Start with one backyard that has been baking under black plastic for 11 weeks.

Add 1 big truck that may or may not fit in your driveway after moving your own cars and your neighbors deciding they should move their cars too.

Add 1 cu yd of seed cover, still steaming!

Add 7 cu yd of soil/compost mix.

I said SEVEN.

Boggle at how you and one other person are going to move that huge frakkin’ pile o’ dirt onto your lawn. Get out the shovels. Discover just how bad it is to be so sedentary. Trade off shovelling with husband who is shovelling and dumping the wheelbarrow.

Enjoy the drink of the day, plenty of water with some cranberry juice to give it some flavor. Oh yeah, it’s only 9 am, and it’s 97F degrees in the shade. Drink more water.

Decide you can’t shovel anymore and start moving bags of bark mulch to their intended positions around the perimeter. Get bark mulch crumbs all over you, including in your bra! Stop working at noon, because you both are completely exhausted and it’s over 100F.

Get up at 7 am the next day and open up those bags of bark mulch. Finish the pile, which is even harder now because you burned all your muscles yesterday lifting shovels-full of heavy dirt. Stop at 10 am when the temp is in the high 90Fs.

Look at what you still have ahead of you, and decide to wait until the backyard is in shade before breaking down the wheelbarrow piles. Work until 10 pm, in the dark to keep the bugs from being attracted to the light. Spread out all the piles and try to make a flat lawn. Decide to be McGuyver and lay several cinder blocks on a tarp and drag them all around to compress the soil. Give up and collapse exhausted into bed and set the alarm for 6am, when Home Depot opens.

Arrive at 7 am at Home Depot to rent one of those thingies that you fill with water and roll over the soil to compact it. Attempt to install borders around the bark mulch edging, give up in frustration at the soil you started with which is like concrete. Spread fertilizer and seed. Cover with seed cover, using your expensive Tupperware Mix n’ Stor and 1 gal Pitcher to scoop out the steaming pile and shake it onto the ground. Get dizzy and stop sweating even though you feel like your face is on fire, while your husband continues to cover the seed and then rolls over it with the Home Depot thingy. Go inside and sit down and drink, drink, drink more water to see if you can get your body to sweat or pee or something. Forget to take pictures on the third day until it’s all over. Finally start sweating again, just as your husband is finishing up and is ready to collapse himself. Admire the hard work you have done, and hope that some grass will actually sprout instead of dying in the heat. Turn on the sprinkler.

We now have a collar, and some shoulder seams. Not much for a few weeks work, but I was ignoring it for a bit.
I’ve been super busy at work with lots of later than usual days, conference calls to Japan, and general silliness. Plus I’ve been accepted into a program at work to get a certification as a Business Analyst. I am an analyst already, but only by figuring things out myself. This program gives you methodologies to use in your analysis, hopefully getting everyone in the program using the same methods and getting us out of our usual “this is how to solve it” mode that we usually jump into. I’ve already used some of the skills I’ve learned in class back in the real world with a new project that was sprung upon my group. The course lasts for 6 months, so I hope to learn plenty during that time.
Back to the jacket… I expect to put the button bands on this week and then comes the search for buttons. Most of my LYS are supplied with gaudy plastic buttons or juvenile buttons. I like smaller, Celtic styled silver buttons, so will probably be on that search for a while. Maybe the girls at my stitch n’ bitch will have some suggestions. There is talk of a field trip to WildFiber in Santa Monica on Wednesday, but I can’t imagine driving all the way home and then heading back north to go to a sale. I may be able to be convinced though if anyone knows what kind of buttons they have at Wildfiber.

