January 2007 Archives

Once again, I got a great secret pal. In fact, did this woman get my color sense or what?

Yummy grapefruit scented body stuff and the jewel-tones of the yarn are just perfect. Under it all is a magnetic board for making your way through complicated patterns, like lace or cables where you have to work line-by-line. I already have one of these from KnitPicks, but you know what this means don't you? That's right! Now I can work on two complicated patterns at the same time! One at home by my chair, and one in my bag for Stitch n' Bitch. I'm so excited, I might find something lacy to knit up the yarn from my last SP package.

And look at these colors! I love, love, love it. My LYS has this yarn, but not this colorway. I have looked at some of the other colors and keep putting it back because it's not quite right but this one is so perfect. I think I want to make something that I can look at all the time, like wrist warmers or fingerless gloves or gauntlets or something. The colors will brighten up my day, which is what I really need right now with the crazy work life!

So, I hope she doesn't mind that I introduce her to you... My secret pal was Jenna. Which is hilarious because now that I finally know, I went to check out her blog. Her "about" block says

South Park Republican - n. [south pahrk ri-puhb-li-kuhn] One who hates conservatives but really %^&#$! liberals. And loves knitting. And puppies. And kittens.

Could that be any less like me? How wonderful is that! This just goes to show that knitters should be working on the world peace thing. Throw the politicians out. We knitters can figure out a way to work together instead of dividing ourselves up. I think my SP coordinator was having a little fun there!

And as far as my gift-ee goes, I have a box in the car all taped up and ready to go, and just realized that I didn't enclose anything inside as far as a letter or reveal. What a maroon! I'll send her an email later this week with the reveal and a smack on my forehead.

I just am popping in a sec to ack my Secret Pal who has sent me 2 packages in the past couple of weeks. I don't have it with me to reveal to you who she is, but I promise to post an update this weekend. I didn't want to let any time go by without saying THANKS!

Work is crazy and I hardly have time to think, never mind knit or take pictures. Go-live on the project has even been pushed back a week, but do you thing that stops the enhancement requests and user expectations for launch? Sigh.

more... later... promise!

There was a rumor a few years ago that James Cameron (of Titanic and other film fame) was going to bring my favorite book to the big screen. Then the small screen. In fact, I actually saw a trailer for Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars on the Sci Fi channel during the first broadcast of Battlestar Galactica miniseries. I've been watching for it forever, put a keyword on my Tivo, and have been so disappointed. I guess it's never going to happen.

Today, I saw this: Clooney, Others Develop SCI FI Shows, which contained this nugget:

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson's best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.

This is such a good book, I was just considering buying the Audiobook so I could enjoy it again, but decided 40 bucks was a little steep. And now it's going to be a miniseries on Sci Fi? Way cool. Clooney just seems like a cool guy the more I learn about him. Clearly he has good taste in fiction, eh?

If you haven't read the book, it's a story of a small girl who is presented with a book by her father. It's interactive and teaches her things and adapts and leads her through puzzles and lessons that will help her survive in the real world by presenting it in an alternate world. As she grows, it challenges her more and more and there's a lot of other bad real world stuff going on that she is able to deal with because of her interaction with the book. It's been 10 years since I read it, so I was thinking it was time to refresh my memory, but maybe now I'll wait for the movie. Or see if I can find it on that new Netflix-like Audiobooks service that I've heard about. Guess it's off to Google to see if I can find it.

So I know you've all been waiting to hear about my soaked-but-not-blocked swatch results, right?

Work life has been crazy. So crazy that I have to confess something. You see my blogroll over there? Well, it sorts the unread entries to the top of the list, which means that the blog at the top is the one I am most behind on reading. I think I have about a dozen Yarn Harlots unread by now. I'm too busy to do my daily blog cruise, never mind post anything myself. When I get home at the end of the day, I don't even want to look at my computer. Until today, I hadn't even updated my iPod for two weeks, in fact I was also behind on podcasts.

