Life as a Spectator Sport

Acrylic yarn galore, enough to stock a Walmart yarn department, in skeins and balls and bits and pieces left over from previous years' hats and pot holders and baby blankets and what have you. I'm trying to use the blasted stuff up, and a granny square afghan is about the best use I can think of. I pick this up whenever I happen to be sitting in this chair, and work a round or two. When I have managed to use up all the plastic yarn, I'd like to make a rainbow granny square of "real" yarn (wool or cotton, in other words), with each square shading from red in the middle to deep dark purple on the outside. But that's going to be a while.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Progress on ducky blanket

I've finished one panel of the blanket for my grandson, and I hate this yarn. It's Bernat Baby Boucle, a bulky-weight acrylic yarn that I didn't chose so much as acquiesce to. The pattern was on the ball band and I liked the texture of the knitted-up sample in the store, so I bought it. But it's a real b**tch, excuse the French, to work with. The needles catch in the boucle loops, the yarn is not very strong at all (I broke one stitch trying to work the needle free of a loop), and it doesn't feel soft any more when you've had it in your hands for an hour.

But I've gotten this far with it now, so I'm not going to rip it out. I'm just sorry I bought as much of the yarn as I did. I'd had ideas of making the blanket roughly twice the size of the original, since the "baby" it's being made for is going to be four next month. But I wimped out when I came to the end of the yarn in one of the white stripes. I just did not want to knit another foot of blue and white intarsia stripes. So I went on to the duck in the corner, and as a result, the blanket will be only about one and a half times as large as the directions call for, and I'll have a bunch of this nasty acrylic left over.

I'm working on the middle panel now, which is solid blue with white horizontal stripes at the top and bottom. The directions said to cast on 50 stitches, and in an excess of virtue, I cast on 72, making the center panel three times the width of the end panels. It's going to be a loooong slog of nothing but back and forth knit and purl to get this finished, and then I'll still have the other side panel to do. Isaac had better like this when I'm finished with it! He's a bit old for a favorite blankie, but his mom carried her green and white ripple afghan around until she wore it out, so perhaps he'll do the same. I should have listened to her request for a similar one for the baby, because it would have been long since finished and given to him.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

You knitted what??

About a month ago, I purchased a box of varied yarns from a company called Discontinued Yarns, and in it was a single spool of ribbon yarn that I bought for no good reason other than I liked it. I had no idea at the time what I might do with it, but on the Sewing Divas site I discovered, ta-da . . . Knitted Necklaces! The author of this post used stocking stitch for one necklace and garter stitch for another. I liked both of these ideas, but decided to make my first one with i-cord. This was not easy to do with a ribbon yarn! But I persevered and produced something that I like well enough to try to find something to wear it with :) Considering that I don't buy clothing unless my current wardrobe is beyond repair and no one has given me anything lately (thank you once again, Kate!), I must like it very much indeed.

Here is is against a yellow shirt (which is much more yellow than it looks--my digital camera doesn't render yellow well). It's just a 3-stitch i-cord interspersed at intervals with 4 or 5 rows of garter stitch to add some variety.

This shows the garter stitch "beads" a bit better.

I don't normally wear necklaces, partly because I'm very active and things dangling from my neck tend to get in the way of whatever I'm doing. It's also because I already have reading glasses dangling from my neck, and most of the time, a badge on a lanyard as well. Add to that the fact that I spend much of my working day driving, where my seat belt constantly grabs whatever is dangling around my neck, and the prospect of adding something else was not an attractive one. So I made the necklace quite short, keeping it away from the other dangly items, if not the seatbelt.

