Posts from — November 2005

No time for a “real” post today but wanted to check in anyway. I am still happily away; most of it during plane rides for Thanksgiving. I’d like to throw out a question…does anyone know of a super soft, superwash, super drape, wool (it doesn’t have to be wool, but it does need to be washable, mostly wool and 4 spi gauge)? A friend of mine over at KH is looking for the “perfect” yarn. Please let me know if you have any yarn ideas I can pass along to her.

If you haven’t seen this before you MUST go take a look. This site has picutres of knitted wedding cake, a bouquet, food, lipsticks…the list goes on and on. Almost anything you think of can be knitted and the “Cast Off” organization is trying to prove it!

Our reunion with “the Brits” went very well! We always have so much fun with them. It broke my heart when they moved to England several years ago. Beccie is my “oldest” friend…really the only one I have seen on a continuous basis since high school. We always joke though that its probably for the best that they moved…otherwise we might end up really fat alcoholics…our favorite group activities are cooking, eating and drinking! We had some great wine; wish I could tell you about it but I don’t quite remember exactly what we had. I know we started out with some Domaine St. Michelle …a reliable, relatively inexpensive sparkling wine from Washington. After that it all gets a little fuzzy. The knitted gifts were well received although I doubt Brent will ever get to wear his hat (Rebecca seemed to like it quite a bit). By the way, did you notice her shirt??? I am totally in love with it. Unfortunately for me, she got it in Singapore and I doubt I’ll be visiting there any time soon. They had the most amazing stories from their trip there….including things moving in their soup!

I made them “reenact” this picture. I know. Me. Big geek…but it has always been one of my favorites. The original is from their “going away” dinner before they moved to the UK..I think sometime in 1999. Not perfectly the same, but decent, no? Considering how many years have gone by, I think we’re all looking pretty good.

I did manage to get some knitting done after they left. I really wish they could’ve stayed longer but they have something called a “family”??? I guess for some stupid reasont they need to see them too. I completed the scarf for the design I submitted (Anyone good with copyright stuff? I based this on something I saw in a book that was based on an heirloom pattern. How is one supposed to know how much to change something in order to make it one’s own???) I also got started on the second design project. Thank goodness I won’t have to worry about any copyright stuff with that one…it’s all right out of the Cheryl archives.

I know some people aren’t wild about chunky knits. I’m telling ya though, if you need a quick knit, this is it! It took about 5 hours total including sewing up the sleeves/pits. It’s pretty boring, but I just wanted a nice comfy, baggy sweater for basic wear. And its soooooooo soft! Now I am a loss as to what to cast on next. Yeah, I know I have a couple of other thing already on the needles, but I have lots more yarn just begging to be a sweater…and it is finally cold enough for it. However, I’m going to have to resist the urge. At least one of the packages of yarn for my design work is due to arrive today and I don’t want to be distracted when it gets here. I’ve promised a one week turnaround on the first one, but it would be great if I can get it done by Monday.

My friends from England are coming over tonight for a reunion…the recipients of “The Beccie Scarf” and the “Simple Stocking Hat”. It’s been way too long since I’ve last seen them. Tasty cheese fondue and much wine will be consumed. Have a fabulous weekend!

I’ve had the link in my sidebar for a while…I guess no one looks there! Anyway, since I have to do what the cool kids do, please visit my Frappr Map. I’d love to see where everyone is from!

I started knitting a sweater last night with US size 35 needles. It is INSANE how quickly a sweater goes with this big yarn and needles that size. I cast on about 5:30 and finished at 9:30 and even ate dinner and cleaned the kitchen in the same time frame. If you want to make something quickly, this is definitely the way to go. About the yarn…at the risk of bragging (ok, I guess I am) the yarn is a fabulous wool that I purchased in Florence, Italy. I found (well, not literally found, but saw on a forum) the address to the “holy grail” of yarn stores. If you’re ever there you absolutely must go. It’s near the Duomo and the name is Filati Campolmi at Via Portinari Folco, 19/R Prices were unbelievably inexpensive, even with the crappy exchange rate. About 1.5 euro per certain # grams though the price varied by fiber. I got all 100% wool, 20-100g balls, 800g purple and 800g variegated for 124.00 USD! About $3.60/100g of fabulous Italian wool…seems like a bargain to me and doubles as a wonderful souvenir. In retrospect, I should’ve bought a giant suitcase so I could’ve brought home even more. Considering the gauge, the fabric drapes especially well. It’s not stiff at all and VERY soft. I can’t wait to wear this sweater. Since I still haven’t received the yarn for my design projects, I should be able to finish it today!