Well, the good news is that the gauge is fine.

I think you can see the red line falling right where it needs to, perfectly framing the lace stitches and making me feel confident that the gauge is right on.

I am hopeful that I didn't misunderstand the directions, or this will be one giant sweater when I'm done!

With that lingering doubt, I started on the sleeve. It does seem a little wide, but I know it's supposed to bell out and be all flouncy, so it should be fine. If it's not, I'll do the second sleeve differently and see which I like better before moving on to the body.

Can you see the difference between the unwashed and washed wool? It's pretty wild how it goes from string to a really nice fabric.

I got stuck on the sleeve though, because I've been distracted by these:

These are some tiny socks (2 on 2 circ method, for those counting at home) for my nephew Wyatt, who's mom mentioned that she couldn't find any non-girly warm socks. I offered to make some, and this is the first pair. The next will be made from the leftovers from his Christmas present.

Pattern: My own, modelled after photos of Ernie
Yarn: KnitPicks Swish Superwash wool
Needles: KnitPicks 4.0mm

Here are the final shots of those Christmas presents, above is the Ernie sweater, for Wyatt, who's mom said "Did you remember that Ernie was my favorite?" Did I remember?? So I'll make him some socks he can wear with his new winter boots he got from his Yia Yia (I think) so he can play in the snow and rain of his home state of Washington.

Pattern: Adapted from Debbie Bliss's Baby Bolero
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (wool/cotton blend)
Needles: KnitPicks 4.0mm

And this is the Baby Bolero, for my niece Ava. Her eyes are an amazing shade of blue, so this should look lovely on her. I think my next distraction will be something nice for her, because she is such a cutie, who could resist?

I hope to get some pictures of the kids wearing their new duds in the new year. Both patterns were made a little large so they could grow into them.

It's a beautiful day outside. Probably high 60's, low 70's. Last night, huz and I were driving around looking for a takeout place that was open, and were looking at the Christmas lights near our neighborhood. We heard that Colorado is getting another storm. Once again, we thanked each other for deciding to move back to SoCal after our short stay in Indianapolis. This is the story of our deciding moment.

It was New Year's Eve, 1998. We were in Philly to see Barenaked Ladies, and staying with a friend of huz who had a place in Philly and generously offered her spare room.
New Year's day, it was frakkin' cold, and we went to watch the Mummers parade, in person, not on TV like the rest of the city because it was freezing! The "home base" for the parade watching was a friend of huz's friend, a Japanese woman who had lots of interesting food, since I guess New Year's is a big deal in Japan. That was nice, I was introduced to a lot of new things that day.

That night, we went to huz's friend's boyfriend's house to watch some movies and have dinner. We hung out for quite a while and then it was time to go. We had been inside for quite a while, and I guess it had rained because we came outside to find that the car was encased in a sheet of ice. We chipped off enough ice with the car keys to unlock the door, but then had to break the ice holding the door sealed before we could get in.

We finally got the door open, but this was a rental and had nothing inside; no ice scraper, no windshield wiper fluid (either that, or it was frozen) so we had to run the engine to warm up the windows enough to melt the ice. The back window got nice and clear, but the windshield wipers were frozen solid so we couldn't use them to spread out the tiny circle of warmed up area on each side of the windshield. Finally we decided to just open the front windows and use them to see where we were going until the windshield was clear. This was an insane idea, because even looking at the road wrong made the car slide in the wrong direction from the way the tires were pointed, but eventually, we made it back to where we were staying.

We got inside and were finally able to relax for a few minutes (don't you get all tense driving in bad weather?) and then decided that we would hit the road early in the morning because otherwise we might miss our flight if the car needs to be defrosted again and everyone on the road, etc. We packed our bags and went to bed, then rose at 5 AM to have breakfast and get to the airport for our 10 AM flight.

We get outside, and the car is fine, in fact all the ice from the night before had melted in the 5 hours between leaving the boyfriend's house and getting up in the morning, which was really weird, but we were grateful anyway, and headed for the airport.

