Life's a Stitch

Thank for all the B-Day wishes. It was a perfect weekend starting with:

A welcome surprise from Mandy's (refer to my last post about hiding her identity) son, who true to form, graciously vacated his downtown Seattle view apartment so his mom and I could have a girl's weekend. OK, you 20 something knitters, this man is available.You know what they say about men? Watch how he treats his mother and that's how he'll treat you. This guy is super sweet:

Then our mystery woman took me to the Elsebeth Lavold exhibit at the Nordic Heritage Museum, Knitting Along the Viking Trail. Spectacular! Only disappointment was that the pieces were displayed as art, which they fully deserved, but without mention of the yarn used as well as the pattern sources.

The weekend ended with the often maligned, but wonderful, Mr. Manilow. Uttering his name, I've found, elicits extreme emotion. Read the comments from my last post. You either love him or hate him. It doesn't matter, this 65 year old performer's concert where everyone sings along, waving (albeit free) glow sticks, deserves some credit. The techno version of Could It Be Magic was hard to take at first, but it was OK. Really. His acapella encore of One Voice, dedicated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, was the real magic. Even our reluctant Mandy enjoyed it.

During the weekend we hit four Seattle yarn shops and all I spent was
$2.50, adding to my Scottie button collection. The Canadian customs inspector  questioned me. "What," she said incredulously, "you went all the
way down there to see Barry Manilow and you didn't bring home any concert
souvenirs?" Here's my big purchase:

So, Mandy (did I mention she's blogless?) told me she fessed up at work that she was going with me to  see Barry Manilow. Thank you Blogless Marsha for a wonderful birthday weekend.

It was one of those morning dreams. Do you get those? When you awaken too early, fall back asleep to inexplicably bizarre dreams? In this one my LYS, but not my real my LYS, was going out of business. I hadn't made it to the final sale so I ran down at 4:45 in time for their 5:00pm final closing. The owner told me I had a $58 credit and she gave it to me in cash. I said "Good, now I can buy some yarn."

As if that wasn't good enough, an employee pulled me aside and asked if I'd be interested in accompanying her to France for a yarn tour, also marked down. I was surprised because I didn't picture us as friend material. I was pleased she asked me and off we went. And you know what happened then? I woke up. 

I'm going to live out my travelling dreams this weekend for my birthday, not quite so far. C offered to take me to see Barry Manilow in Washington for my birthday before he realized he had to work this weekend. That's his story and he's sticking to it. So instead, I'm taking the train to meet a friend who has sworn me to secrecy lest her friends find out she's seeing Barry Manilow. Don't worry, Mandy (her code name), your secret is safe with me 😉

It seems half the birthdays of my life are in springtime and half in winter. This one's looking like winter:

How much yarn will your vacuum eat from the time it take its first bite until you flick the off switch?

Oh about four and a half grams, enough for a third of a wedge of the Free and Easy Pie Shaped Shawl. Luckily it sucked down yarn from the skein end, just like an endless piece of spaghetti, not touching the already knitted portion.

About this, the second F&EPSS I'm making with the same yarn, but in stockinette rather than garter stitch, I think the colour definition is better in the second, but it suffers from stockinette roll:

Since this time I elected to start with a provisional cast on, maybe I can add some weight to that end with some sort of sawtooth edge to mirror the bottom. Hopefully that will encourage it to straighten out.

Next time? I think I'll stick to the garter stitch version. What do you think?

We have gotten two kids through college with the agreement that we
pay for three years, they pay for the fourth. The third child, AKA the
shock (not because he was a surprise, he was very well planned, but
that he was a boy after two girls), is finishing year one. It's a good
thing economically. We spent a long time saving for those educations
and with the current downturn, I don't know how much more we could
afford. Right, you say, what's with all the yarn expenditures?
Oh well, we all have our weakness, but true to our purchasing habits, hardly anything is bought at full price.

