A good Monday

I don't know if everyone feels this way, but I find Monday mornings to be rather difficult. After two mornings of sleeping until the luxurious hour of 7:30 (or maybe even 8!), it's back to getting up early (and yes, I do realize that my early is not nearly so early as that of other people), getting kids out the door, getting on with the day.

This Monday morning was different. I woke up to find two absolutely delightful and entirely unexpected email messages in my inbox. The first was from Hip Mountain Mama, whose blog I found when I read at Darcy's Knotty Knitter that there was a blog contest, and that we should go check it out. I did, in the middle of doing many other things, and added the new blog to my blogrolls because I enjoyed reading it, and thought no more of it.

Until yesterday morning, when I got a lovely email telling me that I'd won the contest. My very first gut reaction upon seeing header in my inbox was that it was going to be a message telling me thanks for entering, but someone else had won. (No, no-one actually sends email messages like that, but this should tell you how much I didn't expect to win.)(As an aside, I may have been conditioned to expect things like that from a former Dean who always started his review letters with the phrase: "I regret to inform you...", and then, once I'd had a heart attack, would go on to say that he hadn't had a chance, due to the press of other duties, to review my file as thoroughly as he was sure it deserved, but that I still had a job. I mean, seriously.) But it didn't; it said, loudly and clearly, that I won. And what a prize! Check this out. A Fiona tote! How cool is that? Answer: very. Thank you, Hip Mountain Mama! This is one prize that is going to get a lot of use.

And right below that, there was an email from Anne, telling me to check out this page in the new issue of the Twist Collective. I don't know how many of you might remember me mentioning, way back in January, that I'd gotten a lot of knitting done: the wine dark sea sweater, and the kimono, and something else that I'd share later. Well, it's later, and I'm sharing. That there, my friends, is Anne's pattern Artichaut -- she knitted the lighter one, and I knitted the darker one. I finished it the day before Anne came to visit way back in the winter and handed it over to her then, blocked and ready to send off for a photoshoot. I was so excited to have finished it in time that I completely and utterly forgot to take any pictures of it myself (and let me tell you, it was so beautiful on the blocking wires that even Rick made several comments about it). Luckily, Anne was not so forgetful, and she sent me a few.
This one was knitted in Briar Rose Grandma's Blessing, in the most stunning olive green colorway you have ever seen. I absolutely love working with that yarn; Grandma's Blessing strikes me again and again as one of the best all-around yarns out there. It's a great weight for shawls and sweaters and so soft and bouncy that it's a complete pleasure to knit. I don't get tired of projects that I'm knitting with it (the sweater Ondule was another one). Love it.
I'd managed to forget how much I love this shawl, which is just as well, as I won't see it again for a while yet. I know that this is something I am going to wear endlessly, though.
And aren't Anne's photos beautiful, too? They put my meager skills in the shade; I think I'll send her all my knitting from now on for photoshoots, heh.

In the meantime, I completed my excellent Monday by working on the knitting questionnaire and casting on for the Fraggle socks from the Rockin' Sock Club. I'm almost down the first leg; pictures next time. Of course, life isn't all wine and roses. I woke up this morning to find that my old dog Kia isn't doing so well as we'd like, and that my lovely cat Gwilim had left a big fresh juicy (and, thankfully, deceased) rat in the kitchen for me. All before my coffee. Ah, well. It can't be Monday every day.

Clearing off the needles

I just finished another project yesterday morning. This means that, at the moment, I have one active project OTN, and one non-active project sitting around waiting. Besides that, unless I am forgetting something, there are two projects that are so old that I will probably never get to them, and I should just rip them and either repurpose the yarn or sell it or give it away (edited to add: I did forget one more that I will finish someday; Ravelry certainly keeps one honest). One project I'm pretty sure is something that I wouldn't wear anymore, even if I were to finish it. The other is a pair of socks that I would like, in yarn that I would like -- it was the size 0 needles that have made this project less than enjoyable, but it might be time to pick it back up and see what I can do. On the other hand, that skein of STR from the latest installment of the sock club is calling...

Meanwhile, I blocked the project that I finished and let it dry. That took ages and ages, given that it is currently extremely damp and somewhat chilly around here. It's been misting enough to leave the ground wet, in fact; not a lot of water (and not as much as we need), but enough ambient humidity to make drying fabric a slow process.

