knitting companions. I'm really hoping somebody from the south bay knitting contingent will come with me next year to the 2009 retreat. Pleeeease?

A hard week and then it was over.

2008-11-18T01:14:00.001-08:00

Arlie at the vet
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters,

There are many stories I wanted to tell you over the last few months... some I even took the photos for and started writing in my head, but putting them into a useful narrative always got confusing. I'm interrupting my blog procrastination in honor of Arlie, my very favorite kitty, who died last week on November 8th.

Bill and I are really having a sad time with the loss of Miss Arlie. We've been so insulated from death in our lives - our parents & granny are still with us. Arlie is the first of our cats to ever get sick, let alone die. And we feel terrible about her last week, which involved a lot of intervention and attempts to jumpstart her digestive system. Poor kitty. She really told us at the end that she was D.O.N.E. *sniff*

Arlie Barley Pudding and Pie Parker was about 15 months old when she came to us in November 1995, so she was 14 years old. We wrote these Ten Good Things About Arlie to remember her best attributes.

1. Arlie had an M between her eyes, bull's eyes on her flanks, and a short, bent tail that tapered to the end. She had soft, thick fur and a tawny undercoat. She had four black paws.

2. Arlie always came to visit anyone sitting quietly, especially if the bathroom door was open.

3. Arlie liked to meet new kitties, like Peanut and Benny, Squeaky and her adopted siblings Jasper and Sierra. She was hopeful and positive that each new kitty would be her friend.

4. Arlie spent a lot of time with shy or quiet people. She made sure they had someone to interact with in large groups.

5. Arlie could find a rubber band anywhere in the house. Nom, nom, rubber bands, mmmmm. She was persistent.

6. Arlie was good company for sick people and took especially good care of Mary after surgery.

7. Arlie's stubby little tail was very active and expressive, waving around to indicate interest or vexation. "Who am I?" Nan asked us once, wiggling her thumb above her closed fist. "Arlie!"

8. Arlie asked people to play with her by bringing a toy (mrrrow, mrrrow!) late at night or sitting near the toy she wanted to play with and looking Very Intently at the people. But she never nagged or made a scene. Just hoped.

9. Arlie picked her own scratching post - the wooden X frame of the laundry hamper. She used it vigorously and covered the floor with splinters.

10. Arlie liked to sleep in her special chosen spots: the back of the purple chair in the sun, on the settle in her kitty hat, on the bed on top of the purple blanket.

Our very good, very empathetic, very socialble kitty is now buried in the back yard and we miss her so so much. We are grateful to everyone who reached out to mourn with us. Even though Arlie was just a kitty, she was a big part of our lives. Good kitty. Good-bye.

[See some of Bill's photos of Arlie the love bug over here.]

How I spent my equinox

2008-09-24T01:24:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 22, was the autumnal equinox, that half-light, half-dark day which marks the beginning of fall. Did you celebrate? Maybe swap from your summertime door decoration to a harvest theme? Cast on a lovely fall sweater?

Well I spent the autumnal equinox doing one of my competitive birdwatching events - a birding "big day" in San Mateo County. That was Monday and today is Thursday. I think I've almost recovered.

I've mentioned these odd pursuits before - a birding "big day" is an attempt to see as many birds as possible in a single 24-hour period, usually in a specific county. Many birding big day competitions are fundraisers for environmental organizations. Ours was part of the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory's California Fall Challenge - so if you want to donate anything to support bird conservation science in the SF Bay, just click on over.

To run a big day, you get a team of people (me, the spouse-o, our friend Bob) and a location (San Mateo County) and a date (September 22). You plan a route through the county which maximizes the different types of birds you will run into. Our route had about 14 different stops from the "sea watch" at Pigeon Point lighthouse to a manky little pond behind the Nob Hill market in Redwood Shores. Once you have your route, you have to scout the area you want to bird so you know what to expect at each location -- which is why you didn't see me online Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday before the equinox. I was "in the field". Scouting also helps in planning your snack and bathroom options carefully, so you never have to stop birding on the big day.

It's traditional to name your big day team. Ours is called "MBB Overdrive", for our initials (Mary, Bill and Bob). This gives us license to make an iPod playlist of 70's classic rock schnulzers to play on the road between stops. We favor songs that reflect the urgency, craziness and time-compressed nature of our adventure. Think of BTO's "Takin' care of business", Steve Miller's "Fly like an eagle", Boston's "More than a feeling". Of course our playlist begins at our rendezvous point with the Chariots of Fire theme, to get us fired up for our big race. (Playlist suggestions always welcome!)

Then the planning is done and it's time to run the big day. On Monday, we get up at 2:30 in the morning, drove down to Pescadero and went out listening for owls in the dark on cold country roads (4 species heard in and near Butano State Park. And no rangers!). We then spent every hour of daylight (7:15 to 7:15... the equinox, remember?) looking for more birds, hitting our fourteen locations and keeping an eye on the clock. We had fabulous weather - clear skies, very light wind and a high at the coast around 72. This may have helped with the seabirds, but may have hurt with little dickeybird migrants.

No one monitors our results - big day sighting are on the honor system - so you'll just have to believe me when I say our total for September 22 was 129 different bird species, which is 48.134% of the 268 species recognized as occurring in SM. You can read the rest our trip report at birdWalker.

This result is "good" but not "great". Winning teams in the California Fall Challenge big day contest usually get over 50% of the county total for the county they are birding, so no prizes for us this year. Looking at the birding mailing lists after we got home, we found that other birders saw an additional 7 species in locations we were at, but didn't walk far enough into. Didn't walk far enough?? Dammit dammit dammit! This only makes us eager for next fall and our next chance to run this route.

On Tuesday, when I was released from birding duties, I spent a couple hours finishing up some unfinished projects from the Black Sheep Gathering and my recent trip to the TKGA Fall Knit & Crochet Show in Portland. Look for more knitting and less birding content in the next installment of spinnity knits.

Underdog (from the wayback machine)

2008-09-13T23:49:00.001-07:00

Underdog!
by spinnity

Did I mention this little episode? The Underdog incident? Perhaps I glossed over it in hopes no one would find out, but the photos are too fabulous to keep under wraps. So, even thought this event is 3 weeks old, here goes:

Someone important to me had a significant birthday in August. And asked us all to dress up as superheroes for his party. Wow, fun, you say, a costume party! Bah humbug, says I. I really couldn't get into it. I didn't want to wear a superhero-snug costume and I wasn't coming up with any creative ideas for alternative heros, like "Can Always Find The Matching Lid Guy" or "Ennui girl" so I was way behind on party prep. But it really was the only thing he wanted for a birthday present. The day of the party, I had this idea: Underdog.

Underdog is lovable and schlubby. No one expects taut abs and beautiful cleavage from Underdog! And he has a theme song, which is singable by anyone. Perfect.

The hubs and I made a shopping list and ran around town collecting a red sweatshirt, red shorts, red baseball socks, felt to make a U and ears, and nose paint. For him, we made a similar list to collect Aquaman parts, including the stretchy yellow belt that just *makes* the outfit. We had so much fun dashing in and out of stores on a deadline (party at 4:30!) and constructing our insignia.

Underdog @ the party
by spinnity

I'm giving you two photos from party day - me and hubs with the Birthday Boy up above, and all of the guests in our party costumes at the Pump It Up bouncy house party place down here. (All the other party groups that day seemed to be between 4 and 7 years old. Our party ranged from 4 months to retirement age and we bounced pretty hard. I still have the bruises to prove it.) I honestly had a blast dressed up in my ridiculous Underdog suit. And you are hereby authorized to remind me of that next time I'm being a poop about a costume party.

If you can... will you please?

2008-09-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

On Monday I did something I should do more often. I left the house.

There's been a bit too much of the stay-at-home, "yes these are my jammies, thank you for asking" life lately, especially during the day. I have been working on some knitting projects and some web site updates, which give me no real reason to step outside the door.

Monday I was lured from my cave by Chelsea of the Santa Clara knitting meetup who has local knowledge of Santa Cruz. At our Wednesday knit night, she recruited me and Jasmine for a road trip to visit yarn shops "over the hill". Chelsea, Jasmine, baby O and I met up at my place and started off going the wrong direction -- we stopped by the Stanford Blood Center to make a little deposit. Feeling highly virtuous, we got back in Chelsea's car and headed out. I was seaming like a madwoman all the way over curvy Highway 17, because I had a mission.

I wanted to wear my new orange sweater to lunch. The "Lots of Options" top from The Knit Stitch in Rowan All Seasons Cotton was knit fully a year ago, seamed, ends woven in, buttons attached... and then I couldn't bring myself to wear it. It was a bit too wide and a bit too short and a bit too low in the armholes, and all of that we could overlook if the button bands hadn't gapped like the gap they warn you about on the London tube - "Mind the gap! Mind the gap! Stand clear of the doors, please!". Over Labor Day weekend, the bobaknit gang gave me a suggestion for fixing my doomed object: sew the button bands shut. That'll fix those gaps! Genius. Let me at it!

So I seamed both edges of the button bands front and back, using the project yarn, in the car, faster than I have ever seamed anything before. And I wove in the last of the ends just as we reached the parking lot. It's normal to dress next to your car, right? With the bands sewn shut, the Lots of Options top is a much better fit - a little of the width was taken up into the sewn-up bands, so it's a little less wide. I like the drape a lot. [Sorry about the lack of photos - I need some daylight to take them and will post ASAP]

Our lunch spot in Aptos was Gayle's Bakery - I should say "the legendary Gayle's Bakery" - where we ate baked goods and healthy lunch fare. My Fiestaware plate and my apricot galette matched my new orange top quite nicely!

After lunch, we made it to two of our three target yarn shops, starting with The Yarn Place, conveniently across the street from Gayle's. We allowed ourselves an extended prowl through their Noro-rich offerings and let the time slip away a bit. Eeek - is that the time? Must rush!

With our Yarn Place purchases wrapped up, we sped through town to get to the Golden Fleece before closing time. Golden Fleece has Kauni in stock and some nice organic and natural yarns, including Ranch Alpaca which looks really yummy.

Overall, I consider this a very successful day of field research. We have to do it again, gals! Maybe we can hit the third shop -- the Swift Stitch -- next time.

And now, a word from our author
I sort of glossed over the blood donation at the beginning of our trip, but I would like to make a serious plea to anyone out there who is able to donate: Would you please make a donation this month?

End-of-summer is always a tough time for our nation's blood supplies, since the captive donor groups (otherwise known as college students) are off-campus and probably not donating. Everyone is on vacation and civic-mindedness is temporarily forgotten at the beach.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of 9/11. September 2001 was a time when Americans banded together to give blood in response to a crisis. Maybe you were you one of those donors. Are you still donating regularly? If not, maybe this anniversary is a good time to renew (or start) your commitment.

Call your local blood bank and get yer butt in there. In the south bay, that means the American Red Cross in San Jose or the Stanford Blood Center. Both are great facilities with easy access and great support and appreciation for donors. If you haven't donated before, would you consider it, please? Your donation could mean the world to someone in the hospital right now.

I'm spinnity, and I endorse this message.

Summer Limpets means Ravelimpets

2008-08-13T01:16:00.000-07:00

Hi knitters

The Olympics! They're here! And WOW, do they demand a lot of time... especially if you have a DVR.

Bill and I kind of love the Olympics. We have a special nickname for them - we call them "Limpets". In the real world, small-l limpets are little marine snail creatures, but it makes us giggle to have a mollusk nickname for this super-serious, emotional event with national pride at stake. "Awww, the Limpets. Aren't they cute?"

We're not particular about our Limpets. We'll watch summer or winter Limpets with equal enthusiasm. We aren't even all that picky about which events we watch. Beach volleyball? Sure! Greco-Roman wrestling? Why not? Women's soccer? Absolutely! We watch late into the night. We cram in a few events over breakfast. And this year, while we watch -- I knit. Because I have to. Because I am in the game!

Yes, I am competing in the knitting world's biggest competition of the year: the ravelympics. Or, if you are me, the "ravelimpets". Yes, I know I'm weird.

If you are not a member of the knitting web site ravelry, all you need to know is that "ravelympics" was invented this summer as a knitting event which runs parallel to the Summer Olympics. Each knitter is asked to challenge themselves with a difficult knitting project/task and identify it in their ravelry project list. We are then allowed to cast on when the Olympic flame is lit and work until the closing ceremonies wrap up the show on August 24. That's 17 days to complete a challenging knitting project.

Or, if you are me... 12 days.

Due to events beyond my control (a contract knitting gig which needed to be finished on Monday), I wasn't able to start competing until Tuesday -- 5 days into the ravelympic period. This means I missed the kickoff party my team (What up, Team Bobaknit?) held on Friday. I had to form my own cast on party tonight by inviting Janice over to watch me start my project and munch up my organic veggies.

So what am I knitting? Swatches. 16 swatches. And a hat.

But not just any swatches! No, these special swatches are the knitting assignments for the Master Knitter program which I have been intending to complete for Some Time Now. In fact, I knit most of the swatches in 2005, but I wasn't happy with my results. Since then I've done more reading and have learned more about what will pass the judging. I'm starting the whole project over, with new yarn, different needles (smaller - so my seed stitch will be dense enough) and the current instructions.

Today, I knit ONE swatch. Here it is, still on the needles, next to an older false start at the same swatch:

Look closely and you might be able to spot the split stitch on one edge, about halfway down. Riii-ii-iiip and reknit, and bingo: one down. 15 swatches + 1 hat to go. For successful completion, I need to have 10 swatches done at my halfway point, which is Monday. In Limpet-speak, that would be my split time.

"To keep her medal hopes alive, spinnity will have to dig deep to get to 10 swatches by the halfway point. Can she do it?"

Summer airplane knitting report

2008-07-16T10:25:00.001-07:00

Departure lounge
By spinnity

Tuesday I had a very long travel day back from my visit to the nieces in Florida (Bye bye Sarah, bye Alison! Hang in there, Susan, only two more weeks!).

My plan was to fire the starting gun in the Orlando departure lounge and see how far I could get on a single knitting project in a long day of travel - a little over 10 hours to get from Orlando to San Jose. Remind me to get a non-stop next time, ok?

The chosen project is the "Via Diagonale" purse from Spring 2008 knitty. [Rav project link] My mom and I are both knitting Diagonale purses this summer in a cross-timezone mother-daughter knitalong. The knitalong was my idea - see, I'm monitoring the mailing list of a yarn shop in Urbana called "Klose Knit" and I saw that their monthly knitting group is knitting this purse. "A-HA!" I thought. This is how I will hook my mom into going to a knitting group, by starting with the project the group in her home town is knitting! It's a super-cute little purse, so even if it doesn't rope her into meeting people (are you listening, Mother?), at least we'll have cute purses. Hers: cranberry and tan. Mine: Brown and light orange.

I got all my supplies and pattern ready the night before, which was very smart, because I discovered my pattern printout had the section heading: Slip Stitch Pattern and then skipped right to the photo of the purse. No stitch pattern! Oh no! Was the page set up for legal size paper when I printed? I had my computer with me, but no printer, so I stayed up a little later than usual writing out the row by row instructions from knitty. I would not say it was my neatest handwriting. Then I sat back, concerned. How on earth was I going to keep track of these rows? Why didn't the pattern include a chart, for heaven's sake? I went looking and found the designer has published a chart for the Via Diagonale stitch pattern. Hurray! But that meant staying up even later to copy out the dang chart. Sigh.

Afternoon over Chicago
By spinnity

First leg Uneventful flight with minor delays from Orlando to O'Hare, lovely view of Lake Michigan and the high-rise apartment buildings on the north end of Lake Shore Drive casting long afternoon shadows. [Google map link to the bend at the end of Lake Shore Drive which you can see in my photo, just south of the big wide beach. I hope at least one of you will click that link, since I wasted 45 minutes finding a map to match my photo. Talk about a waste of knitting time!] I knit the entire flight and finished one repeat of the pattern.

Layover in O'Hare
By spinnity

Layover In Chicago, I took advantage of the Central Timezone to phone my mum and tell her that I was working on the purse. She's way ahead of me, with 7.5 inches finished already. We plan to line these purses when she comes to visit, um, on Friday this week. :-) So I need to keep cranking I've only got about 1.25 inches so far. The pattern is starting to be visible in the knitting. It is sort of like pointillism or newspaper photographs, because when you get too close, you can't see the pattern at all, just the dots of the two colors. You have to hold it back a bit to see the diagonal lines.

Second leg Even though the second flight was longer, I got less knitting time, due to a nap attack around 11 pm Eastern time. Even better... during my nap, one of my balls of yarn escaped out of my knitting bag in row 16 and rolled merrily up the aisle into first class. I didn't notice. When I woke up, I kept right on knitting, until the seat belt sign went off. Then about 15 people stepped on my yarn when they got up into the aisle and I had to stop knitting until everyone cleared the aisle and I rolled up the TEN YARDS of yarn that had unwound as the ball took up position under row 7. Next time I'll use something other than a torn paper shopping bag to keep my yarn in!

Arrival - this is how far I got
By spinnity

(I cheated and took this picture in the morning instead of at the airport.) Our experiment shows that I knit 3 pattern repeats, for 3" of purse body in 10 hours of travel. It's about 28" in circumference, which makes 76 square inches knit. The bag is 192 stitches around, or roughly "3x a sock". I figure I can multiply "purse length" x3 for a good estimate of potential sock progress on the next trip.

And I've got 6.5 more inches to knit to finish this puppy off by the time Mom arrives, so it's back to the knitting for me! I can't wait to see if I make more or less progress by the hour at home with all my distractions around me. I'll bring the purse to knitting meetup tonight. I hope to see some of you there and hear all about your summer travel knitting!

Lucky mountain sock update

2008-07-10T06:35:00.001-07:00

All Blues, sock number two
By spinnity

Just realized that I've left the story of the lucky mountain socks hanging, again. Whoops! If you recall, I started spinning this two-ply yarn in February, decided on a design for Husband Socks in March, made a somewhat valiant attempt to finish the spinning in May for our big birding trip to the Sierra, and then took the yet-unfinished spinning to Florida in June when my niece was baptised. (Spinning was a big hit, by the way. When I arrived in Florida this week, 3-year old Sarah asked me if I brought that turny thing with me. The seed has been planted.)

Well, an invitation from my friend Margot to visit her house in the hills by San Jose at the end of June turned out to be the end of the spinning. I had carted my Lendurm spinning wheel up to her place for an evening of spinning, but I had been switching between the regular head and the plying head earlier in the week and ended up leaving the both at home. Luckily, I had the spindle and the last lot of Fiber Fiend roving in a spare project bag in the car and made short work of the 30 grams I needed to spin up. I plied from a center pull ball the next day and turned back to the knitting.

Tuesday morning this week, I flung the 4" cuff of the second sock into my carryon bag and on the very brief 4 mile drive to the airport, I wound that last bit of yarn off the spindle into a ball. Just barely made it before the nice TSA people shooed us away from the curb! Two airplane flights plus a Dorothy Sayers novel on the iPod later... I've gotten round the heel. I'm now ensconced in the house of nieces in Orlando, squeezing rounds of sock out between babysitting and mother's helper tasks.

Sarah's salon
By W.F. Walker

Nieces are a big distraction from knitting, so I've had to invent a game called "At the Salon", where 3-year-old Sarah combs and "styles" my hair while I knit. Just like at the real salon, eh? (I believe I have a photo of that activity from an earlier trip... I'll go hunt that up and post it here shortly.) [ETA the photo I mentioned of of Sarah's salon, from January]

Also along on my trip are the 4 skeins of Tahki Cotton Classic for my Via Diagonale knit-along with my mom. We're both aiming to have the knitting of this cute little purse done by the time Mom arrives in CA for a visit on the 18th. And I've got a bit of contract knitting... and a little twined knitting project for our upcoming guild meeting where I will be teaching twined knitting.

Even though all three of those projects are more urgently needed than these socks... wool socks? In 95 degree heat?? ... they are the only project I have eyes for right now. I just can't wait to add in the last ball of yarn in about 3 rows and get these puppies finished. Mmmm, woolly socks! Whoops, that's a niece crying in the next room! Gotta dash!

Spindle-us interruptus

2008-06-12T14:12:00.001-07:00

All Blues, sock one
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters! In my theater review of "Northanger Abbey", I mentioned the socks I am spinning & knitting for the spouse-o. This project is going in fits & starts - big bursts of energy put into spinning for a day or three, then a flurry of knitting, then a long slow ramp up to making myself spin the next lump.

As you may recall, the first lump of fiber was spun at-and-after Stitches West in February. Fine & dandy. The next big push came in early April, when I had nailed down the stitch pattern & knew what I was spinning for. Then in May, I had a frenzy of spinning in a moment of delusion, thinking I was going to have these socks done for our Sierra birding trip. Well, um, no. We did have a lovely 3 days in the mountains - see Bill's flickr set "Sierra Workshop 2008".

Even after the mountain trip, I kept a bit of momentum going - I was working on this yarn at our May 31 Spin In at my house, which resulted in some rather funny photos and my favorite spinning sentence ever: "Here, Bill, grab this and run!" as my center pull ball collapsed on itself in a big overly twisted knotty mess. Despite moments on the brink, I think I have enough yarn spun to get the second sock just past the heel turn. But the sock project has been languishing in the tote bag for two weeks.

