I'm getting bored with Kyoto
I've been totally focused on Kyoto for about a week now, and I'm not working on anything else really. I haven't wanted to work on anything else. But now I have the 7-day itch. I need another project. Usually I have a couple of projects going at the same time but right now I don't. I need to start something else so I can go back to enjoying Kyoto and not dreading the drudgery of millions of stitches per inch/ row.
Speaking of drudgery, today I sorted through about a zillion boxes I got out of my storage space. It was Caesar Chavez Day and the Great State of California, my client, is closed today. I had the whole day off and I spent it working my way to the bottom of the mess in the garage. I've had some stuff in storage since I moved here from New Orleans 5 years ago. Pictures, pots, pans, and a whole lot of just crap. I will be having the mother of all garage sales next weekend. I set up a folding table in the driveway this morning to take advantage of the beautiful weather and just sorted and sorted and sorted. Some boxes held stuff like old glassware and bed linens and those took about 1 minute to go through. Others were full of old cards and letters and notes and pictures from ages ago. Those boxes took much much longer. I started around 10:30 and I finished right at sunset, about 6:30 or so.
I still have a few more boxes to go, but I will be able to get it done next week with no problem. I won't be working on it this weekend though, because I am spending the weekend in Santa Cruz house-/kitty- sitting for Red and her hubby. I will sit on the beach, I will read, I will knit, and I will even manage to get myself back to the Santa Cruz stitch n bitch on Saturday afternoon. I haven't been since January, way back before I moved. Gosh, it's been so long I wonder if anyone will remember me?
Mom and Dillon are gone
Sigh. My mom and nephew have gone home. It's quite sad. I miss them terribly. The house is so quiet without them. I found the sweetest note that they left for me on my desk. I hope they come back again soon!
My new needles are here!
My mom is working diligently to get my house all nicely decorated. Today's schedule consisted of the following activities:
Hanging pictures
Hanging pictures
Hanging pictures
Moving furniture to a new spot
Moving furniture back to the original spot
Hanging pictures
We repeated this most of the afternoon. I think we have more pictures on the wall than an art gallery now.
My new Inox Express needles got here today. Yeah! I'm so excited, and I can't wait to start using them. But first I have to get through a little more Kyoto.
Speaking of Kyoto, I'm starting to pick up speed on the project, which I think is due to the fact that I've got a little more fabric to hang onto now than before, when it was just a few rows and some really slippery needles. I've also made a couple of mistakes in the seed stitch- k2 or p2 instead of p1 or p2 in 3 places. I didn't want to frog back a whole 2 whole rows to fix it, and the way the pattern works you can't crochet hook it either. I sat and thought about it, and finally figured it out. I ripped back about a half row, increased a stitch in one boo-boo, and k2tog in another. Bingo! Problem solved, and the tiny seed pattern camouflages the remaining problem area perfectly. If any one is able to notice one stitch out of whack at the bottom edge of an 8 stitch per inch 1x1 seed stitch pattern right where there is a color change it's because that person has bionic vision. I'm not able to pick it out of all the background noise very well and I'm looking for it under good light with the fabric a foot from my nose.
Just in case you were wondering, I can't see any closer than a foot away with my contacts or glasses. I also can't see farther than 12" *without* my glasses or contacts. I know I am at the point where I need bifocals. I've been in denial about this for quite sometime. For the last couple of years I have been blending in nicely with the old folks in the Bakers Square holding pie menus out at arms length (did you know that if you can't make up your mind what kind of pie you want you can get two half slices for the price of one? I love Bakers Square!). Except for the fact that I am 37 I fit in perfectly. Anyway, I am now going to have to do something about it because it is interfering with my knitting, so Friday morning I have an appointment with the eye doctor to get it checked out. Oh crap. I think I have a meeting for work at the same time so I will have to change something around. Hmm, I better go do something about that now before I forget...
Only one more full day with my mom and nephew here. That is sad. Very very very sad.
Happy Easter
We did a big ol' Easter egg hunt for Dillon today. Mom and I hid about 200 eggs for him in the yard. I'm not sure which is better- hiding them or finding them. It seems like he had as much fun looking for them as I did finding sneaky spots to put them.
