KarenJoSeattle

I Think I Won't Read Any E-Mail For a Few Days, Okay?

This may be more than you want to know about my computer systems, but I do now have a cobbled-together e-mail system again after 11 days without. And I have absolutely no desire to use it. I included a couple of shots of a very old FO - my second Unpattern and third or fourth sweater - to entertain you while I rant a bit and get it out of my system.

Last Thursday my husband set up a temporary e-mail account with our ISP so we could send and receive mail. It didn't go through our server and it's many layers of spam filtering, but at least we could reconnect to a degree.

Which still left about ten days worth of spooled e-mail floating around with no way to get to us. Something in our connection between our server and the outside world is broken and until he can debug it on-site, neither the DSL or ISP people can know what to fix.

So he also arranged for the ISP to forward directly from the spooled stuff on their servers the e-mail for our specific real accounts. This step of specifying which e-mail to forward was necessary because we have our own domain name. That means that every made-up address that gets generated by sellers of male-oriented drugs or fake banks for ouraddress.com comes to us unless we do something to filter it first. Usually we have about three layers of filters and still get a few in our regular in-boxes but only a dozen or so a day in our desktop junk-mail folders.

When DH set up this forwarding the service rep told him it should happen in about 20 minutes. Four hours later when he called back he found that, unlike in the past, the guys on the phone couldn't do this particular fix but had to forward it to the one and only guy who could, who would get to it as soon as he had a chance. On Friday afternoon when the guy still hadn't gotten to it, they suggested DH try sending him an e-mail since he sometimes read those from home on the weekend.

And he did. But he just set it up to send current mail and didn't do the part about only forwarding mail for specified addresses. And for some reason the Universe decided the system would forward everything to me. From late Saturday morning until the guy apparently got to work today and got around fixing it at about noon, I received about 350 to 500 e-mails each time my computer retrieved it - every 15 minutes. I turned off the chime for new mail in the first half hour.

It took 2 1/2 hours for last night's 6,000 message build-up to down load when I turned my laptop on today. Fortunately yesterday I had left it on so the 9,000 ones I had that morning were already there. I estimate I dealt with deleting about 25 to 35,000 pieces of spam and two real e-mails in two days. Sorry, no good screen shots as I was busy trying to keep up with it all. Thank goodness he didn't send everything that had spooled for ten days also.

Last night I had to close various windows and slow down my Ravelry search for patterns as I kept getting out-of-processing-memory messages just from the stuff coming in every 15 minutes (and, um, a lot of photos of sweaters) even though I have a ton of memory. I had trouble with Bloglines not opening stuff while the massive download happened one-at-a-time this morning, but then, I'm not sure Blogline has everything together again after their transition either.

But now I have all the 'real' e-mail I'd not gotten, most of which is out-of-date holiday sales offers and only one business-related thing we should have signed and returned last week. Luckily, most of my knitting and blog-related stuff comes through the account I receive on-line so I've gotten the important stuff all along. I'll now receive e-mails sent to any of my addresses, though all replies from me will still come via the temporary address.

So, that's the long way to say that if I haven't responded to a comment you left on this blog or a message you sent, please bear with me. I think I got all the real e-mail that went to my in-box but did not check everything that went into the junk folder while I deleted a few hundred at a time.

And I may not respond to everything I get over the next couple of days. New messages have lost some of their thrill. I hope to get a lot more knitting done instead.

There and Back

On Friday we made a round trip to Monterey, four hours each way, to fluff my mom's space in an antique mall before their weekend holiday Open House. We had dinner once again at Taste, where you should go if you're ever in Monterey, or actually Pacific Grove. It's a bit out of the regular tourist areas, but not hard to find and the best food for the most reasonable prices in an area where restaurant food can be very over-priced. The locals eat there.

 I volunteered for the after-dark drive home and so got two or three inches of knitting done during the morning stint. My husband spent the first half of it driving in the fog. I spent the second half of my turn driving in the fog in the dark. The trade-off was worth it.

On shelves in the restroom of the antique mall I found some issues of McCall's Needlework & Crafts magazine from the mid-60s. This one tempted me, but I decided not to go there. I do not need more things to collect or store. I once owned 500 gardening books, many of them mainly because they were collectible. Even though I'd read over 450 of them and learned a lot, I don't want to got there again. I already have enough yarn and knitting magazines and books. I didn't even look to see if the patterns for the cover sweaters were in there.

Besides, I'd just ordered a bunch of Aran knitting books, a couple just because they weren't easy to come by any more. Sigh.

I spent a lot of time yesterday and today - too much - browsing through Ravelry and putting things in my favorites folder that I may want to knit for NaKniSweMoDo. I might actually use some regular patterns for some of them instead of my usual design-my-own with Karen's Unpattern. There are actually some nice patterns out there in larger gauges, like some simple Aran-types. And some non-Aran types. I'll need some projects in larger gauges if I'm actually going to come close to finishing a dozen sweaters next year.

On my top-down Motley Crew-neck, I've made good progress. I've done a set of increases for the below-the-waist shaping and have about an inch before I start the ribbing. I'll use the same seeded ribbing I did for my gray Regia socks. Since it will start about where I would do the second set of increases, I plan to just decrease enough to make the pattern work. I don't think I'll get any poofiness, but if it doesn't work, I'll just redo it. I don't plan to swatch it first. Sorry, Karen.

I wonder if I have a size smaller needle here if I need it.

I Think I'm Broken

Eight days ago I tripped on a tree root and fell, leaving my left foot swollen across the top, bruised at the base of my toes and sore in one spot when I walked, my right knee skinned and my hand and arm to my shoulder feeling like I'd lit on it with almost my full weight, which I had. But things only felt injured intermittently for two or three days, so I decided I hadn't really broken something in my foot or irreparably jammed my most-used limb.