Five spindles worth of sock yarn have so far gone into these socks - I've been knitting each little bunch as I produce it. This is probably going to result in somewhat different yarn in different sections.

I'm packing today for a weekend jaunt to Orlando for my second niece's baptism and I'm thinking... socks! Do I dare take the handspun sock project? I'm guessing I would run out of yarn on my plane ride to Orlando tomorrow, and then what?

So the question before us is: do I take my spindle & fiber to Orlando? Or do I take a second sock project and work on that while I'm away from home & get back to the spindling when I return? Maybe you'd like to vote?

Pros of travel spinning : arms away from the body, no sticky body parts during humid Orlando days. Family will think it's super weird, so that's a plus. 3 yr old niece is likely to enjoy the spectacle. I would love to see these socks finished!

Cons: have to stand up. have to avoid the dog, who might find spinning too exciting. Might not make any progress and every ounce counts these days in airline baggage!

What do you think??

Take the poll

Free Poll by Blog Flux

Jane Austen fans: get thee to the Pear Avenue Theatre

2008-05-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

Any Jane Austen fans out there? I suspect that among a crowd of smart knitters, we will find a few Jane-ites. Well, this post is for you, dear Readers. The non-fan is welcome to pass along and come back for the next post wherein we will discuss the production of spindle-spun socks. Today's post is going to be all about your big chance to see creative live theater.

Ok, Jane fans: I highly recommend that you see the current production at the Pear Avenue Theatre, which is a "word-for-word" or "Nicholas Nickelby"-style adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Last Friday I was privileged to attend the premiere of this adaptation by Diane Tasca, directed by my genius sister-in-law, Rebecca Ennals and I loved it.

The style of the adaptation is to retain as much of Austen's text as possible, just as she wrote it. The characters address one another using the lines from the book. For instance, Annamarie MacLeod, playing Catherine, might say "Catherine addressed her friend, asking her if Isabel did not wish to sample the cheese?" And then Melissa Quine, playing Isabel, might respond while shaking her head or turning away, "But Isabel was highly agitated and did not seem inclined to take any refreshment." (No, those are not real lines, I made them up. But you get the idea.)

Now it is true, I have a family connection to this show. But I am not selling you a bill of goods. The Pear is a fantastic little theater and hires quality actors who work their butts off in this small space. And Rebecca has a super-power as a director for doing more with less. I think her focus on the emotion and story helps actors connect with the emotions of a text by stripping extraneous stuff away (extra costume pieces, props, set pieces) quite intentionally so that the staging uses the simple elements left to really enliven the story being told.

In the case of Northanger Abbey, the movable portions of the set and props are limited to 1 chair, 2 benches, a desk, and some books. There might have been fans... is that a prop or costume? .. but not much else. When needed, the books become letters being delivered, the benches become a carriage or a bed, or the chairs along the wall in the Upper Rooms in Bath. And for the audience, having fewer "things" on stage really draws your attention to the connections & interactions of the people, where the chewy center of the play is to be found.

The small cast has to take on many roles each to make the show go, so you will see the actors change their costume pieces to become a middle-aged mother instead of an earnest young woman, for instance. The use of third-person speech helps you keep track of who they are after each change, but the actors do a marvellous job of conveying their personality as they become different people. I especially loved how well Martin Gagen managed to distinguish three middle-aged men as completely separate characters. I'm only singling him out because he had a pretty big challenge in making us see three different men who would generally be played by character actors in a BBC adaptation and might be hard to distinguish, even when played by different men. His doting father to Catherine and stern, status-conscious General were so clearly individual that you find yourself waiting for the other cast members to come out for their bows.

So go see it! Now! Show runs weekends now through June 8.

In summary:

What is it: New adaptation of Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
Where is it: Pear Avenue Theatre in Mountain View, near Shoreline and 101
Why should you go: Loving adaptation, beautifully acted by a small cast making the most of the simple set and the emotions of the story. A delight to be so close to the actors in this small space. A moving portrait of a young woman leaving the delicious world of fantasy for the nourishing world of real love. And it's funny! Don't just take my word for it - read the comments of other theater goers at Artsopolis and a nice article in the Metro about the importance of the Bay Area's small theaters

My new disguise

2008-05-19T10:03:00.001-07:00

Claralund
Originally uploaded by spinnity

HI knitters,

I'll be poking my head up out of the silence to offer an update on several unfinished stories I left you with in April (Sock Madness, Texas birding photo quiz results, contract knitting + recent knitting gatherings), but today I just wanted to show you my new favorite sweater - my Pentecost Klaralund.

I have wanted to knit this sweater in this color for three years - since I saw Jeni the Knitist in hers at Stitches West 2005. What a great color, what a great use of rectangles + simple stitch pattterns to give a slightly shaped sweater. I bought the pattern and the yarn. I printed the errata. But I was shy about making a twinsy sweater to look *exactly* like the Knitist (with longer hair). Well guess what? Within 8 hours of finishing this sweater, I have already been mistaken for Jeni! My disguise is *perfect*! Bwahahahahahaha!

My Klaralund [rav link] has been on the needles since last fall - October, I think. I finished all the pieces before Stitches West & then got distracted two seams shy of a finished sweater. On May 10th, it suddenly occurred to me that if I sewed up those last two seams, I could wear this sweater to the Pentecost service at church (red for the spirit, don't ya know). One late night seaming session + a few drangling ends later, I had a new sweater! I've named it Pentecost in honor of the color, the season, and the spirit. I think it's the first sweater I've finished for myself since the horrible Summer of Cotton when I knit two lovely sweaters that came out all the wrong size.

Anyway, after church I wore this sweater to Purlescence when I dropped in for Tea & Sympathy. Another knitter who came in after me said "Hey, there's that sweater I have been following around Trader Joe's!" Uh... haven't been in Trader Joe's since finishing the sweater. But I know the Knitist frequents that shop, since she brings yummy snacks from TJ's to our monthly spinning gathering. Only 8 hours into the life of my sweater, it's already working. No one will be able to tell us apart!

I fell kinda bad for Jeni, whose iconic look I've stolen (sorry, Jeni!), but not sorry enough to stop wearing my new favorite sweater - except this week when it has suddenly been in the upper 90's and way too hot to be swathed in wool. But I have a plan - I'll be taking it with me to the Sierra next weekend where I will be the only Klaralund in Plumas county. That & the summer heat should mean that it will be at least September before Jeni and I show up at a party in the same outfit.

Further updates Real Soon Now

Texas bird photo tour update

2008-04-10T21:47:00.001-07:00

Photographer vs. Cactus
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Texas is working us pretty hard! Click through to my
Texas photos on flickr to see a few "scenics" from the funnier moments of our trip.

It's Thursday night. Since arriving last Saturday evening, we have been to both units of the Martin Refuge (private refuge for photography, with a dozen or more separate photo blinds maintained year round with water, feed, & hidey bushes so the birds get used to being up close), Frontera Audubon twice, Allen William's back yard habitat / refuge in Pharr twice, Estero Llano Grande in Weslaco, and the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands.

Oh! And the Inn at El Canelo ranch. And a friend's yard to see parrots. And the sod farms in rural Weslaco. That's nine separate locations, some an hour or more apart.

We've been outside, in the car, or in our hotel room for 90% of every day, with short lunch & dinner breaks. Three cheers for Taco Palenque!

We've logged at least 70 new "year birds" for 2008 (only one life bird - the Red-crowned Parrot) and enjoyed ourselves immensely, but we are all starting to look like Bill does in this photo. A little bedraggled. A little fried. A little "stick a fork in 'em, they're done".

But wait! We've got two and a half days to go! Tomorrow we're off to Laguna Atascosa NWR in the morning and South Padre Island nature preserve (also known as the convention center!) in the afternoon, to see some migrants, some coastal birds, some new habitat.

Saturday we are making a pilgrimage to Sabal Palm Grove, which may become forever inaccessible if the Border Fence is built. I'll be posting a whole essay on that topic later, but for now, we are going to go pay our respects to this little oasis which may be bulldozed or permanently walled off from the U.S., in case we never get to see it again.

Sunday, if American Airlines manages to get their grounded planes back in the air, we're flying home around 5 pm, so we get to bird in the morning before we go.

You can keep up with our adventures in Texas by visiting Bill's Texas 2008 flickr photo set. Bill posts a few photos every night - I am busy knitting on Sock Madness, Round 3, so I can't really post for the next couple days.

Oh yes. This is what we crazy birding / photography people think of as a vacation. We're having an absolute blast in Texas! See you all soon.

Edited to add: P.S. - I have read the answers to my photo quiz - thanks for playing along. Everyone is sort of close, so I have to do some judging. Which will have to wait til I'm home. But I haven't forgotten you and your prize, oh contestants. We'll just have to wait til Monday for a winner.

Vacation photo quiz

2008-04-06T21:15:00.001-07:00

A Birder's Story
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters,

I skipped blogging last week during Round 2 of the Sock Madness to save my strength for knitting. I finished in time to qualify for Round 3, and I'll post more about my new Reversai socks shortly. Short version: I love them. I love the Hazel Knits yarn. I love this contest.

For today, I am posting one photo which summarizes my vacation so far. The only thing missing is a representation of our airline flight. After I took the photo, I thought of the perfect symbol that I should have included: the TSA notice that they have been inside your bags.

From this photo, I hope you can figure out where I am, why I am there, why I lost an hour at lunch (hint: see the orange key fob), why I have spare time on my hands to knit socks during the vacation, and what I am doing tonight. If you are Janice, maybe you can figure out how far I've gotten on those Early Spring socks since last we met.

If you want to guess at the answers to any of these questions, leave a comment here or on Flickr.. with a comment box, if you like. The first person who answers all 5 questions right will win a skien of Hazel Knits Artisan Sock. (That's a pretty tasty wager, you say? Well, I am willing to take the risk because I doubt you will get them all right. But y'all are sure welcome to try!)

I'll post some notes tomorrow with some more attractive photos of my vacation and sock progress. See you soon!

Sock Madness, Round 1 - DONE!

2008-03-18T10:40:00.001-07:00

Sock Madness, Round 1 - DONE!
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Knitters, I am done! Finished my socks for Round 1 of the Sock Madness 2 competition this morning, finally. I sent my mail to the organizers and I can only wait to see if my time is fast enough to qualify to move on to Round 2. I have not been keeping up with the msg boards, because I've been knitting, and I'm walking straight out of the house now, so I won't find out if I'm in until I get home this evening. Below are my thoughts on the socks and my performance in the competition so far.

As posted on Flickr:

When Mud Zombies Roamed the Earth - my Zombie socks for round 1 of Sock Madness 2 - are done. I am uploading at 10:22 AM PST on the 5th day after the pattern was released. 120 hrs, 22 minutes to get to this point. Versus 17 hours for the fastest competitors. Oy.

As posted on Ravelry discussion thread:

Finished! Can’t believe how long these took in comparison to our fastest competitors. I’ve got to do a better job of clearing my schedule if I make it through to round 2.

I love the finished socks. Very sculptural. I finished them at 10:15, posted at 10:22, and am walking out the house wearing them (ends not woven in) at 10:30 am, PST. Sooooo glad to be done!

As told to the spouse-o last night:

I am the Bodie Miller of Sock Madness 2. Got everyone all hyped up about my appearance in the competition and then spent my time in Turino at parties, helping a friend move, driving to Napa to give a guest lecture, knitting other projects.... Frittering away my potential. This is why I gotta do a better job of clearing my schedule next time, so I can shake my Bodie Miller image and log a real competetive run.

SM1 : Day One Progress

2008-03-14T02:02:00.001-07:00

SM1 : Day One Progress
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Sock Madness is here!

Just a little ahead of March Madness, Sock Madness kicked off today with our first pattern. I've got one sock leg to show for my day's knitting. There are knitters both way ahead and way behind me.. though the knitter who explained that she has not started *this* sock, but knit a different entire sock today has eared my gypsy curse.

The pattern is called Zombie Socks by Sheryl Giles see the threadbare parts where the zombie's clothes have rotted away?) and I'm using the recommended yarn - Colinette Jitterbug. This is my first exposure to this yarn and I adore it. It's so deliciously ... round! I also like the pattern a bunch, both philosophically and as a finished product. Can't wait to turn that heel and have an actual sock to wear!

My goal is to finish my pair of socks by Saturday, which will be an absolute stretch for me. Wish me luck, and go check Cindy's blog for her progress updates in the same crazy competition.

W00t Sock yarn and sock madness

2008-03-07T22:35:00.001-08:00

Spindle plied
By spinnity

Oh, knitters, I can scarcely stand myself. I have produced sock yarn, from my drop spindle. Truly! Who can believe it??

The superwash Merino roving came from the Fiber Fiend - it's her "Midnight Sky" colorway. I spun the first spindle full (which is about 30% of the 4 oz roving), standing in the Fiber Fiend booth at Stitches West. I plied it almost immediately after the show, and thought I was done. Then I started comparing it to other sock yarn in my stash and decided it was not really tight enough to be sock yarn. Photo one here is of the plied yarn the *first* time through the plying.

So I balled it back up and ran it back through the drop spindle to add more twist. (1.5 hours, in case you were wondering.) Photo two is after twist has been added.I'm so totally chuffed with the results. Can't really take credit for them, since I'm not yet fully in control of my own spinning. It's more miracle than skill at this point. So I feel no compunction against celebrating this yarn. I hope you like it, too!

Re-plied and rockin'
By spinnity

I'm swatching on 2.25 mm needles now and planning how to turn this lovely stuff into socks for the spouse-o. It's a beatufiul blue / grey / black tweedy yarn and so far I think I like it best in fairly simple ribbing patterns.

But swatching is rather pre-mature, because I probably won't get to start these socks until after the first round of Sock Madness, which starts on March 13.

Yes, I have signed up for Sock Madness- a sock knitting competition kicking off at the same time as the NCAA basketball tournaments. Cindy had so much fun with Sock Madness last year, I had to sign up. There will be multiple elimination rounds to the competition, all judged on speed. The first pattern will be released on March 13. I'm not a fast sock knitter, so I'm really hoping I can make it past the first elimination round. I can't wait to see what sort of devious pattern they throw at us next Thursday

Niece sweaters are also progressing - bought the cutest buttons for them this week and I'm adding the edging to the 3-yr-old sweater tonight. I am quite confident I can get these out the door before The Madness begins.

Ok, one last photo -- my beautiful sock yarn, with the twist all set. W00t, sock yarn!

Swift of all Swifts - finally online

2008-03-03T20:16:00.001-08:00

Today when I stopped by Purlescence to take the edge of a slow afternoon by buying just one skein of lightweight Sock That Rock (color: Waterlilies), Chloe kindly offered to wind my yarn, even though I waited until 5:59 to make my purchase and closing time is a 6.

"No, thank you," I said. "I have an unnaturally close relationship with my swift at home, and I would feel terrible giving up a chance to use it." She laughed, but it's true. I love, love, love my umbrella swift.

... because it is made of beautiful black walnut.
... because it twirls silently on metal fittings.
... because it only takes a tiny amount of finger pressure to tighten the table clamp or adjust the width of the umbrella.
... because my darling husband bought it as an anniversary present.

My beloved umbrella swift is made by Bluster Bay Woodworks, who used to show up at Stitches West with a booth full of swifts with fans blowing on them to make them go round. Yes, I said this turns by air pressure only. Does that sound like the swift you are using?

I haven't seen Bluster Bay at Stitches for at least three years, so I guess they aren't making the trip anymore. So I was surprised when Bill handed me a postcard from Bluster Bay from today's mail. They have a website, at last! Here they are: www.blusterbaywoodworks.com. I think that's my swift right on the front page of the web site. <3 <3 <3

I love them. I love my swift. I gotta go wind a hank.

[ETA: should have linked to a photo of my own swift in action. So you could see that it is the six-arm kind. See:

Springiness & spinning

2008-03-03T03:37:00.001-08:00

The third bump of Fall Squall
By spinnity

This weekend, just one week after the madness that was Stitches West, the spin-in group came round to do some communal spinning. I'm still working with pre-Stitches fiber -- the Old Same Corriedale that I've been working on for over a year. Yes, it's still beautiful, but I'm ready to start seeing other wool. Those three new bumps of fiber I bought at Stitches, for instance.

So the fire is lit: Fall Squall must be finished. This month. No, really.

I have are 4 bundles of this wool. Two were finished at previous spin-ins. At Saturday's spin-in, I worked on bundle three -- the last bobbin was done around 8 pm and plying finished at 11 pm. It's sooooo pretty and sooo even, woo hoo! Just.... one... more... bundle!

I am planning to use all of these hanks of yarn together -- maybe a square necked sweater as seen in Spin-to-knit -- but I'm not sure how that's going to work with three hanks of very different yarn. For hanks one through three, I've managed to turn the same weight of prepared fiber into 135, 215, and 300 yards of finished yarn. According to charts of yardage-to-weight, this means I've got bulky and aran and worsted weight yarn in the same colorway. I might be able to alternate them.. or use them progressively to adjust the gauge.

For a break from spinning, I've been knitting two Easter sweaters for my nieces - size 3T and 6 months. Frustratingly, the nieces have chosen to live in overly-warm Florida, which is a challenge for the knitwear. I was hunting for some sort of cotton blend for these sweaters at Stitches - and found it almost immediately in a cotton / bamboo yarn called "Southwick" at WEBS. It's a tad splitty, but has lovely drape and shows the lace patterns really well.

Easter sweater?
By spinnity

I'm using the same yarn for both girls' sweaters, but different patterns. One is repeat of a simple raglan baby sweater from Plymouth. For Miss 3T I'm inventing a sweater using the miniature leaf lace from the Little Silk Shrug [Ravelry link] in Lace Style.

Lace + cotton / bamboo make a pretty airy sweater, but I'm not sure even this will be sufficient to overcome the Florida weather. But useful or decorative, these puppies need ship out on March 17th.

The ups and downs of Saturday

2008-02-16T19:45:00.001-08:00

One Ear Gromit
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Ikea discontinued my kitchen chairs a long time ago. So I was damn pleased to find a fellow selling 4 of 'em on Craig's list this week. Today I went and got them *and* managed to wedge them into the car (Chairs: +50 points)

They turned out to be the catalyst for a bunch of garage cleaning (long story), in which I opened boxes which had been unexamined since I packed them eight years ago. (Garage cleaning: +50 points)

One of my boxes was nearly full of Origami Page-a-day calendar models which I folded in 1998 and 1998. In the spirit of garage cleanup, I let them go to the great paper recyclery in the sky. Under the origam heap I found.... Knitting Gromit! I wondered where he had got to! As you can see on that link, he's NOT AVAILABLE, so I was feeling pretty cool, for a woman who can't go out in public for more than 90 minutes at a time, *cough cough cough*. I set Gromit on the windowsill in the family room along with a few other items headed for the knitting studio / guest room. (Gromit: +20 points)

Spouse-o and I were sitting at the kitchen table on our new chairs when Mr. Big reached up to investigate the things on the windowsill, neatly hooked Gromit with one paw and slung him to the ground. Eight years safely nestled in a crumpled wad of printer paper and it only takes 30 minutes to lose an ear. (Mr Big: -25 points.)

Now I'm off to see Bill and the Penguin Jazz gang playing their old Nossa Bossa set list at a Brazilian cafe in Sunnyvale (Penguin gig: +100 points).

The Perversity of Cats

2008-02-15T12:13:00.001-08:00

Squirrel Stations, Everyone!
by spinnity

... or "How I spent my Valentine's Day date night"

Hi knitters!

I've been meaning to post a few Florida photos from our late January trip before going on to daily life back at home (yes, it was fab - both the bird photography and the niece photography portions of the trip).

But sometimes the present is more compelling than the past. Just now, it's the story of Mr. Big and the Missing Date Night.

Most of this week I've had a cold settled in my chest and I've been at home nearly all day, instead of out working on my database and babysitting projects. This has given me a chance to observe the integration of the two new cats - Sierra and Mr. Big (birth name: Jasper) into our household. You can see them in the photo -- guess which one is Mr. Big?

Anyway, Wednesday I was home all day working on swatches for next Monday's Knitting Guild topic - "Mystery Yarn Marriages: stitch patterns and techniques for combining yarns of different gauge" - and doing chores. Mostly cat-related chores. SOMEONE peed on a laptop bag and it had to be washed. SOMEONE barfed on a hand-made quilt (!!) on top of the piano (@#&%!) and that had to be washed as well. And Klaralund needed blocking before I can convince myself to go on knitting - a measurement of 21" was not going to cut it if this was going to fit. Jeni said it would definitely relax if I washed it.

As I was knitting & cleaning & weaving in ends on Klaralund, I got to see many Stations of The Cats. They tussled over favorite lounging spots. They investigated what I was doing and played with toys I threw them. They observed the shifting of sunspots and the squirrels in the yard. I felt very connected to the new kitties. "Awww, new kitties. Look how they are thawing," I thought.

Jasper, a.k.a Mr. Big, Nov 2007
by spinnity

I gave them a special treat -- bits of lettuce. The new kitties *love* lettuce. The sound of tearing leaves off a stalk brings them running and it's the only food they will take from my hand. Seriously. If we are cooking dinner and have to get leaves off some cauliflower, the kitties come immediately to see if it is lettuce. Every time. Oh, and they will chew through any plastic bags left where they can get them, just in case there is lettuce inside.