After the egg-citing hunting event was over we loaded up the car and went to the beach for the afternoon. My friend Red and her dog Camille met us there. Camille was dressed for the occasion with bunny ears and a festive purple and green ruffled collar.
It was super fun, and there were a ton of folks digging through the sand and pebbles on the beach looking for shells and beach glass. We were all joking about it being like an Easter egg hunt. Here's the three of us just before we left. The lump in my coat is Turbo. Turbo was wearing her ultra cool Britney Spears-style "daddy's girl" t-shirt but she was still pretty cold. I stuck her in the front of my jacket and zipped her in.
I brought some knitting with me to the beach, and I even made an attempt to get it out and do a little busy work, but I didn't even do so much as a single stitch. Maybe tomorrow. Kyoto will take me till 2006 at this rate.
A few pictures from yesterday
Here are some pictures from yesterday with my mom and nephew.
The big red dinosaur in front of the Asian Art Museum.
At the gateway to Chinatown.
It's fuzzy I know, but it's the only shot of Dillon and me from yesterday. He's so cute!
Last night, after the Exhibition Dancing was over. Dillon and Turbo are both worn out.
Dance dance dance
We had a great time in San Francisco today, but the best part of the day was just a few minutes ago. My nephew Dillon danced for us for like an hour. We had some music on in the den, but he pulled his own music out of his luggage and showed us the moves he's been working on at home. He is Mr. Showmanship for sure. I asked him if he had a stage name and without missing a beat he said "The Terminator." I've got some pictures from it and the exciting sightseeing today, but I am too tired to plug in the camera to the computer. Maybe I will do it over coffee tomorrow morning....
They are here!
Mom and Dillon got here with no problems at all today. Yeah! I didn't really do any knitting, but I might have a stitch 'n bitch while they are here, just for funsies. Tomorrow we are going to San Francisco on the train and they'll get to see how I get to work and where I work. Then we are going to Chinatown and the Exploratorium, and whatever else we have time for. I'll take lots of pics and share them with ya'll tomorrow.
Spring Break
My mommy and my 12-year old nephew are coming from Arkansas tomorrow to spend spring break with me. Yeah! I am very excited. They will be here for a week, and mom will be tastfully arranging all the contents of boxes and furniture and crap that I have stacked and shoved and jammed into rooms. She is very good at that, I am not good at that at all. Hmmm, have I already told ya'll that? I'm having de ja vu at the moment.
I'm slogging away with row 3 of Kyoto. I dunno if the Inox Express needles are making me faster or slower. I keep having to focus and concentrate really hard on the stiches because things are so slippery. I may be taking twice as long as I need to. But then again, I haven't messed up my seed stitch even once and had to rip out 75 stitches to fix 8 stitches like I usually do, so maybe I am coming out ahead...
I started Kyoto today
Today after work I sat down and started Kyoto. Boy, this sucker is going to take me a long time. It took me three hours to cast on 238 stitches and work one round of seed stitch. Maybe it'll speed up as I get a little further along- the casting on and the next two rows always work more slowly for me than any of the rest of the project. I am a really really really slow knitter though, so I may be working on this till July!
bacon! bacon! bacon! bacon! bacon! bacon!
I just had some bacon for breakfast, and I'm dancing around the house doing the bacon dance. I feel like that dog on the Beggin strips commercial that Bacon! for 15 seconds. I just love bacon! It's one of those foods that's good by itself and can be good with lots of other foods too. Yum yum yum yum yum!
Other foods I will eat on a spoon right out of the jar/package or with other foods:
Ranch dressing
Peanut butter
Nutella
Cream cheese
I've probably got a large peanut butter clot in a vital artery somewhere close to my heart. Why do foods that are so yuumy all have such bad body karma?
Marge is doing it too!
Ok, now Marge Simpson is hawking Dove shampoo. Like that's really her hair and not a wig.
GAAAHHHHH!