And, of course, the gray weather doesn't do photography any favors, but I've done my best for you.
This is the seasilk scarf/stole (Rav link) that I've been knitting for myself. The yarn is Hand Maiden SeaSilk from The Loopy Ewe, in the Sangria colorway, which I truly adore, even after all of this knitting. I really wanted to use up the entire skein, but I got paranoid at the end, and I started the finishing rows just a bit too soon; I probably could have squeezed one more inch out of it (another repeat or so), but I didn't. If this length bothers me, I'll unpick the end and do it again, but for the moment I'm happy. I was trying to find a length/width balance that would make it wide enough to cover my shoulders if I'm feeling cold, but long enough to wear in a more scarf-like manner if it's my neck I want covered. I think I hit it fairly well.
I'm happy with the textures in this scarf; I wanted something that felt dimensional, and that broke up the striping, at least a little. What I ended up with were vague runs of color, rather than pooling or striping, and the color runs are diagonal. The seed stitch edges and the trinity stitch main body go nicely together, and make the light shine off the stitches. And I'm so happy that I figured out the faggoting thing (thank you, Anne!), since those little spaces always charm me to pieces.
The ends turned out fairly well, too.
I think I'll get a lot of use out of this; it's bright and cheerful, and it's a warm fabric, without being too warm or weighty.
Looking at the pictures I got of this, I realize that there are no good modelling shots; they were all taken indoors either in a mirror, or by Rick, who is in the middle of a good bit in his book, and therefore not as inspired as he might otherwise be. I understand how that goes. But here's a quick PhotoBooth shot to give you a sense of the width.

Other than getting this done, we've had our usual busy weekend. Older Daughter played a fabulous soccer game yesterday. They were up against a team who was undefeated this season, and I think that, for her team, that word was like a red flag to a bull. They just went out there and played harder and better than I've seen them play all season. They won the game 1-0, and we parents enjoyed the heck out of every single minute of it. They played their hearts out, and both teams worked beautifully together, using all of the strategies and tactics they've been taught by their coaches (which they so often forget to do in the heat of a game); we kept looking at each other and marvelling, "it's like real soccer!" What a treat. And then we got to go have dinner with some dear friends (no cooking after soccer, wow!), and go for a walk and hang out and laugh and talk. Life doesn't get a lot better than that.

This morning was all about completing the big errand of getting hiking shoes for Older Daughter, and making sure that Younger Daughter has a pair that fit, and getting waterproof hiking pants for our trip. We leave in less than a month, and hiking shoes need time to get broken in. Now I'm just hoping that mine are still waterproof. In fact, the plan for the rest of the afternoon is to head out to the trails for a nice hike; I'll try to find a few puddles to stomp in, shall I?

Finishing and technology woes

I promised you another finished object, and, in fact, I did finish it on Tuesday night. I even washed it and took it out to dry and took pictures of it (along with the hummingbird nest, mama bird in situ) and sat down to post yesterday. Whereupon the Bermuda Triangle once again ate my pictures. At which point I gave up.

I also figured maybe it was too soon to post, since there were no comments on my earlier post yet. Or so I thought.

In point of fact, it turns out that since Wednesday night, I have been completely unable to receive any email that does not share my work email extension. What threw me off is that I was still getting the occasional email message. It wasn't until yesterday afternoon that I figured out what was going on. Our tech folks still haven't figured out the problem yet. So, if you've emailed me, I haven't gotten it (outside email messages aren't coming through on my webmail access, either; I'm living in an email black hole). Alas. (I am checking my Ravelry inbox, so I can be found there...)

However, I did convince my camera and my computer to play nice this morning, so without further ado, I give you what is perhaps the cutest thing I've ever knit.
The bow is crooked in that picture, but the colors are true, so I'm posting it anyway.

That's the Tulips baby cardigan (my Ravelry project page), which I started an embarrassingly long time ago. I missed the original baby deadline, but a friend of mine at work is having a baby boy at the end of the summer, and it seemed to me that he needed a happy colorful cardigan, no? I'm not sure why I put this down for so long, although I think that it was the Fear of Weaving in Ends that did it. There's a lot of end-weaving involved in this sweater. However, I've gotten a lot less annoyed by finishing (although I'm not sure I'll ever like seaming, really) over time, so when I picked it back up, I wove in the body ends, then did the sleeves and it wasn't so bad. I love the applied i-cord around the edge and on the neck.
I bought this as a kit, and still have yarn left over in all of the colors, so if anyone's knitting this and has run out of yarn, let me know. Otherwise, the bits will probably come along to sock summit for the color class I'm taking.
I'm glad to have this done, since my friend's baby shower is coming up quickly, and I was bound and determined not to miss this deadline. If I can get some booties knitted to go with it, I will, but mostly I'm feeling good about having it done.