So I was feeling all connecty with the new kitties and that's probably why I freaked out when we came home from Heart Day dinner out to find Mr. Big had gone missing. A whole day of friendly interaction, passing in the halls, and now he's GONE. Nowhere to be found in the house, and his sister is mewing pathetically, like she's lost her best friend. I could only imagine that he had oozed out the front door as we were leaving for dinner - or was hiding in the garage and got startled when the big door opened after our date.

The hunt was on, but it wasn't going to be easy. The new kitties do not come when called (mine do!) and they don't seem to know their names. They never, EVER go outside and Mr. Big does not let me touch him if he can see me coming. The only thing I could think of that might attract him was the sound of lettuce.

Sierra, Nov 2007
by spinnity

We walked all around inside the house with a bag of lettuce and a flashlight, looking everywhere for Mr. Big. Sierra kept coming after us to get more lettuce and mewing. She's got a big voice, that one. Mr. Big is more the strong, silent type. We stood in the garage tearing lettuce and listening to every little creaking noise. Sierra came out there, too, even though she kind of hates the garage. We got out the kitty harness and took Sierra out on the front porch to meow & attract her lost brother. We walked round the block rustling our bag of lettuce. 8:30 to midnight, this went on, with breaks for tea and coughing fits.

At this point, we decide we can do no more, we'll have to go to bed and start searching at first light. We're planning what to say when we have to call Mr. Big's former owner to help us hunt the neighborhood for his beloved cat. We're completely bummed.

And that's when Mr. Big is seen walking out of the hall bathroom. A 9 x 6 room with no hidey holes, which we had checked over and over again. HE WAS IN THE HOUSE THE WHOLE TIME! But he wouldn't come to his mewing sister, to the sound of lettuce, to the rattling of the cat food decanter. Nope. Just not interested. Gaaaaaah! And where the hell was he?? We can't figure it out. Little weasel. Comes *every* time we're cooking with anything that sounds like lettuce, but can't be bothered to come when we want him.

This morning, everything is back to normal. Two big kitties are pressed against the window at the Squirrel observation post. They are moving normally from room to room and checking in on each other. My three Klaralund pieces are drying - and they are the right size, so I can keep knitting - Jeni was right!

But I want my evening back. Mr. Big, you owe me one Valentine's date night, dammit!

Knitting Class Mashup

2008-01-25T20:52:00.001-08:00

Scribble graph
By spinnity

Hi knitters,

You won't see me this week -- I'm in Florida doing some birding and visiting family. Now. As knitters, can you guess what I was doing the night before we left?

If you guessed "1) Going to spinning night at Purlescence, followed by 2) packing, and finally 3) digging through available knitting projects, yarn & books to find *the* perfect knitting to bring with me," you either know me, or we are of the same tribe.

I know knitters who plan ahead for their travels quite carefully (Hi Mom!), but I'm sure I'm not alone in the last minute crazy, right?? Let's hear from a few of my midnight sistren out there! Is there a name for this phenomenon?

Anyway, in a quick post (because the WIFI at this Quality Inn is the suck and we're going birding early tomorrow morning), I invite you to ponder what happens if you take Sally Melville's color stranding / creativity class (taken at Stitches West 2006 - that's my chart above - and this is the resulting swatch...)

Scribble swatch
By spinnity

and mash it up with the output of a class called "Machine Knitting to Dye For" from Nancy Roberts.

Yes, it's "Scribble Socks", a Knitting Class Mashup. Using my own scribbles plus my own color choices to design something just for me. It's... perfect!

In my vision, "Scribble Socks" start off with a corrugated ribbing cuff followed by panels of scribbles down the leg, using Lisa Souza's sock weight Blue Skies as the background color and my own hand-dyed sock yarn as the motif color... shading from brick red to leopard yellow through the scribble chart and on towards the heel... which I haven't invented yet.

My own dyed sock yarn
By spinnity

"But spinnity, isn't an 18 row chart with no symmetry and an unfinished design going to make a very bad travel project? Especially if the chart isn't even finished yet?"

OK, yes, you have a point. Maybe three. But I'm too in love to stop now. At it's best, this color stranded scribble reminds me of the animal heads and sharp turns in the Elsebeth Lavold Viking Patterns for Knitting. The 18 row chart is kicking my ass a bit, but soooo beautiful.

And the fam have been great about participating in my obsession. Brother-in-law JHW listened while I described the whole background story and then named it a "knitting class mashup". He rather likes designing low-resolution creatures for games & Mac desktop icons, so he asked for a piece of knitters graph paper to work on some more design ideas - mirror images and writing turned sideways, encoded meanings. Can I just say? He noticed without being told that the graph paper wasn't square. And if I hadn't given him a piece, he was already asking about the ratio of height & width so he could make his own. Then spouse-man shot the two iPhone photos of the swatch in progress tonight. So at least I can say the project brings our family together. Thank you, family!

Tomorrow, I'll be using my travel time and classroom time during spouse-o's this photography class to tweak the chart and knit more swatch in my practice yarn. I think I need about two more iterations of the repeat to have confidence in the chart. With a project like this, I won't be crying if we get rained out tomorrow afternoon and have to stay indoors knitting. Hmmm... Crested Caracara and Whooping Crane vs Scribble Socks. Hah. I win either way.

It's needles either way.

2008-01-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

Hi knitters,

Being a woman of leisure (yes, fully liberated from my day job as of last Friday!), I have been away from the computer a lot lately doing errands and enjoying the world. I thoguth my next blog post would feature some photos from the holidays and a report on birthday festivities... but I'm interrupting those plans to urge all knitters to donate blood, if you are able. Knitters are used to needles, right? So this ought to be an easy sell!

This week, I have gotten phone calls and email alerts from my usual blood bank urgently asking for blood donations. They say that the blood reserves in California are very low after the holidays. This story from KCBS focuses on Blood Centers of the Pacific, who say that as of January 9 they have about 1/3 of the supply of O- blood they need.

If you've never given blood before, now's a great time to start - because January is National Blood Donor month, which means you are likely to get a lot of love and some nice gifts if you are a first time donor. Stanford Blood Center is giving AMC movie passes, for instance.

Personally, I like to schedule my donations, but you can usually walk in to a donation center if your schedule is hard to predict. It really only takes about an hour to go through intake, actual donation, and then rest/observation to be sure you are OK to depart. I went Tuesday for a 3 pm donation appointment in Mountain View and was out of the center by 4:10 pm. I was a little disappointed - I only managed to knit 4 stripes in my "Hail to the Orange, Hail to the Blue" Chevron Scarf while waiting to be released.

Please call / visit one of these blood donation organizations. Tell them "Knitters like needles!"

Stanford Blood Center in Mountain View, on Hillview in Palo Alto and on campus
Blood Centers of the Pacific - in Cupertino, Redwood City, San Jose and many more
American Red Cross of Northern California, in Newark, Pleasanton, Oakland, Pleasant Hill and San Jose

Don't forget you can always glom onto an existing blood drive - maybe there's one in walking distance of your house at a church, school or business nearby.

Happy knitting!

FIRT NOST! *

2008-01-01T23:19:00.001-08:00

First note of the year, w00t! Welcome to 2008, knitters.

I've had a fabulous January 1. I hope the rest of 2008 will be just as fun. Fabulous for me consists of: birds, good food with friends, music in my home, and knitting. Bill bounced out of bed this morning at 7 am (my idea... but I was more of a slug and had to be lured out with stollen and fruit). Our plan was to get in as much birding as possible on January 1st, before hosting a small gathering of musicians and friends for a dose of Hoppin' John and greens for good luck in the new year.

The plan was quite successful - we hit 4 birding locations in Santa Clara county for 93 species before 2 pm and came home to finish cooking greens and cornbread. The fellers played some jazz and the rest of us caught up on family news from our holiday visits. For knitting, I worked on a pair of "Last Minute" handwarmers using DK Zephyr, which are actually past the last minute, but progressing nicely. I also put in a few rows on my Illini themed Chevron Scarf, while watching the Rose Bowl on TiVO. Since I don't follow football at all, the game was not too disappointing to me, despite Illinois' TERRIBLE first half performance. Overall, a great day off and a wonderful start to the new year.

In honor of January 1, I am posting my "Knit-year" resolutions, something we discussed at our December Knitspiration guild meeting. The topic: what do you resolve to do differently in 2008 in your knitting life? Here are my plans:

Spinnity's 2008 Knit-year Resolutions

Resolved: I will complete two of the many sweater kits in my stash before I buy another one. Sigh.

Resolved: I will knit my husband a sweater in 2008.

Resolved: I will design and knit myself one sweater that FITS in 2008.

Resolved: I will spin every month and use my handspun for at least 3 projects

Apparently 2008 must be the international year of the sweater, because that's all I can think of when I think about what I want to do differently. (Note that I am NOT resolving to deliver knitted gifts on time. We have to keep these resolutions achievable, right??)

I hope your New Year is getting off to a wonderful start. If you have any new year's resolutions for your knitting life, I'd love to hear them. Is there any thing you want to change about your knitting habits with the new year?

All the best to you in 2008!!
- spinnity

*(FIRT NOST was a common title for the first posting of the day in the group notesfiles on PLATO in the 1970's and 80's, when I was a plato system user in the Illinois public schools and colleges. See, if you are typing fast... "first note" comes out as "firt nost" and there is no time to edit if you want your Note to be First. Ahh, youth.

I did a Google search for the phrase earlier today, and couldn't find a single reference to this term anywhere on the internet! Well, now there is one, and I was there first. FIRT NOST!! FIRT "FIRT NOST" on the internet! I'm so meta, I can hardly stand myself. Bwahahaha!)

A woman of leisure... almost

2007-12-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

Hi Knitters!

I've been in a weird blog silence, waiting for news at work. And it came Thursday - I've been laid off! Although it's rotten to be given the boot, I am actually quite ready to move on and glad to be given the chance to leave with a "lovely parting gift" of a severance package instead of walking away on my own. I'm still working mornings, but I've started taking my afternoons off, and on December 21, I hand over my computer and will be done working for a while. My severance will last a good way into 2008, so I'm looking forward to that thing you never get in your adult life: time off!

While I am a woman of leisure (sort of), I am determined to get more exercise and embark on some volunteer projects (databases! why does it always have to be databases??) at church and possibly for the SF Shakespeare Festival. Yesterday I went walkies with Emy on the Los Gatos creek trail, which was GREAT. My legs are really tired today, so I must have done something right. I'm looking for a yoga class next.

I'm actually a little concerned that I might have LESS knitting time due to the layoff -- meetings were awfully handy for knitting! But I'm plugging away. I finished the actual knitting for the EZ Knitters Almanac baby sweater for my newly arrived niece. Alison Claire was born in Orlando on Thanksgiving day and I'm ashamed to say I only started knitting for her a week before she was born. I've got a few ends to weave in and underarm seams to sew and this puppy can be shipped! It's sized for about a 6 month old baby - might even still fit her next winter, if she is as petite as her sister - so I am also hunting for the yarn to finish a newborn wrap-front top from the Blue Sky Royal Baby set. I *know* there were two ball of this Melange alpaca - I *just* photographed them for Ravelry. Only now one of them is missing. If only someone with some leisure time would come organize my stash... oh, wait. Drat.

The only other knitting actually in progress is my Klaralund, and this is a Ravelry success story - I traded & bought 3 skeins of Noro Silk Garden from two other Ravelry members to make up for bad info in the original pattern. (550 g of yarn for the largest size vs 700 for the largest size in the errata!) Now I am eagerly knitting away, hoping to have a new sweater to wear in Illinois at Xmas time.

I spent Sunday evening winding up little balls of Silk Garden & labeling them with their sequence in the stripe pattern, so I will have an easier time finding the next ball to work with each time I run out. This particular color - #84 - has 16 different stripes in each repeat. I don't know if all Silk Garden has that many colors - I would have naively said there were maybe 8 colors - so I was surprised to find 16. My little balls of yarn now have labels like "11-15, bright red to dark brown" or "1 - 6, fuchsia to deep purple" I'm using my first sleeve as the key to the stripe sequence and trying to only join yarn in the proper place in the sequence. Anal much?

And finally - a spinning report. Last Saturday's spin-in was a small but hearty gathering. We celebrated Cindy's first plied yarn with some nice champagne and enjoyed meeting Margit's dog posse. (Three dogs makes a posse, right?) I plied some alpaca in the Fiber Fiend "flame" colorway, which I bought from Margit at the last spin-in (photos later - I'm at an awkward stage with my photo processing due to upgrades & ignorance.) And, big surprise, Margit had all her dyed roving ready for us to peruse and I fell victim to some blue / grey / light blue merino roving which ought to be good for husband socks.

Tomorrow night is knitting meetup in Saratoga - we talked about maybe going for fondue after knitting which would be very cool if it works out. Leave a comment here or make a note on your meetup RSVP if you can do fondue starting at 10 pm Wednesday.

Happy knitting!

Bambu, I <3 U

2007-11-12T17:49:00.001-08:00

Bambuzzled -- finished
Originally uploaded by spinnity

I had a chance to deliver my completed "Bambuzzled" scarf to the recipient this weekend - she loved it, I love it on her and it was a giant <3 fest. So here's my wrap-up on the Bambuzzled scarf, using seltsame's latest sweater notes as a template.

1. Ravelry link: Bambuzzled
2. Pattern Source: Blue Moon Fiber Arts
exclusive design by Cookie A.
3. Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Bambu, bought at the BMFA booth at Stitches West, 2007
4. Needle Size: US 6
5. Gauge: dunno, but I bet I was under intended gauge, because it took some stretching to reach the desired 60 x 10 inches, despite my Pattern Changes.
6. Pattern Changes: Knit 3 more repeats of the 24 row lace motif until I ran out of yarn.
7. Yarn Review: A joy to work with. Does untwist some, but I didn't have much trouble with splitting. Pattern motif is crisp but the garment is drapey. Right on.
8. Did it fit: Yes! Glad I made the additional rows for a larger recipient.
9. How many times did I frog: The last 3 lace repeats were doomed. Kept messing up an edge stitch, attempting to fix from the row above, goofing it up worse. Ending bindoff was also trouble. Never frogged the whole thing, but the last 6-10 inches probably got knit 8 times.
A. Usability analysis: This scarf looks very nice folded/rolled/scrunched around the neck, and the pattern is great where it flares out.
B. Final Thoughts: Awesome use of one skein, very beautiful & wearable final outcome. Also, how cool am I for using up Stitches yarn before the next Stitches (don't laugh. It's not nice to laugh at the afflicted!)

More ravelling - all the sock yarn

2007-11-04T19:19:00.001-08:00

All the sock yarn
Uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters!

Today was Stash Upload Day 1. I've borrowed a photo backdrop tent from Janice for the weekend to get my stash up on Ravelry. Hah! Despite lofty intentions, I don't think I'm going to get the whole thing done today. I spent pretty much all of today cataloging sock yarn and adding it to Flickr and Ravelry. Just sock yarn.

To make beautiful photos, I've enlisted the help of the spouse to do all the photography and photo editing while I do all the data entry in Ravelry. (Man, do I owe him big time! Spinners in the house all day yesterday and stash photography all day today. Not a very exciting weekend for him! Good thing his new copy of Propellerhead Reason arrived on Friday so was entertained making music while I was spinning.)

The stash upload production line involves keeping the yarn organized in the same sequence it was photographed in. Photo-guy uploads the processed photos to flickr and I add all the tags. Then I can go back to Ravelry and match up the photos with the stashed yarns. I'm up to 67 yarns in my stash - most of them single skeins. And ... they are all sock yarns. I'm beginning to be afraid. Who votes for destashing some of this nonsense, besides Bill??

De-stashing seems more attractive now that I am spinning up some of my fiber supply and making yarns I really want to knit with. At yesterday's spin-in, I tried desperately to avoid plying my 3-ply because it sucked so bad last time -- I was sure I would be bad company. But some hot tips from Margit got me on a better track and I spun a very consistent 3-ply which appears to be much finer and much softer than my first 4 oz. of this "Fall Squall" Corriedale dyed by Judy's Novelty Wool.

Fall squall, bobbin 2
Uploaded by spinnity

It's still on the bobbin - but I'm quite, quite pleased with my progress and can't wait to swatch this second bobbin which is probably closer to a worsted weight, 5 sts/inch yarn. I've got two more 4 oz. lots of this fiber queued up to spin.. as soon as I finish photographing the Dale Baby Wool, which is next in the Stash Upload queue.

Camera lost. Camera found! (repeat)

2007-11-02T16:38:00.001-07:00

Squall singles, round 2
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters! Here you can see evidence that my missing camera has been found! I lost it at work on October 5 - I was really sure that it was the first thing I'd ever had stolen at work. Three weeks later, a colleague from out of town found it one cube over, just sitting on the surface of the empty desk. And guess who put it there?? Me. DUH!

So the camera was restored, I took two photos of the Loch Ness monsters who are our two new cats.. and then it immediately went missing again, before I even got a chance to get the crummy photos out of it. Last night I finally figured out where I put it *this* time, and I'm back in business.

My first photo after finding the camera was this shot of my latest spinning efforts - I finished spinning these last night. Now I will 3-ply them together and compare to my first skein of the "Fall Squall" colorway from Judy's Novelty Wool. I think I'm all over the map with these three bobbins - some probably spun too loose and some too tight. I'm combatting a tendency to product a harsh, skritchy yarn - which I have so far managed to do on both the spindle and wheel. The singles are harsh, the finished product is harsh. Doesn't keep me from kniting with it - but I'd be better pleased if I'd managed to make a softer yarn.

For softer spinning, no-blog-rachel is currently the apple of my eye. Her first self-dyed navajo plied yarn is soooo soft and the colors are beautiful. She's really making amazing yarn for a new-ish spinner!.

In UFO news, I'm still stuck at 5 of 10 September UFOs finished. The neckline of the red & white baby sweater is giving me fits, trying to get the right number of stitches picked up to make my picot edging, and then trying to seam it to the right place on the body. The two other baby sweaters are untouched so far. My tall socks for the other Mary are waiting to see how I do on picot edgings for the baby sweater, and I did make good progress on the gift sweater, but I can't show you.

I suppose service on this blog will resume now that the camera is back from a month off, so I'll talk to you all soon.

I made representational art!

2007-10-18T15:32:00.001-07:00

Needle Felting
By spinnity

At Knitspiration knitting guild on Monday we explored needle felting. I started out making a lovely abstract object , stabbing away at a blob of fiber to mat it together. Every once in a while, I turned it over & pulled off stray bloblets that weren't working for me, and then suddenly I turned it over and found out it had become this lovely cat shape. I added the eye & collar as my last touches, committing to the idea of this being representational art.

Needle felting has never really called to me, but when I sat down to do it, I had a blast with this technique. I loved the slightly intentional / slightly random nature of the work I did (not saying this is the way needle felting has to be, but it is the aspect which drew me in.)

We had invited Gunilla as our instructor and she brought all the towels, foam pads, felting needles and fiber for us to work with. I managed to snap a felting needle in the first 15 stabs... but then worked for a whole hour with no further problems.

I thought the whole guild did wonderful things with this fun technique. We had 9 creative, beautiful objects at the end of our session -- most had stuck with the abstract, for which I applaud them. I wish I'd had my camera along to take pictures of the beautiful objects everyone made - but it's been stolen. Waah! (Emy - I'm keen to hear how you like your new SD850!)

Watermelon Mittens
By spinnity

And for a progress update on the 10 UFO's -- here's a photo of the mittens I made from the watermelon yarn (using the pattern designed by Freshisle Fibers specifically for the yarn.) These are ready to mail to my auntie in Wisconsin, to keep her warm this winter. I've also got an odd-duck scarf to send her. Too bad her new mittens and scarf won't match at all. Still. The UFO pile must go, whether it matches or not. I'm not sure I'm going to meet my October 31 deadline to have them all done. Does 70% pass?

Cleanup on aisle four!

2007-10-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

Hi knitters,

I've got two excuses for the monthly long blog silence. A) My camera went missing (probably stolen) so I don't have any new photos to show you. B) Most of my knitting right now is cleanup in the UFO pile, which is like pulling teeth for me. Not to mention embarrassing! It's all thanks to stupid Ravelry and the Projects tab. I can't put all of these up as UFOs. It would make a To Do list a mile long in my mind.

So there's gotta be cleanup. Here's a photo of the top layer of the UFO pile all laid out where you can see 'em:

See any themes here? Like, that everything is approximately 90% done, but not totally done?? Sigh. ([EDIT] - I used a large version of this photo in my first post -- but it didn't work in the template. Small now. Click through to flickr for a larger view and comments explaining what everything is.)

Nudged by having to log all these, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf and clear stuff out. Right now, I'm operating in "first in, first out" mode, working only on my oldest (active) UFOs. I chose the 9 UFO's in this photo plus one secret one. And when these are done, I'll take another UFO picture and work on those. And the beatings will continue until morale improves, dammit.

