What a couple of weeks!

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been back home for almost a whole week. It was kind of crazy there for a while, driving to the lower U.P., then “up and over” and down to near-Detroit to stay with a friend on the way to my parents’ house, then a Rav meetup with two previously-met knitting friends, then a meetup in Fort Wayne on the way home.

During the whole trip I only had two knitting projects with me, and I finished one and cranked on the other (despite leaving the lace pattern at home). I felt like such a Knitter.

Here’s the project I finished: Those Noro Socks!

Since then I’ve started and finished a book (“The Wednesday Sisters”) and taken an Aran knitting class at Irish Fest Summer School.

If you’re going to Milwaukee’s Irish Fest on Sunday, leave a comment and I will get back to you — I’d love to meet you there. I will wear my Ravelry button (I’m “chocolatesheep”) so you know who to say Hi to.

More later!

Now with more widgets!

Random facts:

I’ve added a Twitter feed to the sidebar, up at the top. Now that I’m on WordPress, Ravelry, Twitter, and Facebook I’ve started gluing some of them together.

I’ve finished watching Torchwood: Children of Earth. Pass the coffee and the tissues, please.

I have a long trip to plan for this week involving two three knitter meetups, several Midwestern states, and retrieving my firstborn from Ohio. Then it’s right into Irish Fest Summer School, where I’m enrolled in Intermediate Aran Knitting. (My first knitting class!) The next weekend is Irish Fest itself, where I hope to meet even more knitters. So I don’t know how many posts I’ll be able to do this week.

But. The important thing today is not my knitting. If you could do just one thing today, please say a prayer for Felipe Massa, a Formula 1 driver who was badly injured in a freak accident during qualifying session for last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix. He sustained a skull fracture and a concussion. He had emergency surgery and is now in an induced coma for the next few days. He is just 28 years old, and his wife is expecting their first child in November. Brain injuries are so scary and tricky — look up Cristiano da Matta and Richard Hammond if you need any evidence from the car/racing community. But please, just say a prayer.

Zip a dee doo dah

You know what?

Cleveland is surprisingly pretty.

More details later, after I’ve had time to recover. Ten hours of driving on Saturday, ten hours of driving on Sunday — eventually that adds up.

Xtra pictures of the SOMA cube

Well, you did guess that starting a post title with X was going to be tricky, didn’t you? I can’t believe I got this far and nobody commented on it. Almost all the ways through my ABCs, and it’s only mid-July. That degree in English Literature is sure coming in handy!

I got the game pieces assembled, but I need to do a lot of sanding before I can call them done. Right now they’re more like portable splinter dispensers.

The seven SOMA pieces

Now, let’s make a cube.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

You can also place the last piece differently and make this pretty configuration.

The Crystal

And here are all four cubes, assembled. Sanding is next.

Four cubes

Whew! I don’t know when I’ll get to do the sanding. We have seen a couple of yucky bugs and it’s time to give serious attention to de-cluttering the house so we can have it sprayed.

Knitwise I haven’t done anything with the lace scarf in a few days. I guess I got tired of being so good at un-knitting it. But I have added two stripes to the current Doctor Who Scarf, and Fringed the second Pinstripe TenScarf on the 11th.

Next to get attention: Casting on for the second Noro sock, or attacking Tyrone. Maybe with scissors.

What on earth is Beth making?

I started a project with the kids this afternoon. It will take us several days to finish.

The only clue I’m giving right now is that there will be four identical products when we are done. If you can guess what I’m making, you’re such a geek that I will make a very nice one for you, too.

Here is a picture of Stage One:

Stage One

Good luck. We’re all counting on you.

July 11 update — we have a winner! I am making four sets of SOMA cubes. There is a cool site about these puzzles here, and here is the Wiki page.

And here is what I’m making. Not all of the necessary pieces were visible in Stage One, so I’m extra impressed that anyone guessed correctly at that stage.

Vultures!

I’m getting really tired of this. Poor Farrah Fawcett, can we let her rest in peace?

Quite some time ago I wrote a post that included a head shot of Ms. Fawcett with that famous hair, which all of us “of a certain age” were trying to re-create on our own heads many years ago.

The post has taken on a life of its own, and most of the people who find my blog via search terms have been using phrases like “Farrah Fawcett” but most often “fara faucet” or some even more misspelled variation. Every time poor Farrah’s cancer flared up in the last two years, I’d get a spike of hits. (That post is responsible for 10 percent of the total hits on my blog. I Am Not Making This Up.)

So. I was away around the time of my birthday, and didn’t have access to wifi. When I got back I noticed this tremendous spike of views on and just before my birthday. In fact, June 25 set a new one-day record, topping the day I wrote about the Blue Moon Fiber Arts sock club debacle. Wow, I thought, did people really come by to say Happy Birthday in those kind of numbers?

Nope. Farrah Fawcett died of cancer and my blog must have hopped to the top of the search-engine list.

Sorry folks, nothing to see here. Just one thumbnail headshot of Farrah from the 1970s, a few chocolate bars, and a lot of procrastinated knitting. You vultures can move along.

But you yarnies can stay! I’m making a lace scarf, and finishing socks, and all kinds of exciting things.

Here’s the first clown Noro sock. I haven’t cast on for the second one yet.

