Here Comes October...

...and that means SOCKTOBERFEST! Who doesn't want to knit a nice cozy pair of socks as we head into autumn? To join, just start knittin'. There is a Flickr group here. for anyone who wants to post pictures of their socks, discuss others' projects, etc. "We're Not Wooorthy" bows must go to Lolly of LollyKnitting Around; she started this shindig up and this will be year 3!

For anyone who doesn't know her blog, you MUST check out her posting on photography, especially useful if you want to make beautiful pictures of projects or yarn stash. It's a seminar-in-a-blog and I will be reading, and re-reading, in an attempt to get some better pictures than I have in the past.

That's all. Off to steam my stuffy head and possibly even clean a room or two. Or something.

For My Darling Husband....

A bouquet (image available here):













and an apology performed in interpretive dance (use your imaginations here):


I was wrong. I was soo wroooong. I'm beginning to think I may not have been entirely correct, even.

You were not completely crazy to sign up for Facebook. In fact, you were quite clever. Perhaps even brilliant. Or am I getting carried away?

I got invited in this morning, and have spent much of the day off and on sending invites to friends and locating other friends on Facebook. If you know me, and would like to be my Facebook buddy, shoot me a line!

I'm also loading more patterns into Ravelry, as well as reading some of the group forums, although that REALLY can take up a whole day in itself.

Feeling low and lonely, and it's nice to reach out and contact friends, even when they're pretty darn far away.

It's a good thing I can act in puppet shows, make out-of-season Easter crowns, and supervise glitterglue painting while on the laptop, though, or Lily would be mighty bored today.

Saturday Slow; Whiny Bloggin'

Shaping up to be a very quiet weekend here. We had planned to have a family weekend in London, but Wednesday evening when Lily's sniffles translated into a rotten head cold for me, that plan shifted a bit.

So, early this morning, the boys took their overnight backpack and headed to the City to see Madame Tussaud's and who knows what all... Lily and I are staying home to be sickly in comfort, instead of suffering loudly in London.

Right now I am drinking delicious hot beverages and contemplating my first sinus/headache meds of the day. Lily is painting masterpieces with glue and glitter across from me. My idea of sleeping until 10:00 was soundly rejected at 7:00. Oh, well.

My head is a ball of stuffedness, and now it's traveling down to my chest for a cough. Doped up, I feel OK and function quite well, but without meds I'm a misery. And I don't want to be doped up all day and all night because I believe a cough needs to come out. Lily, on the other hand, got nothing more than a teeny sniffle, a teeny cough for a few hours, and seems to be perfectly healthy now. Good for her :)

On the bright side, David has offered me the chance to go to London next weekend, solo! After the Tae Kwon Do grading, I can go down on the train while he and the kiddies hang out at home. Yarn shops in the great metropolis, time to actually LOOK in the shops in Covent Garden, and maybe a show? Bliss if I feel better by then.

Today's plan for me? A quick library trip to return some (overdue) videos and (not yet overdue) books, and maybe some knitting. Laundry. Whoo hoo. A nap? A girl can dream...

Clapotis

Here it is - the quickest knit I've done in a loooong time. Apologies for the zombie-like coloring but it's a night-time, flash picture of a tired lady...what can I say? In reality, both I and the yarn have a warmer tone.

Details: one skein of sportweight microfiber from Germany, size 5 US needles. Finished dimensions - approximately 12 by 80 inches. I used all but 15 grams of a 180-gram skein. The stitches seemed to fly off my needles, because the pattern is so easy to memorize. Three evenings of mindless TV and some knitting this morning was all it took. I think I'll be making this again, in the wider version. You can see the sheen of the yarn in the close-up shot.

Prize Day

So, a couple of weeks ago, I participated in a little blog contest over at Knitting in a Happy Camper - guess Vyvyan's middle name and win some fun swag. (Her swag picture there is better than mine, so check it out!) I fixated on the cute cute cute devil duckie point protectors, guessed Lorraine, and went along about my business. Lo and behold, I was the winner.

This whole "I often think I'm losing my mind because my memory is so bad" business has its good points - expecting the cute duckies, I was shocked to the socks to see all this:

Aren't I lucky? Yes, I am! The kids have laid dibs on the candy, and report that the fizzy ones are excellent. I'm tickled to death at all the fun stuff. That yarn cutting pendant at bottom right is an awesome teal on the back, by the way. I shall be wearing it as jewelry as soon as I put a cord on. Thanks, Vyvyan - you made my day so much brighter!

Updatey Goodness

Things have been sort of quiet here. Thursday was a wash - I woke up and threw my back out. Reaching for the toothpaste or something arduous like that. It took several Aleve to make it through the day. Friday morning I woke up, and the Magic Chiropractic Fairy must have visited because everything was once more in alignment. Thank you, Magic Chiropractic Fairy.

I took advantage of the lack of pain to take a nice hike through the woods at Sandringham Park, heading off the big paths for some small, hillier ones. Beautiful pines and chestnut, ferns everywhere, and lovely, lovely blackberry brambles. Nothing is better than a blackberry plucked from the brambles, if you ask me.

Had a nice coffee afterward at the cafe, and then headed home where I worked on my Lemming Scarf new Clapotis. I am using some German microfiber sportweight in a natural variegated tone, making it about 2/3 size and probably a bit shorter, depending on when the yarn runs out...

Nice feel to the yarn, two knots so far (grrrrr), and not suited to socks as I had originally planned. Lost the ball band somewhere or I would add it in my Ravelry stash. This is a VERY quick knit. I used the Raveler-suggested modification of making the "k" between the "kbl" stitches into a purl. Doing this allows you to leave off the stitch markers.