Since taking this photo on September 8, I've finished and mailed two of these, finished & washed two more. I've still got a gift sweater (not in the photo, of course. Back & sleeves done, needs a front), the red & white Snowflakes & bars baby sweater (needs picot trim for the neck), the whales baby sweater (needs seams, eyes, and a make-up button hole), and the cably baby sweater (needs a body to go with the sleeves) to work on. And two pairs of toe-up socks whose bindoffs are not making me happy. So I'm only 2 for 10 so far. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Finishing these UFOs will be good for me -- give me room to contemplate the other bazillion projects-in-progress and not-yet-started objects in the stash. I'm trying to be really faithful to these UFOs from the photo. I'm only cheating a little with the Early Spring socks from Janice. And Klaralund.

My Klaralund is exactly the same color as Jeni's. We'll have to phone each other before knitting events to avoid showing up in the same sweater. It's a fast knit -- it only took Friday evening and Saturday afternoon to knit most a sleeve. It's currently drying after a quick wash to check gauge of the finished product. I'm spot on, so I'll be able to get back to knitting that rectangle this evening when it is fully dry. I was grateful to Ravelry last night for telling me there are larger sizes available on the Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton web site. I've only knit up to the shoulder patterning of the first sleeve, so I am still able to switch to the larger size.

I'm on my second attempt at Janice's Early Spring socks -- my fault, not the pattern. I knit the foot a little too long the first time, turned the heel and decided the foot was too loose. Thanks to useful instructions, I was able to rip back to the lifeline before the heel gusset quite easily, then back another pattern repeat to start the increases a little earlier. Sunday, I turned the heel for the second time and I'm ready to work the cuff / leg in the round. I am working in Louet Gems fingering weight wool, instead of Panda Cotton. Looks like the pattern will work just fine in wool. Janice lent me her original sock -- one of the pair, anyway. The other has been on display at Purlescence since it was knit, so these are virgin socks. At this rate, I might get to wear my Early Spring socks before the designer wears hers!

But only after finishing my UFO assignment, of course.

Albatross, check. Fleeces bought, check.

2007-09-18T11:19:00.001-07:00

Black-footed Albtross
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker

Hi knitters,

I'm back from my Marin / Mendocino weekend and it was a huge success, both for birds and for fiber. We drove up Thursday night to stay with a friend whom we met on our Alberta birding expotition, back in July. On Friday, the three of us got up before 5 am to be at the boat dock at Bodega harbor by 6:30 am. *groan* We were out from 7:30 am until 6 pm on the smoothest, glassiest ocean I've ever seen and ran into *large* flocks of shearwaters and storm petrels, along with smaller counts of fulmars, puffins, murrelets, jaegers and Sabine's Gulls. Oh, yeah, and quite a few Black-footed Albatross! If you look behind the albatross's head in the photo on the right, you can see how smooth the water was. I mean, it looks more like pond water than an ocean. It was just amazing. And did I mention the blue whales? This trip is going down in my memory as The Best Pelagic Ever.

Saturday we slept in a bit, had leisurely breakfast with our hosts in San Rafael and then struck out for Mendocino county. First stop: California Wool & Fiber Festival. I visited Margit in her booth & bought some nice dyed roving and a pattern. Then I bravely approached the Wall o' Fleeces... and fell in love.

Romney-Coopworth
By spinnity

The object of my affection is a silver grey Romney-Coopworth fleece, raised by Anna Harvey. The fleece weighs 9.5 pounds. Yes, *pounds*. It has long crimpy locks and a beautiful sheen. (Click through the photo link to a bigger view. Look at the color! The curl! Mmmmm, luscious.)

I talked over my fleece choice with the gals staffing the sales table, Linda Klein and Nancy Finn (yes, that Nancy Finn!!), who told me that it is quite clean and the sheep wore a coat. We admired staple length and the different shades of grey. Thus enabled, I plunked down a larger sum of money than one might expect to possess this fleece utterly. (Mine. Mine, my precious!)

I bought a second fleece, which may or may not turn out to be anything -- but it was very, very inexpensive at $6.25 and it's a Shetland. I was suckered in by the idea of spinning with fleece from this all-important breed. I think I might dye it.

I bought fleeces!
By spinnity

I took both fleeces off to Shari at Morro Fleece Works for cleaning & carding into pin drafted roving. I'm still waffling though, about the decision to have that gorgeous grey fleece turned into a single-shade, evenly colored roving. Maybe I should do what Nancy Finn was hoping to do if she scored that fleece, and comb or card it myself into different shades of grey. Then again, can you imagine how much time that would take me? I felt better about sending the fleece off for carding with Nancy's support ("Oh no", she said, "just give yourself permission to spend the time on the spinning." And it felt like a blessing to go the way I have to go for now. 9.5 lbs? Prepared by hand? I'd be at the preparation until 2010!)

I left my fleeces with Shari and drove off to the rest of my Mendocino adventure - wine tasting in the Anderson Valley and our Sunday pelagic trip, which featured approximately the same birds plus the South Polar Skua in much worse seas in beautiful sunlight. I lost my lunch only once, thanks to my new anti-seasick patch, huzzah! We stayed over Sunday night and drove home Monday just in time for Knitting Guild and a four day work week. I plan to spend every boring conference call dreaming of crimpy grey wool. Mmmmm, soothing grey wool running through my fingers. Sooooo much more interesting that the day job!

No knitting to show - look at pretty cupcakes

2007-09-13T12:57:00.001-07:00

Knit Night Cupcakes - UFO
Originally uploaded by teenytinyturkey

Hi Knitters,

Again I am saved from making a knitting-free post by a friend (different one this time) sending me a link to a cool, knitting related image. Today: Knit Night Cupcakes!

teenytinyturkey used marzipan to make a whole series of cupcakes decorated with amazing replicas of knitted objects, balls of yarn and knitting in progress. She is an evil genius! I love them! I love teenytinyturkey!

At our next big knitting gathering, a la the Kristizilla farewell, we MUST make something from marzipan! I kind of like marzipan -- it was something I learned about back in my 20's when I worked at a European food importer & coffee shop back in C-U. They had a delightful case full of little marzipan fruits - bananas, grapes, strawberries, soooo cute. But Knit Night Cupcakes are clearly superior to any old fruits! All hail!

Why no knitting progress? Well, I've got a finishing bug just now. I'm trying so hard to finish up a pile of a dozen unfinished objects (photo later, if I get my act together) that I have no "process knitting" to work on . So far the finishing isn't going so great either. Bambuzzled was finished, but has been ripped back to the end of the last lace repeat for sloppy edges. I *did* finish Mom's watermelon socks and mail them, along with two hats I knit for giggles, which I have now donated to Mom's campaign to keep school kids warm. But I forgot to get a photo.

Since then, it's been knit, frog, knit, frog on all the other unfinished objects. I knit & reknit the watermelon mitten a few times (different stitch counts above the thumb, different needle sizes...) but it's still about 2 inches from done. Same with Bambuzzled -- forwards & back, but no progress. I'm withholding photography on these little bastards until they are DONE. That will show them, right? So, no photos yet.

Meanwhile the lack of process knitting caused a big turmoil last night as I tried to figure out what to take on my long car trip today. I think it's going to be socks. Socks are always good for "field knitting". Small enough to stuff in a pack. Sturdy enough to withstand life in the field. Impressive to one's birding companions. Good stuff all around. So imagine the chaos in the knitting room as I excavate every sock yarn and every sock pattern trying to decide what I will knit. Gah! If only I was a planner-ahead.

Even the sock knitting plan required a big assist from Janice and Emy, who transmitted the stitch pattern to me when I realized I didn't have the retro rib pattern in the house (note to self: write down who has borrowed your knitting books & magazines! Do not let them leave the house without knowing where they went! Bad librarian!)

I won't be able to knit much during the actual birding because I have a rule that knitting does not go on tiny boats. I get seasick enough without looking down at my knitting! Yes, it's tiny boats this weekend -- I'm going to Mendocino for a pair of "pelagic" (ocean-going) birding trips, with Shearwater Journeys. We'll be on a boat all day Friday out of Bodega Bay and all day Sunday out of Fort Bragg. By all day, I mean 6:30 am to 5:30 pm. All day. Two days. I think I might be crazy.

In between, I have convinced my birding companions to visit the Mendocino County Fair... home of the California Wool & Fiber Festival. There I will visit young Margit, who will be selling her Fiber Fienddyed roving and I just might visit a few other vendors as well. Tragically (luckily? depends on who you ask!), we will be 4 birders in one vehicle... limiting my fleece acquisition possibilities. Unless I have the fleece ... mailed to me... later. Now, that's worth thinking about. Hmmm... maybe if they poked holes in the carton, they could mail me a sheep?

The eyes of the newly-obsessed....

2007-09-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

You know how you buy a new car, like, say, a Beetle, and suddenly you see them everywhere you go? As a new recruit to spinning... I'm afraid I'm now seeing sheep everywhere.

A friend sent me a link to "Telephone Sheep", by Jean-Luc Cornec on exhibit in Germany. I'm in love.

Another view

Try a search at flickr for even more.

They have so much personality!

And meanwhile, I've just finished reading "Three Bags Full", a mystery where a flock of sheep try to figure out who killed their shepherd. I loved the view of the world through sheep eyes.

.... Marie sent me email about her friend whose in-laws just sheared their six sheep.....

They're everywhere! They're following me!

171 Knitting Books... and counting

2007-09-02T01:46:00.001-07:00

The Knitting Books
Posted by spinnity

Wow, people. Thanks for all the guesses for my book contest. I am a bit embarrassed that I can't live up to the highest estimate of 287. I suppose a number like that gives me something to shoot for. I did leave out all the Rowan, Dale, Noro, Jamieson Shetland and Elsbeth Lavold single yarn pattern books and "magazines", but I don't think I'd make it to 287 even with those included.

Q: Just exactly how many knitting books books does spinnity actually own?
A: One hundred seventy-one

Yes, spinnity owns 171 knitting books. I've piled all 171 up in stacks for your perusal above. I bet you will recognize many of these books by the colors on their spines. Others may be a bit "before your time"

Some highlights:

The oldest books are some Golden Hands and Sunset survey books from about 1972.
The first books I bought were Maggie Righetti's Knitting in Plain English, Vogue Knitting's reference book, and Twined Knitting (all bought around 1990).
Sometimes I go into collector mode and Must Have certain books just to complete the collection... For instance, I have all the Elizabeth Zimmerman books and one video (not included in the count).
The newest books in the collection are the Twisted Sister Sock Workshop and the Twisted Sisters Knit Sweaters - a Knit-to-Fit Workbook -- these two were in the mail from Amazon when I posted my question, so I included them in the total. They arrived Wednesday, just in time for the great counting.

The winner of the contest -- the person who came closest to 171 without going over -- is from Gypsy Junk Knits -- and she is owed two skeins of sock yarn. I had picked my Schafer Anne (it's one BIG skein, not two skeins) as the probable prize, but GJK, contact me via email (spinnity bei yahoo punkt com) so we can confer on whether you want any of my copious Koigu instead, since you are planning a Last Minute Knitted Gifts chevron scarf. I might could hook you up!

Now for the geeky librarian part -- I've just figured out that taking all these books off the shelf for the photo op has created a window of opportunity to Reorganize the Knitting Books, woohoo! Hurray for the long weekend!

Happy Anniversary, on land and at sea

2007-08-31T00:59:00.001-07:00

Anniversary dinner at Junnoon
By spinnity

Wednesday was the 15th anniversary of my marriage to the dashing and talented spouse-o you see pictured here. We celebrated Wednesday night with dinner at Junnoon restaurant in Palo Alto. I don't think we would have tried this restaurant if Bill hadn't played a gig here, backing singer Leanne Weatherly (Sundays & Mondays, 6:30 - 8:30 pm) If you are in range, you should absolutely check out Junnoon. Their attention to spicing is exquisite. Try the Paneer Cake with tomato and onion sauce -- or the chilled mango soup, which is worth founding a new religion for. We spent three hours over the five course tasting menu and enjoyed every bit of it.

Anniversary at sea
By spinnity

We pre-celebrated Sunday with a FABULOUS day on the ocean in Monterey Bay. Go check out Bill's photos of the wildlife we saw - and take special note of the flat, glassy, shiny ocean. Dude, it is *never* like that. We saw: albatross, shearwaters, auklets, murres, humpbacks, and ORCAs! The whole trip was a prize donated to participants in the Audubon's Birdathon in from April. Bill and raised over $1500 with our crazy birdathon, thanks to the generous support of many friends & family. We were awarded the sixth pick of prizes. I think were super-lucky that this all-day bird & whale watching trip was still available. We snapped it up! We are grateful to Doug and Gail Cheeseman, of Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris for this memorable trip. (Oh yes, consider it. He's hot in the suede jacket for a night on the town... AND he's hot in the dorky birding regalia. I am one lucky woman.)

Anniversary piano
By spinnity

We extended the celebration today by taking delivery on a 1922 Steinway bought from a good friend. It's true, I don't personally play the piano, but the presence of a piano in the house is an excellent way to get a party going (which I love) and it encourages Bill to play at home (which I love).

All in all, a fabulous anniversary celebration. I don't know what we can do to top this when we get to a Really Big Num (25? 50?). It was an awesome week, babe, and an amazing 15 years. Onward!

(Note to contest participants - I am piling up all the books for a group photo. Thanks for all your guesses so far -- I'll announce a winner Saturday morning along with the prize.)

Raveller, know thyself. A blog contest.

2007-08-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

Hi knitters!

[There is a contest at the end of this post. Keep reading.]

Like many of my knitting pals, I had been waiting for my ravelry invite for the past month. If you haven't heard of it, ravelry is an online knitting community with oodles of database capability. It encourages you to document every Work In Progress project, every yarn in your stash, all your Finished Objects, even all the books on your knitting shelf.

I love this sort of thing -- what librarian wouldn't? And I've tried several times before to catalog the stash. I started using Knitable to log my yarn and needles, once. Last summer, Mom and I made a spreadsheet of my knitting library... down to the names of the photographers and designers on every Dale Baby Ull pattern book. I tried to make my own photo pages for every project waaay back in 2004, using automatically generated web pages from some random photo software. None of this stuff worked -- it was not inter-connected, it was not webby, it was hard to keep up.

So ravelry is clearly for me. I put my name in for the beta in June. I was number #9667 in line. (N.B.: This means there are nearly 10,000 knitters cooler than me. Take that, Sin of Pride.) I was sure I would a-splode while waiting to be allowed into the fold. I've been tracking my progress in line like a UPS package.

July 30: * 2399 people are ahead of you in line. * 11874 people are behind you in line.

Janice and Mel were already in.

August 7: * 1615 people are ahead of you in line. * 13870 people are behind you in line.

Lisa, Cindy and Jeni were in.

August 18 * 1222 people are ahead of you in line. * 13870 people are behind you in line.

At bobaknit, Abigail and Annabelle were in. Everyone I knew was talking about ravelry, and their stash photos, their WIP catalogs, the cool linky links. GAH! I hate waiting!

Last night August 22: 25 people are ahead of you in line. 17877 people are behind you in line. [YIPES. 4,000 new signups in five days?]

So close! I hoped to wake up to find an invitation in my mailbox this morning.. but still ravelry needed to show me who was boss. The invite finally arrived at 11 this morning. And I'm in! I've posted two WIPs (Bambuzzled and Army Wyverns) and one FO (Shark baby!) so far. Y'all have already seen all the details about those projects, either in person or here on the blog.

Ok, but now I'm in, what can I do? It's a work day, remember. I'm not going to be able to post all of my stash photos for a long time. (Remember the stash vs the floor sander, last year? For ravelry to work, I gotta get all those yarns OUT of the bags and photograph and count them. It's gonna take months.)

I'm not even going to be able to catalog all the WIPs hidden in secret caches around the house. Gotta have good light, be able to find and photograph the WIP, find the dang patterns... Weeks, I'm sure.

So what the hell can I do? Books. I can do the books. I counted my knitting books this afternoon and decided that if all ya gotta do is enter a name to search on and click the picture to add it... I could document all my books today. Goody!

Well, it sort of worked. Ravelry's bookshelf is not yet compatible with the more *ahem* mature knittng library, such as the one here at Chez Spinnity. I put in some titles and other it just doesn't find. (Hellooo, Sally Melville has more than three books published?)

I managed to put quite a few books on my bookshelf. Then I used the bookshelf to look up a couple projects I am considering (Tomato Soup from No Sheep for you has 80 project entries in Ravelry. Bliss from Rowan 39 has 2. Maybe this is because you can't enter Rowan 39 as a book??). I can totally see the promise here and I am stoked.

But there are more books on my shelf that I can't enter, because they aren't in the database yet. And this is where the blog contest comes in.

Enter now to win 2 skeins of *very nice* sock yarn from spinnity's as yet undocumented stash by answering this question:

Just exactly how many knitting books does spinnity own?

Before you enter, you may want to know what counts in the total?.

Each title count once. Duplicates don't add to the total.
Only books count, not magazines or staple-bound pattern brochures from the yarn company or macrame owl leaflets.
Only KNITTING books count, not crochet, spinning, weaving or color theory books.
Books in a foreign language count.
Books *about* knitting, like Yarn Harlot" and history of knitting are in.
It's books I own, not books in the house. I included 2 books being sent by Amazon today.

I have confided the total number in a trusted arbitrator who has seen the collection.

Now it's your turn. Leave a blog comment before midnight August 31 with your guess of how many knitting books are in Spinnity's home knitting library. The closest guess without going over, wins. If I don't know your email address, you might want to explain how I can contact you in your comment.

And by the way... you can find me on ravelery as spinnity

Spinning addict

2007-08-21T12:08:00.001-07:00

Last Minute mitts
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Oh, knitters. What am I going to do? I have a new addiction! And I have fallen victim to the Sin of Pride. it's all about ... spinning.

2007 has been a year for getting back into spinning - thanks to a big nudge from Kristi, who got me going in January with the first of our 2007 Spin-Ins. Not that I was ever really a spinner -- I went to one weekend spinning retreat with a borrowed wheel in 1996 and then pretty much dropped it. But now.. now I am actually on my way to becoming a spinner! It's really thanks to the spinners who come for the Spin-Ins. Without their presence, I would not be making the progress I am in my spinning - both my output and my consistency have really been improving with Hours Logged.

Up til this week, I have only been spinning about once every 6 weeks, at the Spin-Ins. This is probably good for the health of my hands, but my productivity is WAY low. Nevertheless, I am in love with my lumpy, imperfect, home made output. What's new for me is that I finally want to USE my handspun instead of saving it as a precious memento of my cleverness.

So check out my "Last Minute Mitts" (the hand warmer pattern from Last Minute Knitted Gifts) knit in my own very own handspun yarn. Aren't they clever? Aren't they oh-so-Artful-Dodger? Isn't the slight variation in the color beautiful and fascinating? I love them! I love the yarn, I love the pattern. I love that I *made* them from yarn to wearable object. Tee-hee-hee, I'm sooooo clever. (See where the Sin of Pride has a wide open door?)

Birding Jasper
Originally uploaded by spinnity

The yarn was spun at Spin-Ins between January and May this year. The Corriedale roving was dyed by Judy's Novelty Wool, and I bought it at Stitches West 2006. I started and finished these mitts during my birding trip to Alberta. I wanted something to keep my hands warm on our Rocky Mountain leg of the trip in Jasper National Park. In the action shot above you can see how well hand warmers suit my birding hobby -- fingers are left free for the focus knob. and just wait til you see what I saw while wearing my mitts!

White-tailed Ptarmigan
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker

We crossed a milestone in Canada - our 500th "life bird" was a Northern Hawk Owl seen in Jasper, (I love how cool that sentence is. "Oh yes, our 500th life bird, we saw it in Canada. It was a Northern Hawk Owl.") No mitts required for that bird - it was a warm night filled with mosquitoes when we saw #500. But for #501, the White-tailed Ptarmigan at the top of The Whistlers, mitts were definitely the order of the day.

Fall Squall
Originally uploaded by spinnity

But back to the spinning... this past Saturday I did something new. I prepared, spun, and plied 4 oz of dyed roving in a single day. OK, I was pretty much at the wheel from 2 pm until 1 am, with a break for dinner, so I'm no speed demon. But I managed to get all the way through a bump of fiber -- right to setting the twist - in one day. And then... last night... after Knitting Guild... I got my spindle out and worked for a couple hours on the fiber Kristi gave me for my birthday. See? Addicted. And happy!

Bambuzzled - Aug 2007 WIP

2007-08-19T21:06:00.001-07:00

Bambuzzled - Aug 2007 WIP
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters!

Bear with me, I'm still all excited about the veggies. But there *is* knitting in this post.

Bill and I got a veggie box reprieve last week - August 7 - 14 - by spending the weekend in Ashland, Oregon, at the Shakespeare festival. We got some friends to take the veggie box while we were gone Phew! This week we received the first of the summer's tomatoes and sat right down Wednesday night (box arrives on Wednesday) to eat caprese salad and french bread for dinner. We only used up one measly tomato, but man oh man was it delicious.

Thursday we both worked at home, and since we were planning to attend a reading and dinner in SF, we thought we'd better eat some veg for lunch. We grated & sautéd some kind of pattypan squash, served it over pasta with more yummy tomatoes. I think next time I would julienne or roll cut the squash to maintain more of the strucure of the squash. Friday we headed out to a friend's house to watch Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy accompanied by yummy Thai food - but I made a (hold on to your hats...) mango and radish salad so we could continue making progress with the veg. I'm feeling very open to the randomness of the box and very virtuous for chipping away at it every day. We've got some broccoli, potatoes, more tomatoes and squash , cute red onions with their green tops still on, and a whack load of lettuce on deck for weekend munching. Mmmm, summer!