I was reviewing this month's credit
card bill and it was apparent Mr. C fed the economy hobbywise. In a stange way it was
comforting to see that the worm had turned. That's a woodworking pun. Going
down the list there was Home Depot, Canadian Tire (tool dept), Rona
Home Centre, Dick's Lumber, Summit Tools, House of Tools and Busy Bee
Tools. What about Home Hardware, I asked? Oh, I paid cash there, he
replied. That's a guy bill if I ever saw one, said our friend, Doug.
Having no room to talk, I agree. We all need a spree now and then and
hopefully his will have some payback. I'm going to spend (poor choice
of words) some time in the near future setting up his ETSY shop for
shawl pins and related items – Woodenknit. Good name, eh? Thanks to
Doug for coming up with that one. 

I smell another expense. If you find any missing "r's" from this
post it's because my computer has, in the middle of this post, suffered
a freak accident leaving its "r's" with a partial disability. It was a
near miss computer drop. I managed to catch it by the "r" key, bending
it out of shape. Arrrgh. I had to press hard to type that.

Pattern: Free and Easy Pie Wedge Shawl – from the 2005 Knitting Pattern a Day calendar and on the ball band of Helen's Lace yarn.

Yarn: Fleece Artist Baby Curls (discontinued).

Needles: Size 9 US

Impressions: Three weeks of stress free knitting from start to finish. That is until I stretched the too tight cast on edge and heard a pop:

Technical stuff: Thinking I had taken every precaution, casting on loosely over two needles, it was still too tight. I took a deep breath and treated the edge as a provisional cast on using E. Zimmerman's fool proof sewn bind off and voila, a perfect edge, matching the sewn bind off on the other side. It worked out so well that I've used a provisional cast on for the second one.

The rest of the story: This was made in response to a prayer shawl request. It's a perfect pattern, given to me by a mom who had made one for her daughter. The recipient will be a daughter who has lost both her mom and dad, as well as her good friend. It's light as angel wings with the colour of the rainbow.

You know when the household garbage starts piling up in the waste basket? When one person puts one more thing on top instead of taking the garbage out? I heard the perfect term for this condition which afflicts my kitchen and one particular bathroom on a regular basis. It's called Garbage Jenga, after the tower stacking game. One false move and it all comes tumbling down.

Gracee loves Garbage Jenga. Especially in that bathroom, she likes the Q-Tips, which require the precise positioning of her front teeth for the pull. She's also an expert Jenga tissue puller, that dog. She considers Kleenex a treat. Could be worse. Here's the guilty party, after a hard day of Garbage Jenga, using a felted bag as a pillow:

There, that satisfies the knitting content requirement.

As I fessed up in the previous post, my yarn fast has been broken. No way will I stand in line for hours to get 15% off at a not so local yarn shop, when I can wait a few weeks and average 30% off at my very local, walking distance yarn store. I stuck to my promise of not buying anything at full price and I'll stay true to my vow of no new major projects. Honest.

This is the first two drawers of my stash, laceweight drawer through sock and sportweight yarn, sale items included. Except for the the box of Koigu-esque yarn for my Babette in progress shoved under my favourite chair, and the two plastic drawers that contain my Alan Dart yarn. Oh yeah, the way too much Plymouth Encore purchased for my first crochet project, nowhere near finished. Did I mention…

I felt immense relief the other day when I ran into a fellow Raveler at our local Canadian Tire (you know who you are). Those of you familiar with Canuck shopping know that Canadian Tire's inventory is only 5% tires. It's like our London Drugs chain, a "drug" store that sells clothes, computers, toys and food. She had just bought a gift for her stash – five of those wonderful seven drawer plastic chests. This was in addition to the ones she already owns.

I always feel funny sharing the goods on the blog, but some have
commented that to talk about it without illustration isn't fair either.
This is not done in the spirit of showing off.

Thank you for your words of parental encouragement. Mari arrived safely in Sydney, the dresser made it home, and the adventures continue.

While I'm transferring yarn to the stress purchase of my last post, Chuck shakes his head. "It's not going to do it, is it?" Telling the truth, I admit it. One drawer each for laceweight, sportweight, DK and worsted is not enough. I have more than enough gifts in waiting, notions, needle sets and pattens to stuff the shelves.

Fessing up's not a bad thing, though. I seem to remember that from my Catholic upbringing. It clears the conscience, let's you start afresh, giving you perspective on your behaviour. Let me share some of my enlightenment:

1. Although I have only knit two pairs of socks I have enough yarn for 18. Good thing I use sock yarn for other items.

2. My laceweight drawerful is my favourite, followed by the sportweight. Lots of handpainted goodness.

3. Looking at some of my yarn I wonder what possessed me. Even at 75% off, it's not a bargain if you don't like it.

4. To the contrary, there are yarns, no longer available, that should have been purchased in larger quantities. I have enough for only three complete sweaters, but dozens of scarves.

