Fall

It's supposed to be Autumn now, and with that time marks the beginning of sweater weather. 

Yesterday's temperature here was 102 F.  Today is supposed to be "much cooler" at 86 F.  That makes it kind of hard to want to work with heavy wools.

My fingers have been itching to work on worsted yarn - been doing a lot of lace and socks lately and it just doesn't feel the same.  Not bad, mind you, but a completely different feel.  Lace and sock-weights dance on your fingers, like a light, delicate ladies' tea; while worsted-weight is heavier, like a substantial meal of hardy comfort food.  I'm ready for the comfort food, please! 

Yet, it's cooler here, but that means under 100 F (it's all relative).  Still not exactly Fall weather.   I need to move North.

Fishing

My husband is off fishing today.  Ocean fishing with a bunch of guys from work.  Very manly. They normally have a lot of fun on these trips and I'm glad he's able to go - he's been very busy and under a lot of stress at work lately (all a normal part of the job).

He was getting ready last night about 9:00 pm (he had to be up at 3:00 am the next day)  and said he couldn't find the hat I'd made him.  It gets very cold out on the water that early in the morning and the hat I'd made him was a very warm llama /wool blend.  Since he couldn't find his hat and I am a supportive wife, I immediately offered to "whip up another hat" for him. 

Good intentions - bad idea.

I had a nice bulky washable wool blend in a manly deep gray, but after an hour I was only at 2.5 inches.  At that point I realized that I was so tired my eyes were spinning and my hands were starting to cramp.  The I realized that while I could probably finish the hat if I stayed up all night, I wouldn't be able to move my fingers the next day and I had knitting group and the stupid hat wasn't worth it.

 It's all his fault.  Hubby shouldn't have lost that last hat.

Anyway, I went to bed, woke up Hubby and apologized for not getting his new hat done in time for him to take it out fishing tomorrow.  (He returned the favor by later waking me up at 3:00 am.) 

Hope he does well this trip, catches lots of fish and has a good time.  He can lose the new hat another day.

Time Out for the Yucky Stuff

I've got a little problem - you see, I got a sweater's worth of Rowan Summer Tweed.  Figured, "hey, it's summer and I like tweed", and the composition of said yarn is 70% silk and 30 % cotton. 

I'm a sucker for silk.  I love, LOVE, silk but equally hate cotton.  Now, usually when you have a silk blend it's nice.  This stuff is not.

I hate it.  Awful stuff.  It works like a harsh cotton on my hands and has lots of vegetable matter in it (straw, I think - or hope).  It sticks like Velcro on wood needles.  I've tried to like it.  I would really like to like it.  I had it in mind for a nice little summer cardi, but alas, the yarn had other ideas.   

You'd think it would be good stuff - Rowan is like, famous, and it looked nice in the skein.  Truly disappointing.  So now it's the Time-out bin for the yucky yarn.  Maybe it will learn how to play nice while it's there.

I Tawt I saw a Pudytat

Have you ever taken a drive on a beautiful mild summer day?  The kind of day where you could roll down the windows and put your elbow up on the door and enjoy the delicious cool air flowing up your sleeve and cooling off your arm pit.  Radio on with your favorite song playing, foot tapping to the beat. 

Then you realize that a bee has flown up your sleeve and things start going a bit different after that.

The other night I was sound asleep and was enjoying a wonderful dream - you know, the kind where you are doing something amazing and you look really good doing it - and I suddenly woke up with my eyes watering and was almost choking. 

Seems a skunk had passed right by our air conditioning unit outside about 2:00 in the morning and the smell got all throughout the house.  Just couldn't get away from it.  Made me glad to go to work that morning.

My biggest worry was that my stash would have the smell - but it's OK.  Whew...

Ode to Pudding

Note: this is a non-knitting post today.  Fair warning.