Unfortunately, besides being slippery as all get out, this ribbon is very fragile. It was difficult to keep the needle points from poking it, and every time that happened, it developed a little scuffed place that stands out quite noticeably. I wore it all day today, and the scuffs didn't seem to get any worse, nor did it develop any others, but it certainly can't be tossed into the jewelry case with anything else. So it was an experiment, and I'm not sure how often I'll actually wear it, but it was fun. I tied the ends together in a bow today, but if I decide to keep wearing it, I'll sew a toggle closure on the ends.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

More finished objects

Baby sockies! It's a good thing my niece likes bright colors! Opal Mosaik in blaring red and white, the leftovers from Kay's socks, plus a half skein of leftover yarn from the very generous fellow sock knitter (thank you, Tamra!) who responded to my plea for more of this yarn if anyone had it, and refused to let me pay her for it. I was concerned that Lucinda would already have outgrown these, and decided to make the second one larger and then ravel the first one back and make it larger too. I carefully checked where the toe shaping began and worked four or five extra rounds on the second sock before beginning the toe decreases. But when I had it finished, and held them both up together, you really can't tell that it's any larger. It is larger--that four or five rounds did make a tiny difference in size. But not enought to warrant ripping out the toe of the first sock and making it longer. So off they go tomorrow, and if Lucinda has already outgrown them, they'll have to wait for the next little one.


These are the finished denim socks, almost but not quite identical. Another issue with toe decreases. I didn't have the first sock handy when I was getting close to where I needed to start the toe shaping, and unwilling to just put them down and wait, I guesstimated. Oops. I worked about two rounds extra on the second sock, enough that the lighter blue turned into a darker blue before I got to the last couple of rounds. So there is more dark blue on the toe of the second sock than on the first one. Kate allows as how that probably won't make it unwearable. And of course it is about a quarter inch longer, but I don't think that's going to be a problem either. I have to remember to measure these before I deliver them, so I'll know exactly how long to make the next pair.

Now I can finally get back to the Sockotta striped socks I began in January. Uh, no. Have to finish the ducky blanket for my grandson first. I just counted, and I've made eighteen items since the middle of last year. Except for dishcloths that I haven't given away yet, sixteen of them were for other people. There are several other unfinished items that I will keep for myself, but even so, this is ridiculous! I'm not the only one whose output goes mostly to other people. There is even a group on Ravelry dedicated to knitting for oneself. But of course when you make things for other people, you get to make things that you'd never consider for yourself, so there is a certain selfish aspect to it.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

I like bright colors

Here is the finished dishcloth, and I've decided to keep it for myself. I had intended to add it to the stack of small items appropriate for gifts, but I don't want to part with it!

I've also finished the denim socks for Kate, but they are out in the car and I'm too lazy right this minute to go get them for a picture. So that will have to wait.

A few more rows and I'll have the Opal Mosaik baby socks finished for Lucinda. Then I have to put everything else aside and finish the ducky blanket for my grandson, whose birthday is coming up soon.

I'm also working on a project that I hope may get accepted by Knitty or MagKnits. Stay tuned for more on that. Nothing elaborate, just something I haven't seen anywhere else and thought other knitters might find useful as well. If it isn't accepted for publication, I'll post the directions here.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Is this not cool!

This is the beginning of a Garterlac Dishcloth (entrelac in garter stitch, in other words), in Lily Sugar'n Cream dishcloth cotton.

I started an entrelac vest years ago when entrelac was first introduced, but it disappeared into a box when I moved back home from Shelley's apartment, and hasn't surfaced yet. It'll turn up one of these days and I'll be able to finish it, but in the meantime, I'm having fun with this dishcloth.

Entrelac is amazingly simple, given the apparent complexity of the finished item, and since garter stitch entrelac is completely reversible, you don't have to be such a perfectionist about the edges where you pick up each sections stitches.

The only problem with entrelac is that all the stitches of each module (a module being a square or triangle) are active at the same time across a tier (sometimes called a layer). Since each tier or layer consists of whole blocks or triangles of stitches, not just rows of stitches, it can be hard to spread a piece of entrelac out until it's finished. Spreading this one out required fiddling with the cable of the circular needle until the piece was approximately flat, and then aggressively pinning it to the seat of my office chair to take its picture. Such a picture would not have been possible if I'd been using straight needles, and in fact, this 29" circular was almost too short for comfort.

Dishcloths are wonderful swatches for new techniques, or for playing with a new yarn, and when you're finished, you have something you can use, or can put away for a gift (which is where this one will be going, as the dishcloth I crocheted last year stubbornly resists wearing out!)