The knitting update is more of a monoculture. Vacation knitting in Ashland consisted of about 5 minutes of work to finish up Mom's watermelon socks (yes, Mom, I will put them in the mail soonly!) and then a whole lot of lace. After our first play (Taming of the Shrew), I cast on for Cookie's pattern Bambuzlled, which I bought from Blue Moon Fiber Arts at Stitches West this year. Since casting on, I have worked on nothing else but this scarf. I'm about halfway done - 6.5 repeats completed out of what I hope will be 12 instead of 10 repeats. It's only about 19 inches so far, which seems worryingly short to me. I love the stitch pattern and the drape of the yarn, so I really hope this turns out to be a nice, nice scarf instead of a mistake.

I can't find much evidence that others have knit this scarf (as a scarf) on the Intarwebs. Looks like a couple of people have made it as a stole and some people took photos of the Bambuzzled kit they bought at Stitches West, but there is not a lot of activity involving this scarf on the 'net. Has anyone locally worked this pattern? Do you have any tips for me about ... how many repeats you got out of the one skein of Bambu or what your finished length was?

I'll have to post tomorrow about the Spin-In on Saturday. The spinners had some reassuring words for me about the scarf, so for now, I am going to keep going on Bambuzzled. Maybe an FO later this week?

Bye bye, Mom! Now how am I going to use up the veggie box?

2007-07-31T19:59:00.000-07:00

Hi knitters,

Well, we put Mom Wiz on the airplane to go home yesterday morning. (Note to self - don't fly out of San Jose airport Monday morning if you can avoid it. Lots of business travelers meant a security line that went from the American Airlines check-in counter, across the bridge to the parking garage, where it wound through a maze of ropes, like Disneyland. The family in front of us were through passengers who thought they had landed in some third-world country, not Silicon Valley. But the line moved very quickly and swept Mom away all too soon.)

We had an awesome visit, although we saw too little of sis-in-law Rebecca, busy director bee that she is. We did see her shows, though - Midsummer Night's Dream, which she cast, and Sweet Charity, which she directed. And we ate at home a lot more this year than we have in past years. More on that later.

We've already started talking about what to do when Mom visits next year. I think we ought to rent a cabin in the Sierra and kick back for 3-4 days, let Mom see another side of California. Mom says we should have more movie nights and go to the Garlic Festival. We all agree that we have to continue the Shakespeare in the Park tradition and play more cards.

Knitting while Mom was here included:

* Modular red scarves from Iris Schreier's pattern - Mom finished two, I'm not quite done.

* Stitch-n-Pitch knitting on the train to the SF Giants game - socks in Baywood yarn for Mom, watermelon socks for me.

* Seams on the three year old whale sweater, since baby X arrived on Friday the 20th (congrats K. and G. X!)

* Pattern research on a cream lace shrug for me, so far considering elements from a shrug in Lace Style and a cardigan from the summer Knitter's. No decisions yet. Heck, no swatches yet!

(I apologize for the lack of photos - I lost my camera battery charger in Alberta. Without ever using it. Hmm. I'm stubbornly refusing to buy a new one, for at least another week, since I'm sure it's really just hiding somewhere, giggling.)

Since Mom left... i.e., since yesterday, Bill and I have been immersed in a project for my friend Michelle who is a professor at Sonoma State University. She is assembling an exhibit of research she and her students done to record the stories of the Women's Movement in Sonoma County in the 1970's. It's an oral history project involving digital voice recorders, transcripts and a lot of background work to understand the context of the stories the women tell in their interviews.

Bill and I are technical consultants to the exhibit, working on things like a web site, a blog for the guest book, a giant timeline, and visualization of the work of the Sonoma County commission on the status of women. The whole topc is very seventies, naturally - full of consciousness raising and grass roots action. I think the collaborative work on the exhibit aligns nicely with the subject matter -- "Let's hold a bake sale!", "Let's build a web site!" The work is really fun, although it's stressful just now. We have a long way to go to make this exhibit happen by August 12.

The intense work on the exhibit has kept us home the last two nights, which is helping with the Problem of the Veggie Box. You see, we signed up with one of those Community Supported Agriculture services. We picked Two Small Farms, because we had a preview of its wares when Adam & Rebecca went to England and left us with their subscription. We enjoyed eating those fresh veggies so much that we decided to sign up for our own box.

Little did we know.

The veggie box comes once a week - Wednesday is D-Day. Every week there is a mix of greens, stuff you might put in a stir fry, herbs and sometimes fruit. They post the this week's list of veggies every on Monday, for those the plan-ahead type people. I usually just get a surprise when I open the box.

The variety and randomness of the box has revitalized cooking here at Chez Spinnity. I look up recipes based on the ingredients found in the box. Last week, for instance, we made a Lentils and Lamb dish with cubed celery root, carrot and leek (box), with a side of spinach (box) and grueyere gratin new potatoes (box). Three veggies used up in one meal! And we've been eating so many awesome salads - I particularly love it when the box coughs up beets. Mmmm, roasted beets in salad, mmmmmmm. It's clearly worth the subscription fee to get this much variety into our diets.

But without Mom around, getting through all this vegetation will be tough for just two of us. Tonight I found a wonderful quick recipe for Fennel and Parmesan salad to use up the fennel bulb from last week's box. But that's... one... veggie used up. We're definitely falling behind, after only two days on our own.

I think this women's movement project is really rubbing off on me, because the first solution I can think of to the Problem of the Veggie Box is... a commune! A dinner commune! If more people were eating dinner at my house on a regular basis... surely I'd be able to get through the veggies. Right? If only we didn't live in the far-flung bay area, with friends in 5 area codes, I'm sure it would work.

Since everyone is so scattered, I have to go with a much scarier alternative: talking to my neighbors. I bet one of the families on either side of me would be interested in sharing the box. Let's see... today is Tuesday. The box comes Wednesday. And I still have potatoes, lettuce, peppers, spring onions, strawberries, and a leek left from last week.

Excuse me, I'm off to chat up those neighbors!

Showing Mom a good time

2007-07-19T13:12:00.001-07:00

Hi knitters!

I'm back from Canada, I've *nearly* finished those cabled socks from the last post, and Mom is here. We've been running around showing Mom a good time - we went to used bookstore Saturday, walkies at Shoreline on Sunday and a drive-by at Bobaknit. That was the weekend. Then we were off to knitting guild on Monday for modular scarf knitting, had Pizza Chicago on Tuesday and headed out for Knitting meetup last night. Whew. It's a good thing Mom gets to relax during the day with a full roster of chores and stuff to pester me about.

Coming up next on the Mom-dule (Sched-mom?): Dinner out and Harry Potter movie tonight. Dinner in and Harry Potter book release party at Printers Inc tomorrow.

I wrote a looong writeup of what happened at knitting Meetup last night, which I am now just shamelessly copying into my blog, because it has a bunch of upcoming knitting related events you may want to know about. If you want to know where to find me and Mom over the next 10 days... refer to this handy guide. I hope to see some of you out & about with knitting in tow.

<begin Knitting Meetup news & announcements>

July 18 - what happened?

BIG (!) group of 27 knitters at last night's Meetup, but the little side room at Panera handled us just fine. Here are the notes of what I remember.. I am sure I have missed some names or made mistakes, please correct me!

In the south west corner: Mary Wiz (cabled socks) and Jo Wizz (red scarf) arrived late and cozied up to Karen (tiny hat in the round) , Renee (large felting project), Jasmine (socks?) and baby O. (no knitting, just gazing adoringly and trying to get moving). Due south, we had Megan (dude, what were you knitting?), Scottie (2 color garter stitch scarf), Allison-the-first (cabled hat in the round), and Lori (blue Panda Wool socks)

In the south east corner: Caroline and ... 2nd time gal with cute curly hair. Stacey? were knitting... what? At the next table Suzanna was helping Lin adjust a Caron S/M sized shrug to fit her petite XS frame and dwindling yarn supply.

To the north, we had Kristina swatching for a dress for her 1-yr old and Marilyn visiting us for the first time - Marilyn organizes 2 other meetups, so it's nice to have a some meetup crossover!

And the in the center of the room: The Big Table. I didn't get a chance to see everyone's knitting and I may have forgotten some names. Keep me honest here.... Pam is working on a multi-directional scarf for the Red Scarf project AND a pink felty pig purse. Oy. So much energy in that gal. Christiane, Margaret, and Tracie were all there.. and I have no idea what they were knitting. Shyamala has cast on for a 2 color throw pillow in a very interesting stitch pattern. Alison-the-second and Lisa were consulting on the Lady Eleanor stole - great to see Lisa advising other knitters, now that she's passed her one year knit-iversary (and braved her first socks!)

Who else was there....? Let's see..... Lauren and Allison-the-third (hope I got the L count right for all y'all Allisons') were first timers rounding out the end of the table with Jessica... and Brit was there early but took off before I could see her.

That's 26 names. I think I'm missing one or two. Can anyone fill in my missing synapses?

And now for this week's announcements. There are many knitting-related events and some just plain fun events you might want to check out

*********
Saturday July 21 -- Shakespeare in the Park!
*********
The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival is once again presenting Free Shakespeare in the Park -- this year it's Midsummer Night's Dream. The play is **free** and features high-quality sets, costumers, acting and direction. AND it's a great place to have a picnic and knit. For extra spice, Rebecca Ennals, one of our members, is the Artistic Associate and Education Director of this company and may be spotted at some of the shows around the bay.

Starting this weekend SFShakes will be performing in Cupertino's Memorial Park Amphitheater (Across from De Anza College)

# Saturday, July 21, 7:30 PM <-- I'm going to this one, for sure, with the fam
# Sunday, July 22, 7:30 PM
# Friday, July 27, 7:30 PM
# Saturday, July 28, 7:30 PM
# Sunday, July 29, 7:30 PM
# Friday, August 3, 7:30 PM <-- I could also be talked into any show after Aug 1
# Saturday, August 4, 7:30 PM
# Sunday, August 5, 7:30 PM

*********
Sunday July 22 - Jazz at Franklin Square Mall, Santa Clara
*********
This is a purely shameless plug for my husband's jazz band who will be performing as part of the KKUP Jazz Marathon at Franklin Square Mall. KKUP is the bay area's tiniest community supported radio station and has lots of different types of programming, including jazz. This event is a fundraiser for their jazz programming and features several different bands playing from noon to 6 pm. Bill's band - Penguin Jazz Quartet - is playing from 2 - 4 pm

*********
Tuesday July 24 - Stitch-n-Pitch at the SF Giants
*********
Yes, knitting is so trendy, they have a knitting night at the baseball park. For $20, you get a seat in the 'bleachers', waaaaay above the ballfield, a chance to visit your local baseball team, and a goody bag. Last year the goody bags were nifty logo tote bags with orange and black yarn, needles and a pattern to knit an SF giants logo hat. Who knows what we'll get this year!

If you don't have your tickets yet, call for direct sales or call your local yarn shop. Full Thread Ahead, Commuknity, Purlescence, 9 Rubies - all ordered tickets and may have extras. I missed the boat with local yarn shops last year and ordered directly by calling the special events group purchase line

*********
Saturday July 28 - Lambtown, in Dixon CA
*********
See the earlier post on the Meetup message board about this county-fair style celebration of sheep, wool, and lamb... meat.

Lori is going with her hubby and has been for the last two years. It's rather a fun event if you can stand 2 hours driving and a bit of warm weather and the associated farm experiences. (Think warm sheep... standing in the pens... Mmmmm. Delish!)

*********
Saturday July 28 - Sunday August 5: Sweet Charity performed by Penninsula Youth Theater
*********

More shameless plugs for my sis-in-law and sister knitter, Rebecca Ennals. Penninsula Youth Theater will be performing Sweet Charity at the Mountain View center for performing arts starting Saturday July 28. If you like musicals, if you have high-schoolers to entertain this summer, or if you want to support our friend Rebecca -- come see the show. (The whole Wiz gang will be at the matinee on Sunday July 29.)

*********
Red Scarf Project
*********

Tracie, Allison, Mary, Pam, Jo, and more are knitting "red scarves" for the Orphan Foundation's annual Valentine's care packages to college students who have aged out of foster care without being adopted. These students have no one at home to send them reminders of their hometown events or home baked cookies. The Orphan Foundation undertakes to send a Valentine's care package with a hand-made scarf. The project name is "Red Scarf Project", but scarves of any gender-neutral color are acceptable.

Scarves should be 5-8 inches wide, and 60 inches long. Any pattern will do, as long as it is soft & snuggly and shows the care you put into making it. You may want to attach a tag to the scarf stating your name and city and any message you want to send to the recipient. Finished scarves are being collected at Knitting Arts by Niko and Marie Stroughter. The collection deadline is September 30, 2007.

More info:
Nikko's appeal
Orphan Foundation Red Scarf Project
Now Norma Knits Red Scarf FAQ

********* PHEW! *********
That was a lot to cover. Hope you are all having fun with your knitting and had a good time at Meetup last night. Please keep those RSVP's and comments coming!

<endKnitting Meetup news & announcements>

... and the end of a long blog post. If any one read through to the end, you get extra big hugs from me. Line up to claim them Saturday night at Free Shakespeare in the Park!

Vacation knitting

2007-07-08T06:03:00.001-07:00

Dye-o-rama socks
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Even here in Canadia they have the Internets! We're at Slave Lake in the middle of Alberta looking at birds, and I've been knitting between stops. This is a baby cable rib sock from the 2006 dye-o-rama yarn I received, accompanied by a strawgrass taken from a black spruce bog. The spruce bog did not contain palm warblers. But we picked them up elsewhere. Been a great trip so far and we'll be back on Friday.

Hiding behind a meme

2007-06-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

Hi knitters,

Not much blogging lately, eh? Today I am posting what might be the world's slowest moving meme (seen on Mel, Jeni & Wizknitter's blogs) instead of giving you a real update on my life or knitting. This is pretty hectic weekend! The short form of the life update is: my project at work shipped June 15 and is quite successful, I'm leaving for Canada Sunday on a birding trip, and mom is coming to visit July 14.

The knitting update is: Monet waterlily sock #1 is in the straightaway on the foot down to the toe. The ancient 2004 whales baby cardigan got another shot at becoming an FO.. but didn't make it, despite last minute attempts to sew in the sleeves. I knit a hat out of yarn I spun and I'm very proud and grateful to the spinners who come spin with me to keep me learning this new craft.

I hosted a baby shower last Sunday for a non-knitting friend and tomorrow we are having a farewell to Kristi, boo-freakin'-hoo.

And now.. the meme

Bold for stuff you’ve done, italics for stuff you plan to do one day, and normal for stuff you’re not planning on doing.

Afghan
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (=modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting (twined knitting)
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Baby items
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffitti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf
Teaching a child to knit
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Button holes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dying with plant colours
Knitting items for a wedding
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths,tea cosies…)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone else's handspun yarn
Knitting with dpns
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Knitting two socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars simultaneously
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener BO
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
LongTail CO
Entrelac Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with selfpatterning/selfstriping/variegating yarn
Stuffed toys
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerlessmitts/armwarmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

Comments on the above: This is a fun list of things to think about. I have cashmere and linen that I bought at Stitches West in February - but only the cashmere got marked with "things I plan to do". Hmm. And am I the only one who thinks knitting grafitti is a really fun idea? Can you imagine if we grafitti'ed the boba knitting locations with some knitted boba-grafitti? It would be a calling card only we would recognize.. just like real grafitti. And I was really surprised to have to answer "no" to "teach a child to knit". All that time I've spent entertaining kids with stuff out of my knitting bag and I never taught them to knit? Now there's something I'd better get moving on!

Renaming a gift scarf

2007-06-08T10:27:00.001-07:00

Scarf
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Is it wrong to give a gift scarf a new name? I mean.. when I got my cat from the Humane Society, I didn't keep the name "Isabella", though it is a cute name. But when it's something the giver made themselves... and named themselves... is it OK to rename it when it gets in your hot little hands? When Janice presented me with the beautiful, just-the-right-colors Burned Macaroni scarf, I hesitated a moment over this point of etiquette before declaring its new name.

Gentlemen, behold! The "Grilled Cheese Sammich Tomato Soup" scarf.

Why the name change? Well, it just happens to be my favorite lunch from childhood and, um, beyond. As a food it really doesn't match the rest of my life. I eat a lot more high-end food these days. I cook mostly from the Moosewood vegetarian cookbooks. I love me some organic produce. I'm even contemplating getting into one of those Community Support Agriculture delivery servcies (Two Small Farms, in case you are interested.) But for a quick meal on a busy day, I still turn to the canned Campbell's tomato soup and good grilled cheese sammich. And Bill makes (and photographs) the best grilled cheese sammiches. Mmmm. Don't you think comfort food tastes even better when someone makes it for you?

The gals at Bobaknit thought you would need to use pumpernickel or rye to get enough brown to match the scarf. Well, have a look. I think the grilled sammich holds its own in the brown department.

I adore these colors and the floofiness of the scarf. I still want to knit one of these myself, but now I am freed to knit it in any color I choose, not a wardrobe-matching color. Many thanks to Janice for the surprise gift, I love it. *mwuh*

Big day wrap up report

2007-06-02T10:23:00.001-07:00

East bay hills at Sunset
Originally uploaded by spinnity

Hi knitters,

I just realized I didn't report on our Big Day Success on April 14. Our team, the Bob-o-Links saw 143 species which is a great total, but we got beat by the experts - Mike & Mike - who set an all time county record.

Bill posted our birdathon bird listt on Birdwalker - our biggest county total ever.

And we just heard this week that Bill and I were the number # team for fundraising. We got a prize - a whale watching trip in August.

Thanks to those who supported us! We birded much harder knowing that every speicies was worth $2.75 to support outdoor education.

Where's Mary?

2007-05-24T00:33:00.001-07:00

Corriedale Bobbin
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Sometimes I neglect the blog because I'm out having fun. Not this time...

Hi blogland!

It's just two weeks before the launch of my big project at work. I mean big. We've been working on this thing for mmmmmonths and the developers have been coding since March. We're pushing through QA testing and bug fixing now. I'm working oodles of hours, morning, noon, and night - and I'm pretty cheerful about it because our web site is going to look **so** good when the new version launches. It's a good kind of busy, with everyone working together to make the project go.

But working all the time means less time for life. I'm behind on photos, behind on blogging, behind on bill paying, behind, behind, behind. Knitting is progressing, if slowly. Projects on the needles this week:

Spey Valley socks from Knitting on The Road for my spouse-o in Blue Moon Fiber Arts medium weight, color Lagoon.
Wyvern! Bind off is languishing. If I could just get 40 solid minutes to pay attention to the bind off, I'd have new socks. Next deadline for socks is June 11, when I am going to the Sierras for 4 days birding.
Eve's Rib scarf in Noro Gemstones, gift for my testing contractor who leaves today (how will we make it without her? and how can I give away my precious Gemstones?)
Swatch in Rowan Calmer for a short sleeve cardigan from Rowan 39. Swatch needs steaming to be sure I'm on the right track before casting on.

If you've seen me away from the office in the past month, it was probably at a yarn shop. Gotta emerge from the coding cave a couple times a week, right? So I took a three week class on Sundays at Full Thread Ahead to learn to crochet 3 different kippot and a one-on-one spinning lesson with Sandy at Purlescence where I plied the bobbin half-full of ... let's call it worsted weight... Corriedale at the top of this post.

I also managed to show up to knitting guild, and two Knitting Meetups since I last blogged. Knitting guild was particularly good this week - we had a session with Ada Lai from Great Knit Design, demo'ing the Knitware program. Guild members left with knitting design stars in their eyes, thinking of adapting patterns and turning swatches into projects.

I'm predicting more silence on this line until June 3, but I'm still here & still knitting. Hope your May is less pressed for time than mine!

Shark pool!

2007-05-04T14:04:00.001-07:00

Shark pool!
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Could anything be more perfect? The pooling colors in the body section of this one-year-old sweater outline the nose of a shark coming from the right underarm and headed for the left. Dum dum. Dum dum...... Dum dum, dum dum. Not safe to go in the water with this sweater!

I gifted the sweater last week to my colleague J whose baby is due next week, and she was sure I'd done that on purpose. If only I had that sort of vision.. it was completely unplanned, of course. Just came out that way. It is a SIGN, I'm sure.

I happened to see a San Jose Sharks fan on the street the other day - and the shark on his t-shirt was in almost exactly the same position as this shadow shark. Bwahahahaha! I love this yarn! Way to go Purlescence and Claudia Hand Painted Yarns!

Shark baby!

2007-04-27T22:29:00.001-07:00

Sharks sweater
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Yesterday at work, I presented my colleague with this baby sweater knit from the fabulous custom-dyed yarn called Sharks!, by Claudia Hand Painted Yarn. This yarn was the brain-child of the very smart gals at Purlescence and it debuted at at Stiches West in February. I am not a fan of the San Jose Sharks, hockey or these colors, but I am *huge* on this concept -- hand-dyed yarn in a custom color that represents the San Jose area. "Sheer stinking genius" as they like to say during band rehearsal.

