Dogs Steal Yarn

Yarn diet? What yarn diet?

Okay, so I wasn't going to buy any more yarn until Rhinebeck because my stash passed out of control ages ago and I need to keep a tight fiscal ship in anticipation of a hell of a lot of repairs to the (cross-my-fingers-hope-it-all-works-out) house we're buying. Sure, I bought some yarn for a baby gift last week, but the gift had been planned for months and baby sweaters take so little yarn that that didn't count.

But then the wonderful Andrea gave me that Threadbear gift certificate for my birthday. It seemed the logical thing to apply the gift toward something I'd always wanted but would have had a hard time justifying if I were paying for all of it. And so I did it. I bought yarn. Enough for a sweater for me. See for yourself:

That's right. Noro Silk Garden, baby! I have drooled over and longed for this stuff for pretty much as long as I've been knitting. I've never wanted to fork over all that cash before, though. Threadbear has a good price for it, which helps. It's not that I buy cheap yarn, either. I prefer 100% natural fibers. I have an impressive stash of Manos, for example. But Silk Garden just seems so...indulgent. I'm sure I'll love it, but hopefully it won't ruin me for the more affordable yarns I love. I doubt it. The reasonably priced Cascade 220 is my absolute favorite. So soft, and such colors! Manos comes up a close second, then Lamb's Pride. But for the moment, I will revel in my Silk Garden. Oh, for enough of this stuff to fill a bathtub! I'd love to roll around in it. Maybe I'll add that to the list of things to do when I win the lottery.

Back to Academia

I had my MFA orientation tonight. I had originally written a very long post all about it, but scrapped it. It was mostly about this one incident that rubbed me very much the wrong way, one fellow student who seems to think the entire program should bend around her needs and schedule, but I've decided this is not the place to air those gripes. I'm still not sure exactly what this blog IS for, but I know what I don't want it to be. It's really not necessary or appropriate for me to badmouth a stranger in public like I'm really really tempted to do here. So I'll just say that I reserve my judgement on her for now, and we'll see what happens from here.

As far as the program itself, I'm thrilled to have been accepted and I can't wait for it to start. The coordinator of the fiction department wasn't there tonight. He was stuck in the Boston airport due to bad weather. Too bad, because he's the reason I chose this program and I was really looking forward to meeting him in person. Ah well. I'll meet him in class next week, anyway.

Pretty much everyone seemed cool, and I think it'll be a good group. It's kind of awkward to have a room full of writers who don't know each other, though, because a great many of us write because we aren't comfortable talking. At least on some levels. Sometimes. Ok. Maybe not. But I'm shy and so were all the people around me tonight. A room of wallflowers, empty dancefloor. We'll warm up once we get into workshop, though.

Progress?

Aren't pictures of black yarn in st st exciting?! Here's what's consuming my knitting time at the moment:

The big black blob is my brother's sweater body. All stockinette with a rolled hem. My fingers are craving something more interesting, but that's the sweater he wants so I just have to keep chugging along. At inch 13 I can start the gray band, so that's something to look forward to, I suppose.

The smaller black blob is my mom's sweater body. Seed stitch hem and then stockinette. I need to figure out how to do a scoop neckline in the round, but I still have eight or so more inches before I have to worry about that. If you have any hints, please do share.

After these two sweaters, there's that toddler sweater to finish. (If you don't remember the fiasco that followed picking up neckline stitches and then ripping out when I didn't need to rip out, perhaps it's for the best. You can read all about it in the archives if you want to relive the horror, though.) Then another baby sweater and then...

...I will actually knit for myself! It's been quite a while since I worked on something just for me. I don't know what I want to do first. The corset pullover? The monster sweater? The Season kit? That fabulous Falkenberg kit I got for my birthday? Or maybe just finally start those Koigu socks? Ah...decisions.

Oh--and the house is now in contract. I still don't have a buyer for the co-op, and don't want to jinx things by talking too much about what isn't yet mine, but here's one picture of the house we're buying. Just a tease. When we have a contract for the co-op I'll show more.

Can't you just see me knitting in front of that fireplace, dogs sleeping peacefully at my feet? Anyone who has met my dogs is now laughing at me. Go ahead. I don't mind.

Grammar Avengers Who Knit!

There's a new web ring in town, thanks to Em. It's the Grammar Avengers ring. We aren't here to JUDGE you. We're not even here to EDIT you. Really. All this ring will do, I suspect, is formally link a group of writers and editors who've already formed a loose network to bond over being big nerds who knit. And that's certainly a good thing. So will we be storming into your blog to take you to task for misplacing an apostrophe? Probably not. We're too busy contemplating the various forms and incarnations of the IRO. Yes, Grammar Avengers have been known to throw metal.

Breathable air! Cool!