And on a completely different note, though equally cool, is this spider climbing on the driver's side mirror of my car. I can't identify it for sure, but it seems to be a crab spider, sometimes called a flower spider. Info on the web says they can change color from this dazzling white to yellow or tan to blend in with whatever flower they are sitting on. This one turned up in the middle of a concrete parking lot, so it must have been lost. I had returned to the car after doing an inspection, and as I started to shut the door, I saw this spider swinging from a length of silk, swinging back and forth through the window that I was about to put up. In another moment, I'd have had it in my lap, and then it would probably not have survived long enough to have its picture taken. I'm not arachnophobic, but it would have been disconcerting to have this thing crawling on me. With it safely on the outside of the car, and me safely on the inside, I could admire it much more objectively.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Pushing on . . .

There comes a time in the life of every sock I've made so far when I just want the freakin' thing to be DONE. That's where I am with this pair of denim colored Sockotta socks for Kate's birthday (which was last week :< ). I love the colors, I love the texture of the yarn, I love the pattern, and I am TIRED of working on it. But then I look down and somehow the knitting has progressed to where I have only a few rows left before beginning the toe decrease, and how the heck did it get that far along! If I weren't trying to get ready for a road trip tomorrow, I'd have it finished tonight.

I have two skeins now of Sockotta in the tan European stripes colorway, which I think are going to end up being Jaywalkers for me. I've been wanting to make that pattern for a while now, but didn't have anything suitable. The color variation in this yarn is subtle enough that I don't think it will overwhelm the pattern. So maybe that will be the next cast-on.

In any case, I'm going to need some tan socks, because I am about to make some tan dress slacks. Yeah, like I need something else to keep me "busy." But I can't find dress slacks that I'm willing to wear any more, so there's nothing to do but make them. Everything I've bought over the years (when you could actually buy slacks with belt loops on a fitted waistband, a fly front and side pockets) is wearing out, or is already retired to the scrap heap. Everything that is available now has an elastic waist, no belt loops, no zipper, and no pockets. And most of them are in stretchy fabrics that not only show every bump and lump, but look as cheap and flimsy as they probably are.

So I cleared off the kitchen table and set the sewing machine on it. Considering that it's been in a corner of the front bedroom for two years, that's real progress. I have some nice tan chino, and a Palmer & Pletsch slacks pattern that I like, so we'll see how it turns out.

Weather and knitting and stuff

I've been re-reading the old classic book on weather, "Eric Sloane's Weather Book," partly because as a pilot and a sailor, I've always been interested in weather, and as a pilot and a sailor, Sloane wrote in a way that is easily accessible to me. But also because it seems like a good idea to know more about weather phenomena than I do, and I suspect I know more than the average layperson as it is. If the day comes when there is no evening weather on tv and no instant weather on the computer, I want to have a better idea of what's going on in the sky than what little meteorology I remember from pilot ground school.

We're having thunderstorms today, by they way. I can tell because it's thundering and raining outside. Kind of like the New England weather stick--if it's pointing down, humidity is high. If it's pointing up, humidity is low. If it's wet, it's raining.

Knitting continues apace. It appears that I am actually going to have enough of the denim Sockotta to finish Kate's second sock without going into the new skein of yarn that arrived today. But I don't think one skein will be enough for a pair for me, with my much larger feet. So I'm not sorry I ordered more of each of the colors I have. There are always baby socks. And caps. And mitred squares. etc. It's the etc's that make knitting the most fun, in fact, putting together what you have on hand to make something unique.

If I had sat outside for a while today, I could probably have snapped a picture of something I haven't seen here in a couple of years: Monarch butterflies. When I first moved out here, they came in clouds in the late summer and fall on their way back to Mexico for the winter. You could walk down the old driveway between head-high stands of Queen Anne's Lace and watch them flit from one flower to another in huge fluttering crowds of orange. The numbers dwindled year by year until there were none at all last year or the year before. I don't know whether to be encouraged by seeing them this year, or to assume it's some kind of anomaly. In any case, there is still plenty of Queen Anne's Lace for them, considering my typical indifference to the weeds.

Back on the road tomorrow--Lynchburg, Charlottesville and Washington, and then Richmond and Norfolk the next day. Assuming no other work comes in tonight, of course.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Knitting the iPod

No, not knitting a sock for it. I have a perfectly good leather case for my iPod.