Japanese craft books are everywhere, including my house. I picked up a book a few months ago dedicated to sock and glove projects, and immediately stopped by Target to pick up some socks to make sock monkeys for my niece and nephew. This one is for my niece, Ava.
Here she is on her first birthday, back on June 3rd. She’s sitting with her Daddy opening presents. It was a terribly hot day, and she wasn’t feeling well, hence the teary looking eyes, but what a sweetheart! I think she like the monkey, and for Mommy and Daddy, I got Ava a CD called Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music – The Ultimate Sesame Street Music Collection. That way, there were songs that they could sing along with that they know from when they were kids, instead of all the Barney/Raffie/Wiggles stuff that kids get into today. She is already turning into a punk rocker anyway with her parent’s taste in music, but as soon as she starts understanding the lyrics, they’re going to be in trouble!
And I’ve finished the clogs except for the felting, so I can get back to putting the Knitting Bag Jacket together. After that I think I’ll show the progress I’ve made on the Barbara Walker Afgan in Den-M-Knit that I’ve been working on between projects. I’m not sure what to work on next! I’ve got some Debbie Bliss Wool Cottonin Navy to maybe make a classic tunic length cardigan. I’m thinking Rowan or Debbie Bliss style, with seed stitch borders and stockinette body. I dunno.
I have also been swatching a ball of Debbie Bliss Cathay in this great purple (#11) that I just love. It’s cotton/silk/microfiber and really yummy. It doesn’t have enough silk in it to have that stink of silk, and is I guess a DK weight. I have been turning around ideas in my head, but I may end up making something from Big Girl Knits with the yarn, once I buy some more. I just bought it because I had some free time while waiting to pick up my husband after work and had nothing to do, so I went and bought some yarn for swatching! I keep it in the car so I can try stuff out with it when I am stuck somewhere. Doesn’t everyone do that? Please explain that to my husband who is so helpful and cleans out my car periodically (we use my car for our weekly commute together) and doesn’t understand that I want to leave the ball of yarn in the car.

It’s Thursday night. Here she floats, soaking out all the spinning oils or whatever are in there that make the yarn so crunchy while you are knitting it and leave it so soft when you are done. Soaking in a mix of hot water and good ole Dr. Bronners in Lavender, to maybe keep the moths away, if they should find their way here.
I left her to soak overnight, and changed the water in the morning, pouring off the bluey soapy water and replacing with cold water this time, since I don’t want to end up with a bunch of felt when I am done! Came home after work and changed the water one more time, it’s starting to run clear finally, although with a bit of a blue tint still, which surprises me since neither the soap nor much of the wool is blue, but whatever!
After dinner, I pour off the water one more time, and place the pieces in a colander sitting over the dishpan to let the water drain off. Just before bed Friday night, I start spreading it all out to block. I end up needing three of my foam blocking boards to get everything spread out. I don’t have enough floor to leave the stuff blocking on the floor, so stick some extra pins in one of the foam boards and double deck.
I check on Saturday morning, and every thing’s still damp. Of course, it’s only been 8 hours, and the weather has turned quite humid in the past few days, not like it’s August or something. I pack up some stuff to work on and head out to a local park for World Wide Knit In Public Day, and meet a few of my Long Beach SnB buddies for a few hours of picnic, knit and basking in the sun for some of us. I managed to only sunburn a small patch on one ear, and my back in the places around my armholes that I missed hitting with sunscreen. I got one of the promised slipper/clogs done for my huz, so he can have his own and not wear mine. I’ll try and knock out the other this Wednesday at our regular Stitch n’ Bitch.
Now it’s Sunday, and every thing’s dry except the stuff that was on the bottom of the double decker. I’ve flipped them so the damp one is on top and wait so I can join the fronts to the back and pickup for the button bands. Perhaps I’ll start the finishing Monday night. My huz has asked me to hem three pairs of pants for him, and I said yes. Two will be easy, but the third? They are cuffed, so I will have to do the “cut off the cuff and reattach it” thing, which I have needed to do for a while with 2 pair of my own slacks, but have been curiously avoiding. I told him same, and he volunteered his pants for the trial, since he isn’t able to wear them as is, so he won’t be missing anything if I royally fuck them up. So, I guess I’ll try it. If I can find a free bobbin for the black thread on the sewing machine… I think I’ll stick with the hand sewing easy shortening.

Oooh, I am hearing a good oldie – No Promises from Icehouse. Not on iTunes, darn. I hate that I have all this great vinyl in my office, and no turntable, or way to get it onto my iPod. So much stuff that was never even released on CD and probably never will be. I wonder if I have the song on a compilation CD somewhere? Thank goodness for XM on DirecTV, I can at least hear some of my faves from the past. I especially enjoy Fred and Lucy channels. Oooh, now it’s This Corrosion from the Sisters of Mercy. One I like, but not enough to buy it. Wanna see my current CD collection? See those holes? There’s stuff that belongs in those holes, except for the ones on the far right. They are in a pile, ready to be loaded onto my iPod. I’m am starting to get selective on the syncing now, since not everything will fit. I’ve discovered that not everyone has as much of an attachment to music as I do. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s so closely tied to my memories, I know exactly what I was doing when I heard a song for the first time, or when I listened to it a lot, in the case of songs that I bought.
Smells do that too. Last night, as the huz was rubbing some lotion into my sunburn, I was totally brought back to 1998, when we were dating. He had bought me some lotion from the L’Occitane store in San Diego. Being a dorky tourist, I bought more when we were in Paris because I loved it. Of course, when we got home, I looked online and found out there are about a dozen L’Occitane stores in Southern California. Since I don’t go to the mall, I never thought about it. At least when this batch runs out, I’ll have an easier way to replace it.
Now I’m hearing Under the Milky Way by the Church. That’s the first summer I visited San Diego while I was a freshman in college. No car, summer job at Target, laundromat laundry, burritos from Fins, 1989. Oh, and it’s Shrimp
Sunday, I could totally go for a La Jolla, or a Del Mar, I wonder if they still do that?
OK, that was quite a topic drift, and now I’ve got those pants to hem.