It's a beautiful day today. The humidity has lifted and finally there's no need for the AC. Just open windows and a delicious breeze drifting through. My apartment has another blind date today. Someone coming to see it late this afternoon. The first buyers pulled out of the deal the day before they were to sign the contract and so I now find myself needing a new buyer at the very height of the slow season. Each time a new person comes through (which isn't often enough, thanks to the time of year) I get nervous and wonder if they'll be "the one." Reminds me of why I hated dating. Then again, Billy and I met on a blind date, so maybe the apartment will share our luck. Billy and I may well be the only ones in New York not away on vacation at the moment. Usually I love the city when it empties out like this, but this year I just wish everyone had stayed in town to shop for one-bedroom co-ops.

I have to work on an editing job today. It was actually supposed to be a day off, but it was way too hot in here to work yesterday. My office is the corner of the bedroom (one of the reasons we're moving--the set-up here is not conducive to working full-time from home) and the only AC is in the living room. Just a ceiling fan was NOT cutting it yesterday. It was hard to breath in here, so I opted for knitting my brother's sweater in front of the living room AC. Deadline be damned. Today is for catch-up.

I'm seven inches into the body of my brother's sweater now. It needs to be twenty inches before I join the sleeves. With such a long, large (XL) body, I'm finding I need smaller goals to aim for rather than just looking way up the road to the twenty-inch mark. So I'm now knitting toward thirteen inches, at which point I'll start the two-inch band of gray. Here are the sleeves, in case you missed them the first time around. The body will have a single stripe to match the one on the arm. I haven't decided if the striped arm is the left or the right yet.

Ok. Off I go to work. Soundtrack for the day: When I Pretend to Fall by The Long Winters. Best new album I've heard in a while.

The day after...

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone! They played a big part in making yesterday a really great day.

At our birthday dinner last night, my brother's fiancee and I tried to convince the waiter we were fraternal twins, and flashed our IDs as proof of our joint birthday (my former marriage being the excuse for different last names). Since she's Korean and I'm a half-English, half-Russian redhead, it wasn't an easy sell and he wasn't buying. He gave us free green tea ice cream with birthday candles in it anyway. They were trick candles, though, dammit. You just don't expect to find trick candles at a nice Japanese restaurant. I took advantage of the trick to make my wish three times before finally dropping the thing into my water glass.

The plastic bag behind Diego's chair turned out to be a decoy to distract me from the big plastic bag in Billy's closet containing the real gift. The real gift was a new meditation cushion. My old one was recently destroyed in a dog-related incident too ugly to recount here. Suffice it to say, the dry cleaners pronounced it uncleanable. So now I have a lovely meditation cushion again instead of a throw pillow from the couch. What a guy! :) Oh...and of course the awesome Hanne Falkenberg kit. I'm going to swatch for it this weekend, though I probably won't start it right away. Big knitting plans now that the gift ChicKami is done include buckling down and finishing my brother's sweater, ditto for my mom's sweater. After those are done I'll jump into either this Tokyo kit or my Season kit.

I also got a way too generous gift from the very wonderful Andrea. A gift certificate for Threadbear. She's way too good to me. Having her as my eternally patient and knowledgeable knitting mentor is gift enough.

Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy birthday, dear MEE-EEE. Happy birthday to me!

It's midnight here in Brooklyn and so officially my thirtieth birthday. Woohoo! Thanks, Mom! This life stuff is pretty cool.

I finished the gift ChicKami earlier tonight. Here it is:

I'm happy to have an FO kick off my thirties. Didn't plan it that way, but I like the way it feels. How bout a decade of goals met, plans fulfilled, all that good stuff? Thirty is going to be a big year. Things are good. Really good. So much possibility. It's exciting.

ChicKami progress

So I've finished the back and am now working my way up the front of the ChicKami. As you may or may not recall, I'm making it for my brother's fiancee. We both turn 30 tomorrow (how my twenties managed to go by so quickly, I have NO idea) and I'd like to have it finished in time to give it to her at our joint birthday dinner. Yes, my brother is marrying a woman born on the same day as me. Yes, we are a lot alike, in ways that make us sometimes want to strangle each other. She's a wonderful woman, in spite of our similarities :P and I'm happy to call her family. Let's hope the ChicKami fits! Here's where it is so far:

Billy is being very mysterious about a plastic bag behind Diego's chair in the bedroom. (Okay...so the dog has his own chair. Is that so wrong?) (Have you noticed how much I love parenthesis and ellipses...?) I'm being very good and virtuous and not snooping. It's killing me not to peek, though! I asked for this Hanne Falkenberg kit for my birthday, and watched him order it, so I don't know what the deal is with hiding plastic bags. Maybe he's just being cute. Can't wait to get my needles into that kit!

ELECTRICITY!!!

I have electricity! Woohoo!

The juice finally came back online here in my neck of the woods around seven yesterday evening. My ISP's servers came back online a few minutes ago. And now here I am, basking in the Mac's soft glow and back in touch. Didja miss me? Hunh? Hunh?