What I'm talking about is storing one's knitting patterns on the iPod. I've been hearing that you could do that, and decided to track down the instructions. Unfortunately, it appears that the only way to do it is to convert the instructions to a text file and store the file in the "Notes" section. That's okay, but I had hoped for something more spectacular, like being able to save images along with the text. Oh well. I could, of course, scan my knitting patterns and save the images on the iPod, but I suspect I might have trouble reading them.

I saved the instructions for a Brioche stitch hat that I've been meaning to try, so we'll see how well that works out.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Holy Terrors

With all the noise about middle-eastern kids and teenagers being brainwashed into martyrdom, no one is paying attention to what's being done to our own children. Until CNN's documentary, "God's Warriors," only Rolling Stone magazine was giving much print space or time to organizations such as BattleCry, headed by self-proclaimed culture terrorist, Ron Luce. I'm not going to provide their website address, because I don't want anyone linking there from here. But it's listed in Rolling Stone's online article if you have the intestinal fortitude to check it our for yourself.

"Brainwashing" is not too strong a word. Here's a paragraph from the Rolling Stones article:

"The devil hates us," [Luce] exhorts, "and we gotta be ready to fight and not be these passive little lukewarm, namby-pamby, kum-ba-yah, thumb-sucking babies that call themselves Christians. Jesus? He got mad!" Luce considers most evangelicals too soft, too ready to pass off as piety their preference for a bland suburban lifestyle. He hates what he sees as the weakness of "accepting" Christ, of "trusting" the Lord. "I want an attacking church!" he shouts, his normally smooth tones raw and desperate and alarming. He isn't just looking for followers -- he wants "stalkers" who'll bring a criminal passion to their pursuit of godliness.

Luce tells the impressionable youngsters to list on pieces of paper what elements of popular culture they're willing to give up:

Hanneh [a twelve-year-old] starts with Bow Wow and Usher, bites her pen, and then decides to go big: "Music," she writes, then "Friends" -- the nonfundamentalist ones -- and "Party." This, she explains, is a polite way of saying "sex." Not that she's had any, or knows anyone her age who has, but she's learned from Luce that "the culture" wants to force it upon her at a young age. "The world," he tells her, is a forty-five-year-old pervert posing as another tween online."

What's ironic is that many of the people Luce warns against are equally opposed to contemporary pop culture--the mass merchandising of cheap junk, the sexualization of everything in order to sell more of it, the role of television in people's lives, etc. Luce, of course, doesn't mind merchandising his own products: sloganed t-shirts, jackets and caps.

The ironies continue.

The lights in the Cleveland arena fade to blue, and a man on the stage whispers to them about sin and love and the Father-God. They rise, heartened; the crowd, en masse, swears off "harlots and adultery"; the twenty-one-year-old MC twitches taut a chain across the ass of her skintight red jeans and summons the followers to show off their best dance moves for God. "Gimme what you got!" she shouts. They dance -- hip-hop, tap, toe and pelvic thrusting.

Luce's "holy warriors" have been sent around the world to preach his brand of Christianity. Others are turning up in their own pulpits or in the political arena, spreading Luce's contempt for "cultural Christianity."

If this doesn't scare the dickens out of you, consider this militant activity against two Ohio churches.

The group started its crusade when First Baptist Church in Granville hosted "Love Makes a Family," a traveling exhibit by the Family Diversity Project showing photos of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families.

The night the exhibit opened in July, members of Minutemen United stood outside and protested the exhibit and the church's open attitude toward homosexuality, said the Rev. Kathy Hurt, senior pastor at the Granville church.

Since then, the group has been visiting the church every Sunday, she said.

On one of the first Sundays, six people came to the church's 11 a.m. service and addressed the congregation during a time designated for prayer requests and comments.

Hurt said a man, who introduced himself as a minister from the New Beginnings Church in Warsaw, Ohio, started to give a sermon about how the church was acting against God's word by accepting homosexuals.

Members of Minutemen United also visited King Avenue United Methodist Church in Columbus that same morning, said the Rev. John Keeny.

"They rebuked me as a pastor for preaching that God's love is for everyone," Keeny said.