So, I finished the fronts and really like the way they came out. I really got the hang of the intarsia/weaving as you go technique by the top of the back piece, so the fronts came out well. I even have some yarn left if, after washing and blocking the back, I decide to frog and re-do. Here are the fronts, pinned but not washed or blocked yet. I love how subtle the green and brown are.
By the end of last week, I had finished the first sleeve, and my husband and I went to Hearst Castle for my birthday, which happened to fall on a national holiday this year, which is always cool. It was interesting… I can’t say that I liked it or hated it.. it was just interesting. I like things a little more plain, I guess. The land was beautiful, but I was bummed that I didn’t get to see any zebras by the freeway.
So, in the car I knitted like crazy and got most of the second sleeve done. I even took it on the bus up the hill in San Simeon, since what else was there to do on a bus? But, about an hour from home, I ran out of yarn!
What you see here is my swatch! I started to unravel it when I got home so I could keep going, until I ran out of the green too. I knew I would need to use my swatch since I knitted the whole ball of yarn to make it, but I didn’t think I’d use the whole thing!
Two Swans to the rescue! On Sunday, I sent an email to Two Swans saying Help! She got back to me on Tuesday to let me know she still had a ball of each color in my dye lots and dropped them in the mail that day. They arrived yesterday, and now I am thinking I will frog out the last few rows of brown and join in the new ball instead, since the swatch has been washed already and I don’t want to change my gauge.
So now I am watching the end of Jesus Christ Superstar, about the only musical I like besides Tommy and West Side Story. I laughed so hard at the overture, as everyone is piling off the bus. Barry Dennen wraps his purple velvet around himself and turns around to face the camera and has on these ridiculous glasses, which are totally back in style today! His were sort of chrome colored, but now all the young chicks at work are wearing them in black. I am sure I’ll see them on at least one sister this weekend.
It’s pretty cool with the HDTV… when you watch a standard def picture, you get the black border around the image, with plenty of room to turn on the captioning and have the lyrics across the bottom of the screen so you can sing along! Not that I need them, I know the whole thing end to end, except for the two songs that were in the movie but not on the Brown version. …Don’t you get me wrong, Don’t you get me wrong, now, Don’t you get me wrong, Don’t you get me wrong, now…I only wanna know, only wanna know…
I’ll be in San Diego this weekend, to celebrate my niece’s first birthday (Happy Birthday, Ava!) and her Daddy’s graduation from college. He’s been working on it for so long, taking one or two classes a semester and working full time. We are really proud of him!!

I’ve been working on the Knitting Bag Jacket for a couple of weeks and am really enjoying working on it so far. Not that there haven’t been problems… I started out with a photocopy of the pattern shoved in my knitting basket and had trouble with the private side of my corrugated ribbing because I wasn’t following all of the directions.
So, I ripped back a few rows and made it look the way I thought it should look, and went along. Later, I realized what went wrong. I had read the pattern directions, but began following the pattern stitch directions instead, and missed the instruction on how to begin and end each row. Duh!
Continuing along, I started on the color blocks. I didn’t like the first set of color blocks, but I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong and so kept going. I did the second and subsequent blocks differently than the first row, but still it wasn’t right. It looked better, and looked nice, but it didn’t look right. This went on for the next few days until I finally decided to dig the book out and see what Ms. Melville recommends for these straight-sided intarsia blocks.
I was starting with a wrapped stitch when I should have been starting with an unwrapped stitch, and since the blocks are 6 stitches wide, ending with a wrapped stitch. When I worked out the wrong thing I was doing, I was actually alternately wrapping and not wrapping the stitches, but somehow it wasn’t working out that way. Here, let me explain.