The hand still gives me fits off and on, especially if I put any strain on my thumb or the area near it. Like sometimes when I knit.

And today I went for the longest (2 hours) and most hilly walk I've done since my fall. When I got home my foot ached at the base of one toe and had swollen over that area again. Darn it. I may have broken something. Sorry, no photos.

Not that there's a lot to do for it. I'm a nurse (though I haven't worked as one for years) so I know there's not a lot to do for it. Except to stay off of it. And not to walk.

But I'm a walker, so this will drive me crazy. I just hope it heals without any lingering issues. If I can stay off of it.

(No knitting happened today. Could you tell? I don't even have a photo for you. And I have to make a round trip to Monterey tomorrow, which will take all day, so I may not blog but will probably get some car knitting done. Not that you'll know since, if you use Bloglines and your account is acting as mine is, no one's new posts will generate the little number in ()s that lets you know they're there.)

Wait, I did post today, very early, to complain about Bloglines and TypePad. So I can post this stamped at the time I finished instead of began and get my little red gold number on the calender. Yeah, I am easily pleased.

More Bloglines Weirdness

I've noticed over the last couple of days that Bloglines currently does not always indicate when an updated blog link actually has new posts. My own blog is one for which I don't get a nice little number when the latest posts gets picked up, but if I click myself, I'm there.

A while back I found that Stephanie's blog updates had gone stealth. Now Margene's and mine seem to have the issue while Stephanie's regained function a while ago. I'm not sure how many of my blogs are affected as I still have a few I haven't caught up on and I'm not checking everyone to catch missed postings.

Sigh. Anyone else seeing this? I wonder if it's related to their upcoming server move - or if it will be corrected by that.

P.S. TypePad has recently developed a bug in their new auto-save feature. I like having the auto-save for emergencies, but now with every post it wants me to recover the last auto-save the next time I go to compose a post. When I ignored the request I ended up with a broken save of the new post.

I'm Ready

The base joint of my right thumb still gave me grief today, so I did only a bit of knitting. Surprisingly, my hand actually felt better after I knit. I think the current issue comes from a trip over a tree root about a week ago. My left foot still has bruises and some achiness across the top. My right hand and knee acted as brakes. Unfortunately, this is not the first injury to the same spot on this hand. I hope it holds up for another couple of decades. I already knit Continental.

Instead of knitting, I prepared for next year's knitting. I've signed up for NaKniSweMoDo, despite not managing to actually finish NaKniSweMo so far this year. Between time issues, my balky hand, and frequent days spent at home in cozy sweaters, I decided I needed some larger gauge yarn for at least a few of my dozen sweaters of 2009. I tend to buy smaller gauges and then knit them a bit tight. Besides those considerations, I also have developed a bit of an obsession with tweedy yarns and cables.

So I finally put together an order of super bulky Cascade 109 Tweed on sale at Webs. I've never seen this yarn in an LYS, so I hope I like the actual tweeds as much as I liked the photos. Between the website and Ravelry, I think I've managed to pick colors that have co-ordinating tweedy bits and will go with my comfy pants. I ordered four sweaters' worth for less than $200 total due to a free shipping holiday deal.

I also found a copy of the Rowan Plaid Collection book on-line. Though I rarely use regular patterns, preferring the design-your-own type like EPS or Unpattern, I found four sweaters in this book that I want to knit with only slight modifications. I got a good deal from an Amazon retailer of OOP books. And It made a good excuse to order all those cable and Aran books I had stockpiled in my shopping cart plus a hardback of Barbara Walker's Top Down book with the original photos.

So now I'm set, especially if they hold a repeat Dodecathon next year and the year after.

Pretty filler Fall photo of setting sun on liquidamber trees from our last weekend in Salem, Oregon.

November '08 Recap

I set myself a couple goals for November. Considering how much traveling we ended up doing, I didn't do too badly on them, though I missed one by half.

I sort of planned to post every day, though I didn't actually sign up for NaBloPoMo as I wasn't really aiming for 100%, just to get back in the habit. I missed three days, but I did set up posts ahead of time a few times when I knew I just wouldn't get to it. Two of my non-posting days fell just after a break with the pre-queued posts and I didn't notice that I hadn't actually written a post the days I had ones pre-written. And I missed the first of December for no good reason other than allergies that made me sleep all day but still fall asleep that night. It felt like a good reason at the time. So, I did a bit better than I expected on the posting but didn't quite accomplish my goal. I did make progress.

I also made progress on my Motley Crew-neck/NaKniSweMosweater, but got maybe half of it done despite actually signing up for the Ravelry group which functioned as the official KAL site. If I'd known I'd have so many distractions and impediments this month, I'd have gone with the bulky-weight alpaca/Jacob blend rather than the 6spi sock yarn. But I got the project well under way and I still feel the need to finish ASAP, so I'm happy with what I did here.

I could have knit more than I did today, but it's just as well I didn't as now I'm babying my right thumb joint with a heating pad. Occasionally wrapping my hand around a cup of tea didn't quite do the trick. I got only four rounds knit over the holiday weekend but knit two or three times that today. I also took some time to rewind my disintegrated balls (alternating 2 balls to prevent pooling and obvious difference between balls) of yarn back into functional balls from their other end. I need to remember that large balls of yarn work better knit from the outside even if I wound them as a center-pull, especially if the yarn itself is not large.

December looks promising. We'll see. I want to finish my Motley Crew. I signed up for the NaKniSweMoDo, knit a dozen sweaters next year, challenge. I may pull out an old UFO or two, especially as the year goes on, but it won't feel right to me to count this one in next year's total when the goal was to finish last month. Besides, I want to start with a couple of larger gauge projects for the mental boost of a speedy completion.