The pastor said he was proud of the way his congregation responded to the interruption, and he asked them to pray that the hearts of the Minutemen would be open.

First we had Fred Phelps and his funeral-crashing family and followers. Now people posing as Christians are interrupting other churches' services. What next? Dragging people out of those churches to public pillories? Mathew Shepherd style executions? One doesn't want to think so, but there is a fine line between violent words and violent behavior.

Groups like BattleCry are a fertile recruiting ground for white supremacy groups, something I haven't seen mentioned yet. Luce doesn't appear to discriminate, but kids who don't have the privileges of white middle-class society aren't going to be interested in giving them up.

What's more, Hitler and Stalin proved what could be done with a mob of energetic motivated teens--do we need another example?

The final irony, and one that Ron Luce would certainly not appreciate, is his confirmation of mammalian stress behavior. Humans, like their cousins, react in known and predictable ways to stressful conditions. Remove a mouse from its nest, wash it carefully to remove any trace of its former odor, and when it's replaced in the nest, it will be set upon and killed by its former loving family-members, who no longer recognize it as kin. Humans draw in to ever more narrowly-defined social groups who will resort to any level of violence to protect their own, and we're seeing it happen. Whether it's an outcry against gays, or illegal aliens, or the poor, or Muslims or anyone else who isn't one of "us," the outcome is the same--violent rhetoric and eventual literal violence. Welcome to the 21st century.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Wow! Wal-mart's got it figured out!

How to deal with a tainted food problem without causing a huge outcry, that is. Just quietly remove the food (dog treats, in this case) from the shelves, and say nothing. If someone complains that their dog died, offer 'em some money.

Maybe if the toy manufacturers did the same thing, we wouldn't be having all this yammering over lead in the kiddies' toys. I mean, everyone of my generation grew up with lead paint all over everything, and we're pretty smart, aren't we?

Don't answer that.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Boo, hiss

It has become obvious that one skein of Sockotta sock yarn won't make two socks. At least, it's obvious it won't make two garter rib socks for Kate, and if it's not enough for her demure little feet, it sure as heck won't be enough for my clodhoppers. The rib pattern might take a bit more than plain vanilla stocking stitch, but not that much more. And with a shorter leg, I might have gotten two socks out of one skein, but neither of us likes little ankle socks. So I ordered another skein of each of the colorways that I already have. There are always baby socks to use up leftovers.

I hadn't mentioned before that this pair, in various denim shades, was for Kate, since she reads the blog and it was a birthday gift. But she has seen them now, tried on the one that was finished, and confirmed my guess at the correct size. I'll have these finished in another couple of days, and then I can finish the pair I started for myself back in January, or something like that. I don't think I've ever left a second sock unfinished that long, but other things kept getting in the way.

Almost finished. These are more nearly identical than any other pair I've ever made. The second sock has just the slightest bit more dark blue at the very top of the cuff than the first one, but that's the only difference.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

It's another baby sock!

From the red and white Opal Mosaik that Kay picked out for her socks.



I didn't have quite enough left over for two socks, but a generous fellow sock-knitter from the Yahoo Socknitters list sent me the leftover yarn she had from a similar pair of adult socks. I'll make something for her in return from the little bit I'll have left over, a mini-sock Christmas ornament, or something similar.

The busy colorway obscures the structure of the sock, unfortunately. And I'm afraid it's on the verge of already being too small for my grand-niece. I made the cuff larger than the rainbow socks, but didn't change the foot length or shaping very much.

On to the second sock . . .

Sunday, August 05, 2007

More bad bridge news

More bad "bridge news," or more "bad bridge" news. Just as bad either way. MSNBC has analyzed the National Bridge Inventory in an article with an interactive link to each state, and a list of the structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges for each state. According to the article:

The following state bridges carry at least 10,000 vehicles a day and have been rated as either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete by inspectors, according to an MSNBC.com analysis of the National Bridge Inventory.

A structurally deficient bridge is closed or restricted to light vehicles because of its deteriorated structural components. While not necessarily unsafe, these bridges must have limits for speed and weight.

A functionally obsolete bridge has older design features and, while it is not unsafe for all vehicles, it cannot safely accommodate current traffic volumes, and vehicle sizes and weights.