I only work outside of the house two days a week, but when something goes wrong in the city it always seems to happen on one of those two days. I was on my way to my client's office on 9/11. (Actually, crossing the Manhattan Bridge on the Q train right after the first plane hit and saw way more than I ever want to see again, but that's another story.) And when the power went out on Thursday I was in that same client's office in Midtown. Fifty-third and 5th, to be precise. Quite a walk from my beloved Brooklyn.

It only took me 2 1/2 hours to walk home via the bridge, which wasn't so bad. My flipflops held up nicely, thank you very much. I think I'll have them bronzed.

I did get in some quality knitting by candlelight, after Billy and I managed to pull together the strangest living room picnic in history from the odds and ends we foraged from the fridge and pantry. The ChicKami may very well be done by the end of the weekend.

An FO deferred

In my haste to finish the toddler sweater, combined with the impossible quest for the perfect picked up neckline, I have managed to create my worst knitting fiasco to date. It involves slippery cotton stitches and ripping out when I really should have left well enough alone. It wasn't pretty. Ladders running amok everywhere. I won't bore you with the play by play. I will tell you I'm now six inches away from getting back to that neckline. Enough said. I don't want to look at it again today, and maybe not tomorrow. I've got some work to do this evening and then I'll cast on for that ChicKami.

The kid lives in Austin, anyway, where he certainly doesn't need a sweater--even a cotton one--in August. And he won't fit into the damn thing for at least a year. The rush was entirely of my own making, as was the fiasco. Which is usually the way things go.

One step forward...

...you know the rest. Things are progressing with the co-op sale, but the house contract negotiation is dragging a bit. No one's being difficult. It is just apparently a bit more complicated to buy a house than an apartment, in terms of what needs to be in the contract. I hope to have good news on this front soon.

In a fit of optimism I went to my friendly neighborhood hardware store to grab every single Benjamin Moore colorcard from the display. It took a good 15 minutes, and I walked out with an 8-inch tall stack of 'em. So now I'm choosing hypothetical wall colors for the hypothetical house. My hypothetical office/studio/fiber room will be a deep red. Hypothetically.

Now that the work crunch is past (phrase book files turned in on Tuesday, thank you very much) I'm determined to get the toddler sweater finished this weekend. And not a moment too soon because A)The kid's birthday is tomorrow and B)I'm starting to get bored with the project and anxious to move on to the next.

Immediately after the toddler sweater is done, I need to make that ChicKami for my brother's fiancee. That should be pretty quick. Then there are two baby gifts that need to be done pretty soon, as well as my mom's sweater and my brother's sweater. Oh...and my mom's boyfriend's sweater and Billy's socks... I think I've planned too many gifts. I love to knit for my family and friends because it means so much more than simply buying them something. I feel like the real gift is the time I dedicate to making the project for them, the time spent thinking about them and what they might like... But there are so many things I want to make for myself too! I have such a list.

The ChicKami has to be done in time for our shared birthday on the 20th, but after that I'm going to make something for myself. Maybe the monster sweater that I started back in the early spring. It's only half a sleeve and a few sketches at this point. I call it the monster sweater (it's based on EPS but I added extra-long slightly belled sleeves and some waist shaping to the plans) because the colors I have planned are Muppet monster colors. I always loved the monsters best of all. Especially Sweetums.

I'm back!

Ah, the speed, the power...my dsl is back and I'm a happy kid.

As promised, here's a picture of the toddler sweater progress:

Here's a close-up of the twisted ribbing.

I'm half done with the front now, which is the last piece before seaming and the neckband. The kid's birthday is Friday. I won't make it in time for that (I have to allow mailing-to-Austin time) but it won't be nearly as late as I had feared.

We had a guest star at last night's knitting group. Carolyn came by to work on Lil' Beck and felt her Suki. No surprise--she's very cool in person, and her knitting is gorgeous. Her Suki looks terrific too.

I also promised pics of my brother's homecoming, but none of them came out well enough to share. Rainy days, digital cameras and teary-eyed family members with shaking hands make for crap photography. Ah well.

By the way, has everyone been following the internation rock-on symbol thing at Brainylady? Alison consistently makes my day. She's brilliant. And we're both tattooed vegetarians with boys named Bill. Small world and all that, hunh?

News good. DSL bad.

Wonderful wonderful news. My brother is home.

I went out to my mom's in Jersey Thursday night to get up WAY early to meet the buses as they arrived at the base on Friday morning. We were told to be there at 8. The buses pulled in at noon. We sat or stood around by a curb in front of some Dumpsters. In the rain. Nice. I got a lot of (damp) knitting done. The buses pulled in finally, we waved our homemade signs around and each family searched for their loved one. I swear they all look alike when they have their covers on. Then there was lots of crying and hugging and we got to take our Marines home. Totally worth it. I would have sat in the rain another 100 hours.

He's lost weight but he's healthy and he's home. He tried on his sweater sleeves and liked them very much. Perfect fit, too.

My dsl is down so I can't share pictures of the homecoming or the knitting, but I hope to post photos of both soon.