Spa 2009 - OK, I spoke too soon.

So how do you like my Amanda hat? Nice, huh? Almost done, looking good, right?

But now what do you think of it?

Apparently, I had a little too much Johnny Walker last night. And in the cold, bright, unfeeling and downright cruel light of day, I saw the results.

Before you scream - YOU JUST WANTED TO FROG SOMETHING - ADMIT IT!!!

I really did try to save it. The damage was just too extensive. Apparently, JWB allows me to knit really quickly, but really stupidly.

Done and Done. What's Next.

Finshed the scarfy thingie for Cris. Can't prove it, because I forgot to get a picture of him in it. Asked him for one, won't hold my breath....

He said the colors were great, but he wanted the hairy things on the ends. Translation (Brazil-Man to plain English) is that he wants tassels.

He ain't getting tassels. Tassels are not for manly men. Suck it up, Cris!

It's Almost Done, I Promise!

Dear Cris,












You know that scarf I promised you for Christmas, and how I teased you with a two-foot-long piece of it? I know you are getting on in years, so the sense of urgency is not lost on me. This scarf has come with me

• to work
• to knitting group
• to wait for Chinese food takeout
• in traffic
• to Christmas dinner with the in-laws (which is why it might smell a little like prime rib - not a bad thing...)

and it is almost done. I am well into the last of four skeins (of Noro Silk Garden, for the knittahs reading this). It has been satisfying to watch the colors change from one to the next, and to see this scarf get longer and longer. But yeah, it's been long enough.

It's almost yours - I promise!

I Was Gina's First!!!

Miss Gina started a new job at Yarn and Fiber, and a bunch of us (Donna, Heather, Jackie, and Sarah) joined her Friday night to keep her company.

Guess who was her VERY first customer!

Doesn't she look proud?

Here's some of what I picked out...the yarn and pattern are for a Christmas present for my favorite izzer...

• a pattern from Cherry Tree Hill - the Making Tracks shawl. Looks easy, maybe I can't screw it up. But then again, I frogged it completely three times before I understood the freaking directions. Sigh.


• a bar of Mow the Lawn!! soap from Down to Hearth Soaps - it smells so good - cleavage worthy!!!


• an Addi Turbo circular 10 / 32" needle for the shawl


• two skeins of Mountain Colors Mountain Goat Alpine, 55% Mohair and 45% Wool. Really nice to work with.


• a bag of pink needle protectors

Gina's worried (and rightfully so) about how much of her paycheck she will actually bring home. After last night, I am more worried about mine! Being able to wander the store every Friday night is going to test my willpower. Damn!

It was such a nice evening. Sometimes knitting at Barnes can be tough - the group grows to as many as 20 people, you can barely hear yourself think. But Y&F is comfy, quiet, the walls are soundproofed with yarn. What more could you want?

FO Two

Finished Jess' Cheetos Sweater from that Hotplace, made with Knit Picks Shine cotton in apricot.

Can you see see her in it? Nope - cuz her mother hasn't sent the Merry Thankmas pics to post.
HINT, HINT.

FO One - UPDATED, FINALLY!!!

April 10, 2007: And finally, here is a picture. Worth the wait, huh? Isn't she a righteous babe?

Finished Lisa's wristers, made with soft baby alpaca in a maroon to match her scrubs.
Can you see them? Nope - cuz she hasn't sent me a picture of her in them to post. I didn't have my camera when I gave them to her.
HINT, HINT.

Ah, SPA!!!

Better late than never, I 'spose. Went to NETA Spa in Portland Maine a few weeks ago, and had a great time. Took Lisa, of course - whenever there is an excuse to get the heck away for awhile, we are so there. Spa weekend doesn't even start until Friday afternoon, but we went up on Thursday just to have more time to relax.

Lisa is standing next to a fantastic mermaid in progress, by Lida Diak at Grafton Fibers. What cracks me up is the mermaid doll the big one is holding. (No, I will NOT pick up another fiber skill. No, I will NOT pick up another fiber skill. No, I will not pick up another fiber skill. But felting is pretty cool. So maybe someday...)

Thursday, Feb. 15th: Got to the Doubletree in Portland after a very easy drive up there (and an excellent lunch at the Galley Hatch in Hampton - EXCELLENT onion rings!!) around 6:00, and stopped at the Shaw's down the street for a few munchies, water, and other stuff we forgot. Would you believe the lobby was full of spinners and knitters already?

Friday, Feb. 16th: Grabbed lunch at Amato's - will definitely go back there again. Great Italian takeout and the owner was a big flirty teddy bear - just my type, if I wasn't married...

Lisa and I did a shift as Greeter Gnomes at the welcome table, got to chat with Tommi Hall for awhile. She's very cool - even took the time to teach someone how to knit on Thursday night. How do I know that? Her pupil got in our elevator, and headed to Tommi's room right across the hall from us.