Well--I've got news for you, folk. Just as an example, the I-64 bridge over the Elizabeth River in Chesapeake is emphatically NOT restricted to light vehicles. Nor are any of the others in the major cities of Virginia that carry tens of thousands of 18-wheelers, concrete and dump trucks, and private vehicles every single day. And I expect that's equally true for the rest of the country.

So it's back to what I said before. Most of the time I can't avoid these bridges. So I'll use them and pray that when the next one falls down, I'm somewhere far away. At least there weren't any in my county, though the main highway in the next county over had several listed as either deficient or obsolete. They at least don't get the kind of traffic burden as the interstate and major highway bridges in other parts of the state.

A different kind of needlework

On an embarrassing number of occasions recently, I have almost left the house wearing something that had a large hole in the seat. One time, it was only because Clarence noticed it that I didn't find myself miles away on the verge of doing an inspection before I realized I wasn't suitably attired. And there is that increasing stack of shirts with missing buttons to attend to.

So I hauled out the sewing box, all ready to spend the afternoon virtuously mending. Um, well, all I can say is that if my yarn stash was somewhat disorganized, my sewing box was in total disarray. It still isn't good, and I still haven't sewn on any buttons or mended any holes, but I do at least know what is in there now. No suitable buttons, of course. But I did find my missing multi-tip screwdriver, a small crescent wrench, a hammer, a paint brush and the carpenter's folding measure that I thought I had lost. This admixture of tools is not really surprising for someone who carried her laptop in her knitting bag for the first six months of ownership.

So it's off to the fabric shop, sometime next week, with an armful of shirts so I can try to match buttons. In the meantime, I have been virtuously doing laundry (until it started to rain), printing out my paperwork for next week's inspections, roasting coffee (finally! I thought I was going to die if I didn't have some decent coffee!), and making this dishcloth out of the prettiest Sugar 'n' Cream yarn I have ever seen. Lily calls this color "Buttercream," and it does have that feeling of a big iced Easter cake. I thought of desert colors, all sandy and washed out in the sun, and I think I would have called it "Sand Painting." I'd love to find something in a similar colorway in fingering weight wool for socks.

The pattern is called Nubbins, from the little mini-bobbles at the beginning of each row. It's super easy to make, and I'm sure I'll be making it again. The pattern comes from Vyvyan Neel, who has pictures and detailed instructions at Knitting in a Happy Camper

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

Considering the amount of driving I do, and the number of hours I've spent lately in rush hour traffic on a bridge or overpass, the number of bridges that might fall down under me is a bit of a concern. So I checked out the list of bridges that are, according to the Department of Transportation, in need of immediate inspection.

This is not an easy document to read, partly because it is a spreadsheet, and the final column of the spreadsheet ended up at the very bottom, after all the other columns. Anyone was has tried to print a wide spreadsheet has had this happen to them, and unfortunately, whoever converted the spreadsheet to a pdf didn't realize that they hadn't specified a wide enough format to include that final column. So to see the "Crossing" information (the river or hightway that a particular bridge goes over), you have to find the portion of the final column that pertains to the bridge you're looking at in your state. Fortunately, the number of entries for Virginia is relatively small, they're located near the bottom of the page, and near the end of the total list.

The list is also heavily abbreviated, and it's obvious that it was compiled by different people whose idea of how to abbreviate differed from each other. But some head scratching and a bit of help from Microsoft Streets and Trips got me enough information to figure out the most important ones to me.

Only four of them are of any real concern to me. One is in Roanoke, the 9th Street bridge over the Roanoke River. Another is on Highway 340 in Front Royal, over the Shenandoah River. The Westover Hills Bridge (Rt. 161) over the James River in Richmond is one I use regularly, and worst, Interstate 95 over the confluence of Broad Street and the CSX rail yard in Richmond. That one I use almost every time I drive in Richmond. I may find a way around it.

And then there is Interstate 495 in Maryland, over Northwest Branch Park in Silver Spring, another route I regularly use. The thought of any portion of I-495 being at risk is pretty awful, considering the traffic it carries.