PS E-mail is still down. I can receive on my karenjoseattle address as I get that over the Internet, but cannot reply or receive on any of my other addresses. It seems we have a confluence of our ISP experiencing a power outage with no one on this weekend and something amiss in the phone lines. Trouble-shooting it while almost a thousand miles from our server is proving challenging. We'll owe our concierge when we get home.

Sixth of Sixth - Photos

Vicki/knitorious tagged me for this meme.

*Go to your sixth picture folder and pick your sixth picture.

*Pray you remember the details.

*Tag five others.

Right now I'm in Oregon for my nephew's second college football playoff game. And our server in Seattle won't respond. The usual long-distance fixes plus having someone turn a couple of switches off and back on to reset things haven't worked.

So I chose from my folders of photos on the desktop of my laptop. There it turned out the sixth folder was one I'd just added with random photos taken in Salem today. Here the light of the setting sun lights up red Japanese Maple leaves against the brick wall of a University building.

And I took this photo right before that one. The building is the woolen mill built by the original missionaries to support the school that later became Willamette University. This counts as my fiber-related content for the post.

Willamette lost today 27 to 30, their first loss of the season. They played the division's defending champions, and played them well except for a first quarter where they couldn't get the ball closer to the goal line than 10 yards. They beat the other team in the second half.

My nephew caught seven passes and made two touchdowns.

And he made a tackle. He doesn't tackle. He's a receiver. But if he's the one there, he'll do it. It will feel odd not to go to a game next Saturday. This one made four in a row, plus one two weeks before that.

Okay, I snuck in a few extra photos. I tag Ashley/ashpags (I'd tag your photo blog but you haven't posted there for just as long), Rebecca/Supergirl, who has a challenge to take a photo of herself every day, Erika/Redshirt, who may have puppy photos, RobinH/PracticalCrafts who mostly posts knitting on her knitting blog (imagine that) but does occasionally throw in another photo or two, and Karen/akabini, who may have something from the Seattle Marathon or from one of her many patterns. I'll try to get around and leave you guys comments to let you know very soon, but not tonight.

Saturday Sky

 

 

Once again I'll spend today at a collage football game in Salem, Oregon. If you're into such things, you can find a link to listen to the radio broadcast on the Willamette University web site. Game time is noon.

Last Monday as we drove down to California we passed Mount Shasta just as the sun set. Here are a few views of the mountain. This is one of the old volcanos in California's portion of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Last summer when we drove this route during the height of the California wildfires, we could not see this mountain from the highway through the thick smoke.

I do have a scarf to knit on on the plane and at other odd moments. Pictures when it's worthy. The sweater sits in the trunk of the car at the Sacramento airport looking not much different than the last time you saw it.

What Does It Take

How much yarn and how many projects will get a knitter through six weeks, given that those six weeks include two major holidays and several important college football games?

Well, if they televised these games and I watched from home, I could get quite a bit of knitting done during one. But they don't and I don't. Instead these games involve more travel.

Still, I need enough to have choices for different moods and different knitting conditions. besides, I bought one of these for the car so we had plenty of room on the way down.

In this pile I have my current Motley Crewneck/NaKniSweMo sweater, which will not make its deadline. I also have my Biscuit cardigan, which needs to be heavily blocked, then seamed and a neckband knit on. After buttons, it'll be done. Then there's the Alpaca/Jacob bulky for the next planned sweater.

For smaller projects I brought a nubby brown and gray cotton and rayon yarn for a seed stitch scarf, another variegated yarn for an undetermined lacy scarf, and a ball of sock yarn to practice knitting on DPNs before my class at Madrona that requires them since I knit on two circulars for in the round.

Then there's the hat of double-stranded sock yarn that turned out wonky and needs ripping to become a beret and neck wrap. And I brought the four garter-stitch-with-YO-columns scarves of various dimensions I did this summer for de-stress knitting. I need to wash/kind-of block them and sew in ends. One will be a gift and all can be Blog Fodder, so I brought them.

I don't expect to finish all of these; maybe not even half. But I can't really say I have nothing to knit. Or finish.

Happy Thanksgiving

May you have a happy day spent with those you love the most and/or doing the things you love the most.

If you're one of those like health care professionals or police officers who must work today, thank you.

In these difficult times, when we know things will get harder before they get easier, take time to think how much more we still have than if we'd been at this point in our lives in 1620, 1774, 1898, or even 1975. The yarn selection is so much better.

PS My e-mail is down and likely to be until Friday or later. Sorry but my reply will be late if you've sent me something.

NaKniSweMo No Go

I just came to the conclusion that there is no way I'll finish my Motley Crew-Neck sweater by the end of this month for the NaKniSweMo deadline.

I still have a ways to go on the body. Then I need to do 3/4 length sleeves. And finish the neckline.

I'll have no seams since I knit this top down. And I'll have few ends since the Socks That Rock heavyweight yarn comes in 350 yard skeins. So that's something.

It's taking me about ten minutes per round for the body, counting the bits of time that seem to evaporate between rounds. In about an hour we'll get in the car to drive to the Spousal Unit's parent's house for the holiday. If I don't take this turn to drive, I might get an hour of knitting done before it gets dark. I'm not sure if I'll bring it out tonight or tomorrow, even though my husband's family includes multiple knitters.

Probably I'll volunteer to drive this leg since I know the drive on Friday will all fall during daylight. But that drive ends at the airport and a flight to yet another football game. This project has become too large for airplane knitting.

The drive back from the airport happens in the middle of the night, literally.

So I may get another two to three hours of knitting on this before the first of December. Definitely not enough time to finish it. But I have a good start and the hardest parts done, so I don't expect this to take up much of December's knitting time.

