Almost!

Yo, grrlfriends, thought you should know we’ve finally ordered a camera, and where there are cameras there are pictures of the knitting! Stay tuned!

Fivey Meme

Got tagged by my friend Heidi to do the Meme of Five. I’m ammending it, though; I’m not tagging anyone. Meme on or not as you desire!

I. What were you doing five years ago?

Five years ago I was living in a two bedroom condo with my husband, our new baby, and my sister. Good times. I miss the kid being a baby and my sister living with us, but not the condo!

II. What are five things on your to-do list for today?

Laundry, buy five bags of sand for a sandbox, make a Texas Barbecue dinner for six, try once more to remove a recent vomit stain from the living room carpet, and bake a pie.

III. What are five snacks you enjoy?

Cherries, iced lattes, Dorritos, fruit pie (homemade or great bakery!), and chocolate anything.

IV. What are five things you’d do if you were a billionaire?

I’d love to endow a small scholarship in my mother’s name for single mothers to go to night school. I’d remodel my house, have it professionally landscaped, and have someone in to clean and garden for me.

V. What are five of your bad habits?

I waste too much time playing spider solitaire, procrastinate on the housework and the yardwork, eat too much junk and not enough vegetables.

VI. What are five places you’ve lived?

I’ve lived in a dorm at University of Oregon, an apartment I shared with my older sister in Tempe, Arizona, some fairly nasty company housing in Denali National Park, a condo in Pleasanton, California, and a house in Salt Lake City.

VI. What are five jobs you’ve had?

Library Page at a public library in Arizona. Store Trainer at a McDonald’s in Anchorage, AK. Retail Sales Associate at a hotel gift shop in Denali National Park, AK. Preschool “Teacher” at a daycare in Mesa, Arizona. Store Manager of a bookstore in Everett, WA.

VII Am supposed to tag five people, but I’m not going to. Meme on, dear readers, as you desire.

Playing Like A Girl

Check this out–makes me proud to be a woman.

Friday Of Whatever

Yesterday I decided I need one more small fair isle project before doing my EPS yoke, so have cast on these darling mittens many of you have already made. I’m using Cascade 220 superwash in red and white. We’ll see if mine measure up to the previously established cuteness. I am, by way of a progress report, at the second Estonian Braid. On the second go-’round of the second braid, actually: late last night I had a brief moment of inattention which resulted in a hole in the braid, so I ripped back and went to bed. Everything’s more difficult after 11 pm, right?

Am going to give the circle hat away today, which will be fun. My son’s so enamored of his green hat with diamonds that he took it to bed with him the other night. There is no higher praise!

Still no camera, sorry grrlfriends.

When will it end?

It’s snowing on my newly-planted pansies and my newly-bloomed daffodils.

Such is knitting…

Friday I made another Fair Isle hat, this one worsted weight and sized for a four year old, by request blue and green with circles, no earl flaps. I adapted this knitty pattern: using Mission Falls 1824 wool, I cast on 80 st on a size 8 needle and did half the chart. Since I made it mostly while I had the recipient over, I was able to try it on him for size, so I knew I only had room for half the pattern repeat, and that I had to start the decreases 4 1/4″ from the cast-on edge. I followed my usual hat decrease pattern, every other row decreasing after 1 fewer stitches to make the groovy spiral, decreasing every 10 stitches the first row.

My own kid loved it, but wanted his to be a green hat with white diamonds. I nearly finished that one last night, but when weaving ends I cut two ends I hadn’t woven yet! Luckily, they were at the crown of the hat. I experimented with pulling the stitches tight to provide me with enough yarn to spit-splice, but of course that did not work. Picked out the crown, and now it’s back on the needles. Another hour and it will be done (again!).

This has to be the stupidest knitting mistake I’ve ever made.

The Fair Isle on both hats looks great, though.

I figure I’m learning two things: 1) I can learn new things, good things. I’m more confident about the Fair Isle on EPS now that I can do it with two hands. 2) I can learn new dumb mistakes, too.

Such is knitting!

WIP Wednesday

Still no camera, so I’ll just describe things. Is that hideously boring? I’ll make the descriptions short.

On the needles:

1) EPS. I have knit the body to the armpits, and must now recalculate the sleeves. The color is lovely, and I’m maybe thinking about steeking it after all, after I saw a very pretty cardigan in More Big Girl Knits. That book is full of gorgeous sweaters!

2) Chullo Hats: I made a brown Chullo hat with cream fair isle diamonds (which I charted myself, go, me!). I’ve already given it to the recipient. He loved it, which made me very happy. I’m now knitting another one for his brother. I’m using Berocco Ultra Alpaca, and it’s fantastic, smooth, soft, and blocked like a champion. The hats are based on this free pattern I found on Ravelry, but I’m using 100 stitches on a size 7 needle, and doing ten decrease points after 6.5 inches. The second hat is black, which makes it impossible to see. I ripped back to the earflaps today to fix several mistakes. It should go really fast, once I get everything established.

3) Messed about with a kippah pattern. My sister and brother-in-law are Jewish, and her husband asked if I could knit him one some time. Fun, but it turned out with a little nipple thing at the crown. I think the problem would be fixed by increasing every round at the crown, instead of every other round. I tried to block the nipple thingy into submission, which of course didn’t work. I think maybe when it’s dry I will pick out the crown and reknit just that part, just for fun. Although it would probably be faster to rip out the entire thing, since I knit it top down…Or just chuck it and knit a different one of other yarn…Does anyone have a kippah pattern they like?