It killed me, just about, to watch everyone file into the Vendor room at 5:00, when our shift wasn't over until 6:00. The good stuff was going to be all gone!!! Little did I know, there was way more good stuff than could be bought in an hour by hundreds of fiber-ers with itchy credit cards. I liked that most of the fiber for sale was home-grown, home-dyed, and / or home spun. There were products there you would never see in the typical yearn store. And OMG - the spinning wheels were beautiful. I am sticking to my promise never to take up spinning, but it's tough. Maybe a drop spindle some day....


Saturday, Feb. 17th: Was today the day of Lisa's first knitting joke? Or was it Friday - I forget. But we were checking out the vendors, and we found one with about a dozen beautiful fish hanging from her kiosk. She had knitted them, felted them, and stuffed them. So she actually asked - are those (wait for it...) GE-FELTED fish? Bwahahahahahahaha. No really, it was funny at the time.

Also met a very nice lady who was weaving on a jackloom as she ran her kiosk full of yarn, books, weaving tools. Since I am still working up the courage to take my Kromski Loom out of the box, I asked her if she had a book for total weaving idiots, and she made several suggestions. Picked up some books, some Interwoven magazines, checked out her Opal yarn but managed to resist.

Sunday, Feb. 18th: It was hard to check out. Didn't do a whole lot of e xciting things, only hooked up briefly with other knitters, and barely saw the ManchVegas crew, but it was relaxing, and very liberating to do whatever we wanted, when we wanted to. No hubbies, no pets, no kids, no chores. No dishes. Beds made for us. What's not to like?

The Doubletree did a fantastic job for us. I have never slept in a more comfortable bed, with more pillows than one human needed. The restaurant served most meals buffet style, and the food could have been a bit better, but it was fine for the price. Lisa would have been happy with their bean medley for all three meals. Odd girl. Where's the chocolate? Well, it was in our room, that's for damn sure.

Lisa found some super-soft chunky yarn to start another project on. Or maybe to stuff in her bra, right, Gina?

Guess what I FINISHED!!!!! (Merry Thankmas Spoiler, Jess!!)

Yes, I have SPA pics and want to talk about this past fantastic weekend, but FIRST. I finally finished that SMUCKING Cheetos sweater from H - E - double hockey sticks. I think it's gorgeous - soft, slightly shimmery, OK - maybe not perfect, but I think it will fit her. Took the bag o'parts with me to SPA, and told myself I wasn't coming home till it was done. After all, Jess is finally getting her arse home next week, and I promised her she would have her Bolero when she got back.



Since Jess missed so many holidays while in Brazil, we are going to get together soon to catch up - calling the day Thankmas. Cuz HallothankmasNewSuperBowlPrezzyMLK Day was just too long. And who makes greeting cards for that.


So Jess, if you are reading this, pretend you didn't when you unwrap it. Pretend you love it, even if it is a bit lumpy in places. Pretend you will never take it off, even if my finishing skills are less than speck-takkaler.

Cause with every dropped stitch, every frog session, every curse I threw at it, every ARM HOLE I SEWED UP WITHOUT THE SLEEVE IN IT, it still came out kinda cool.

Didn't it? Can't wait to see how the color looks against Jess' tanned just-back-from-Carnival skin. Should be GO-JUSS.

Is it Long Enough Yet?

Here's my willie warmer, still plugging away at it but you can see that I will have to make some decisions soon on the pattern. The 3x3 ribbing is going quickly, and so far, it's about 6 inches long. Ahem - most men would say I have a long way to go. I figure I will make it a little longer than is probably needed, and he can always cuff it if he needs to. Heck - I don't even know the
guy!

Grand View. Whew. Still Recuperating.

Wow. What a weekend. From Friday night to Sunday noon, 12 absolutely insane women knit, drink, munch, gab, sing, crack jokes, and occasionally sleep. Where? The Grand View Country Store in Randolph, NH is a yarn store for yarn stash-aholics.

Everywhere you turn, there is yarn. It's enough to convert anyone from a "I'm just coming with you to scrap" type chick into a "OK, this scarf is almost done, what do I do for a second project?" chick.

Case in point.

Is it Hot in Here?

Yes, here it is, my long-intended post about the famous Cheetos sweater from Hell. This has been on the needles for over a year now - luckily the recipient is done growing, I think / hope. So this blog entry is for you, dear Jess. Read on, lucky readers, and learn the story of the shrug.

This is Jess daSilva, by the way - she just graduated from RISD, and was a phenom on the Providence Roller Derby circuit. When she comes back from Brazil next spring, she will go back to the team. Her game name is daSilva Bullet. Freakin beautiful, or WHAT???