Round One Down

Division III College Football Playoffs - Round One

Willamette 48

Occidental 33

Sweater 2+ inches

This picture shows the hands of my nephew catching a touchdown pass taken from a photo taken by another nephew.  You can see it Here from another view, plus read the sory of the game if you're interested. If not, knitting content returns soon. Right now we're on the road to California and I plan to just power along on my sweater body when not driving. Photos posted when it looks notably different than in the last.

Next weekend we'll fly back up to Salem  for Round Two.

Saturday Sky

As this posts, I'm sitting in the football stadium at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon watching my nephew's playoff game. Hopefully it's not raining and the game is going well.  (ETA - We Won)

Early this last week we had an unusual for us episode of heavy late-morning fog. I looked down on it from my 19th floor windows. Rebecca/Supergirl got photos from a different perspective.

Friday Fotos

If things are going as planned, about the time this posts I'll be packing the last few things into the car. We have a place in California in the small town where I grew up. Every year we head down for about six weeks over the holidays.

 

 

Here are some pretty photos for a Friday - some of the last of the Fall color in this area. I'll see if I can keep up the daily posts over the weekend. We'll stop in Salem, OR for a football game on our way down

How Fast Could a Knitter Quilt if a Knitter Could Quilt a Quilt?

Technically I just pieced and tied.

In August we spent a few weeks painting the studio apartment of the professional-level ballet student we sponsor. I also made her curtains. And I planned to cover an old quilt of hers to match the new decor.

Today I made the quilt cover. And I packed for leaving at noon tomorrow to spend the holidays, all of them, in California, and had a Pilates lesson and a facial, plus a couple of other errands. Oh, and I got another inch of the body of my sweater done while waiting for busses delayed by rain.

I did draw out out my pattern last night, then added up the number of squares of each print and determined the square sizes over breakfast. I got a little under half of the squares cut before I had to leave. The Spousal unit cut the rest and ironed them while I was out. Love that man.

About 4:30 or 5 I started sewing. Somewhere along the way I bent a needle or threw my sewing machine out of line, I think after hitting a pin, so it wanted to tangle or break the thread for the last few long seams. And I bungled winding a bobbin, using up way too much thread, ran short, and had to switch thread colors often as I saved the matching one for the places that showed. And I only tied four corners to hold things in place and will need to go back to finish the rest of the corners later.

We delivered it at about 10:30PM.

All I have left to get packed are toiletries and knitting projects - six weeks of knitting projects. Though there is a yarn store where I'll be much of the time if I need it.

I think this is the first quilt I've finished, though I've cut pieces for one or two others over the years. It turned out much better than I expected. Most of the corners even matched pretty well, especially for such a fast job. I really didn't think I could do it.

Fortuitous Timing - Short-Row Shaping Top-Down and In the Round

So, this sweater, my Motley Crew-neck NaKniSweMo sweater, has a close fit with zero to minus an inch ease in the bust. And I have a fair amount of bust.

Therefore, besides the side shaping I have planned, I also want to try the short-row bust shaping technique. You know, where you do some short rows under the bust to give things a bit of room and keep things from pulling up so much?

Two of the classes I took from Pat Brunner at Madrona last year covered this technique. I got out my handouts, asked some advice of a friend, and set off.

This sweater is knit top-down and in the round. That involved some interpolation of the instructions. The first time through I found myself closing the gap on a shorter row as I knit beyond the previous turn on my way to the next in a widening wedge of stitches. Things looked good, though, at least fro the front. The turning stitches became very obvious on the back side of the knitting.

Then I also found myself purling back with my goal number of turns already completed and no obvious way to head back the right direction without adding another odd-numbered turn. And I couldn't figure out why.

Just hours before I found myself in this stalemate, I'd read Margene's post where she linked to the second issue of a(nother) new on-line knitting magazine, Knotions. I'd noticed an article on short rows for bust shaping so had browsed through it, since that was something I was in the process of doing for the first time. But at that point I thought it was working.

Jody, the editor/owner of Knotions, briefly covers the differences for both top-down and in-the-round. With a top-down project you invert the wedge so you still knit the wider rows first.

I tinked. I re-knit. When I made my final turn after a purl row I had all of my goal turns and the same number on each side plus now headed in the right direction. Since I'd tried out the yarn-over method of short rows, I just knit two together as I came to each of my first set of gaps on the left side of the sweater front. I continued across the back and closed the right front gaps when I got to them. There I switched to SSK as it looked better to my eye. While on the left I knit together the yarn over and the following stitch, on the right it was the stitch and then the yarn over. These yarn overs look a bit wonky due to the turn, so I wanted them underneath the regular stitch not on top.

I haven't tried the sweater on again, yet, but it looks like everything worked out just fine the second time around. I'm still not sure why.

Alternatives Are Good

This morning while reading threads on the Madrona Winter Retreat forum on Ravelry, I came across this video of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knitting by the method she calls Irish production knitting.

It reminded me that last year after taking some workshops from Sally Melville I fully intended to practice the pencil-hold style (can't find good instructions on-line - see Sally's book The Knit Stitch) she advocates. My hands and wrists get tendinitis, achiness, and other issues often when I do a lot of knitting, especially at smaller gauges. I really should learn other styles of knitting that use different techniques and create different stresses. Today I took a day off knitting so my achy hands could rest.

I already often knit back backwards when knitting flat. Not only does this improve my gauge since I purl loosely, but it switches the hand doing the majority of the work. I practiced a bit, then knit an entire sweater doing this instead of purling. Now it feels pretty comfortable. So, I know I can teach myself other ways to knit and get comfortable with them. I do need to stick with one for an entire project as each method will produce a different gauge, but I usually (other than during NaKniSweMo) have a couple things going at once and so can still alternate techniques that way.

I just went to search my blog for the first time in a few months to find where I've posted before about knitting back backwards. The search widget I added quite a while ago is no longer visible. It's there among the things on my configuration page but, even after I tried moving it to a different spot on the page, it's just not visible. Weird. And annoying.