Tuesday night I knocked off the rest of Jayne’s scarf and another hat for my Dad. Glad the Christmas projects are somewhat under control since I now have two design assignments (YAY). The yarn is in the mail but I’m still not divulging any more details. I don’t want to end up embarrassing myself when said design assignment assigner gets my stuff and decides she must’ve been on crack when she agreed to let me design these projects! In the meantime, I did go ahead and write up the Simple Stocking Hat pattern, just to get my designerly vibes flowing. (Does anyone wonder how it is that I can post all my family/friend knit projects? I tell NO ONE about my blog. Goes back to that whole insecurity thing.)

Lastly, I’m so jealous. Four, yes FOUR of my favorite bloggers are all hanging out together this weekend. First there are Drew and Laurie gettin’ their knit on in sunny Los Angeles and Jen and La hanging out at the new Casa de Jen aka future alpaca farm in Georgia. Be sure to check out their blogs this weekend as I am sure there will be many amusing tales of their fiber adventures.

I was a fly girl yesterday! Does anyone remember that one? I think I need to download it.
Anyway, back to flying. I have actually been thinking about the disorganization and clutter in my life for quite a while. Then Laurie recently posted about her clutter…which reminded me about something I had read a while back: FlyLady. At first I just chalked it up to a silly idea. I mean really, clean my sink and my life will be better? Put on some shoes and I’ll get more done? Just not going to happen. Plus lists and stuff…that is way too “anal” for me. Plus, I tend to be a little OCDish anyway (another way I am like Laurie…I swear we were seperated at birth!), so there could be a negative aspect to this if I really got into it. However, when I read Laurie’s post and she mentioned an organization book it reminded me of FlyLady; I revisited the whole idea. The genius is in it’s simplicity. I really should’ve known it would work…I’m practically a psychologist ya know! (Shut up! So what I dropped out of grad school before I was finished…I still learned stuff!)

I still haven’t really read it all and gotten into the whole program, but I’ve boiled it down to the “gist” and it seems to be working for me and I have to admit, having a sparkling clean sink (not just regular clean and empty) really does make me happy (isn’t that strange???). So, the gist is…take 15 minutes and tackle one project, maybe one of your “hot spots” (eg…the table you throw the mail on when you come in, the “junk drawer” etc…any place that tends to get “out of control”). That’s it. Psychologically, it is so easy to look at one’s house and cringe at the idea of cleaning it all at once. As a result, maybe nothing gets done at all. Maybe you think the right day will come when you’ll have plenty of time and actually do it. Maybe so…I’ve done that lots of times…usually 2-3 days before I’m having company…very stressful. On the other hand just telling oneself “ok self, I’m going to take 15 (or even only 10, or hell I can stop whenever I want! No one is holding a gun to my head!) minutes here and start cleaning up this area and after that I’m done!” This kind of thinking makes it a LOT easier to get SOMETHING done rather than nothing. You’d be amazed at how much small things help the overall appearance of your living space. Then if you happen to get in the mood and keep cleaning, well then, so much the better. You’ve used psychological trickery to get started on this daunting task of cleaning up and organizing your life.

Another aspect of the system that is very helpful is the email reminders. You can sign up at the Yahoo FlyLady Group to get email each day. It is a lot of email, so you might want a separate email address for it or filter it into a folder. An example of how the email has already helped: Yesterday morning I started the washer and then proceeded on my merry way to Target and Home Depot to get toilet fixin’ supplies (I could detour here and tell you about the toilet fiasco bit I won’t. In a nutshell, I’ve done the repair successfully twice before…but yesterday…UGH…could not get it to seal no matter what I did. The plumber is coming tomorrow and yes, I know you’re not supposed to leave the house with the water running but I like to live dangerously). Of course, once I had left the house the laundry was totally out of my mind. I wish I could say this was unusual, but it’s not. I can’t tell you how many loads of laundry I’ve had to rewash because it sat overnight in the washer. Yuck. So here is where belonging to the email group is helpful…one of the little reminders they sent yesterday is “where is your laundry?” Thanks to that reminder my laundry ended up blissfully clean, fresh and in it’s proper place. Give it a try…I’d love to hear about it if you do.

