So, tomorrow is St. Valentine’s day, and I am in love… with a sweater. I first saw it a few weeks ago, and have been thinking about it off and on since then, and the worst part is, it’s one of hers, so I may never see an actual pattern. Sigh.
Oh, it’s called Sanddollar. And I am not a girly-girl, so how I fell in love with a pink sweater is a mystery to me. It’s from the Pacific Coast Highway book. None of the libraries around here have it. I checked. Ah well. Here’s a link if you haven’t seen it.

I braved the crazy SoCal rain last night to go to the Anaheim Public Library. I had seen on their on-line catalog that they have both POK and She who must not be named’s fair isle book.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty huge selection of knitting books, and even more amazed to find that they were all organized by both their Dewey numbers, but also alphabetically after the numbers. I am not used to this, my local library is very good at getting books near the correct shelf, but never so neatly organized. It must be the German influence in the city, that they keep things so neat.
So, since I was there, and I had just opened an account and was limited to 5 books, I had to choose carefully. I already knew I wanted those 2 books, but there were tons more that I had heard chatter about on some of the lists I am on, and wanted to check them out. There were several Kaffe Fasset books, so I picked those up, and some Cheryl Oberle, and I picked those up too.
Browsing through the Fasset books, I was wholly unimpressed. The color patterns were nice, but the actual garments were crap, I think. Since I didn’t read the books, and only looked at them, I hope the point of the books was inspiration rather than blind pattern-following. Those long sweater coats were awful! They could have been so improved by just removing the ribbing from the bottom, I think. Anyway, his books did inspire me to think about making a sweater inspired by the photo I took this summer of the Bachelor Buttons planted outside my grandparents house.
I ended up only with POK and AS Fair Isle to take home, simply because I wanted to focus on one thing. (Remember, trying to pay attention.) I spent a bit of time looking through the Fair Isle book, and I can see what the fuss is about. Again, more inspiration in this book than patterns, I think. This got me thinking I could make a fair isle using the same photo as inspiration. (I will post the photo later. ) I may head out to the LYS and pick up some skeins of DK or smaller wools and make a swatch just to see if I can. (I don’t know of any reason why not, I just haven’t tried it yet.)
I didn’t look at POK much yet, just the first few sections, but I can see why someone would want this reference. It appears to be well written and organized, and very comprehensive. Not sure it’s $600 worth of info though… but I have 3 weeks to find out!

OK, does anyone else think this is Dubya’s only plan for stimulating the economy?

I caught them just in time, they only just fit! I think if I do them again, I will do a few more stitches around. I made them with a pointy toe top, with stranded stiches across the instep, which I then snipped after fulling. I think they look kinda Grinchy. Soon enough, they will end up Oscar-y, which is ok with me!

So I made a swatch and then another, and now I have felted this on gauge swatch but with the Galway I had to use size 13 to get gauge, so it’s more like a lace swatch that’s fuzzy than a piece of felt.
Time to go shopping, and get the yarn actually called for in the recipe. Perhaps on the way home from work today. I tried last night but, this being southern California, and, it being Thursday, I really didn’t have a chance.
Does Thursday suck everywhere, or just California? I didn’t have much of a commute in NH, and I didn’t have a car in Boston, so it didn’t bother me as much if it took a little longer to get somewhere, I had a book or The Globe to read while I waited.

I decided to do the FFFA after all, so I have to get crackin! No new episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so what’s a girl to do on a Tuesday night anyway? I have some blue bulky Lamb’s Pride (as shown in the swatch of a few days ago) and that top color of Galway worsted, I think I’ll use those! But, ARGH I am using my 10.5 circular needle for the bag I am making.
Ok, between the time I typed that and took the picture, I committed to making the FF.
Here you can see that I decided to slip it onto some of the other yarn that will be in it. It’s kinda looking like a toilet seat cover at the moment. I did 60 stitches by 60 rows, then picked up 30 stitches on each site and started going round. I figure, if it comes out huge or sucks, I can just cut it up with scissors and fire up the sewing machine and make it look like a bag!

Have you seen this? We Like The Moon
I made up my swatch last night for a bunch of stuff I want to full. I can’t decide if I am going to do the or not… I mean, it was at least 85F here today, and I usually go barefoot. My husband wants some slippers though, so I bought some black wool for that. I am planning to make a bag of some kind with the wool I bought for myself, but haven’t decided on proportions yet. It turns out that the Lamb’s Pride Victorian Pink doesn’t full as well as the other darker colors, but it did get a bit of the fuzz on.
Before: After:
I am going to try and figure out a pattern for a bag.

I feel like I am 17 again. There was an exchange student from Spain visiting our small NH town that year, and he was known for being a bit of a prankster. So when Bernardo came to our classroom door and said “The Space Shuttle exploded!” we all laughed him off, even the teacher, who knew Christa McAuliffe from those statewide conferences that were held once in a while. Mr. Roy said, “Wait a minute” and left the classroom, apparently to find a TV. When he returned, he had tears in his eyes and told us that it was true. It was the first time I had ever seen a man cry, and it really made the news more real to see such emotion from a teacher. They are usually pretty unemotional in the classroom, just to keep things in control, but he lost control there for a minute.
I was working on my blog this morning, changing the templates and things when my husband brought up cnn.com and told me what he read. My first reaction was to laugh, because he is also quite a joker. I wen’t to google news to see what happened, and the Washington Post story was 5 hours old and didn’t mention anything. The most current link was from a newspaper in Pakistan. I guess because of the Israeli on board.
You wouldn’t know if from my blog, but I am a big fan of NASA, I dream of going to Mars. Well, maybe not me, but perhaps my kids or grandkids could be part of the first colonies. I hope that the kids I hope to have will be as interested in space exploration so I can make lots of trips to the Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park, or the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
I am so sad today. I hate explosions.

Not that anyone would notice, but while I waited for those batteries to charge, I got busy putting together a new domain and blog using movable type! Now I need to work on the stylesheet so I don’t look like everyone else on the planet.

I hope there is a knitting meetup this month. Orange County seems a bit lame on the ‘getting together’ thing… Every time I inquire about some kind of get together, everyone begs off. And I know it’s not me, because even the first meeting gets blown off, so it can’t be my fault! I could understand it if someone actually met me and then didn’t want to come back, but hey!
I really want to meet some actual other real live knitters, so I can see if there is a better way to purl. I think I knit ECU, that’s with the yarn in the left hand, but not twisting stitches, right? Anyway, that’s what I do, and I end up with the yarn around my thumb when I purl and it gets tiring, unless I am purling a whole row or round, then I put the yarn around my neck like the Greek way and use whatever finger feels like moving to complete the stitches.
The only other knitter I know learned the same day as me so we both kinda don’t know exactly what we are doing, other than producing some nifty stuff.