So, does an abundance of links compensate for a lack of photos? Or do they actually need to all be really useful links?

Knitter's Day Out and a Very Good One

Today I met my friend Ann (Ravelry link) on the ferry over to Bainbridge. I had a signed copy of Stephanie's latest book for her and I hadn't been to Bainbridge for months. I hadn't seen Ann for even longer.

We chatted on the ride over, had coffee and a bite at the bakery, then wandered Churchmouse Yarns each looking for yarns to fill a need. I found an interesting charcoal and chocolate boucle skein from Shoalwater Bay for a scarf. Shoalwater is a local Indie yarn source that does non-wool things. This one has rayon and cotton in the blend. I think besides Churchmouse you have to catch them at a craft fair but I know Churchmouse ships stuff all over so call them if you need non-wool hand-dyed yarns. This one is called Chocolate and is more brown than gray.

I also found another 6-ply Regia sock yarn that's not tweed in a pretty blend of grays. And a yarn to quench my desire for a tweedy, split-neck and collared sweater - Tahiki Donegal Tweed.

Best of all, I Found pairs of Addi lace needles in 2.5mm, 2.25mm, 2.0mm, and 1.75mm so now I should be able to get a decent gauge on almost any sock yarn I try.

Actually best of all, after Ann left to run errands I ran into Dion getting advice on the finishing of a sweater and, while I waited for Karen to arrive to say 'Hi' before her class started, Michelle also came in. So I caught up with four knitting friends in one sunny but crisp fall day.

And I tried on what I have of my sweater, got some advice from Karen on shaping, and did a bit of girly short-rowing on the boat on the way home.

NaKniSweMo Update

Though it now actually looks like the beginnings of a sweater, the month has reached the halfway point while my Motley Crew-neck has not.

I joined the body in the round just as we left Seattle for the drive to Salem. Before I took my turn to drive I probably got in the equivalent of a couple of hours of knitting, with some breaks to stretch my hands and rest my eyes. Today I only needed to tink one round to fix an error that couldn't be fixed any other way. I actually introduced this error at the point where I'd fixed another error by laddering down a few rows. I messed up something in the switch between my two balls of yarn that also fell at that point.

I tried it on just before joining the front and back. Things seemed to be on track. Tomorrow morning I'll split the body between two needles and try it on again.

I think I'll leave it on the two needles. Besides making it easier to try on whenever I want, I find two needles less strain on my hands and right now my hands ache. I think I tense them more when knitting in the round on one needle. Hopefully a more relaxed grip won't change my gauge too much. I'm knitting a hair tighter than on my swatch, so I can stand to loosen up a bit.

By the way, my nephew's team won, so they go on to the playoffs unbeaten and as the #1 seed in their bracket. Scott caught five passes, one for a touchdown on a fourth down and 11 yards play. We'll drive to Salem again next weekend to see the first playoff game with my entire family except one BIL who couldn't get time off. Saturday evening we'll celebrate Thanksgiving and maybe a win with dinner for 16 at a local restaurant.

Saturday Sky - Salem

Last Sunday in Salem, Oregon, the sky over the Willamette looked like this.

We'd just walked the riverfront park with my mom, then all of us rode the merry-go-round housed in the peaked building. They have a beautiful one, much of it built and carved by their own crew. It only costs $1.50. The maintenance room has glass walls so you can watch the work on weekdays.

 

After this most of us, minus my mom, walked around Bush Park a bit. The weather stayed this crisply beautiful and fall-like all day with only a little rain late while we we inside eating dinner.

Today, possibly as you read this, we're driving back down for the day to watch the last of my nephew's regular season football games. Right now it looks like the weather will turn out even nicer.

Make Bloglines Go

Like everyone, I have some small issues with Bloglines regularly. Often a few of my favorite blogs have the dreaded Red Exclaimation Point ! of Disconnectedness.

And, though I swear I read when I first signed up that they checked all linked blogs every hour, my own posts sometimes take as long as a day to show up on any of my feeds. Of course, I subscribe to all of my own feeds just so I can angst over stuff like this.

Today I thought for about the third time this week that I hadn't seen Stephanie post for quite a while. I didn't remember anything about her being off to somewhere with absolutely no connections to civilization, so I finally clicked on her link and found she'd been posting along just fine without me. Bloglines just hadn't let me know that since the first of the month, or even given me a ! so I'd know to go check on my own. I guess I should be better at checking on people when I don't hear from them, but fortunately Stephanie has plenty of people watching out for her.

When I finished catching up with Steph, I bopped back to Bloglines only to find this. They were down. And they stayed down for hours.

I posted. I started this post. I went to Google Reader and added more than just my own feed so I have a Plan B for Bloglines. I went to Ravelry and popped over to a few friends' blogs from there. Seems Vicki found 200 old posts, dating back to her first and randomly spread over her four years of posting, on one of her links. While I suffered Bloglines withdrawal, she took a stroll down memory lane.

Why do I let myself get into these ruts? I like to think of myself as independant and nonconformist. These reminders of my familiar routine and dependance on a flakey technology do not reinforce that at all.

So, how's your Bloglines doing?

Get Ready, Get Set...Madrona Registration Opened Early

A little after 11:30 I went to check the schedule for the Madrona Winter Retreat because I hadn't actually picked out second choice classes. When I opened the site it said in large letters REGISTRATION NOW OPEN.

So I registered - once my heart moved back out of my throat. You know how you feel when you think you've prepared well for something important to you and suddenly you find you're actually behind and not ready - yeah that.

I hope Suzanne opened early on purpose to prevent system crashes or something. A couple of years ago they opened five minutes early and people were livid. If the cause was a system based farther east in a different time zone and someone who neglected to take that into account, I would not want to be the Retreat Organizers today.