Seduced by the cleverness of the yarn, I bought 2 skeins of sock weight Sharks!, probably for me, me, me. I also grabbed 1 skein of the worsted weight, with no real plan, probably to make a hat or similar. But then it hit me... my colleague J. is having a baby in 2 weeks and it's playoffs season for the Sharks.. and she and her husband were choosing baby names at the Sharks games. Clearly, they MUST have a Sharks-colored sweater for their impending baby girl!

I turned immediately to "Last-Minute Knitted Gifts" and the delicious "Child's Placket Neck Pullover". I love seed stich for babies and I've wanted to knit this little sweater for some time now. I plunged right in and cast on Monday last week. I had a sneaking suspicion that a 1-yr old baby sweater would consume more than 1 skein of worsted, and I was right. I ran out Wednesday morning. Back to Purlescence for more of this pricey, super delicious yarn.

With my second skein of yarn, I knit up the sleevies on borrowed size 7 double points at Knitting Meetup (thanks, Lisa!), then set the whole thing aside in favor of a bit of spinning over the weekend.

Monday this week I got serious about the Shark Baby sweater again and finished up the raglan section, which is worked back & forth, and finished weaving in ends Wednesday night, in time to give this to J. on her last day at work. Phew!

I adore this yarn, adore the pattern and I'm very pleased with the outcome. I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to spend this much on a baby sweater again... maybe next time I'll try a nice vest for a two to three year old? With pockets?

I need to post a second photo with the sleeves spread out so you can see the fabulous shark shape made by the pooling. That was the icing on the cake.
I can't thank the Purlescence gals enough for this yarn. It was just a delight to knit with this custom colorway which is purely local and so likely to be welcome to gift recipients in the area. Loved it!

Wyverns - only 28 hours before they must be socks!

2007-04-12T17:12:00.001-07:00

Wyverns - only 28 hours before they must be socks!
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

These Wyverns are meant to be my good luck socks for my big birdathon on Saturday. I'm leaving the house at 3:30 AM for a day of gonzo birding, to compete against other teams and try to raise money for the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society.

I just *know* these socks, with their chicken leg ribbing, will bring me luck in the field. So I am knitting like mad to finish them up. Just 4 repeats plus ribbing to go!

Wish me luck!

Knitzophrenia

2007-03-26T23:58:00.001-07:00

Hand spun, spindle spun

We last left our heroine three weeks ago, fresh from spinning one nostepinne worth of forest green singles on a hand spindle and about 3/4ths of a bobbin worth of French blue Corriedale on the wheel. I am enjoying the simplicity of being a beginning spinner. It feels OK to spin wool without a plan for it. It's just a pretty color, spun up into a pretty shape. Simple!

In my knitting, it doesn't feel that simple. I've been picking up projects at random and adding them to the mix. Last weekend, for instance, I knit up a little entrelac pouch in Noro Silk Garden (1 skein) just because it appeared on my desk in the Stitch-n-Bitch calendar on Friday and I knew I had the yarn at home. See? Easily distracted by shiny objects! I could take a clue from a certain *focused*, knitter whose results speak for themselves. Yes, in theory I could list my WIPS, count them, get scared of the big number and start checking them off. Oooh, look! A really cute scarf project! Wouldn't that look great in Malabrigo?

Wyvern ready for cuffing
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Around work on my Shiny Object projects, I'm trying out the goal-oriented approach on solid color socks. This Wyvern sock has is now ready for a cuff. I ripped out the two previous Wyverns - the first one was much too small and the second one would have fit over my shoes. Hmmm. Maybe my real name is Goldilocks. This attempt seems like a keeper - the stitch definition is really nice in this mystery Red Cross yarn and it fits really nicely. I've been weighing the sock and the ball of yarn on my very tempermental digital scale and I think I've only used about 30 g of my original 100. Phew - enough to make the seecond sock!

Meanwhile, I've been lurking on the fringes of a "Hanne Falkenberg kit support group" at Uncommon Threads. I have a "Da Capo" - bought at Stitches 2006 - which I had had not cracked open. A support group sounded like a good way to get moving! So I went to the first meeting in January, skipped the second meeting for a Valentine's Day date, and planned to go to the third meeting before back trouble intervened. But the existence of the group has got me moving on this project. I swatched and plunged in. I've got 50 ridges so far, which feels like 1/4 of the length of the piece. Of course each row adds 2 more stitches, so I'm probably onl about 10% finished.

Da Capo progress plus markers!
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

See the stitch markers on my Da Capo? I received this lovely surprise in my mailbox last weekend - they are a Thank you from Aija for spinning day. Awww, thanks, sweetie, you shouldn't have! Generally I am not much of a one for stitch markers, preferring obsessive counting over any sort of tallying / place marking device. But look how cute those little pink markers are! And they are just the right size for the Da Capo project, where I have to remember to keep increasing at the point of the triangle. They were on the needles about 1 minute after I opened the package.

Tomorrow is a birding day. Bill and I are scouting for a "Big Day" fundraiser birdathon coming up in three weeks. I hope to come home with a few more birds for the year list (currently at 168) plus a finished Wyvern. Mmm, wyverns.

March Spin In, and what they left

2007-03-11T12:48:00.001-07:00

Spinners at work

Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Yesterday on a gloriously beautiful spring afternoon, full of sunshine and pollen, the spinners came a-visiting, with suitcases, bags and baggage. This was a repeat of our January gathering - Kristi and I set up the "Spin In" for people who already know how to spin. And spin they did! For most of the afternoon, there were seven spinning wheels and a handspindle in motion. I've got two sets of photos from this event -- one set of the spinners themselves and one of what they were spinning. I saw at least 4 spinnners change from one fiber to another, so I think it was a very productive day! I'll post the yarn pr0n pictures in the next post - the colors of the yarn came out better than the colors of the people, sorry gals!

New spinners

In January, at our first spinners' gathering, I didn't get much of a chance to spin. I was being hostess and teaching spinning. This time, the newer spinners were self-sufficient, spinning away and asking questions as needed. So, reluctantly, I had to admit I had no more excuses for not spinning at my own spin in, and I actually spent several good hours spinning. I spun a gift roving from Kristi on the spindle before dinner - I think it's coming out "lumpy worsted" weight.

Hello Zodiac

There were many yummy snacks - and snacks of quality! Aija brought delicious pastries from a Chinese bakery. We ate Janice's crab dip on Lori's homemade bread. Cookie served up ice cream and made a boba run to get these drinks with their "Hello Zodiac" lids. Jasmine milk tea turned out to be a great accompaniment to the spicy soup at dinner - although it is a bit of a cultural mismatch to drink pearl tea with southwestern tomato & chipotle flavors.

Spinners dinner

Our soup this time was "Smokey black bean" from a recipe from Vegetarian Times. This photo is missing Margit - and the make up photo I took to include her is, um, not good. Sorry Margit, I'll get you in next time!

After dinner, I continued to pretend the wheel didn't exist. But Kristi was on to me and urged me to get over it. I trepedatiously sat down at the wheel with a French blue Corriedale roving from Judy's Novelty Wool. The technology of the wheel is still not familiar to me, and I am kind of struggling with my drafting style, which involves untwisting, or back-spinning the beginning of the drafting zone with each drafting motion. I can tell from the fierce hand cramps I got during fiber preparation that my current hand motions are a recipe for repetive strain. I'll need to develop a new style. I did manage to spin about 2/3 of a bobbin before going to bed - the last of my 4 ounce bundle of fiber. I couln't stay up any later, but I am ready to ply next time I sit down to spin. I let a sample twist back on itself to see what I was getting. This yarn also looks like it is coming out at 12 wraps per inch - lumpy worsted, just like on the spindle. I think this is huge progress from my 1995 spinning efforts, which are clearly "lumpy aran" or even "lumpy chunky" weight.

What they left

Cleanup was pretty quick, and revealed several items left behind. As a public service, I am posting a photo so all y'all spinners will know where your missing kitchen items are. Have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the day and can't wait to repeat it. And I kind of love what I spun. It's good to be among my people. Thank you, spinners, for making my home spinning-friendly. I wouldn't be spinning without your influence.

24 hours of Wyvern

2007-02-22T01:31:00.001-08:00

24 hours of Wyvern
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Waaah, just lost my whole post on this stupid photo. I love and hate the "Blog this photo" interface from flickr. Where is the stinking save button? On the 10th link lookup.. I stupidly used the Google toolbar in the active flickr window and lost everything. Now all you get is a summary. Hope you like terse.

Knitspiration guild on Monday had a class on short-row toes
Knitspiration website is horribly out of date
Guess who the web maven is?
I used my toe sample to start a pair of Wyvern socks, even though the gauge of my yarn is a bit finer than the recommended gauge
Photo was taken 24 hours after cast on
I've done another 4 repeats since then
I got the idea from Mel's Olympic Wyverns - I love the scales
The yarn is from the Red Cross commemorative Knit Your Bit kit and has no manufacturer's information at all, but is not quite as fine as Lorna's Laces.
I'll be at Stitches Thursday evening, Friday all day, possibly Saturday morning, and Sunday morning.
I claim I'm not really shopping, but will buy Knitting Vintage Socks and drop by Nine Rubies booth to get an autograph by Nancy Bush and might be tempted if WEBS has any Elsbeth Lavold yarn
You are fully authorized to laugh at me when you see me at the show with 15 shopping bags
Hope everyone - shops and teachers and participants - has a great time this week at the show
That is all.

Orange and blue for you, Illinois

2007-02-15T16:41:00.001-08:00

Big 10 Medley Socks
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Here ya go, Illini. Big Ten medley socks, knit in your honor. I will wear them every game day until the end of the season - which is really only 4 more games plus the tournament. Poor old Illini aren't doing very well in the league this year. But this is only because I didn't have the magic socks finished in time for the regular season. I'm sorry, boys. But there is still time to get into the NCAA tournament, if you can just focus on the power of the socks. ILL. INI.

OK, enough sports on the knitting blog.

Since finishing the socks, I whipped into the Valentine's love bug hat and delivered it yesterday morning, along with a fabulous surprise gift with a knitting twist. See, at least a year ago, maybe more, Bill lost a photo portfolio. It was full of bird photos from Texas and the Palo Alto duck pond, with some other locations sprinkled in. He was so mad when it went missing. We hunted and hunted for it. Little did we guess that two years later, it would be found in the back room at Rug and Yarn Hut and restored to us by Laura of the SnB San Jose.

So yesterday for Valentine's Day, my spouse-o received one love bug hat (photos to follow) and one long lost portfolio. We are hugely grateful to Laura for recognizing the pictures and getting this prodigal child back to us.

And the knit goes on - I'm still working on Elfin Goth, having ripped back Yet Again to follow the increase directions more precisely. Man am I looking forward to the next phase of this project after the shoulder/sleeve area. Jennifer says she is nearly ready to publish the pattern, so I hope to soon be in the company of other knitters working on this delightfully, wickedly complicated knit.

Oh, and one more hat note - the Royal Baby Alpaca hat which I knit up for baby M is photographed and posted on Mel's blog. Zoom on over to see cutie M patootie snoozing in his hat.

Oooh, pretty!

2007-02-11T00:17:00.001-08:00

Photo Booth meets hat-in-progress
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Had to share this photo of my Valentine Love Bug hat-in-progress. Details on the hat are below, but the photo was made by Photo Booth, an application that came with Bill's new Mac Book Pro. This is the "bulge" effect in action. Made me giggle. What cartoon character has that nose??

Bill and I spent this entire rainy Saturday lumping in the family room doing useful household things. Well... let's be honest. Bill did useful household things while I knitted 5 inches of Valentine's hat. Oh yes, I'm pretty clever at the chore avoidance. I'm knitting for you, dahlinks.

I'd love to tell you more about the yarn I'm using, but both the yarn and the pattern are internet-proof, not to be found online anywhere. The pattern came free with the yarn, which I bought it at the Windy Valley Muskox booth at Stitches last year. The ball band says it is Nash Farms Cashmere. The hat pattern is their own "Cashmere Mock Cable Hat" though the cables seem to me to be actual, not mock in any way. I guess if I want more details about the yarn, I'll have to ask Windy Valley about it at the Market at Stitches West in two weeks.

Look, honey, the magazine tells you how to do it!

2007-02-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when he knows I am listening, Bill jokes with his friends that he worries about the future with me and fiber. I mean, just look at the trail of evidence. We went from yarn & needles, to lots of yarn, needles, fiber, a few books and a wheel, to lots of yarn, lots of needles, fiber, a whole bookshelf full of books, a wheel, and two looms in about 15 years. (New knitters, beware! This could be you.)

Obviously, says Bill, this progression is leading dangerously close to ANIMALS. He worries that one day I'll come home with a lamb. He feels pretty safe as long as we live in suburbia and have a postage stamp sized yard, but he remains vigilant. And grateful for my allergies to dogs and bunnies.

So here you go, honey, my first hint that you might be right about the animals. I want this magazine. I want to look at the ads. And pictures of alpacas. Mmmmmm alpacas. Just look at this cover:

Doesn't it make your heart go pitter pat?

Don't worry. You are still safe from Bactrian camels. They are just a *bit* large for the yard. You might not be safe from More Magazines, but that's a fair trade, right? I get another bookshelf for magazines in exchange for not bringing home a lamb. Or a camel. That's a fair deal, right? Yes. Sounds totally fair to me.

One thing leads to another...

2007-02-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

Today I am experiencing insight into why nothing ever gets done in my life. I am easily distracted by shiny objects. "Oh, I should really finish those Big Ten socks, there are five regular season games left for Illinois.. but shouldn't I be working on Elfin Goth, I'm almost ready for the pickups... Ooh, look at that new project!!".

It sort of explains the lack of bloggery as well. Here's a sample from last week: "Hmm, I should write about the Hanne Falkenberg kit support group at Uncommon Threads. Maybe I'd better read a couple more things first to be sure I've got the write pattern names. Oh, no, Molly Ivins died?!? Who will hold our feet to the fire now?" And no blog post gets written.

Sigh. It's true. Can't keep my head pointed in one direction long enough to finish just about anything. Every completed object is really some kind of miracle accomplishment if you live in my head. Unlike some of my more focused friends, I hesitate to count the number of UFOs lying fallow in my knitting room. And they were once such favorites! With such promise.

I think you know where this is going. Those oh-so-close Big Ten Medley socks... They are not done. Oh, they *were* done, yesterday, for about three hours. I finished sock #2 Wednesday morning and grafted the toe, put both socks on my feet, and promptly decided that the second sock was too long *and* the heel was too loose. Grumble, grumble, why didn't I re-work the heel as soon as I noticed how sloppy it was? False optimism strikes again.

I let the sock mellow until lunch time and then, Rrrriiiip, back to the ankle. I've turned the heel again, this time on the proper needles, and it looks much, much better. So after lunch yesterday, my task was to run once through my five Big Ten colors for the foot and be done. Not so hard, as long as I can control the monkey mind, I should be done in a day or two....

So there I was working diligently on my stripes last night at Knitting Meetup down at Knitting Arts, where we had 2 newbie meetup members and six old hands. There was laughter, there was chatting, there were reports on our three brand new mommies (Yes.. all three mommies now have babies. C on Jan 27, J on Feb 3, M on Feb 6. Congratulations to all three for healthy babies!)

And I'm knitting away on the Big Ten socks when suddenly a sample garment in Blue Sky Alpaca Melange just grabs my imagination by the throat and will not let go until I buy it. "Knit me! Knit me now!" Who am I to argue with that sort of intense opinion? So I dropped the Big Ten Medley, ran to the register, and brought home enough of this:

(Blue Sky Alpaca Melange, color "Dijon") to make a one of these:

The hat was soooooo cute in person, and I like the way it looks on the model's head in the photo as well. I really appreciated how much hunting Katie did to find the pattern for me - it was, of course, horribly misfiled. How does that happen? When you aren't in a desperate hurry for a pattern, it leaps off the shelf at you. But as soon as you set your heart on THAT pattern, Right Now, the darn thing hides itself under "adult" patterns from "some other company". Katie prevailed against the sneaky pattern and I'm now 9 rows into my 35 rows of ribbing to make the hat. Hoping to have the whole thing done tonight.

And then back to the socks. No, really. Really. I mean it.

Hail to the Orange, Hail to the Blue!

2007-02-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

Big 10 Medley Socks
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Hi knitters! It's been three great weekends of birding, and Bill and I have seen 151 species of birds in January, with plans to add a few more "year birds" tomorrow in Marin county. To get to 151, we visited locations in Santa Clara, San Benito, Solano, and San Mateo counties. Those long drives can only mean one thing… socks! Portable and forgiving, socks, make an excellent project for rainy, muddy, dusty birding trips. So may I present the "Big Ten Medley Socks", using a pattern by Jeni the Knittist. (The pattern is still being edited, so don't ask for it just yet.)

Why Big Ten Medley? I guess you aren't all college basketball fans, so listen up for a lesson in team colors from the midest. From cuff to toe, we begin with green for the Michigan State Spartans, then blue for the Michigan Wolverines, orange for Illinois, gold and black for the Iowa Hawkeyes, and maroon for the Minnesota Gophers. You can tell that I've mellowed as an Illinois fan in my 12 years in California, because I'm willing to allow Spartan green and Wolverine blue into my Big Ten concept sock. In the olden days... well... we weren't always so open-minded. And I know the folks back home will look askance at the idea of representing for anyone other than Illinois in the NCAA tournament in March, but this is how we mellow and change away from home. (Special link for Big Ten fans: Sports tunes a-plenty, including a marching band rendition of the Big Ten Medley. Ah, to hear the Men's Glee Club sing the medley once again!)

The socks that weren't to be

Truth be told, the yarn was a mistake from last year's dyeing classes at Nancy Robert's Machine Knitting to Dye for workshop. [PLACEHOLDER - I'll have some photos of the desired yarn in a sec, but blogging from flickr makes it hard to add the link to the second photo. EDITED to add the photo of the "Socks that weren't to be"] You see, I had intended to produce a very different colorway -- which should have been easy to do, since I had NOTES from my first class and was trying to follow them carefully. Well, notes or no notes, I messed up nearly every color in the sequence. The orange is "okay", but the colors I wanted were sort of "tennis ball green", a true blue, a richer orange, gold and brick.

What I got instead is college sports jersey colors. I sure earned a lot about watching/assessing the colors during the dyeing process, because these colors were clearly wrong when I painted them on. And they didn't get less wrong with time!

Making the best of unintended yarn, I quickly decided that these should become my "NCAA Tournament Socks", honoring the Big Ten and my midwestern roots. Even though my beloved Illini are teh suck this year, and unlikely to make the tournament, there's always next year. And with these socks, I will be able to cheer the whole Big Ten to victory over the Evil Dukies of the ACC. Beating Duke is definitely worth the trade-off of cheering for *shudder* Michigan State.

It is a little weird that I am a sports fan. I mean, I was quite a hippy flower child in high school -- in the 80's mind you, when being a hippy was in no way cool. We're talking bellbottom jeans with heart shaped patches. Indian cotton print skirts. Peace signs on my notebooks. And hippies, we know, are not really into organized sports. Didn't really care. And it wasn't just me. Parents didn't really care, either. Brothers didn't care. Hippy friends sure as heck didn't care. I continued not really caring right through the first 4 years of college, even though Illinois produced several high-flying, showboating basketball teams in those years. Too busy singing in the opera chorus and napping on the quad to notice.

In about 1990, when my husband was in grad school, we started going to games with some friends from the CS department for a way to hang out together. It was a pretty fun scene, if you like tame, non-alcoholic sports fandom. I don't remember ever buying a beer at the stadium. We usually walked to the games. November through February, the weather in Champaign varies from crisp to fuh-REEEEE-zing. We would grab the appropriate jackets, scarves, boots and meet up at someone's apartment to walk the 2 miles to the Assembly Hall, yell like crazy for two hours and then walk home, all in the dark, since games never started before 5 pm. I still love walking at night on cold nights. Just being outside in 40 degree (uh - 5 degree C) weather, with the moon peeking through a light cloud cover, maybe a little wind blowing the clouds around, fills my heart with happiness.

We went to the games faithfully until the year we moved to California. Out here, it's much harder to root for a Big Ten team. During the season, tip off is often at 4 or 5 pm -- and we're not home. And then for some strange reason, the local TV feeds are carrying stupid Pac 10 basketball, instead of the games I want to see. And the tournament is the WORST. After 5 minutes of a game you care about, the announcers break in with "and while Maryland struggle against a stinging Illinois offense, we'll send our west coast viewers out to Phoenix for the regional action, with Western Oklahoma vs UTEP. Stay tuned!". GAHHH! It wasn't until someone clued us in to Old Pro in Palo Alto that we found a location to reliably watch Illinois, since they tune in every single regional feed. That's something to see. 30 or more screens, each with a sign hanging underneath: 1:40 - Gonzaga vs Seton Hall. 4:10 - Illinois vs Texas 7:30 Stanford vs Princeton. Sign me up, baby!