The other Maryland bridges are ones I'm unlikely to go over, though they are important to their local economies. Rt. 340 over the Potomac River at Sandy Hook, just east of Harper's Ferry. Rt. 522 at the northwestern-most tip of Maryland, where the Potomac separates Hancock MD from Hancock WV. I don't know Maryland well enough to be certain where the other entries are located, without doing a lot more research and map-peering, and I've scared myself enough for one day.

But as I said to my friend out in the south Pacific, you do what you have to do, and hope that when something bad happens, you're somewhere else. Which is pretty much the same as saying you hope it happens to someone else. Not a terribly charitable thought, but you have to get through the day.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Addicted to fiber . . .

Many posts on Ravelry and other places begin with, "Hi, I'm [insert name], and I'm addicted to fiber."

Hi, I'm Liz and I'm addicted to fiber. I spent the day photographing and uploading part of my stash, and making a Flickr badge on the blog sidebar so everyone else can see how addicted I am. There are 34 images, and that's just the yarn I could easily get to.

I should have been doing laundry, yardwork, housework, even income-producing work, though there isn't a lot of that right now. I could even have been knitting. Instead, I spent the day playing with yarn. I haven't even begun on the various baskets of handspun, and the unspun fiber. This is only a part of the commercial yarn.

In the process, I found two projects I began years ago and had completely forgotten about, numerous balls and skeins of yarn I had bought for projects and completely forgotten about, and two books of projects I had completely forgotten about.

One thing about Ravelry is that it does encourage one to be better organized. And now that I know where (almost) everything is, I could buy more yarn, couldn't I?

Wildlife and knitting

My grandson mentioned that a turkey had flown up in his face when he and the dog were berry picking. I wasn't terribly surprised, because wild turkeys are certainly common in this area, but I hadn't actually seen one myself. Well--now I have. As I came down the driveway this afternoon, Mama Hen Turkey and four or five poults, about six inches tall, walked calmly across the road and into the woods on the other side. I didn't have a camera handy, dang it.

The first denim sock is finished, and I'm well into the cuff on the second one. This picture was taken before I grafted the toe on the first one. And I've cast on the cuff for another colorway of Sockotta, a gorgeous red/pink/orange/yellow jacquard. I don't think it's actually going to stripe. We'll see.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Which Hogwarts house are you?

Okay, I succumbed to the temptation, and I think the Sorting Hat probably got it right.

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

Hufflepuffs are the ones who get things done in the world, even when nobody else is paying attention or thanking them for it.

This particular quiz is very short, and a different, much longer one sorted me in Ravenclaw. But I don't really feel comfortable there, and the Sorting Hat is supposed to take a person's preferences into account, so there.

Actual knitting today, for a change, even though I was on the road all day. The Sockotta Denim sock is nearly finished, started the toe shaping this evening and I'll have it done by tomorrow. I have two more colorways of the Sockotta to play with, so I want to finish up this pair and get going on one of the others. And, of course, the pair I already have half finished.

The template is set to display 10 posts. To see all the posts for this month, click on the month name in the Archive section

This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit here.

RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email to liz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me INTERNET TRAFFIC REPORT SOCIAL SECURITY CLOCK Which one has the Crisis ?! Plastic bags consumed this year: KNITTING BLOGS A Stitch in Time Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits FINISHED PROJECTS -------FINISHED IN 2006------- Peruvian Cap Tutti-Frutti Socks Shelley's Socks Carol's Socks -------FINISHED IN 2007------- Chain Link Socks Baby Surprise Jacket Valerie & Friend Baby Bonnet Rainbow Baby Socks Girls Pixie Hood Mitred Square Heart Red & White Socks Coffee Cup Pot Holder Nubbins Dishcloth Garterlac Dishcloth Suede Booties Kate's Socks Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap Half Thumbless Mittens Red Mittens for Akkol -------FINISHED IN 2008------- SELF-SUFFICIENCY and INDEPENDENT LIVING -- Blogs and websites -- Causubon's Book Food Storage Made Easy The Modern Homestead Notes from a Hillside Farm -- Mailing Lists -- 12vdc Power Living on the Land Rainwater Refrigeration Alternatives Old Ways of Living POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES The political sites have moved BOOKS I'M READING How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising ARCHIVES December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 BUTTONS Join | Previous | List | Next