That means that, at the moment, I have absolutely no deadline knitting on the needles (that will probably change soon). Last night was Older Daughter's final orchestra concert of the year, so I took along the linen shell I'm working on and put a few more inches into the ribbing at the bottom.
The concert was great fun; they have come so far from the beginning of the year, it's amazing. Older Daughter's orchestra teacher probably thinks I'm weird, since I thanked her so profusely, but I truly admire teachers who are able to inspire their students as she has inspired hers. Older Daughter intends to go ahead with orchestra next year, and it's entirely due to her teacher's enthusiasm. I wonder if I should knit her some fingerless mitts?

It's hard to tell from looking at the shell, I know, but I've put in almost ten inches from the bottom of the armscye; I figure I'll bind off at about 12-13". I need to try it on to see how it's looking. This project has become my "I don't have to look" knitting, so I tend to save it for soccer games and concerts and movies.

However, this means that I now have only (ha) two active projects on the needles. There's another one coming along soon, and I do want to knit the STR socks from the club package sooner rather than later, but I have found myself missing my spindles and wheels lately, and I think it's time to embark on a new spinning project. I've decided to challenge myself by attempting to spin something on purpose (not that I usually spin accidentally, mind you, but my results are usually a matter of chance rather than plan, and it's time to change that). Sock yarn. I think it's time to spin my own socks. And I have just the thing:
This is some gorgeous roving from Tempted (50/50 soysilk/wool) that my sister-in-law gave me for my birthday. It seems like it could (in the right hands, which may not be mine) be some beautiful, tightly spun, two-ply sock yarn. If I spin assiduously enough, it might even be able to come along with me on our trip. We'll see...

I will leave you with a hummingbird nest. The mother bird flew away immediately I tried to take this picture; I'll keep trying to get one with her in it for you - it's a pretty amazing sight.
Can you see that? The flash went off on that one. Maybe this is easier to see.
It's teeny-tiny. I could maybe sit a golf ball in it, but that's all.

Scrum

That's pretty much what yesterday morning ended up looking like, and I say that impying absolutely no criticism of Stephanie or Tina, who worked their tails off to avoid just that; the scrum happened in their despite.

The timeline looked something like this:
9:59 am: I closed down every single internet window on my computer but one, just to be sure that any slow-downs that might occur (note the hopeful little interjection of the "might" there) could in no way be blamed on overloaded connections on my end. I also glared at Rick until he agreed to cease and desist with all downloading for the duration. He insisted on continuing to breathe and receive phone calls, but I think that he nevertheless can't be blamed for what happened next.

10:00 am: Every single knitter in the entire world hit "refresh" on their computers at the same time and initiated Total System Failure.

Oops.

I spent the next twenty-five minutes alternately hyperventilating at the thought of getting not a single class during all of Sock Summit because Every Other Knitter in the World was getting onto the system before me, and giggling with near hysteria because, dudes. That was a whole lotta knitters logging on at once. And I know for a fact that it wasn't even all of us.

There are a lot more of us out there than the rest of the world thinks.

I find that pretty inspiring. Even if our major accomplishment yesterday was to crash a computer system and leave some poor ITS guy a gibbering wreck.

On the positive side, I did finally get on to the server (after marvelling at a world that allowed us potential registrants, via blogs and twitter and ravelry, to track exactly what was happening and why)(in fact, many comments were made about the Cassandra-like foretelling that had been offered to the aforementioned ITS folks about the mighty power that is the world-wide knitting community when they have their collective finger on the "refresh" button, and the willful dismissal of said warnings until the proverbial Too Late arrived right on schedule). Not only did I get on the server, but I got into the two classes and two lectures that I wanted. That seemed like an unselfish amount to desire, and I promptly hied myself from the system, and headed off to meet my swimming buddy, only a half an hour later than I'd expected (she's not a knitter, but she's a solid sort, and she forgave me).

So, how about it? Who's going? Who got the classes they wanted? How are we going to find each other among All the Other Knitters in the World?

I do have knitting news. I am this far from a finished object (and I'll bet money that it's not what you think it is), and I'm going to wait to post about it until it's done, which will probably be tomorrow. I was going to offer you pictures of the absolutely amazing hummingbird nest in our wisteria instead, but the camera/computer connection created its little black hole again, and all of my pictures disappeared off my camera and into the Bermuda Triangle. Alas.

Anticipation

Is killing me. (Maybe it should be "Anticipation killed the cat?")