I thought I was doing this, which is the goal,
|X|X|X
X|X|X|
|X|X|X
X|X|X|
|X|X|X
X|X|X|

but what I was actually doing was this.
|X|X|X
|X|X|X
|X|X|X
|X|X|X
|X|X|X
|X|X|X
I still don’t understand how what I was doing produced the wrong fabric, but now that I know what to do, it’s looking a bit wiggly on the front, but not looking “ribbed” at all.
So here’s the dilema. I’ve already trimmed the ends of the woven in bits for most of the back of the sweater. Do I rip out the whole thing and start over, being extremely stingy when I start the blocks so I don’t end up short of yarn? It’s shetland wool, something I haven’t used before, so I can’t predict what will happen when I wash n’ block the sweater. What I really would like to do is soak it, maybe overnight or at least for a few hours to try and get the bloom to come out, then block it to see if the ribby-ness is noticable or not. If it’s not, I’m done. If it is, then I have to rip and redo the back, and hope I have enough yarn left between what’s left in the balls and what’s left in the blocks. EEEK.
One fun tip though… She gives the length of yarn to cut for each intarsia block. So I knit the first row and realized she was being a bit generous with her estimates and so backed off an inch or two when cutting my lengths. But as I was knitting the back, I was stopping before each color block change and cutting the lengths for that row.
When I finished the back, I decided to figure out a better way to cut the yarns and make sure I dont’ end up short of one color or the other.
First, I weighed the balls of yarn to see how I was doing. Most colors were within a half-gram of each other except for orange, which I had more of than any of the other colors, but I still had more than half a ball left of each color, so I knew I probably wouldn’t run out. (Since I am knitting the largest size, I was worried that she didn’t really know that it would be enough.)
Next, I made up a map of the colors as I used them on the back, because the pattern doesn’t tell you what colors to use beyond the first pattern repeat. This way, I knew what to do on my fronts to make the blocks wrap around the sweater.
Next, I cut the lengths that I needed for the left front side. That way, if I make a mistake before I get to the end of the right side front, I have room to correct it.
Finally, I found a use for those silly size 17 needles I received at the Knit-Out. I don’t use needles that big, and was thinking they might make nice knitting bag handles or something, but I can’t imagine knitting with them! So, I knotted the yarn around the needles, short lengths on one needle, and longer lengths on the other Nifty, eh?
So, as I finish up the left front, I can just pull the colors I need for the next row without having to make such a project out of it.
If you are like me and have a big honking set of needles you won’t use, maybe you will!?
Here’s the completed but unblocked back.

So, what’s next? Well, when I was at Stitches, I got to see Sally Melville’s Knitting Bag Jacket in person, and really liked it. It’s amazing how the styling of a garment in the book can influence the perception of the garment. It’s on the cover of her book with some 80’s reject with an orange and yellow neon belt and airbrushed stomach. Ugh! At least inside the book it’s styled a little better. But in person I could see the depth of color and the yarn. Oh my.
So after I finished Kyoto, I asked on one of my knitting listservs for recommendations of vendors who might have the sweater kitted up. I got one response and made my way over to Two Swans Yarn where I ordered the kit. While I was there I took a look around, and thought I had really found my home. My taste in knitwear is for wool and fair isle and Arans and Ganseys although I haven’t knit any yet. One of the reasons I haven’t knit any yet is because it is really hard to find anything beyond the basic wools here in SoCal. Everyone’s got Cascade 220 or Plymouth Galway (more likely to have Encore than Galway) but nothing of a smaller gauge. And I really like to feel the yarn before I knit it. This is why I was able to buy the kit online, I was able to touch the sweater at Stitches West, so I knew what I was going with.
So, I made my purchase, and tagged my order with a note that I was sent by someone on the mailing list. I got the usual automated reply that my order was being processed, followed shortly by note from the owner asking about the mailing list. We struck up quite an email conversation about traditional knitting, and it turns out she is also knitting the sweater. I had actually happened upon her blog while I was searching before I posted the query for vendors.
A lot of people like to bitch about crap on their blogs, so I thought I would put out a good word for a great vendor. I ordered the yarn on Tuesday afternoon, she emailed to let me know it shipped on Wednesday morning, and I had it by Friday. She included a personal note in the box too, which was a nice touch.
And ooooh, I love the yarn! I had ordered a couple-three balls of J&S and Jamieson’s Shetland weight a year or so ago just to see what they were like. I picked random colors from some catalog. I played with it a bit but because of my method of color selection, I was underwhelmed.
This yarn is Jamieson’s DK and it’s wonderfully spongy and the depth of color is amazing and I am loving knitting my swatch so far. I can’t wait to get going on the sweater. I also ordered the color card so I can make a better decision when I want to play in the future.
If you are looking for a place to buy traditional yarns, please check out Two Swans Yarn and let them know I sent you. You might make a new friend!