I got all four of my first choice classes. I'd planned to do Friday morning sock yarn dying with Judith MacKenzie and then thought that was dumb and I should do the afternoon session since I'm not a morning person and I didn't plan on registering for an afternoon class. Good thing I had some time to think about these things. Then, Judith's morning session was no longer on the schedule when I got there. I assume that meant it had filled. Some classes said they were full, I think the filled by lottery ones, and others were just gone.

There was still a Saturday morning section of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's class open, but I stuck to my plan and enrolled in the top-down Aran class with Beth Brown-Reinsel. I knit a lot from the top down, love cables and just started to knit them so this will be very helpful. Plus one of her books was one of the first knitting books I bought.

On Sunday I have Janine Bajus's class on steeking and Lucy Neatby's one on short rows. Both are things I want to learn how to do or do better. I figured Sunday classes would be less in demand and I'll take a bit of tiredness in these instructors since I know they're good even when tired.

I'll book a room even though I live less than an hour away. I like to hang out for the evening hanging-out part. I'll get there Wednesday night even though I don't have a class until Friday afternoon. I'll get plenty of time in the Market before the hoards arrive on Saturday morning, or maybe Friday afternoon. Friday afternoon I'll be happily finger-painting yarn.

Anyway, if you were waiting for 1PM, don't. Get over there now.

A Couple of Things I've Never Seen Before

 

We had some rather dramatic weather during the night, though not really out of the ordinary. Or I thought it was not out of the ordinary until I noticed this. That's organic debris, I think lichen stained with secondary algae, pasted to my 19th story window. I think I'll assume it came off the top of an adjacent building, not from one of the trees way down at street level.

 

Today I also found a crafts magazine I'd never seen before in PCC, our local natural foods co-op. Called Living Crafts, it's geared toward the organic, natural, 'Craft your whole life' consumer.

 

 

Many of the articles in this Winter 2009 issue feature knitting or related topics. There are cardigans to go over kids' holiday dress clothes, wee knitted snowmen with teeny knit caps and scarves, and felted mittens with optional knitted cuffs. An article of knitted farm designs, including two by Nancy Epstein, apparently builds on previous articles where co-op groups exchanged farm squares. The fiber article for the issue covers organic wool yarns.

The cover hobby horse could be a knitting project if, say, you wanted to make the zebra version and couldn't find a striped sock or if you have a singleton knit for a large man that likely won't ever get a mate. Though they don't say so in the materials list, from the photos I'd say this needs a very large sock.

 

Non-knitting projects run from a drying rack for those knitted mittens, to a prayer bowl based on those of the Huichol Indians with beads applied to a coconut shell using beeswax, felt doves, an Artfelt holiday mail pouch, or to candles made in citrus and pomegranate rinds. I'd recommend against that last one based on the year and a half I spent as a nurse administrator for blood services at a trauma center. Never make candles in anything that could now or in the future burn.

I haven't read enough of the articles to critique the patterns and instructions. It has a nice layout and pretty photography. The next issue has a sewing theme so may not contain much knitting.

I may or may not buy this again. It's a nice-looking magazine with a different slant than most, but these really aren't the kind of projects I make. I must say though that I find it facinating that dozens of Yahoo! groups formed over the last year just to organize the knitting and exchange of little farm squares. Definitely not something I'd do or make, but still fascinating.

I have eight more rounds to go on my sweater until I divide the body and sleeves.

Here a Row, There a Row

 

So, on our little trip over the weekend I got one row knit on my sweater while we waited at the airport to pick up family members. Note that the color in this photo comes the closest so far to the actual color of the yarn.

 

 

 

 

One evening in the hotel room I knit another row.

I did not end up knitting on the drive back. My turn as passenger coincided with the leg where six people and their suitcases filled our vehicle. I took the rear jump seat among the luggage and not a lot of room. Plus it got a bit too chaotic for keeping track of increases with so many of us trying to figure out how to get to Powell's Books in Portland on the way to the airport.

Last night after the early morning, the long drive, and an onset of allergies I crashed before I managed to post for the day, so that's one day I've missed on daily blogging this month.     

 

 

 

This evening I finally completed the neckline shaping, cast on the rest of my stitches, joined things up and got a few rows knit in the round. I also started alternating balls of hand-dyed yarn to blend any color variation and prevent flashes or pools. Hopefully I won't tangle everything up on the bus tomorrow.

The month is now 1/3 gone and I doubt I have 1/4 of the sweater done. I do often end up with a day or two per project where I just knit for hours and make great progress. I'm counting on that happening sometime soon with this one.

We're Number One

The day started with misty overcast and occasional heavy rain. The game started with heavy clouds punctuated by a couple of brilliant sun breaks. The start of the second half came during more heavy rain, but the storm broke, the puddles drained, and the sun came through again for a few moments.

Meanwhile, the other team fell apart in the downpour. Willamette won 48-27. Despite what may happen in the last game of the season next week, this game clinched the league championship. Eighteen members of our family will now definitely celebrate our traditional day to gather for Thanksgiving at the first playoff game on November 22nd.

My nephew caught a pass and ran in a touchdown for a total of 93 yards, one shy of the all-time school record. Since they usually use his basketball talents to leap up and catch the ball while already in the end zone, everyone except those of his family who'd seen him do that before was surprised at his speed. Can you guess what number he wears?

Meantime, I've knit two rows on my sweater so far this trip.

Saturday Sky

In the Fall Seattle often gets morning fog. The Space Needle serves as a handy gauge of how low the sky is on a given day.

 

By nightfall the fog clears and we get crisp air, though rarely frost.