Random Thursday

Some random things for Random Thursday:

It’s really nice to have the car problem settled. My husband and I both do a lot of research before making big decisions, so it took a lot of time and discussion before we felt we could commit to driving a natural gas car. There are definitely trade-offs: wee trunk space, 200-250 mile range, drastically reduced availability of refueling stations. Only with careful planning and sustained good luck could you drive this car out of the metro area. Because of availability and cost of natural gas, Utah is one of the only states in the country it’s really possible to drive this car, so we’d have to sell it should my husband’s career necessitate a move. We had to closely consider whether or not we were up to the challenges. I feel good about the decision–we’ve discussed, researched, calculated, and put money down, and now I don’t have to think about it any more. I’m feeling great about it!

I’ve made almost all the reservations for our two week Canadian Rockies Vacation. Good thing we started planning this one so early! Based on my Tuesday experience reserving a couple of nights in Jasper National Park, I don’t think I would have got the campground in Lake Louise if I hadn’t reserved it this morning. The dates for reserving the Canadian parks are staggered throughout April. I reserved Jasper on the first day, but at night, and had to settle for a different campground than I’d initially planned. This morning, the early bird got the Lake Louise campground reservation! Wheew!

I didn’t knit at all yesterday. My right hand felt kind of off, so I didn’t feel like knitting. I am not sure abstaining from knitting really helps, though. Am going to have to ask the doctor… Meanwhile, I read this editorial by David Brooks of the New York Times. He’s discussing excellence in pitching, but you could really apply it to mastery of any craft. I am still mulling it over, but am most struck by what he says about practicing your craft for 10,000 hours before achieving mastery. That’s three hours every day for ten years. Pick up sticks, Heather!

I’m so close to done with the body of my EPS, and I can’t find my old sleeve calculations. This is probably a blessing in disguise; it can never hurt to revisit the calculations! I am going to try on, wash, block, and try on the body before casting on the sleeves, though. Sally Melville mentioned that she blocks her sweaters at the armpits, so I’m going to try it. What do you think?

Car Talk

My husband’s car was stolen last Monday night. It’s a ten year old Civic, which is very popular among car thieves. Who knew? Having a car stolen is a surreal experience. My man woke me up at six, after he’d gone outside to get the paper:

“Honey, when you went to buy milk last night, did you park the Civic somewhere?”

“Park the Civic somewhere? No, I took the Outback. The Civic was in the driveway when I got home around 11:30.”

Um, not any more. Someone had made off with it. My husband’s a champ, he was incredibly calm and cool about the whole thing. The police sent someone over, we called the insurance and picked up a rental car, all before eight am. I learned that thieves love ten year old civics; they’re popular with street racers because they’re easy to soup up. This, you can believe, gave me a whole new perspective on our humble red 1998 civic.

Well, the car’s back, and I had to fetch it myself. The police found in Thursday. They’d previously informed me that they can give you about half an hour to come claim the car, and if you can’t make it, they’re forced to impound the car at your expense. Fair enough, I thought. The police are busy and can only hang out so long guarding my crappy stolen car. Luckily I have an awesome friend who willingly accompanied me to a crime scene, let me share her babysitter so I didn’t have to bring my five year old son along, and made herself late for an appointment when the whole thing took longer than anticipated. Where would we be without our girlfriends? Thanks again, T!

The car was parked in the carport of a seedy apartment complex in Rose Park, a little the worse for wear, smoky, cigarette burned, dash ripped up, stereo missing, half-eaten burrito and stinky gym bag inside. Luckily after I got the key in about a quarter of an inch in, the car started right up and we brought it home. Our insurance makes it out as about $900 worth of damage on a $1000 deductible.

In the meantime, we’d been researching replacement cars.  Yesterday, we put money down on one of these, it should be ready in June! I’m trying to view it as a lemons to lemonade situation.

It’s Tulip Time!

With apologies for the photo quality (which is about the best you can get using this camera), may I proudly present the Tulips Baby Cardi:

Is that not the cutest thing ever? I am so pleased with it! I’m having a hard time restraining myself from Fed-Xing it right to California so my friend can immediately stuff her four month old into it before he outgrows it, but I’m resolved to bring it to SnB tonight so that all present may admire it’s many, many fine qualities.

Here is another bad photograph of the darling thing:

Two things to note in the above photograph: 1) Check out the fantastic neckline!, and 2) Yep, I purled two stitches in a row when changing color from lime to taupe. Oh well!

Stats: Tulips, A Colorful Cardigan For Baby (Ravelry Link), knitted in Cotton Ease lime, taupe, and lake. It took maybe a third of a skein of each color for the smallest size. Pick Up Sticks, a Canadian yarn shop, sells this pattern as a PDF. I knitted this for my friend B’s baby. Well, really, I knitted it for him so I could have the pleasure of carrying him around while he was wearing it at Stitches West, but our plans changed and we didn’t end up going. No matter, it was a fun knit and I love the colors, props to this raveler, brozomama, whom I copied.

I worked the edging and wove the body’s ends before casting on for the sleeves, which is an approach I recommend for those of us who don’t enjoy finishing as much as we should. Oh, and I had to go down to a size 2 needle for the cuffs to get them a balanced size. Otherwise, 7s for the body and 4s for the I-cord edging.