So despite the unwanted colors, these socks are worming their way into my heart as a vital badge of sports fandom. I plan to wear them at home to watch Illinos games (you know, like lucky underwear, only on your feet). I will most defnitely wear them to the Old Pro to watch the tournament. And, bringing it all back around, these socks born in the field are destined to become my primary birding socks, at least for the rest of the spring. Hail to the orange. Hail to the blue. Hail Alma Mater!

Winter means birding!

2007-01-22T18:19:00.000-08:00

Winter in Santa Cruz means Birding!
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

This is a shout out to my weekend knitting group buddies from Bobaknit and SnB San Jose. Hi knitters! I'm sorry to have missed your delightful gatherings for the last few weeks, but just now I'm in the thrall of my other addiction. You see, winter in California means birding to me and Bill. We've both felt the itch all month, as we went nearly three weeks without a serious birding outing. So we've dedicated this weekend, next weekend, and the one after that to birding as much as possible to make up for lost time.

Happy Ano Nuevo

I mean, ok, we were out birding most of the day on January 1, scoring some great ocean views at Ano Nuevo and Pigeon Point. (Year list: 73 species)

And, yes, it's true that we picked up a six species for our 2007 "Year List" on the 7th when we took our young friend Seth for a walk at Vasona Lake (Year list: 79).

But it wasn't enough. What we really want is to plunge in, to surround ourselves with birds and outdoor days and winter sunlight here in this most inviting landscape graced by gloriously clear winter skies.

And so out we went. This past weekend, due to social schedules, we stayed close to home, hitting Mountain View and Palo Alto on Saturday (Year list: 100). Sunday we hit coastal Santa Cruz and Moss Landing. And it was beautiful. (Year list: 118)

For instance -- check us out up there in the photo from Sunday. Temperature was around 55 degrees with almost no wind most of the day. The ocean was flat with no surf between 9 am and 1 pm, as the tied peaked & started to roll out. See the flat blue horizon behind Bill's ear? With a little bit of outdoor wear -- for me, it was long johns, gloves, a hat and my favorite birding sweater -- we were comfortable all day long. Jealous yet??

Oh! I've just realized *is* actual knitting in this post! On my head & hands in the photo at the top are my new garter stitch "field mitts" and matching short row hat in Gedifra Golden Tweed. I knit them in a hurry in Florida, where it was 43 degrees in the mornings. This yarn was going to be a sweater, but the swatch wasn't working out for me. Now it's a hat. That'll show it!

The gloves were adapted from the Weekend Knitting fingerless glove pattern -- I used a larger gauge and skipped the short rows, since the fabric was already plenty stretchy. I adapted the hat pattern from tychus from the Knitty accessories issue. I've got 4 sections instead of 5, and I think I'm going to be adding 6 - 10 rows of horizontal garter stitch to make a better brim, since the hat is currently either too long or too short, depending on whether I roll up the edge. Still, it's a great field hat! Warm, doesn't really call attention to itself, and brings my knitting addiction into the field with me.

Although the knitting continues, birding is the ascendant addiction and I will be "in the field" during as many daylight hours as I can be. Today, January 22, the year list stands at 118 species. Our total species count for all the Januaries, ever, is 228. We've got our work cut out for us to even get to 200, given how late we're starting the push, but we're going to give it all we've got.

Before Stitches West, we'll try to hit all of these places I bet you've never been to:

San Luis NWR, in California's Central Valley, where huge flocks of geese and ducks are mass in flooded fields near Los Banos for the winter. Sandhill cranes fly over in long lines, making their eerie prehistoric gobbling call
In Panoche Valley, in San Benito County, we'll try to get a photo of Long-eared Owls, and chase the elusive Mountain Plover
Up near Davis, in the Sacramento River delta, we'll look for wintering raptors, like Prairie Falcon, Rough-legged Hawk, and Ferruginous Hawk
Marin, Marin, Marin. What's not to love about Marin in winter? Pt. Reyes is nearly empty at this season, but the hills are green like Ireland and the shorebirds are fabulous. And of course, Marin has a great sewage pond at Las Gallinas, where the ducks can't be beat. Seriously worth the 100 yards of stench at the beginning of the walk.
Stretch goal - Mines Road, down from Livermore to Mt. Hamilton, behind most of the Diablo range. Roadrunners, Lewis's Woodpecker, and Lawrence's Goldfinch, mmmmm birdy.

Wish us luck and clear days, and I'll see you at Stitches!

What the cats do all day

2006-12-18T23:43:00.000-08:00

Is that my oatmeal?

Hi there! I'm peeping out from my shell of isolationism to show you photos of my kitties making their daily rounds -- the Stations of the Cats, if you will.

In the mornings, the cats prowl around the bed until we feed them their morning dose of kibble. Then they disperse for a while to points unknown until I am stationed at my computer doing my first phone meeting of the day. Usually Bill brings me coffee or toast, which is quite interesting to The Skinny One, who comes to lurk around my monitor hoping for a chance at the cream or the butter on the toast. I can sort of understand those interests.. but I don't really get what she sees in the oatmeal.

We do a little dance, Izzy, the oatmeal and I. The oatmeal goes on the right side of the keyboard.. Izzy sits on the left & purrs for a few minutes. After a bit, she makes her move across the table to the right, while I move the oatmeal over her head and to the left. She sits down on the right to purr for a while. In the photo above, we've arrived at step four of the dance, where Izzy comes around behind the monitor to purr at the oatmeal from closer range. When she takes a step down to the table surface, I move the oatmeal to the right side and we start again from the top.

Remember that during the whole dance, I am on the phone participating in some meeting or other, so I eat rather slowly, taking bites between looking things up on the computer or talking to the meeting. So we can do the whole circuit 5 to 10 times before the oatmeal is gone. Mind you, she never gets any oatmeal from me. I marvel at her persistence.

Around this time, it's The Fat One's turn. Fat kitty Arlie brings me one of her puff ball toys every morning, accompanied by a little kitty aria. She doesn't bring it all the way to my desk.. just as far as the door. I offer praises and pets for her cleverness & collect my puff ball prize.

The rest of the morning is spent lounging in the sun spots on the south side of the house. I usually go visit them sometime between 10 and 1, since they are completely immovable until the sun wraps around to the back of the house. Izzy prefers the window in Bill's office, where she can nestle behind the curtains. Arlie, more gravitationally challenged, chooses floor locations in the office or bedroom, moving slowly forward as the sunspot moves towards the wall.

Cats in sun

Around 2:30 pm, the sun peeks around the back of my monitor and makes a sunspot on the couch next to me. The Skinny One usually comes to lounge on the sofa in my Loombrary office. The Fat One sometimes comes to sit in the window and cast a shadow on The Skinny One. One glorious day last week, they worked out a way to share the sunspot equitably without casting shadows. Good kitties.

What I did on my Wisconsin vacation

2006-11-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

Jim's
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Ahhh.. Wisconsin. Land of many family vacations, nearly all of them centered around eating. From the 9th to the 15th Bill and I spent a week in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, visiting my granny, my aunt, our grad school roommate and small-town middle America. We also went on a couple birding field trips associated with the Birds and Bluffs fall birding festival in Lansing Iowa. The whole trip was wonderufl.

Bill took some photos - though sadly I don't think we have any good ones of granny - and posted them to a set on flickr. Have a look at the photos and imagine us:

* eating at three different lunch buffets in three days
* attending talks about owls and conservation in the HS gym in Lansing, Iowa
* buying camoflage color fleece jackets -- not to blend in with the forest, but to blend in with the natives
* playing cards in granny's apartment
* watching Chicago beat the NY Giants while drinking Guinness at Eddie's Pub in Prairie.
* trying out all the regional beers we can't get in San Jose - New Glarus's Spotted Cow, Leinie Red, and Capital Amber
* Visiting the raptor center at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center -- another occaison for taking photos
* knitting at the birding festival, on the planes, in the airports & everywhere in between

The knitting has not resulted in anything I can show you yet -- I'm working on some socks that aren't coming together. I've tried about 5 different stitche patterns and none are rocking my world. I might just retreat to the Embossed Leaves from Interweave Knits Winter 2005 and pull out the knitting I did on those planes. I'm also test knitting Elfin Goth for the Domiknitrix, but the pieces won't be interesting until I get the back started, which should come over the holiday weekend.

It's nice to be back in our housey house in time for Thanksgiving and the associated long weekend, which should give us some good birding time. I hope you all will have a relaxing, happy Thanksgiving weekend as well.

Go see Richard III, on stage now

2006-11-09T23:07:00.000-08:00

If you have an evening free in the next two weekends in the bay area, I urge you to go see Richard III - The Business Of War, A Parable . It plays San Francisco, at the Project Artaud Theater at Florida and 18th near the Mission.

Why should you see this show?

1) It's Shakespeare. The language, the characters, the emotions have been realized over and over, made part of our cultural fabric. Many people know that the phrase "A horse, a horse. My kingdom for a horse" comes from this Richard III.. but have you actually seen the play?

2) It's timely. Richard III is about a man who decides that he must have power, who goes about obtaining that power by any means he can conceive. Exploiting family members, check. Having his opposition ridiculed on trumped up charges, silenced, jailed and even killed, checks all around. Cloaking himself in the trappings of religion to gull his people into trusting him, check. Does this sound familiar at all?

3) It's an awesome production. The music, costumes, set and acting are all top-notch. The director's conception of the piece -- opposing the "business of war" with the restorative powers of nature is well-realized. This is some high-grade theater, right here. Don't just take it from me - read these two reviews

4) It's a good, cheap date*. Tickets run between $18.50 for students/seniors/military and $37.50 for the general public. Not a lot as theater tickets go. The theater company and promotion company are new, so they are reaching out with lots of promotions to lower the ticket price. This weekend, you can take advantage of Starving Artist night Friday, Date night Saturday, or Brunch on Sunday (after the show in the lobby). All these apply to in-person ticket purchases only. Or, you can go to City Box Office to purchase tickets in the ordinary way.

* Maybe not a first date. Unless your date likes provocative theater.

5) (I saved the best for last) Rebecca's in it! You may know her as knuknitter, or wizknitter, or the designer of Aunty Becca's knitted purses for children, but the bay area theater world knows her as a director, casting director, school program director, and actor. And she's good! So good in this role, she even brings an angel of death to see the power of humanity. (See the show to understand that last bit)

So go. Go see the show. Tell a friend and go together. Take the whole family. You have only EIGHT more days, so do it now!

Remaining show dates for "Shakespeare's Richard III - The Business Of War, A Parable"

November 10 - 7:30 pm
November 11 - 7:30 pm
November 12 - 2:00 pm
---
November 17 - 7:30 pm
November 18 - 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm

Buy your tickets online

The Big Reveal

2006-11-08T20:58:00.000-08:00

Northwoods Baby Robin Hood Bear

Do you ever watch those home makeover shows, like Clean Sweep or While You Were Out, where they fix up the entire house under cover of secrecy? I confess I kinda like 'em. Especially the ones where they throw out all the mess and make a calm & tidy oasis in the home. You know how they keep the project secret from some of the participants or viewers until the Big Reveal at the end?

Well that's what I've been doing over here -- working undercover until my projects were finished and ready to share. Most of my knitting is in gift mode right now, so that was all under wraps. At the same time, as my floors and other household updates got closer & closer to finished, I started wanting to keep the photos offline until the Whole Thing was ready. And now I am ready to Reveal a gift baby sweater and my new living room.

Sweater first, of course. I started the Baby Bear Poncho out of Interweave Knits on October 13th, with yarn bought at the Purlescence opening night party. This cute little poncho in Rowan Cashsoft was presented to Miss Mel & hubby at a shower last Saturday. Baby will arrive at the end of January.

The sweater was super cute all by itself, but when I added the golden Koigu "rouleau" string tie (a new vocabulary word I learned this week for i-cord!), the poncho magically turned it into a Robin Hood outfit. Feathery hat and green tights will be required, I think. Bring us a pint, Marian, there's a girl.

New floors, huzzah!

OK, and now for part two of the Reveal - my floors are done! And I have new paint! Check out my living room floors, and paint job in "Spanish Sand"Honestly, I didn't know I was planning to paint this fall. When we finished the warm, inviting wood floor project around the 27th of October, we discovered we had made a clean spot in the house and suddenly the paint job was not up to snuff. So we got color chips & brochures & pondered a bit. The idea of putting colors on the walls was both attractive and intimidating. We finally got hooked up with a painter who gave us some great advice about colors we are really enjoying. And helped install new baseboards. And repaired a very narsty spot in the kitchen ceiling.

I love the new sand colored living room -- and also the family room in "Lemongrass" and "Sunbaked Earth" In both cases, the end result is rather darker than it was before, but very enveloping and cozy. It feels homey.

Lemongrass

We're still working on a photo of the "Full Sun" kitchen, which doesn't have much wall surface to photograph, but despite that might have made the biggest transformation with just paint. The dark brown cabinets which have *loomed* at us in their curmudgeonly darkness for year have warmed up & taken their rightful place in the background now that they are surrounded by warm yellow walls. I'll post a photo as soon as we are able to get one which shows the yellow nicely.

I'm hugely relieved to be done with this effort. Bill and I are not used to such a sustained output of energy -- it was a month from start of project to finish and involved moving stuff in and out of the garage multiple times, as well as packing and unpacking many boxes of stuff. Not to mention moving US to San Mateo for a week to avoid dust and fumes. Phew! Too much, too much. I'm just really glad to be ramping down to more quiet evenings at home without big maintenance tasks. And I will have much more time for knitting and socializing now that the floors are finished. Which is why I'm off to Wisconsin tomorrow to visit my granny, aunt & mama. Can't wait to catch up with my knitting buddies when I get back!

New favorite shoes - for socks

2006-10-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

New favorite shoes
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

I obtained these strappy mary jane style outdoorsy shoes this week from REI. (Thank you REI dividend program!) They are cute, comfortable and fierce. And how cute are my entrelac socks showing through those straps?

*So* cute

As the new shoes, they have become the pride of the fleet. They sit next to the door, now that we are a shoeless house (see previous post on new wooden floors!), waiting for the next call. So far they have been showecased flame colored, tuscany colored, and pumpkiny hand-dyed sock yarn. (They do NOT look good with watermelon stripes, but we can't have everything, can we?)

Suddenly I want to knit more socks to honor these awesome shoes. Let's see.. my new Socks of Doom in yellow should look good in here as well, once i adjust the heel on one of them. And the Dyo-o-rama yarn.. and...

Sigh. So much knitting to do for myself and it's gift knitting season. Oh well, back to the salt mines, in my new cute shoes.

----------------------------
Follow-up to the earlier post about storing the stash before the floor work: I spent a stupid amount of time today annotating my stash photo on Flickr.. so have another look. If you were curious what those yarns were in all those bags, now your inquisitive self can be satisfied.

And, yes, Kristi, you are right. That is not the whole stash. There is a bunch hiding in the white cupboard behind this pile. Note how you can't see any white.. at all. There are 50 bags all together -- 35 in the pile you see here and 16 more inside the cupboard. So that's the real total: 51 bags.

But then there is the remote storage for my vast collection of Bolivian alpaca, my 30 skeins of Silk Garden and my 20 skeins of Cork, which all have places of honor elsewhere.. call that 10 more bags. Let's say 60 all told..

Oh, I forgot the Italia Fingerpaints under the bookshelf... that's pretty bulky. Let's say 3 ziplocs for those 10 skeins. 63, then.

Plus the three projects worth of yarn riding around in my trunk for safekeeping, in case the floors went horribly wrong.. Maybe 4 more?

What the heck, I'll just round up to an even 70 bags worth of stash.

70 isn't too many, is it?

Yarn stash vs the belt sanders: Stash wins.

2006-10-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

Packing up the stash
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Here I am back in my housy house after a week away during our floor refinishing/finishing project. I want to give a HUGE shout out to my brother AWiz and Wizknitter for putting us up in style last week. Home cooked dinner and company for the cats was greatly appreciated. Thanks, family!

Even with the fabulous hospitality, the week away was pretty spazzy. Living out of a suitcase is one thing when you are travelling but another thing entirely when you are trying to run your normal life. We got home last night for an inspection visit and decided it was time to move back into our house. We quickly de-plastic'ed the bedroom & my temporary home office in the knitting room, set up camp chairs in the empty living room and fetched the cats home.

The stash, safe in its closet.. came through the refinishing just fine. The bags have only a little dust on the outside -- we had barricaded the stash behind ziploc bags, the closet door, the door of the room and a drape put up by the workmen. The four layer protection system worked like a charm. Stash 1, Floor dust 0.

The floors themselves look mighty fine. Mighty, mighty fine. Rather finer than some of the things surrounding them. This is the perennial problem of any home improvement project. Having made a Clean Spot in the living room.. , shouldn't we paint while the rooms are empty? And.. shouldn't the hideous carpet in the other four rooms be replaced? And what about the dangling wires in the kitchen where a light fixture should be? We now have big dreams and little time before a November 4th party to enact them.

And we have a lot of unpacking to do. We shoved everything inside something else on the way to the flooring days. Some of it was sensible new places to store stuff, but not much. Mostly, we just had to get everything put away. It reveals that we don't *really* have enough room to store our stuff. The kitchen things, books, clothing, and um, yarn, might need some weeding and/or new storage strategies.

The kitchen things are probably quaking in their boxes. And the books are very afraid. But the yarn rests secure in the knowledge that I can't part with my beloved stash. Maybe I'll have to investigate those closet storage system fliers in the newspaper. We can't just live out of stacked ziploc bags with no internal structure. The Tower of Stash will just fall over every time I need to get out new yarn.

Oh -- almost forgot -- actual knitting content: My sock wars assassin Little Feet killed me off last Monday, I'm dead. Good timing. And I'm knitting the Sugar on Snow hat / neck gaiter from the most recent knitty, in a lovely spicy orange and considering modifying the dangling ties to be something other than leaves. Maybe acorns? Maybe oak leaves. I'm checking my Nicky Epstein books for inspiration.

Murder and Mayhem

2006-10-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

Sock Wars, Round II

We have two topics today, starting with Murder, as in, I've assassinated another victim in the Sock Wars. Using the yarn and severed leg contributed by Sockcrusader and mailed on to me by my first victim SK8GRLPK, I whipped up this pair of deadly red socks despite illness My victim, Sheri at The Loopy Ewe, died Thursday morning and sent her thank you note already. All this makes me giggle gleefully, as I am now a Two Kill Assassin, hear me roar.

The not-so-giggly part is disappointing news that I won't get a chance to try for a third kill. My victim knew I was facing impending doom from Moirae and got the impression that I am dead. The thing is.. I am not dead until the socks arrive. Like.. consider how it would be in the real world. Suppose you plan to bump me off, and you bake a poisoned tart. Am I dead? Nope. You have to deliver the tart to me and I gotta eat it. But sadly, in this case, the news that the tart was baked was enough to take me out of the game. Although I am Not Yet Dead, I will now bow out of the Sock Wars and quietly await my death.

It's probably all for the best, since I really have to move on with the Mayhem portion of our show -- floor refinishing! Believe it or not, after 10 months in stasis, the living room floor project is back and moving to completion. Wood was laid into the living room two weeks ago and will be sanded and stained starting on Tuesday. Every story I have ever heard about wood floor finishing contains a sentence like "Oh my, you have no idea -- the dust went EVERYWHERE." I've heard that the dust goes between all the plates in your cupboards, even with tape around the cupboards. And between the pages of books. And in your files.

I'm totally panicked about the dust. So we're packing like mad to protect our stuff. The garage is full of boxes already and we've got more to stack under tarps in the nonwood floor rooms.

But oh, knitters, I know you are way ahead of me in thinking about that dust. Because it wasn't until yesterday that I really realized... the dust.. could get into... the Stash! Wood dust. In the stash. Does it make you shudder? It does me.

Enter.. the 2.5 gallon freezer bag. Freezer bags feature in many of the yarn shops I visit -- you can fit 20 balls of yarn in 1 bag and squish all the air out. The plan is to bag the yarn into groups and then put all the freezer bags into a big construction-grade plastic bag. Can you imagine thins? The entire stash in one bag? Does anyone sense a creepy, scary, self-examination moment encaspulated in a photo, coming soon? I admit, I'm both terrified and curious to see how much yarn there really is. But packing it will mean three very late nights between now and Tuesday morning. Think of me, knitters. And wish me luck. Cause if I don't finish, you'll never get to see that photo!

Up the chain of assassins

2006-10-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Bulletin from the wool front: Yarn Monkey's Sock Wars continue, as a community-organized sock-based killing spree. We heard little from Yarn Monkey in the week after the assasination assignment list was posted, but we've been talking amongst ourselves on the forum and figuring out who needs to kill whom.

I was clear on my assignment, so last Tuesday I shipped the package that successfully killed my sock wars target, sk8grlpk. After weaving in the ends at the delightful Grapevine wine shop in downtown Willow Glen, I got some help from accomplices Bill & Gordon to create a a toe tag for the deceased sk8grlpk. A knitted or felted toe tag would have been better, but I was in a hurry to slay victim #1. And I have prevailed!

Chain of assassins

So on to Round Two. Sk8grlpk had already slain her victim, Sockcrusader of Washington, D.C. Accordingly Sockcrusader. mailed her socks-in-progress from D.C. to Fontana, CA for sk8grlpk to finish and deliver. But it was not to be. My deadly socks arrived in Fontana on Thursday at the same time as the package from the east. Sk8grlpk was a total dear about mailing the D.C. socks to me -- and they arrived here on Monday, in my original mailer, with Sockcrusader's envelope inside. (Anyone need a diagram of that? I might.)