This morning, at 10 am my time, registration opens for the classes at Sock Summit. If I am feeling this level of anticipation (and a little bit of anxiety: will I get any of the classes I want? will I even be able to get into the sock hop, or will I be the only dork sitting in the lobby?)(yes, I was a geek in high school, why do you ask?), I can only imagine how Stephanie and Tina are feeling as they watch the clock count down and wonder whether their server will survive the initial onslaught. All I can say is, they've clearly done everything humanly possible to get ready for that first ten minutes; my hat goes off to them.

The registration instruction page says to have your first, second, and third choices of classes ready, as well as your cup of coffee, since you get fifteen minutes from first initiating your session to losing the classes in your cart. I think I'm ready.
List? Check. Back-up list? Check. Cup of coffee? Check. Book by Hortense Powdermaker (honestly, I couldn't make this stuff up) to read in the meantime? Check.

Anyone else out there registering this morning?

F.O. and a good start to a long weekend

Warning: SPOILER ALERT for Rockin' Sock Club at the bottom of the post.

We just got home from a lovely long day at the beach. We packed a lunch (including fresh strawberries and cherries from the farmer's market, mmm...) and headed down to the water just before noon, carrying everything anyone could want for a perfect beach day. In my case, that meant knitting and reading, and I both finished a pair of socks, and the book that I was reading. I also got a nice long walk down the beach in; what more could I ask?

Well, I could have remembered the camera, that might have been good.

But it was actually very nice to just walk and watch. I love people-watching at the beach. The ocean is such an equalizer; young, old, tall, short, fat, thin, bikini or wetsuit, everyone gives the same little shocked gasp and pause when the water first hits their stomach. There seem to be two schools of thought about entering a cold ocean. There are those who subscribe to the "he who hesitates is lost" school, and go running toward the ocean, hell-bent for leather, all but screaming and beating their chests (this is not a gender-specific mode of entry, I should say). The theory seems to be that if you've got to get in, you may as well get it over with (I admit to subscribing to this school of thought myself when I swim laps; I know I'm getting into that water, so I may as well just go for it). And then there are the hesitaters. Those who enter the water one little bit at a time, pausing longest just at the place where they can avoid getting the top of their suits wet, bobbing as high as they can go when each wave comes in, to avoid the moment of truth just a little bit longer. Sometimes, they end up coming back out before getting all the way wet; sometimes, the ocean sends an unexpectedly large wave crashing down on them, and takes the decision out of their hands.

It's also fun to watch ocean-inspired courting rituals. There are the teenage girls, gaggles of them, walking down the beach in bikinis, giggling (Older Daughter calls them "giggles of girls") and looking over their shoulders at the frisbee- and football-throwing boys. And then there are the boys who run from the water, and offer their girlfriends freezing wet full-body hugs; said girlfriends seem to find this charming. I think that must be something that one grows out of later in a relationship; I also think Rick would be afraid to try such a thing (smart boy).

The socks I finished appear to fit Older Daughter perfectly, so they'll become hers. She graciously agreed to model them for photos.
These are the Rogue Roses socks (Ravelry link) from the last installment of the Rockin' Sock Club (finished the day after the newest installment arrived; I'm feeling good about that). This was definitely a fun pattern, and one I would not have picked out to try on my own, but which I'm happy to have knitted.
That's truer to the actual colors of the yarn. See the little rosebuds there? And they twine.
Front and back.
I particularly liked the heel on these; I think I'll try that on another pair of socks in the future.
To recap: These are the Rogue Roses socks (pattern by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee), in the Gertrude Skein colorway of Mediumweight STR; I knitted them on size two dpns. All in all, I'm very happy with the way they turned out, and I'm guessing that I'll enjoy wearing them when Older Daughter has grown out of them (which, to judge by recent growth spurts, will be sooner than she thinks!).

OK, remember, spoiler ahead. Stop reading if you're in the sock club and haven't gotten your shipment yet and don't like knowing what's inside. Look! Here's a picture of Tilly as your last warning.
Don't say I didn't tell you. I don't usually post a picture of the yarn until I've started knitting it, but I am so completely charmed by this colorway I can hardly stand it. I can think of a certain Knitnana who would like it to, I think (I thought of you immediately!). I tend to very much like most of what Tina dyes, but there are a few things that just capture my heart, like the yarn from last year's Anemone socks in the Tide Pooling colorway. Love, love, love that colorway. I'm tempted to knit a sweater in it, I love it so much. I feel the same way about this one. I might never knit it...
Then again, I might just cast on tonight.

Indecision...

I have a very dear friend who is and always had been extremely bad at aphorisms. She just can't get them right. It's often pretty darned funny, but one of my very all-time favorites was the time she looked at me very seriously and said, "Well, you know, indecision killed the cat." Heh. It's now a common phrase in our household; I don't think my kids even know what actually did kill the aphoristic cat.