My house is a wreck! I've finally gotten all my crap out of storage and it is everywhere. And I don't want it anymore. Any of it. I am going to have the mother of all garage sales. I'm going to sort out some pictures and stuff and the rest is out-o-here!
I did find my prom dress, from 1985. As you can imagine it is quite stylish, and very sophisticated, just like everything else from the 80's. At least I can say it didn't have a bubble skirt. Guess what else though- it still fits! I was suprised. I figured I'd changed sizes and shapes over the last 20 years, but I guess I hadn't changed as much as I thought. One big difference though is in the bust. I had to stuff my bra for prom to keep the top of the dress from collapsing inward (this was back in the stone ages before Wonder Bras existed). The Titty Fairy came to visit me shortly after I graduated from college. I still don't have a lot in the booby department- I'm a just barely a B-cup- but in high school and college I was a AA. Just a pair of peanut M&M's!
soft!
The yarn I am using to make Red's shrug is so soft! It would be a fabulous pillow case. I keep rubbing my face with it, and telling everyone to fell how soft it is.
Gosh, does anyone remember Mr. Whipple on the Charmin commercials? Don't squeeze the Charmin!
A treat for me!
I celebrated my new project today by treating myself to some new Inox Express circular needles. I got sizes 7, 8, 9, 10, and 10.5, all 24". I wish they came in the bigger sizes too, but alas they do not. Maybe someday I will get a huge enormous project and celebrate that with Addi Turbos 24" in 11, 13, and 15.
I didn't make it to the meetup
I was totally excited about going to the knitting meetup tonight, but semi-sadly work got in the way. I say semi-sadly because I ended up getting a new project today, which is great! I'm self-employed and this new thing is going to be a very long term engagement. In fact, I am booked up through the end of the year now- yeah! The sad part comes in where I couldn't get myself to the meetup tonight because I was dealing with some administrative stuff for the new project. Oh well. At least I can comfort myself with the thought that I'll be able to afford to keep myself in needles and yarn for a good long while, although I'd have really liked to celebrate with a latte and meeting
Spinnity's mom.
knitting meetup
Tomorrow night is the Santa Clara Knitting Meetup, and unless I totally space out and forget it's happening, I am going to go. I've wanted to go for just ages and I've not been able to get there for whatever reason until now. Yeah for social knitting!
In other news, my guinea pigs are going to the vet on Thursday. They've got some funky skin thing going. At first I thought Cary was biting Errol, so I separated them for a few days. After a few days though, I noticed that Errol had fresh "bite marks" so I realized it had to be something else. I checked Cary out pretty throughly and found a couple of the little marks on him too, and when I brushed him he shed a larger than normal amount of his crazy hair. I figure they both have whatever it is, so I put them back together in the same cage and they were soooo happy to see each other! The skweeked and played and jumped and sang and generally partied for the rest of the afternoon. I called the vet and got them the first appointment that the vet had available- Thursday morning. I hope whatever it is is minor and easily treatable!
Errol has never been to the vet. Cary's been to the vet twice. The first time was when he ate a piece of a Doritos bag that I didn't realize was on the floor where he was running around, and he had to have a guinea pig laxative to help it pass through without doing too much damage to his innards.
The second time was last summer when he stopped eating. I had to feed him a hay smoothie (hay pureed with water) from a little syringe every couple of hours round the clock till he started eating again. Which took
two weeks! I had to take him everywhere and I was staggering around like a drunk from sleep exhaustion. The little turkey loved the attention, and I swear he was perfectly healthy except for not eating. He'd skweek like a parrot when I'd come near with the smoothie, and just kick back and grab the syringe with both paws and practically nurse like a baby.
The vet gave me all sorts of ideas to try to get him to start eating on his own, but nothing worked for ages. I tried solid and pureed fruit and vegetables, yogurt, baby food, and applesauce in every combination you can imagine. Eventually I tried squirting the hay smoothie over the green pellets he normally eats and that turned out to be the winner. I wish I'd thought to try that first....