Did I mention how much I am enchanted by the Ravelry revelry? It's ever so much fun adding in stash and WIPs, etc. Let's not even mention how groovy the groups are and how much time can be wasted reading the message traffic in one's groups. Not that I would know...

I didn't mention the ultrafabulous knitting bag I bought myself last week - the fabric is so pretty! It's actually a travel toiletry bag/set, with vinyl-covered fabric, but it is just right for a small project or two. The big bag unzips to reveal two huge zippable side pockets, and all those cute little baglets for various and sundry bits. It's extremely fetching. Too bad it doesn't match any of my jackets...

How gorgeous is THIS?

I bought the wool for this pattern (Sirdar pattern 8955) today at my local-ish yarn shop, Laina Crafts. Mine is a cranberry shade. The model sweater hanging in the window had me from hello. I just hope the massive collar will work for me and my rawther massive front. The model looks like Billie Piper from Doctor Who, dontcha think?

I also got some AWESOME purple Inca Cloud alpaca on clearance. She had some other shades, naturals and a chestnut, that I managed to resist, I know not how. Beautiful wool, perfect for lacy scarves.

Remember NaBloPoMo?

You may recall last November, when I posted every day (well....technically not every day...) because of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I don't know if this event is happening again for 2007 but I plan to do it myself either way. It was a great way to get psyched up for posting each day.



To go along with NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), here's NaKniSweMo (National Knit a Sweater in a Month). How groovy is that? The new Knitty is out and there are a caboodle of good sweater patterns in there, not to mention the fab socks, and the to-die-for lace stole on the cover.

Aaaanyway, lots of sweaters to be made out there in the big wide world, and perhaps one of them will be mine.

In a completely different vein, this post about "back to school" by Fussy made me snort out loud with laughter. She is SO on.

I'm feeling OK - no knitting today yet, but I am about to sit down with it now...and that's a Good Thing.

Monday, Monday

A new day, a new week. A little bit of knitting for your viewing pleasure...

[OK, looks like Blogger is having a photo issue, so I will link to the pictures in my Flickr queue instead. The first is 2.5 repeats of the basketweave part of the Hanami stole. For Hanami Progress, click here. The second is my driving/waiting for school pick-up/TV project, the Syrian lace shawl from Victorian Lace Today. This pattern is oh-so-simple so far, and shows off the kid mohair colors really well. For Syrian Lace, click here. ]

No walking today, but I did do some laundry and I spent a hour in the knitting house. And the house is clean. Except for the guest room, aka The Dumping Grounds. I really need to go in there and dedicate myself to putting things away. Not today, I think...

Instead, I am off to the grocery store in a minute to shop for this week's dinners. I'm using my Saving Dinner menus all week, and I hope they'll be a relative success with the kids (as in no tears). We're prepared to listen to/ignore the "this looks yucky" drama if necessary, however.

It was a good weekend around here - we wandered the High Street in Lynn on Saturday, had Pizza Express for dinner (I still love me some Pizza Express!), saw a shooting star in the evening. All good stuff. I had Knitting Time yesterday, and Ravelry Exploration Time here and there all weekend. I like the groups feature, and have had some good fun entering projects and books from my library. Haven't seen anyone I know on the site, but I don't know how I would "see" them anyway. There is so much to explore, you could stay busy for months. I look forward to entering stash and needles information. That alone will keep me busy for months :)

Updating Here and There...

Sooo....the kids are back at school. See here for a cute picture and my rant about the cost of wide footwear.

I've cast on the Hanami stole (gorgeous pattern available here). Check out this post at the Hanami KAL blog for my progress pictures. It's looking very nice, I think.

I got my Ravelry invitation. SWEEET! Didn't the kids used-to say that? Heh. I'm Susieknits over there, but have only set up a profile. Will explore the site in greater detail next week, when the kids are in school.

My MS3 stole, the pattern of which has been revealed now, is still holding at Clue 4. I thought I'd dive in to finish when the kids headed to school, but I was distracted by my Hanami start-up. I may alternate days working on them, or I may finish it up after Hanami. I love the MS3 stole so far, had a bit of angst about the big change in style it takes midway through the pattern, and have decided (based on looking at others' blogs) that I will knit it as written. However, I'm feeling the Hanami love right now, so that's what I want to knit.

This seems to be the Year of Lace for me - Snowdrop, Falling Leaves, Argosy, MS3, Hanami... Remember my Argosy scarf? Argosy is sort of geometric lace. I bought some amazing hand-dyed, handspun Blue-faced Leicester wool at the Sandringham Craft Show in May, and it was telling me it wanted to be an Argosy. I cast on last month, I think, and it is knitting up beautifully. So beautifully, in fact, that I am going to rip the first version, and use it for something else. Check out the contrast between versions. The handspun is wider and a bit more vivid. I like it a lot. I also figured out that my decreases had been slanting incorrectly (I am a sort of backwards knitter), so I've corrected that in Version 2.

On the Sock-knitting Front, when last we posted, I had finished the stripey socks and the blue Horcrux socks. I had cast on another Horcrux for small D, but realized I would run short of the yarn I was using, so that's getting ripped out. Love that pattern, though. So quick and so fun!

I also cast on a basic sock in a tan variegated microfiber I got in Germany this spring, but I'm not loving it, and there's enough yarn there to do a small scarf/shawlette, so goodbye to that sock as well.

On the Non-knit Front, I'm doing better every day. I'm sad, but there are good times each day. David and the kids make me happy, a lot. I fell off the Eating-Sensibly wagon, to the tune of 10 pounds, and have pretty much climbed back on. I found a crafting group that meets Tuesdays on the base, and am hoping to make some like-minded friends there. I'll be walking for exercise, which should help my state of mind, too. Knitting is therapeutic as well, as it always is.