Still no photo of Jim modeling THE sweater, so to distract you until then, some knitty news. I don’t want to jinx anything by saying for 100% sure, but I am getting two patterns published! Again because of the whole jinx thing, I’m not going to say with who (not Knitty, they rejected me, boo hoo) but two places I consider to be GOOD.

The hat curse may finally be broken. After looking for a simple stocking hat pattern, I came up with bubkes. So bravely I decided once again to throw caution to the wind and cast on anyway. This time it actually worked. It was so easy…I may never try to make any other kind of hat again. I’ll write up the pattern soon. I made notes as I went along on the slim chance that it actually turned out well.

Another Christmas scarf started this one for my Dad’s wife Jayne. Paton’s Divine is going to be a great addition to my scarf repertoire. I had never used it before (IT WAS ON SALE) but *something* told me I should buy it anyway…just in case. Although it isn’t my favorite yarn to knit ever (you know kind of mohairy and sticky….oh I just remembered a Knitty Gritty tip for that…put your yarn in the freezer!) but it does make a nice scarf. It’s gooshy, soft and knits quickly; I already have 35” and I just cast on and knitted in front of the TV last nigh. I cast on 15 stitches using US 17 needles and the “floral fantasy” color. It’s a slightly variegated pink…it was difficult to make it look accurate in the picture. The best part is it comes in 100 gram skeins which will be plenty for one long, wide scarf and it looks like there might even be enough to make another skinnier scarf.

Whatever happened to the Filatura di Crosa jacket? I think I got sick of it…it has been laying around waiting to be finished. To back track a bit, it was a total pita to put together! (Just in case you happen to be deficient in your internet speak pita=PAIN IN THE ASS) Set in sleeves…what the hell does that mean? I can sew and all but trying to get that to look right was just about impossible. I just felt so uninspired after I put it together and tried it on (which according to the photo dates was 9/20). It’s definitely not living up to its picture. Even if I add the peplum it’s just too big for what I had in mind. It’s supposed to be a cute, fitted little 40’s look…not a wrap around twice, stupid ruffles didn’t work, sleeves suck sweater. Tahki Stacey Charles took the picture down for their site, so I’ll just have to show you how it is supposed to look. The sleeves I did longer on purpose, but the rest was according to pattern. Considering I used the exact yarn it called for and came out with the exact measurements it listed, one would expect it would look exactly like the picture. Not so much. I may have come up with an idea though last night. Remember how I used “wrap around” to describe it? Well if I added belts to the tips of the front, it could work as a wraparound. My genius never ceases to amaze. :rofl::rofl: I can totally prove that through tales of my tangle with the mighty seam ripper…stay tuned.

:beer:Oh boy…I just had to take this, didn’t I? It’s Jen’s fault.
You scored as Drunk Cat. Put down the bottle, Cheech. Sign up for some AA classes and drink a glass of water. Bars are ok once in a while, but you shouldn’t be sleeping at them.

Which Absurd Cat are you?
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A while back, La (:wave:hi La!) requested photographs of fall foliage. We’ve had nice fall color for a while now, in fact, it’s almost gone.

Just remember La…you may not get all the nice color in Sunny CA, but at least you don’t have to spend a couple of days taking care of this:

Also for La…a tribute to one of her (and mine too) favorite words. If you’re easily offended by “foul” language, don’t click the link. You’ve been warned.

I’m not exactly sure how exciting something should be to warrant being called “a pattern”, but I’m writing these up anyway. Two scarf patterns…just in time for holiday knitting. Both are very simple yet attractive and take just a couple nights in front of the television.

I’m still playing around with my new sewing machine. I finished this handbag yesterday. I’m toying with the idea of making knitting bags to sell in my little online shop (IF I ever get the whole thing going…still working on some yarn purchases). There are so many bags on the market though I’m just not sure if it would be worth it. Of course, I would only use “cool” fabric (at least what I think is “cool”…like my handbag) and I haven’t seen anything that looks like that yet.

I received my second package from my secret pal today. Everything smelled so yummy when I opened the box! Scented candles…YUM. She also sent a really cute note card “hey ewe!” and two skeins of coordinating wool. Thank you so much!

Finally, I received what are hopefully the LAST two skeins for Jim’s sweater, so I should finish that this afternoon. If I can get him to model, pics tomorrow!