Boolah Boolah

 We're off in a couple of hours to drive down to Salem, with a stop to pick up people at the Portland airport. My nephew plays football (very well) for Willamette University. Right now they lead their league with an undefeated record, two home games to go, and a sure spot in the first play off game. This trip has been planned for a while, but my entire family has switched from meeting in California for a Thansgiving dinner the Saturday before the holiday to spending that weekend in Salem, too.

We will not have such nice weather as we did for this game in Tacoma a couple of weeks ago. The prediction shows rain all weekend. I doubt it will dampen our spirits much.

I am taking my sweater project, which looks just the same as last night, with me. We'll see how much I get done.

Almost; Not Quite

This morning my Motley Crew/NaKniSweMo sweater contained only one more row of knitting than it had the last time you saw it. I set a goal of finishing the neckline increases and joining in the round today.

I knit during dryer time for my color and conditioner at the stylist today. Then I knit all evening at home, with frequent breaks to stretch and rest the base of my right thumb, which did not appreciate the hand knit socks as much as I did. We had pouring rain and wind blowing wet leaves around all day, so knitting a sweater felt very right.

At this point I lack six rows to my goal. But that's six rows that start with increasing numbers of decreases and more than I want to try to keep track of this late at night. (Confession - add one and a half hours to the time stamp and adjust for my Pacific time zone, but I haven't been to bed yet so it's still today and I need the date to reflect that for my personal daily blooging challenge.)

I really like this raglan - line detail I've used. When I can get a much better daylight photo, I'll tell you more about it. For now, please ignore the yarn color here. Refer to these photos for a better approximation.

Thanks.

I Got It

Got out to vote. Got my sticker. Got my free Strabucks coffee. Got no knitting done.

A couple times per block on our walk to the show last nightwe passed another group carrying Obama signs and urging people to vote. I had my sticker.

After the show and dinner we walked past the crowd at Pike Place Market that news reports estimated at a couple thousand people dancing in the streets. We had no trouble getting down the sidewalk, but a driver would have found it impossible to get through several blocks, even without the police cars blocking off streets and escorting a few hundred more revelers in a parade up from Pioneer Square.

The street party on Capitol Hill reportedly included 3500. No one got arrested; no one reported any fights. When the police announced by loudspeaker at 2 AM that it was time to go home, the crowd disbursed except for a large group armed with brooms and trash bags who cleaned the streets. The police thanked them over their bullhorns.

Though all ages were represented, most of the crowd we passed and the one in the television footage looked to be voting in their first or second presidential race. The prevailing attitude seemed to be 'Look what we did.'

It reminded me of what 1972 would have been like if we'd won; of how things were when I was their age and a disastrous election and even worse presidency had not yet convinced a generation of young voters that it just wasn't worth their time.   

Progress Made

I got my numbers crunched and started my sweater for NaKniSweMo last night - twice. On the first start I didn't get my increases sorted out correctly. But I have 2 1/2 inches done, with a total of 4 1/2 inches needed before I join it in the round.

A top-down sweater starts with many fewer cast-on stitches, 61 here, since you're just working around the back neck and tops of the shoulders, but you do have both raglan increases and front neckline increases to set up. Mine happen at different intervals bacause I'm doing a scoop neck.

Though, despite the truely scoop-neck plan, I have taken to calling this project my Motley Crew-neck Sweater since the yarn color is Motley Hue.

We'll see how much I get done tonight. I'm about to jump in the shower before I head out to stand in a (likely) long line to vote. (VOTE, if you haven't.) This evening we have reservations at a jazz club to see the first US tour of Martin Taylor, sometimes referred to as 'the spirit of Django' in case you're into Gypsy jazz guitar. Then we plan to go watch election results at a Basque tapas bar. We may be up too late and have too much wine to allow for increases that follow any kind of plan.

Gray Regia 6-Ply Tweed Socks

First off, Molly W., though I'm pretty sure you aren't reading this post since you left your comment on my Crochet Cast-on post after Googling it, I'm sorry I can't send you a reply. TypePad doesn't send me e-mail notifications for most of my comments and that's how I get an e-mail address to reply to. Thanks for leaving the comment and I'm very happy the tutorial is helpful.

Sigh. Has anyone solved this issue with TypePad?

Okay, on to knitted objects. Here are my finished socks. I used Judy's Magic Cast-on to start them toe-up; the version that does not start with a slip knot and so doesn't even have that bump. Is that bit on Judy's site? I'll have to check. (It's here - scroll to bottom - and in the instructions linked above.) I know it's in Cat Bordhi's book on new sock architecture.

Please note that the fat-leg look results from foreshortening, as I expect anyone who has photographed socks on their own feet knows.

The heel comes from Wendy Johnson's basic toe-up-with-gusset sock pattern. I like this heel because it involves no picking up stitches along a flap or loops of short rows.

I did alter things a bit. I have a high arch and a wide foot just below my toes, so I increased up to 68 stitches, still used 34 stitches in the heel, then when finished turning the heel I decreased two away by knitting two together at the corners of the gussets where I felt I could get a hole and another two decreases two rounds later.

The rib stich on the cuffs is Seeded Rib Pattern from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Stitches, page 7, converted to in the round. I started a ways after the ankle so I'd have a nice smooth bit showing below my pants and nothing to rub around the heels. However, as you see, the cuffs want to telescope down over the ankles. Next time I use this stitch, which I will, I'll try running it down the top of the foot and just going with a 64 stitch sock all the way.

I bound off in pattern using Lucy Neatby's Modified Conventional Bind-off technique with a 2-stitch picot added over the knit stitch columns. The cuffs came out nice and stretchy. I think the telescoping issue related only to the tightly knit ankle versus the stretchy cuff as it slides down as one piece with no bunching.