When we got there, around 6:30AM, there were already huge lines outside the terminals for all of the airlines. We got checked in and our flight was delayed several times, for several hours. Finally, around 6PM, we were put on a flight to Columbus that we could connect to a 9PM flight to Indianapolis, instead of direct from Philly, since that flight had by now been cancelled.

We arrive in Columbus, and they can't believe that someone in Philly told us we could connect to Indy, since Indy has been closed for three days and there were no flights in or out! Somehow, in our New Years time off the grid, we never saw the news or knew what was going on, and didn't know that Philly wasn't the only place hit by the storm, but Philly got the best of the weather system, apparently. Since I could hear that there were plenty of other passengers that were told the same lie, we got a hotel voucher and got the heck out of there and checked into the airport hotel. This is one of those hotels that doesn't even have shampoo, never mind room service, so we had dinner in the parking lot restaurant, maybe a Cracker Barrel or Steak n' Shake or something. Nice.

We got back to the airport as soon as it opened, and were told that we could maybe standby for a flight to Indy but we would probably not make it since there were so many others standing by. We decided to rent an SUV and drive the rest of the way back. On a good day, it's about a 3 hour drive. It took us over eight hours. A lot of the roads hadn't been plowed, so we were driving in the grooves left by big rigs, which were the only other cars on the road, for the most part. We got an Expedition, so we were pretty high off the road, but still the snow was hitting the undercarriage and sometimes taking a wheel or two off the road. I was freaking out, having had an accident myself when I was a teenager where I hydroplaned and totaled my car. It was not a pretty sight. Tempers were not only high, but off the chart.

Finally, we got to Indy, went to the airport to pick up our car and drop off the SUV. We get home and the parking lot of our apartment complex hasn't been plowed yet. We found out later that it had snowed so hard that plows were breaking down all over town. City plows, even, not just the neighbor guy with the pickup-type plows.

I decided that if I was going to get to work the next day (I had already missed a day because of the extra stay-over) that I would need to dig out my car. It was in the garage off to the side of the complex. I walked over and tried to open the garage door. Not gonna budge. I tried yanking on it, kicking it, and finally it let go of the ground and I was able to open it.

The snow was about up to my knees, and I didn't have a shovel (having just moved to Indy from San Diego a few months earlier) to clear the snow away, so I used what I had, which was the lid of my Rubbermaid laundry basket. It worked well for a bit, but finally I guess it got too cold and snapped in half. I was finally able to get my car out of the garage, so I closed it and went inside where I discovered that at some point during this adventure, I had smashed the emerald on my engagement ring and the pieces didn't end up in my glove, so I never saw them again.

It was right about then that we decided we wouldn't be spending another winter in a wintry place. We finally broke down and got some shovels but it hardly snowed again the rest of the winter. It's like the whole winter happened over New Years. We later found out that this was the winter when that plane was stuck out on the runway for the whole day and people were getting sick and they wouldn't let them off the plane.

For the rest of the winter, I had to fight with the damned garage door, and even after winter passed, some days I would come home and discover it open, because when I had closed it in the morning, it had made it almost to the bottom and then stuck and bounced back open again. So I had to manually close and open the garage after that, the rental property "couldn't" fix it and had no others to move me into.

By the time September rolled around, we were making plans to move back to Southern California, it didn't matter where. We finally ended up moving back one week less than a year to the day we had arrived, and not a moment too soon. I sold my shovels to an Indian guy who had just arrived and was working on the same project as I was. I was determined that I would never need them again.

We ended up in Orange County, which was nice enough, but not affordable for us, so 3 years later we bought a house in Long Beach, where it only snows when the truck comes once a year to make snow for the kiddies. I don't miss any of it and if I ever live someplace snowy again, it will be the kind of place where I can hunker down and never have to go out until it's all gone.

Happy New Year, and I hope that if you are in a snowy place, you are at least warm and comfortable, and have the right tools to get you out.