Today at work we had a little pot-luck to celebrate the leaving (and promotional opportunity) of a co-worker.  He's a nice guy and everyone likes him, so people brought in delicious cookies, delicate pastries, and (supposedly) the World's most amazing cupcakes ever produced.

Seriously, everyone who tasted one of these gorgeous home-made cupcakes signed and stated that this was absolutely the most amazing cupcake they'd ever tasted.  Some did the happy dance, some looked like they had a food orgasm, and the rest just kept grabbing another one. 

I'm on a diet.  Normally, I would've been right in there with them, but I'm not eating sugar at this time.  None. 

Yes, it sucked.

Especially when they kept going on about how wonderful the cupcakes were.   I just sat there and told them very nicely that I wasn't hungry when I was really thinking "F-you and the little dog you rode in on!" for taunting me with the treats.

I knew they weren't really taunting me - it just felt like it.  I really wanted one of those cupcakes.  I almost caved but I told myself I would make up some sugar-free chocolate pudding when I got home.

I made it.  And it was GOOOOOOOD...........and so was I.

Diets suck.

Tech is Good

Knitting can be a funny thing.  Couple of examples:


Got my regular email from Accesswatch, an email newsletter on the Microsoft Access program - tips & tricks, that kind of thing, and low and behold - a blurb for the author's esty site where she sells her handknit items.  (It then went back to the main point of archiving linked tables to another database.)  Whoa.  I'm in tech and always love to see another fellow techie-knitter.  Way cool. 


The Internet is your friend.  I'm currently working on an old Knitty pattern, Kernel.  This is a not-too-hard lace scarf but the chart shifts over on a couple of rows, which always freaks me out when I'm not expecting it (WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE REPEAT SECTION STITCH MARKER NO LONGER FITS THE STITCH COUNT?!?!?!). 

Basically, it moves over 1 stitch and so you then move your stitch marker.  OK, got it.  But then on row 11 of the 2nd chart I couldn't figure out why I didn't have 6 stitches to knit on the last bit.  Was the chart wrong?  So I went to Knitty, Ravelry and the author's blog site to see if there were any corrections (not a bad place to start before starting to pull out your hair).  Turns out the chart was right - I had just dropped a stitch.  Research is good. 

Again, technology helps out knitting.

Cool.

What's Up?

I think I've found the cure to my knitting slump.  I switched from doing top-down raglans to doing things with sock yarn.

I have a ton of the stuff.  I pick it up when it goes on a good sale, or as a souvenir when I'm traveling, or just because it's simply gorgeous.

Haven't done much with it after I get it home.  Oh, I occasionally pull it out and fondle it while oo-ing and aww-ing, but usually it just goes into my sock bin like it's a deposit at the bank that you can't touch if you want to make any interest on it.

I've changed things.

Firstly, I've been making socks.  Simple toe-up stockinette that shows off the pretty hand painted stuff.  These are also good while I ride in to work with my crazy-driver carpooler.  He's what you'd call an - umm - aggressive driver.  So I don't look.  I knit.  And pretend the driving doesn't scare me out of a year's growth.  Making lots of progress but notice my tension can be a bit tight.

Next up, I picked up a book on entrelac, "Entrelac: The Essential Guide to Interlace Knitting".  I tell ya, I sure didn't know you could do all that with entrelac.  If you get the chance, I'd recommend taking a look at it.  Pretty cool stuff.

So for my second act of sock yarn knitting, I pulled out a skein of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn and have been making up a scarf with simple entrelac. 

I've never worked with Noro much, because I don't like the feel of Kureon and see all the tie-offs in it, but I'm about 2/3's into the skein of the silk garden and have only run into 1 tie-off.  What I really like about the stuff are all the yummy colors.  The color changes make me look goooood, like I'm a way more accomplished knitter than I really am.  I think Noro and me are going to be good friends.

I'm also looking at Leaf Lace Scarf (from page 134 in the book) with some Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light yarn I had picked up to do some lux socks.  Pretty, pretty...

My famine is officially over.