Currently I’m working on the lace scarf (the pattern is called “Moon River” but my project is named “Fire River” because of the yarn colorway) and fixing Tyrone and wishing Tyrone were already fixed. I did finish a second Pinstripe TenScarf, but haven’t added any fringe yet. (And holy moley, I got a Rav PM from the pattern designer saying she hadn’t had time to fringe the one she made since it was for a gift, but she liked the fringe I put on mine. Wowzers!)

This one’s a giftknit, and I want to get another one on the needles ASAP for another Whovian friend. Who knows, I may start cranking these out like some people make touques. I’m not naming any names.

Unclear

Whew. I can’t believe it’s so far into July already. The first session of summer school is almost over, and lots of travel lies ahead this month before the Big Trip back to Ohio in August.

But some things are unclear. The first such thing is what’s up with Tyrone. I really did make a frontal assault at the poor stalled thing last Friday. I wove in all the ends I could, and it’s obvious that I got it on more needles than the one. If I recall correctly (and it’s quite possible that my recollections might be hazy) it’s on two 24-inch circular needles and two dpns. It didn’t seem to alleviate the stitch crowding, and it didn’t make my next step terribly clear. I want to get some thinking time in on it before I press forward. But I think I just need to do “whatever” to accomplish the raglan decreases.

I was never so happy to switch to sock knitting as I was last Friday night at 9pm! So I picked up Those Noro Socks and forged ahead. I’m on the foot now, so it’s no sweat. I worked on it late Friday night, some on the weekend, and even tried it on last night. At which point Mr. Beth said, “That looks like a clown sock” and described to me the hand-knitted sock he was visualizing all this time. It, um, doesn’t look at all like the sock that’s on the needles right now.

I could frog the whole sock if this yarn were the last skein of it in all the world, or I could finish this sock and make its mate. Hey, let’s vote!

No prizes today. Just share your wisdom.

The Deer of the Day

Up until the last couple of days, it’s been unseasonably cool for Wisconsin in June. For goodness’ sake, the ten year old wanted to know if he needed to wear a hooded jacket to the first day of summer school.

It was so cool that the deer, which are typically all but invisible during the summer, have been venturing out in broad daylight to graze and do whatever else they feel like doing. A few days ago I spotted some less than 100 yards away from the road at 2:45 in the afternoon.

Yesterday it started getting hot. The heat index got up to 100°F in our county and is at the same level today. This seems to tell the deer that now they need to hide in the forests during the heat of the day — then go adventuring right at dusk.

Last night I was coming back from Knit Night and being cautious, scanning the roadsides and the treelines for deer. There was a car behind me that clearly felt I was worth passing, but just as he was getting ready to make his liberatory move, I saw an odd line up ahead and started to tap the brakes. Sure enough, it was a yearling between the shoulder and the ditch, looking quite astonished at me as I crawled by.

The guy behind me didn’t pass me after that. I wonder why?

I had to drop off my van this morning to get the brakes and air conditioning fixed before going to Ohio for the weekend, and I spotted another deer (much further away from the road this time) at about 8:15 in the morning. So maybe I’ve made quota early.

Here’s what I’ll be working on this weekend in the car:

Sorry the photo is so bad. Who knew it would be difficult to hold yarn down to show off a lace pattern while the project was still on the needles, and take a digital picture with no flash with your non-dominant (LEFT) hand?

Search me!

You may have noticed that the blog looks a tiny bit different these days. I guess the housecleaning I’ve had to do lately has rubbed off on my cyberlife, and I finally did some tidying up.

It started with Twitter. I resisted the Facebook “temptation” (why do I need Facebook if I already have a blog?) but I did join Twitter. My account is set up so I need to approve every “follow” request, which should cut down on the spammy stuff. But it’s amusing. I did try to set up a widget here that would show my last five tweets, like on the Yarn Harlot’s blog, but since my account is set to Private it won’t let me broadcast it on my blog. Which makes sense, now that I think about it.

But since I was messing around with WordPress widgets anyway, I did make some other changes.

The Calendar seemed to have disappeared, so I put it back.

The Blogroll got trimmed. I apologize for any hurt feelings — none were intended. But I have not been able to keep up on my blog reading, so I wanted to keep the blogs I go to most frequently. I do have some blogs I need to add, but haven’t made a list of those yet.

I also added a Search widget. Now that I’ve finished a square for Paul Newman’s cause, I wanted to re-read my post about Robert Redford. Bingo! Easy peasy.

I adjusted the Recent Posts section to show the last 5 posts and no more. It was just taking up extra space.

And…. I also added the Category Cloud. That should be fun to play with.

Somewhere in all this, the spam counter got reset. Wonderful Akismet has actually blocked thousands of spam posts (Mary-rk, I’m looking at you), not just 43 or whatever it says now. But gone is gone!!

Knitwise, I did finish my square for the Double H Camp effort. It was supposed to be all red, but I got bored and it turned out like this instead:

Don’t worry, Shawn said it was okay to do that.

But now I’m kind of knitted into a corner. With that project done, my other options on the needles are a lace scarf, a Doctor Who Scarf, and a Doctor Who Scarf. I have tagged a few WIPs for the Ravelry WIPs Wrestlemania event, so I’m not starting on those until July 1.

Hello garter stitch my old friend…..