Sock of Doom, Mark II

Inside the package was.. a single severed leg. And some yarn. Hoo boy. I've got a long way to go to get these babies ready & delivered. Two heels, two feet and one more leg to knit. And it seems my new victim might be a size 11 shoe size. But I am calm. I have ninja hands. I will breathe into the knitting.

Meanwhile, my original assassin Stephani has been dispatched by assassin Littlefeet, who has more names than you can shake a stick at. Not that I, assassin elektra, can really complain about someone else having too many names. Stephani also passed her socks-in-progress along quickly. So littlefeet has been taunting me with impending death by delightful, sunny yellow socks. Not a bad way to go, if that is to be my fate.

False start

But for now, I put thoughts of failure behind me. I'm off and knitting the socks of doom for the second time. Surely, my experience will have made me wise and powerful in sock-fu. Not so fast, grasshopper.

I had a bit of a false start using size 5 dpns, which worked fine my silk socks of doom. Here you can see the D.C. socks after I turned the heel last night on size 5's. And you can pretty clearly see where I started knitting because our gauges do not match. Rrrriiiiiip. Try again on size 4.

No more photos now, since I don't want moirae to know how near her death is.. but let's just say these are a fast knit and the size 4's are perfect. Assassin elektra is back in the saddle.

Note: If you were looking for any sort of real life update, you might check over with my darling spouse-o's blog.. we've been having new wood floors put in the living room this week. And he's presenting Wednesday, Oct 4, at the Bay Area Bird Photographers monthly meeting at the Palo Alto Baylands nature center. He will talk about bird photography & photoblogging. I'll be skipping this week's knitting meetup to knit in the dark at his talk. Come on by and knit with me in the back row, if you are interested in seeing pretty pictures of birds.

Red silk for every victim of my murderous rampage

2006-09-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

Deadly silk socks
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

From the shadows, a flash of reflected light from my bamboo double-points may be your ownly warning. I am the assassin, sizing up my victim's shoe size (Women's US 10), selecting just the right weapon for the job (Regia 4-ply Silk, burgundy) and silently proceding with full devotion to my task.

At least, that's what happened after I remembered on Sunday that I needed to check in with the Sock Wars of the yarn monkey. I knew they were coming this weekend. I checked for the pattern to be posted Friday, as promised. Then I forgot all about it for 2 days and went birding! on the San Mateo county coast all day Saturday.

Sunday at noon, suddenly it all came rushing back. Sock wars! Assassin! Someone's after me! Better find some yarn and get kniting. The pattern is written for DK weight yarn -- I don't have much DK in the stash. I have some lovely Cashsoft DK, but thought that might not hold together as socks. Ever the inventive assassin, I am doubling my Regia Silk - a gift from Mel - and coming out with spot-on gauge. The fabric is less firm than I like my socks to be, but super soft and quite attractive, for a murder weapn. I hope I live through round one and get to knit another pair. I think I will keep the red silk yarn as a trademark, bwahahahahaha!

So beware. You may be my next victim (if you signed up). Sock assassin Elektra, weilding my ninja powers and special red silk yarn may be your doom!

Knitting v. work

2006-09-14T23:21:00.000-07:00

Knitting v. work, round 1

Weird knitting day at work today. An epic struggle fought out in miniature.

First, knitting took a swipe at work. It's the first 90 minute conference call of my day and I'm working on the watermelon socks (aren't they cute? Aren't they fabulous?). Alreay we see the conflict in the very setting of the story. The yin & yang of it. The eternal struggle. I mean, 90-minute conference call: bad. 90 minutes of watermelon knitting: good. Work v. knitting. Knitting v. work.

Ok, so I was changing needles while working around the sock. The tip of a needle must have hooked the edge of a key cap on my keyboard. The needle felt stuck, I pushed a little harder and *whing*, there was the letter F sitting was on the desktop and a big hole in my keyboard. Man, keyboards get really gross inside! That was 11 am. Round 1 of this fight clearly goes to the knitting, showing work who's boss.

But work is not to be kept down like that. With the key cap snapped back on, life goes on until 1:30 pm, when work strikes back.

Snap

I'm on yet another conference call -- topic: why so many outages on our servers lately -- when I have the bright idea of trying on the sock-in-progress. Sadly, work distracts me enough so I forget to re-jigger the stitches evenly after the heel. For the heel, you need 12-12-24. After the heel, you rearrange to 16-16-16. But I forgot. I'm in a hurry, I'm on a phone call, and I jam to sock on my foot.

*snap*, I lose a needle. Anyone want to guess whether I had any spares? Want to further surmise whether I had 2 more phone calls to go? And no back-up projects in my bag? Aagh! Work is clearly the victor, defeating knitting in the second round.

Me n the boss

Even though work won out today, I have plently of spare needles at home and can return to the battle tomorrow. As a distraction from the pain of losing a needle, I wrapped up the day with lambchops at Birk's with the boss and some other colleagues. It was a very elegant occasion, as you can tell by our lamb chop frenzy.

How do they think of these things? Sock Wars!

2006-08-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

Well, leave it to Janice to find the best ideas in the blog-o-sphere. I tell you, she has an eye for quality! Following her link, I've just signed myself up for Sock Wars 2006.

Here's the basic outline: it's a game of Assassin, where you are supposed to "kill" someone by sending them a finished pair of socks using the Sock Wars pattern. Meanwhile, you are the target of some other knitter. If you are killed before your kill is confirmed, you send your half-finished socks to someone else. And put on your new hand-knitted socks to salve your wounds. If you are not killed, you get a new target along with the half-finished socks of your opponent. As yarn monkey says:

The Rules

1. The first rule of Sock Wars is, you must talk about Sock Wars
2. The second rule of Sock Wars is, you MUST talk about Sock Wars.
(no really, for this to be a success we need as many combatants as possible)
3. Two socks to a fight
4. One fight at a time
5. No shirts, no shoes, just socks
6. Fights will go on as long as they have to
7. If this is your first time in Sock Wars, you have to fight.

We all know I'm not the most... faithful... of knitters. I tend to have too many projects going on at once and I tend to get distracted for weeks at a time by something else, like birding or life. But this is a really fun idea, and I figure I have just as much chance of being set up as the target of a flaky spinnity-style knitter as I do of drawing a dedicated speedster knitter who kills me on Day 3. But if I have any hope of surviving the carnage, I'd better do as joni says in the comments.. and get those pre-paid mailers lined up well in advance!

Now the real question is: can we get my MOM to sign up for this? I think she could totally survive as a sock assassin. What say, Mom??

Meanwhile, I have also finished and started a pair of socks this week.

A Step Above

Finished: A Step Above socks, in Lorna's Laces, color "Tuscany". Heels had to be adjusted for just the right fit, and now they are ready to rock.

Started: Socks being designed by Jeni the Knitist to suit the standard Nancy Roberts "Socks to Dye For" sock yarn blank. This is my chance to use the yarn I am calling "Big Ten Tribute", which is a set of colors I dyed, but not *totally* intentionally.

Here I have to pause for a fable which explains my next move, Once upon a time my friend H. bought a car, using hard-earned money. As a full-time musician, H. does not have tons of spare cash so she bought an economical car. But the car felt sort of... cheap. Sort of ... inadequate. She regretted buying the economy model and wished she had saved her pennies a little longer for a more solid-feeling car. But it was too late. She was stuck with it. My darling spouse-o and I came up with an idea: Give the car a cutesy name, a name which indicates air-headedness, or cheesiness. Our idea was: if H. could think of the car using this cutsey name, it would become perfectly understandable why the car couldn't do better. The name we decided on was "Bubbles". After all, you really can't expect much from "Bubbles," can you? Bubbles has trouble with simple tasks, like walking & chewing gum at the same time. Like accelerating to highway speeds. So every time Bubbles manages the drive home, you have to sort of celebrate the victory. Yes, maybe other cars on the road were better, but Bubbles did the best she could. Dumb as it sounds, this seemed to help.

Big Ten tribute

Taking a hint from this fable, I figure the best way to fit this not-quite-what-I-wanted yarn into my life is to give it an attractive name and knit it up. So in I go. My green, blue, orange, yellow and maroon socks clearly represent the team colors of 5 teams from the Big Ten -- Michigan State, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota.

So that's what it is -- Big Ten Tribute. By starting early, I plan to have Big Ten Tribute Socks ready in time for college basketball season. They will become luck charms, to be worn on game days. I'll have to keep track of their influence on the outcomes. Maybe I can knit some mistakes into the non-Illini stripes as a curse... hmmm...

Stash swap yarn makes good

2006-07-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

Crosspatch hat
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

I'm quite pleased show a finished object made from stash yarn -- stash swap yarn, to be precise. Here's a blue & purple Crosspatch hat knit from this summer's knitty. This is a departure for me -- knitting from a current magazine, finishing before the next issue is out.

I didn't have any bulky yarn, so I used worsted yarn held double. I reduced the stitch count to 64 -- since my gauge was a bit larger than the pattern called for. The result is that my crosspatch is a bit snugger than the one in the mag, but I quite like the way it fits. And I love the colors. The purple was part of last fall's felted market basket project, and I *think* the blue was dyed by cookie and came to me through a stash swap last summer. Hurray for stash swap, hurray for this great introduction to mosiac knitting.

Seedless!

2006-07-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

Watermelon Socks
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

I love my watermelon socks but the little black dyed-in pips have washed or rubbed off in the three months since I knit them. The black dye seems to have ended up mostly inside my clear plastic clogs. I was sort of mournful about loosing my pips until I realized.

They're seedless now!

I have been thinking about drawing the pips back on with laundry marker, using the remaining ghostly pips as a guide to where to place them. But.. that would be sort of obsessive. And I'm not sure I want to give in to my reputation in that way.

This photo was taken over the July 4th weekend, while I was in Tahoe, visiting Janice. I took some lovely landscape photos as well, from our walk up a fireroad at the Stateline Overlook and a walk in Tahoe Meadows, which was a great location to see mountain birds as well as gorgeous scenery. But the photos are trapped at home, so I'll share them soon.

We had a lovely, busy, holiday weekend. Saw Rita Moreno in The Glass Menagerie at Berkeley Rep on Saturday, spent Sunday and Monday in Tahoe and visited the Marin County Fair on Tuesday for general fair goodness and fireworks. It was one of my Favorite Weekends... Ever. We saw many friends, had lovely food everywher we went (the shawerma in Berkeley... salmon in Tahoe.. fruit salad and corn on the cob in Marin), and really enjoyed being outside together.

I don't know how many people know that county fairs, even here in urban/suburban California, still hold competitions of various arts and crafts, as well as livestock judging. We toured the exhibt hall, viewing crafts and creative writing by kids, the fascinating Art Chairs, and the textile hall. The arrangement of prize-winning items must take the fair coordinators a really long time. It made for a nice diverting, inspiring pathway through the creative work of so many people.

Even though going to the exihibits was my idea, it was Bill who took all the photos of knitted objects at the Marin County Fair, so they are posted under his name. I will leave it to you to check out the whole Fair set at Flickr, but I need to show you just one special object from the knitted entries. It's so special, I'm going to give it a line all by itself.

I know the edge on angle here does not let you see the whole front side of this knitted teacup.. but it is important that you see the size of the lovely blue ribbon this object earned for its maker. This is a knitted teacup decorated with stranded blue wedgewood-style motifs knitted in very very fine yarn using very fine needles. I am knitting socks on zeros right now, and I doubt very much that this was done on anything larger than a size 000 needle. The color work is perfect, the increases are perfect, and if you are the sort of obsessive person who crawls up underneath the display case, you can see that the saucer has a little foot underneath which allows it to rest evenly on the glass shelf. Perfect.

I am so impressed with this work! The vision to knit this delicate teacup.. the skill to knit it... the beauty of the color work. The only thing I can't tell you is WHO made it. Serious lapse on my part! You'd think while I was crawling around under the display case, I might have noticed the name of the knitter. If anyone happens to have been to the fair and sen the name on the label or knows the maker of this teacup, please let me know who should get the credit for this beautiful work.

There were a many beautiful craft entries at the fair. But there were quite a few "just OK" entries as well. Makes ya think, eh? Maybe next year I'll get my act together to enter something in Marin.. or Santa Clara. It'd be kind of fun to have one's work on display next to the cakes and flower arrangements & (Marin, remember) Lego models of Hogwarts. It looks like the deadlines are mostly in May. I'm going to mark my calendar & give it a shot.

A knitterly weekend in Ashland

2006-06-21T02:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, people, we have a lot to cover to catch up from my last post, 11 days ago, so let's get moving. Today we are covering "Where the hell ya been?".

Set the Way Back Machine for 10 days ago, and picture yourself embarking on a 400 mile journey (one way!) to soak up the theater experience that is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. What do you need for the journey?

Travelling companions. That's my brother up front and wizknitter in the back with me.

Something to eat

A place to stay. We enjoyed Ashland's Tudor House, both inside and out, all weeekend.

and of course, your knitting!

Side A
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

It does take a bit of coordination to line up all the supplies needed for a great weekend in Ashland, but we pulled it off. And this closing shot shows the results - here you see me tired, but successful, and brimming with culture. We saw Up, Winter's Tale, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Diary of Anne Frank, and the Importance of Being Earnest on this trip. We will pick up the rest of the season in August when we return.

Full of culture, we drove home Sunday, and the non-drivers kept on knitting until it got too dark to tink a simple lace pattern, which turned out to be very close to the 505 split from 5 near Sacramento. At this point, the knitters packed it in and took nice little naps, but the driver had to keep going for another 200 miles to get us home again. In the end, a long, productive, stimulating, fun weekend was had by all. And that's where the hell I been, at least part of the time. Stay tuned for our next topic.. "what the heck you been doing all this time?"

I got a package!

2006-06-09T02:14:00.000-07:00

Dye-o-rama
Originally uploaded by spinnity.

Thursday night when I came home from dinner out at St. Michael's Alley in Palo Alto, a big fluffy package was waiting for me on the doorstep -- an the return address read DYE-O-RAMA, from Pennsylvania. Oh boy, oh boy, it's HERE!

Inside, all these lovely goodies were waiting for me! The skein in front is The Very First Yarn my dye-pal ever dyed, wow! What a lovely fall colorway. And the larger skein.. well, that's my soon-to-be socks! Look at the richness of the greens and the lovely shades of turquoise.

Just like at dinner tonight, where I had fabulous rack of lamb, I declare it now: "I win." Y'all may have sent and/or received good stuff for the Dye-o-Rama, but .. I win. I love my package, all the nice scented lotions and beatuiful yarn. It's clear my dye pal really thought about me and made this yarn Specially For Me. Wow!

So here's a big thank you to Angelia, of http://angeliasknitting.blogspot.com. I truly appreicate the thought and care that went into dying this beautiful yarn, Angelia! This week is a rough time for Angelia, as her Grandma passed away Monday, so if you have a moment, stop by and say something nice to my wonderful dye-pal.

And I'll talk to you all next week -- I'm off to Ashland for a weekend at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with my brother, wiz knitter and our long-standing theater buddies. I'm really looking forward to our family picnic tomorrow night in Oregon. I hope I'll have some lovely rhododendron photos to show you when I get back.

Back from the desert

2006-06-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Mary in the Desert
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

It was a painfully short trip to the desert for me and the spouse-o. I would love to spend more time down in the Kernville/Mojave area, exploring more of the local birds and migrating rarities, but we had to come back to the world of work on Tuesday.

The wind that blew us into town lasted all day Friday and Saturday. We got a bit hysterical Saturday morning when the wind and the cold temperatures saw us birding one of the most famous spring migration oases at 42 degrees F. Thank heavens we brought the gloves!

Sunday and Monday were better weather, but the anticipated warbler rush hour never did materialize. Instead, Bill and I focused on learning and seeing the desert birds, like Scott's Oriole, Cactus Wren, Sage Sparrow, and Greater Roadrunner. Bill has a set of desert photos on flicker, so go see what we saw!

During the trip I knit away on what turns out to be called the "Lots of Choices" top. I finished the first piece on Wednesday night at the Knitting Meetup BBQ... and promptly decided it is too small. My gauge is off -- my 19 stitches make 4.5" instead of 4", so I was fudging a bit. It turns out that my 91 sts (23.5 inches) does not cross the midline of my body, as Lori was able to demonstrate by trying to tug it round me. Luckily it only took Friday to Wedensday to knit it, so I don't mind starting again. With 101 stitches cast on and 8 garter ridges completed, I'm on my way to a really nice looking summer top.

Middle of nowhere

2006-05-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

We arrived last night after 11 in a town that had clearly rolled up the sidewalks. Thus far we've only seen strips and strips of motels, restaurants, gas stations on the two highways that intersect in Mojave. Oh, and the wind was blowing so hard we had to lean into it. Newly planted trees were whipping around in a 180 degree arc. The hotel desk clerk told us top wind speeds were forecast for 70 miles an hour over night. Not joking. Seems the pass through from Bakersfield to Mojave is an excellent channel for bringing wind to this location.

Today we will be birding near, you know, roads, houses, parks, resorts. Tomorrow we ae going here. That's Butterbredt spring, a popular springtime destination for migrating birds and the birders who love them. Dirt roads all the way in from the highways around that triangle.

Obligatory Knitting Content: have cast on twice for the "Lots of Options Top" from the Knit Stitch, using *bright orange* Rowan handknit dk cotton which I originally bought last year as possible Summer Sweater fodder. And I finished the toe of sock number one in the A Step Above pattern. May not make much progress on #2, since I appear to be missing one of my size 0 needles. Don't think I'm going to get areplacement here in the middle of nowhere.

Santa Clara Fifth Wednesday -- knitter's BBQ at my house

2006-05-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

My Knitting Meetup group meets on the first and third Wednesday every month. On the second and fourth Wednesday, I go knit with San Mateo Knitters, while the Crochet meetup takes over our knitting space in Saratoga. When a month comes along with a Fifth Wednesday -- there's no scheduled event! we like to make it a special event. In March, the Knitters and Crocheters joined up for a yarn swap. This month we are planning a BBQ & potluck at my place. No swap. Just food, gabbing and knitting and/or crocheting.

If you are a knitter associated with any of the south-bay knitting groups and would like to join us, consider yourself invited! Santa Clara County knitting meetup members, please use the RSVP feature on the meetup Event page. For anyone else who wants an invite, leave me a comment with your email address and I will send you an evite with the address. Wedneday, May 31, 6:30 pm, my place. Bring your knitting and a "dish to pass".

Time just keeps moving, doesn't it?

2006-05-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

Been a whole week since my last confession, uh... , blog post. What is the deal with time passing? Can't someone get that fixed??

Much activity in the past few weeks, but I'm only here to talk about the Big News in Spinnity's Knitting: a finished sweater for myself! This is literally the first sweater I have knit myself and finished since 1990. (Yes, there was one jacket.. the big, purple Swing Coat from Jaimeson finished in about 2003.. but no sweaters since I returned from Austria.)

Summer Sweater

Meet Sally's Favorite Summer Sweater, from the Knit Stitch, cast on in May 2005 and finished in May 2006. The yarn is Mirto, by Filatura di Crossa. It's a beautiful yarn, though it has splitting issues.

I sewed in the last ends on Thursday morning last week before work and wore it straight out the door. I also took it on tour to San Mateo Knitters last night. It's kinda long.. and that may turn out to be a problem, but it's a glorious yarn, a great shape and a fun knit for summer. Hurray, sweater!

Tonight I am off to spend my holiday weekend birding near Mojave, CA with my dear spouse-o. Watch his blog for notes about fabulous birds seen in the desert. We might see Scott's Orioles, some warblers who missed their right turn at Texas and are WAY off course, Mountain Quail, and roadrunners. Doesn't that sound exciting?

Tragially, I did not get my Dye-o-Rama box ready to go before our departure, so I will have to ship that next week. Until then, I will remain a founding member of the newly-formed "Machine knit to dye-a-slow-death-by-worry" Club. I am feeling a need to stick up for my dyeing technique, which offers such control and predictabilty... for those who know how to do it. It's hard to be a great defender of the technique at my current level of experise. So I'm worrying:

Will she like the color?
Will she like how much undyed yarn is showing through?
Will the Interlacements Tiny Toes be too fine a gauge for the pattern/yarn/plan of what I dyed?
Will she believe us that the crinkly yarn is no problem, you can just knit from the blank?
Is this really enough yarn to make socks?

The last worry only got on the list last night, when my brother saw the balls of yarn and said "So, those two balls make one sock, right?". *shudder of horror* "No, no, that's two socks worth of yarn." "Oh, for a child." "No.. for a grown woman." "Huh. Because, you know, those socks WizKnitter is making for me took WAY more yarn than that.". Right. One more worry on the list, then.

You can't get to be in the S.D.b.W.Club without a list, you know. But at our meetings, we cheer each other up with the plus side of our yarn. The colors I *planned* were perfect (if not perfectly executed) and I got to spend the day in the studio with my knit buddies, which was awesome. The finished yarn matches her color preferences and I think it will make beautiful socks.

I just hope they will be socks for adults.