I picked what looked like a simple pattern from the KnitPicks catalog, the Bolero shrug, to make for her. I figured - hey - I have been knitting for a WHOLE YEAR - of COURSE I can make the leap to a sweater. And she's small, so it would go quick - right? What I didn't remember is that I hadn't produced much more than partially finished hats and a few scarves. It sucks to work full time plus and try to learn a skill that, for me anyways, takes some concentration and patience. I am not spatially adept - can't just look at a pattern and see what the results will be. And learning new stitches? HA! At LEAST three demos from increasingly impatient expert knitting buddies.

But I digress. So I sent Jess an email with the KnitPicks Shine yarn URL, which they recommended to make the shrug with, and asked her to pick a color. She chose, of all things, the Apricot. What a surprise - this girl has gorgeous coloring that would go with vomit-color. But Apricot? What about that beautiful Cherry? But whatever she wants....! I'll tell you though, the color gives me hot flashes whenever I work with it. Apricot schmapricot - it's the color of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, or Cheetos.

The knitting went along very well - I learned new skills, like increases and decreases, that I hadn't used before. I could see it taking shape, and the yarn, color aside, is sooooo soft. Try Shine sport weight. It is 60% Pima Cotton, 40% Modal - I don't have a clue what that is. But the yarn is so easy to work with.

And then the leaf edgings, the final pieces. The right side came along, after about a dozen trips to the frog pond until I understood the pattern. But the left edging stumped me. No matter how many times I read the pattern, it seemed like what should be a 10 stitch row decreased to a 9 stitch row after the first row - definitely not the same as the right edge. Well, after sending emails to KnitPicks and then learning the very weird and uncomfortable purlwise yarnover as first stitch, voila. The edging is finally done.

So now I get to assemble. Did I say yet that the mattress stitch is boring and frustrating? Not liking it. And I may have to rip a whole side seam out and start over because the pieces aren't lining up. But this think is almost done - I can smell success.

Jess emailed me a week or so ago and hinted that she would be pleased to receive the finished shrug while she is still in Brazil. She added that the girls down there often wear shrugs like that with nothing underneath them. Yeah, right - like that will make me run to the post office! I've known the kid since she was 5! She'll get the sweater when she comes home in March!!!

(Project pictures are coming - bear with me!!)

Booga-Mania 2006

Hey - I just realized we are in a month that ends with an R. You know what that means? It means that Christmas is coming. You know what that means? It means I promise myself that I will try to make as many awesome gifts as possible for the people in my life - and then fail to achieve anything close to that. Two years ago I promised my self I would knit cute little wrist warmers for all the folks I supervised at work - because it can get mighty cold in the winter in our office. They are still waiting. If I wait long enough, maybe turnover will take care of the issue. Sigh.

I promised last year to make Booga Bags. I mean, how easy can it get? Hell, I can knit in the round in traffic, and make i-cord in my sleep. So how many did I make? One - and didn't even felt it. It's the multi-colored one above, in Kureyon Karaoke .

So today was a mizzable rainy day, and time to make my empty, futile promises. But due to the weather and my husband's rare lack of interest in annoying the shit out of me all day (he even took a nap), I even got some work done. I finished one Booga, minus the i-cord, and started a second.

This one is ready to felt. The bottom is a bulky cranberry - the remains of the yarn I used to make the scarf for my husband that is displayed in a previous blog. The white and green are Cascade 220. I'm hoping the thicker cranberry will make a sturdy base for the bag.

The thing I like most about the Booga Bag idea is that after you make one, you really don't even need the pattern. You can improvise to make smaller, or larger bags, and try different strandings and patterns as you knit in the round - which goes anywhere. It's brainless, and so unless I am chewing gum, I have a fighting chance of not screwing it up. No real need to check gauge, no real need to even measure. I figger what ever size comes out of the washing machine will be just fine.


This is the beginning of bag number two. I crocheted (I hear GASPs from the knitting snobs, but bear with me...) the bottom to have a round base - the rectangles are getting boring. This is Lopi evergreen, which I picked up in a quickie visit to Patternworks yesterday with my sister-in-law, the lovely Anita.

She had never been there - it was fun to see her have a little yarn-stiffy as she wandered around the store. But she didn't buy anything. How sick is that? I had to raid the sales bins, and still in a Booga frame of mind, had to pick up some Lopi. Yes, I have Karaoke at home. And butt loads of Cascade. So what.

Anyway, this bag is now in its knit phase.

I am alternating with Lopi gray green, first in a stripe, and now have moved on to a 5 stitch checker pattern. Somehow I managed to come out exactly even on the repeats, without even counting the stitches first. That will NEVER happen again. I don't deserve such serendipity twice.

So, back to Booga. Next posting will be all about the Cheetos sweater from hell.