This yarn, Regia 6-Ply Tweed, isn't as soft as some I've worked with for socks. It also splits and unplies more easily than I'd like when working at this gauge, but it definitely stands up to correction without falling to pieces and over-all I liked working with it. I really like the non-traditional colors in the tweed flecks; here gold, amber, light and dark blue, plus a little bit of maroon and olive with the gray. These will go nicely with blue jeans and a gray sweater.

I used US1 needles for about 7 1/2 spi, which I think is nothing like the manufacturer's guidelines. Even with tall cuffs, these took only half of the third ball. Two balls would have given me a sock that was 4 inches tall from the floor. I wear a US9 1/2 or Euro40 shoe so someone smaller-footed who liked shorter socks could get by with two balls. I'll probably get two more balls and make another pair. Or maybe I'll stripe with it since I have the cream and denim blue versions in my stash. That would only require one more ball total.

It Was a Good Week Here

Last weekend the weather turned bright and warm, so I got out for lots of walking. Sunday we rambled around the city for four hours. People in Volunteer Park all seemed to be passing through, like we were, except for the Pug-owners group gathering for walkies in funny get ups. The dogs were the ones in funny get ups, mostly. In Cal Anderson Park People were knitting, practicing putting, carving pumpkins, playing soccer, and taking a class in whip cracking. The black leather chaps didn't seem to be mandatory for the class, but shirts appeared to be prohibited unless you were female (one student) or had a beer belly (also just one student). Oddly, the basketball court was empty.

Besides the weekend walks, I walked across downtown to a Pilates lesson twice. I'm about to a point where I feel unkinked and back to my old form - just in time to leave for a month and a half for the holidays. I do not plan to do any packing and moving on this trip.

I have been better about taking real stretch breaks from the knitting, which makes a huge difference. I'm also working on breaking the cats of the habit of sleeping on me all night since my hips have started to complain. We made a good start, but you know how trying to heard cats in a new direction goes.

I dug out my Jaeger Biscuit cardigan and found a) I started this about a year ago, much longer than I thought but not surprising if I consider that I finished another cardigan during the time I worked on this and then put it down at the first of the year when life as I knew it went on hiatus and b) I had 10 rows left on sleeve two, button bands, one of which I'd picked up for, seams, neck band and buttons left to do. That's it. I've finished the sleeve and the button bands and am trying to decide if I need to wet block this heavily before I seam or if it will just roll back up in tubes as soon as I unpin it. The seed stitch trim helps, but it still wants to curl up at this point. I'm sure I'll be good and block it before I seam and then just block lightly after it's done. That may delay completion, though.

I finished my gray tweed socks. Wore them around the house last night. They did stretch a bit with wearing. And the cuffs want to telescope down over the tighter ankles, but I made them long enough that that's not much of an issue. I probably will use this rib stitch again, but carry it down the top of the foot. Photos tomorrow.

Besides the routine stuff, I cleaned out and recycled the stuff in the magazine basket and the catalog basket and the mail-I'm-ignoring basket. Then I moved the furniture in the livingroom that the house cleaners don't and vacuumed the area rug. Then the Spousal unit emptied the central vac canister. That kind of counteracted the lemonade etching on the stone floor incident.

This week started off promising. I swatch for my NaKniSweMo sweater but it hadn't dried enough last night so I put off figuring out my stitches, etc for my Unpattern until today. However, I got awakened early this morning by a call from my mom. Our house in California, where she lives and where we've  had ongoing landscaping, garage-building, and other construction happening, got a huge downpour last night. This morning the neighbor found that the utility box for the phone lines had filled with water that then ran through the conduit and into the lower level of his giant house. He thinks it's our changes. We think it's that he, the developer, put the phone box in lower than the giant drain that's in the middle of the most natural direction for the water to flow. Our insurance adjusters get to discuss it tomorrow. My mom has gotten beyond the crisis and into the seeing humor in it stage.

So, the upshot is limited knitting photos and no pattern numbers figured. I promise you more socks tomorrow.

I Have a Plan

Of course, that plan involved posting first thing this morning, but we'll just move beyond that if it's OK with you guys.

First part of the plan - I joined the NaKniSweMo group at Ravelry and have swatched for my sweater. Besides that I've wound five of the six skeins (I may get a pair of socks out of this, too) and I have my pattern out to copy, plus the copy from the last one of these I made, and tonight I'll fill in numbers.

That's STR heavyweight in Motley Hue - a colorway that so refuses to photograph correctly even Blue Moon doesn't have a picture on their site, though I got closer with the last two than I expected - to become a scoop-neck, picot-edged Unpattern. I bought this yarn, and quite a bit more, at Madrona last year. This February I'd like to wear a couple of new sweaters made with yarn bought there last year.  Plus there's the using yarn I already have/my stash is so far beyond SABLE status thing.

I want at least three new sweaters, preferably four, for the four-day retreat. Really, I just feel the need for some nice basic and wearable sweaters that I've made and this gives me a goal and a timeframe, so I'm aiming high. I'm very close to done with my Biscuit cardigan I just picked up again. I want the NaKniSweMo challenge to help me get through all the distractions the end of the year throws at me.

That's two sweaters. The other two I have in mind involve larger gauge yarns, one from Madrona and one recently bought on sale, and hopefully will go quickly. The patterns will stay simple to maximize the likelihood of completion - all versions of Unpattern, EPS, and maybe Barbara Walker From The Top Down.

I also plan to unofficially do a daily-blogging-in-November challenge. I won't join any of the official challenges and definitely won't set myself up for two challenging months in a row, like some people. One will be difficult enough due to multiple trips and a big holiday this month. I don't want to feel like I'm flaking on a group thing, or at least not on more than one group thing at a time. I already can't decide if I should pick up my ABCalong posts back at J, skip to U or wherever we are now, or just bag the whole thing.

So that's the plan. You can expect to see how well it goes in excruciating detail on a (hopefully) daily basis here.