My couch
I got my couch out of storage over the weekend. It's been in there for a few years, because the places I've lived since December 2001 haven't had room for two sets of living room furniture, and my roommate and I have been using his. Now we have a living room and a den, so I have my couch again! I love my couch! It is a lovely plummy velour thing, all plush and soft, and just the coziest thing you can imagine. Today I knitted on it and I am so excited about it I can't see straight. I've missed it so.
It's the little things in life that are so important.
Yarn updates
I worked a swatch of Cotton Classic for Kyoto and discovered that I must just knit really really really tight, because there is NO WAY I was able to get the gauge that the pattern specified with any needle. It's a pretty simple pattern though, so I figured out how many stitches/rows per inch, adjusted it to fit the dimensions of the pattern, and determined that I needed 3 more balls of yarn. I ran over to the yarn shop in Capitola to get the last 2 skeins that they had in the same dye lot. I dunno how I am going to make this work, but I guess I'll add another color stripe somewhere or something. I'll figure it out sooner or later. I'm planning to shorten the body anyway, so maybe that will help a tad. Or not.
Maybe I'll post an ad on craigslist for one skein of the same dye lot. Surely if I can trade beer for a live chicken I can find someone that has the yarn I need.
I also returned the Berocco Suede. I didn't have time to pick out something new, so I decided to just work on what I've got going in my bag right now and pick up Ribby Cardi again later.
Kyoto it is!
I couldn't find enough yarn in the right colors at Knitting Arts in Saratoga to make Kyoto, so I went on to The Yarn Place in Capitola. They had everything I needed/ wanted! Yeah! I am using the color scheme in the pattern on knitty, but the green I selected is a tad brighter, since the green specified in the pattern wasn't as flattering on me as I'd like.
I didn't exchange the yarn for Ribby Cardi though , simply because in my haste to get out of the house and to Knitting Arts before they closed at 6 I forgot to pack up the yarn that needs to go back. Nothing like proper prior planning, don't ya know? Oh well. I will get it back over there sometime this week. I've got 3 projects going at the moment, so Ribby Cardi can wait a few days I think.
In case you are interested in what I've got in my project bag, here's the line-up:
1) The poncho that I've knitted halfway and ripped back to nothing at least 3 times is on track again. This time I am using Sally Melville's poncho pattern that's on the cover of the Winter Knitter's magazine. Basically it's 10 scarves sewn together. Perfect for using a bunch of different yarns, which is exactly what I am doing. I'm doing it in a bunch of greens instead of the gold though. It's for my mom and she likes green. Hopefully I will finish it before ponchos are considered passe.
2)
Kyoto3) A red fun fur shrug for Red in this yarn:
It won't be much more than two long sleeves attached across the shoulders.
I want to start Kyoto right now, but I need to go make some headway on the boxes in the garage I took out of storage yesterday, and I need to get out in the yard and start turning it into a garden. So many things to do and so little time!
It's HOT!
It's really hot outside. Really really really hot. I've been emptying out a storage space that I have- moving boxes and furniture- and I'm sweating like I've been working on a chain gang digging a ditch or something more strenuous. I guess spring has sprung!
This is a good thing because it means I can get down to business on another passion-gardening! I've been waiting for the rain to stop (it rains a lot in northern California in the winter time) and the ground to not be so soggy and squishy. I think this weekend will be the start of my laying some ground work/ preliminary plans (as well as continuing to deal with the mountain of crap that's been in storage for 5 years).
I can't wait to get the yard situated so that it's a lovely place to sit and knit. Right now though I am going to take a shower and go to the yarn stores in Capitola and Saratoga and see what I can find for Ribby Cardi instead of the berocco suede, or maybe I will do Kyoto instead. We'll see.
dpns project
Ok, here are the results of the dpns experiments I've been performing the last couple of weeks. They're wrist warmers, in case you can't tell just by looking (I wouldn't be able to tell, so no worries if you couldn't tell either). I used some kidsilk haze in my stash. They both have the same number of stitches and the same number of rows, but as you can see from the picture they are clearly
not the same size. Oh well. Practice makes perfect. Ribbing of a quality suitable for wear outside the home is still beyond me.
The little flashies on the edges is some grograin ribbon I wove through there in an attempt to reduce the
Chachi Arcola effect.