Let's hope that doesn't happen here. Because I'm in the middle of some indecisiveness myself, and if there's a truck bearing down on me, I may be in trouble.

I'm beginning to plan my knitting for the long plane ride ahead of me at the end of June. (What can I say? I'm a woman who likes to know where her knitting is. A towel's all very well and good, but knitting is the stuff of life. Give me a good book and a good knitting project, and I can wait in any airport in the world.) I've decided, for a number of reasons, that the knitting for this trip is all going to be very simple, with a preponderance of stockinette and garter stitch. This has a lot to do with the fact that the major knitting time will come in the form of two twelve-hour plane rides with an 11 and an 8 year old girl (not to mention my ginormous husband who is convinced that "what's yours is mine" is especially true when it comes to leg and shoulder room on an airplane), and driving on little bitty back roads in Scotland in a minivan with the aforementioned girls and husband, plus my parents. I don't think lace is a good choice under these circumstances. Nor, in fact, anything that requires any kind of concentration whatsoever. (And let's be honest here: I'll be doing as much of the driving as possible, because I'm the only person I trust to be driving on the left side of the road. Rick's not bad at it, but as a right-handed person, he keeps trying to shift the doorknob, while my left-handedness finally becomes an asset in a situation like this.)

So, with this in mind, I decided that two pairs of stockinette socks and some kind of shawl would do the trick, and then Anne showed someone wearing Shawl That Jazz (Ravelry link) on her blog, and I was all over that baby like a duck on a junebug. After exploring Ravelry (and realizing where else --scroll down -- I'd seen this shawl on the interwebs), I decided to get some Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted yarn. This decision was further influenced by the fact that I'm a member of their sock club and have a small discount there right now, and it seemed like the time had come to take advantage. I decided on this colorway.

Now, here's where assumptions make an ass of you and umption, because my assumptions had me expecting one thing, and another arrived. I've never seen Twisted in person, but have knit with STR several times, as well as with Geisha, which I loved. So I had certain ideas about what the colors would look like. To be frank, I hadn't looked at pictures of Twisted yarn in the skein, and was expecting something like the sock yarn. But it's a very different sort of yarn.
Don't get me wrong, please. I like the yarn. I like it a lot. It's just that I was visualizing knitting the shawl in a tight-twist yarn with long color changes, and I'm having trouble changing gears (why yes, I am a spirited child, why do you ask?). I adore this colorway, so I'm trying to decide among several options: a) suck it up and knit the darned thing with the yarn already (big baby); or, b) use this yarn to knit a sweater for Younger Daughter and order myself some STR heavyweight in this colorway and use that for Shawl That Jazz (I know, it would be smaller, because that yarn is lighter-weight).
I think that the real answer is c) cast on for the shawl with this yarn and see what I think. If I like it, tuck it away until the plane takes off, and if I don't, order the other yarn. I'll need to do that quickly if I decide to go that route, though, since I want to leave enough time to be sure the yarn will get here before I go.

Meanwhile, knitting continues in other areas. I have started the ribbing on the linen top.
I don't know if you can tell from that photo, but I started every other purl rib at first (essentially, k6 p2) and did that for about an inch before starting the 2x2 rib. The hope was that doing that would bring the sweater in gradually under the bustline, instead of more dramatically. We'll see. I'm starting to wonder if this is going to be too big (yes, there's that mistaken body visualization again), and am thinking that I should probably put half of it on another needle and try it on now, before I get too much further.
It does shrink up a little bit when it's washed, but not too much. Of course, I could just Trust the Swatch, but that doesn't always work out as well as it should. In the end, a swatch can only tell you so much. It's funny how quickly Rick grasped that when I talked to him about it (one benefit of an engineer's training, I suppose; and speaking of engineers, have you seen this? I laughed. Hard.). He immediately hit on the salient point when he said that a swatch is only so big, and it can't tell you much about what will happen when the weight and pull of all of the yarn in a garment is acting on any particular area of that garment. Of course, only knitting the actual piece will show that, so I swatch as a sort of sacrifice to Yarn, and then just keep my fingers crossed and knit.

I'm also working on this beauty, with which I am wholly delighted.
Thanks to Anne, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with the faggoting, and ripped back and fixed it, and I am so glad that I did.
This combination has exactly the textured feel I was looking for. It looks like a chest of pirate treasure, like gems all piled up and waiting for me to sink my hands into them. I am going to wear this one a lot.