5. A rigid heddle loom can turn ugly yarn into a thing of beauty. Phew.

6. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. There's yarn in my collection bought for chemo turbans and preemie hats that isn't doing anyone any good. I see a positive penance happening here.

7. In clearing space from my bookcase to make room for knitting books, I realize I have more than I could ever read in this lifetime. I have a hard time doing two things at once and generally, I can only accomplish eight pages or so while eating lunch or on the treadmill. My singular focus time is reserved for knitting. A box is packed to go to the florist who sells used books as a fund raiser for her church. Her shop is located on the same block as a good yarn shop Uh-oh.

My current project, not yet complete, but progressing:

I guess that would be compulsive Li obsessing, something I do when I want to push a worry out of my brain. I find something else to obsess about, thereby masking the true level of concern ruminating in my mind. What do you want first, the worry or the obsession? OK, I'll flip a coin – heads, you get the worry first.

It's child related, go figure. My middle one, a girl age 23, is going off backpacking for six months in Australia and Thailand. Six months all by herself. She is my capable woman child, I keep reminding myself. Lots of kids from our neck of the woods do this successfully, but this one's mine.

The obsession: last weekend, after successfully hitting the sale at my LYS, I went to our nearby Home Sense. I'm not sure of the American equivalent, but it's similar to TJ Maxx with odd bits of furniture. There it was, the grand wood dresser I had seen for two weeks prior, marked down 75% from its original price. Four large drawers, two small ones plus two curved doors on the sides, each hiding three good sized shelves. The perfect container for my yarn stash. It could magically turn my knitting room back into a bedroom. 

Twice before I saw this chest of drawers, unable to justify its price, but now it was meant to be. Two weeks of self deliberating, should I… should I not buy it,  squeezed out the fact that my daughter was really going through with her trek. As the trip grew imminent so was my justification of the purchase. I did it. What the heck we have a truck now, this store doesn't deliver, something to be excited about, what a bargain. Dread balanced with happy anticipation.

Tonight I dragged ambivalent Chuck in his truck for the pick up at his 'favourite'  Home Nonsense store. Ha! What was I thinking? The look on his face was plain as day. He respectfully stifled his laughter when the store manager inquired as to the location of my professional movers. That arrogant manager spoke very loudly telling me that people who buy in their store ALWAYS bring their movers for their deliveries, that store staff are not even responsible for moving furniture one inch from its spot on the floor.

Really wanting to tell the man to eff off, I stated clearly that I had no mover, but I did have a receipt that said I had 10 days to pick up my item and I would be back, better prepared. Who would have thought that that dresser weighed 400 pounds! Apparently I hadn't obsessed enough about the details.And why would I buy something 75% off at a clearance store if I could afford movers? I'd be shopping at a real furniture gallery with expensive and convenient delivery arrangements.

Back to the other matter, at 23 it's less about "letting" her go and more about wishing her Godspeed. But I have heard the comments , "How can you let her…, I would never let my daughter…."  There are others more reassuring, who travelled alone, packing along similar parental worries.

I have raised her, she is an adult woman who will hopefully make good decisions, and that's about all you can do. So next time you hear from me, my girl child hopefully will be safely in Oz, and I will be transferring my yarn stash from plastic drawers to the concrete (at least it weighs that much) manifestation of my motherly concern.

Time for a change. After four years the look is changing. It's about time, did you notice? I think it's subtle, but too subtle? So far a new banner and a cleaned up look. I know it adds to the busy-ness, but I cannot bring myself to ditch the Gracee picture, so there she'll stay, my mascot.

Have you been here? It's a post about knitting blog Class of 2005. Kathryn, of Knittsings, spent 20 hours analyzing activity on blogs that have been around since 2005. The left side of my brain found it interesting.

Progress:

Loving this pattern. Although it's garter stitch and very simple (you can do it, Jane, not the Quiddity one, but my sister, Jane), it goes really quickly and the colour changes of hand painted or variegated yarn keep it interesting.