Aches and pains
My elbow bothers me when I knit too much. Is it possible to get tennis elbow from knitting? And if so, is it called knitters elbow?
Dang, dang, dang!
I was so excited about the Berrocco Suede but dog-gone it! It is just not going to work for the Ribby Cardi. The only needle that gives me the right gauge is size 11, and that is just too loose. Sigh. Back to the drawing board I guess.
Here's the skirt
I finished the skirt. It's not exactly something that I'd wear to work. I wore it to a costume party last night in San Francisco with Red's top that I knitted with the same silver fun fur and called myself a Las Vegas Show Girl. I looked fabulous if I do say so myself. At the risk of my blog being now known as the Adult Knitting Blog, here is the whole getup, with my most revealing feature (my face) hidden from view. Too bad I didn't have it done in time to submit it to knitty.com for the
Sex & the Knitty issue .
New stuff
I killed two birds with one stone today- I went to The Yarn Place in
Capitola this evening, just as I had wanted, and I finally found the
right yarn for Ribby Cardi. I got olive and eggplant Berroco Suede:
olive for the body, eggplant for the sleeves.
Red went with me and in addition to providing all sorts of yarn
selection assistance she also bought me this groovy clear plastic yarn
keeper called a Yarn Clam. It like a plastic container you'd get at the
deli with potato salad in it, except it has a grommet in the bottom for
yarn to go through. It'l be great for the Berroco Suede, as I think it
will start exploding off the ball immediately upon me removing the
rubber bands holding the loose end of the yarn on the spool.
Pardon the crap pictures, btw. I'm posting this via my cell phone from
Red's house. Happy Friday everyone!
More furry things
Ok, I thought I took pictures of Electra wearing her shrug/vest/scarf, but apparently I only hallucinated it. I will admit that I had more than one glass of wine at the party, but you'd think I'd remember to take a picture of someone wearing the thing I made them, right? Well anyway, it did look cute on her and she really liked it. Yeah!
I started making the silver furry skirt I've been talking about since like January. More like I restarted it. I've started it, worked it to 85% complete, and frogged it back to nothing at least 3 times. Today though I nailed it. I've got the "base" of the skirt finished, and tomorrow I will finish adding the details. I'm planning to wear it to a party Saturday night, so I have to stay on the ball!
Tomorrow I am going to a yarn shop I've never been to but have wanted to visit for just ages. Hopefully I can find something interesting to make the Ribby-Cardi. I'm thinking that Noro Kureyon #95 will be the body, and something else will be the sleeves, but who knows what I'll be inspired by when the time comes.
finished and delivered
I finished the super secret project, and I handed it over to the recipient. She loved it. Here are the pics of the item in question, a shrug made from Lion Brand Fun Fur. It's for my friend Electra's birthday. Here are some pics of it on me:
The front:
The back:
And if she wants to wear it as a scarf:
I've got some pictures of Electra wearing it, but the batteries in my camera died after I took umpteen million pictures at the party this evening, so I need to get some new ones before I can share them with you. Maybe tomorrow I will have that situated.
I got a response!
So, I talked to J Lo's people about the knitting patterns yesterday. Actually, I just filled out the Contact Us form on the
www.shopjlo.com Customer Service page, but I did tell them how great it would be if they put out some knitting patterns. And I got a response today! I wasn't expecting any sort of return message at all so this is kind of cool, even if it is only .001% of a step above an auto-responder. Realistically I'm not any nearer to having a handknit cashmere J Lo hoodie than I was yesterday, but heck maybe something will come of it. A girl can dream can't she?
Here's the response I got:
Dear Kackie,
Thank you for taking the time to email ShopJLo.com. We do apologize for the inconvenience but we do not have that information available at this time. Please note we will do our best to forward your email to the proper personnel so you can be provide with the correct information. If there is anything else we can do to assist you, please feel free to contact us.
Join our mailing list so you can be notified of future events, new products and great savings.
Have a great day!
Steven Joseph
Customer Service Representative
Customer Service
eFashion Solutions, LLC
Customer Service
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