Nothing to see here, Part Deux

Yes, we still have no pictures. Which is not a bad thing considering everything I’m working on right now is a gift for someone, and I can neither talk about it in detail nor reveal a picture of it.

[Picture update: I got out my digital camera last week to take progress shots of the T-shirt quilt. Not enough battery power to turn it on. Now where are those spare lithium batteries I had with me in July? I dunno.]

So, right now I’m working on a giftknit s—f, I have another s—f to work on in the car, Tyrone is still stalled, and I am still swatching for the Packer h-t. (I told you I was slow.) My mind is mostly on the 3-4 q—ts I also have to finish up.

But my cousin and his family did get here, and we did manage to get 7 kids bedded down at a reasonable time, considering. (No thanks to Jack, of course, but that’s par. He’s up until he’s out, and he’s out until he’s up again, and that’s just the way it is.) The kids were gleeful psychos all evening since they haven’t seen each other since the summer of aught-six, which is beyond memory for all of them. They dovetail nicely: Their first boy, my first boy, their next boy, my girl, their girl, my next boy, my last boy.

Tomorrow morning it will be chaos all over again, so I need to take advantage of this Prime Knitting Time (every minute left before midnight). So see-ya later, and send some extra mojo if you have some lying around. ‘Kay?

Seven little monkeys

Sorry about the long time no post thing. Knit Night gets me so high, then I come back to reality and the very next day is always a hard crash. Plus, I can’t talk about Knit Night this time because…. people are reading. They will find out what I did. Don’t worry, it was a good thing. But since it was a giftknit, I can’t do the reveal yet. Grr!

QUILTwise I have entered the final stages of the T-shirt quilt. Granted, the woman I started making this for a mere 15 months ago now hates me, but I am going to finish this in time for her to give it to her daughter for Christmas. Sigh. Won’t she be surprised. I think this is the end of my quilting-for-hire business, at least until all the kids are in school.

And that reminds me, I’m swatching for gauge on the Packer hat. As soon as I get gauge I will be able to map out the pattern in my mind. I may actually write it down, too.

Meanwhile it’s a slogalong on a couple of scarves. And quilting (and some machine piecing) on two small quilts.

But the big thing today (other than the departure of Mr. Beth for Los Angeles on business, yet again) is the arrival of my cousin and his family. We haven’t seen them since, I don’t know, summer 2006? They have three kids that dovetail in ages with mine. They are coming in the afternoon, and staying for dinner and overnight as they visit friends in the Badger State.

That means that tonight, the three of us will be tucking in seven kids. I wonder how that’s going to work?

P.S. Check out the website for the new embellishment magazine, Make It Mine. This is so cool, and published by the company I used to work for, at another hobby magazine. The time is so right for this one!

You know what tonight is

It’s Knit Night. Or, more properly, Late Night Knitting at the Sow’s Ear. We’re having a membership drive for the Hog-n-Blog contingent, so if you’re an area knitblogger you should make your presence known. Tonight will be a special night. ‘Nuff said!

And just in case you think Verona is too far to drive, I’m driving an hour each way to attend. It is worth every mile (although this time I *must* remember to get coffee before I head home). So it’s not as much that you’re “local” as you may consider yourself “within range.”

Not much new knitting. Work continues a(slow)pace on the Ravenclaw goods, and Crafty Peach assures me I have indeed performed some type of crochet stitch. She’s a goddess who truly knows without seeing. Anyway, for the benefit of the Hog-n-Bloggers, I put the tiny ball of yarn, swatch, and wooden hook into a little baggie to bring tonight. It occurred to me as I was doing this that I should label it “Exhibit A.”

Oh yeah, I did start on that Harlot One-Row (She calls it the one-row handspun scarf, if you’re looking for the pattern at her blog) scarf. It’s not so reversible when you put in stripes, but I like it because it won’t curl. And the way it shows up the “purl bloops” makes me wonder what it would look like if you alternated colors every row. I think it would look almost like a slip-stitch, but I’ll try that out later.

The Christmas knitting seems like it’s all going to get done in time. Now I just have to figure out when I’ll finish four quilts and knit several pairs of mittens. I have a small herd of alpaca yarn and I’m thinking that 100 percent alpaca mittens for myself, in a very chocolate-y colorway, might be an extremely nice present to myself.

Familywise, keep Tom in your thoughts today. He has an appointment with another specialist who wants to figure out why he’s so small and behind the curve. My little man needs some more folks on his team. Rest assured he isn’t in any health crisis, but he just has a lot of catching up to do.

AND — wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, my van is fixed. Transmission. Battery. Tie rod ends. Coolant leak. Blower. Thermostat. Spark plugs. I can now transport everyone across the county for no reason. And gas is $3.25 a gallon at the nearest station. When did that happen?

See you tonight. If you’re the shy type, just look around for my Ravelry avatar on one of the tables. You could even flash the Ravelry “gang sign” if you like.

Rabbit hole #263

I don’t know quite how to say this, but….

I may have done crochet today.

There were these vintage wooden hooks I just happened to have…. and, of course, plenty of little leftover balls of yarn…. and I must have just seen so much crochet done on Knitty Gritty and Uncommon Threads and what-have-you… that eventually it started to make sense.

I think.

I’ll get a photo up here as soon as I can so you double-threat folks can figure out what I did. Because I think I was putting the needle through the wrong loop, but I definitely had something crochet-like going with where the yarn was going.

On the other hand, the original chain I did was complete arse. The last time I did that (for abortive attempts at toe-up socks shortly after the Summer 2007 IK came out, thank you very much Ann Budd) I didn’t even have to think about it, and it came out fine. Not now.

Sigh.

Knitwise, I’m trying to do at least one color band a day on the Ravenclaw scarf, and contemplating starting a scarf for my father for Christmas. He wants something that won’t curl up, so I think an acrylic Harlot one-row will do it. Two skeins of something or a combination of somethings.

And I’m so looking forward to the Knit Night at The Sow’s Ear this Friday night (Hi Molly Bee! Hi SABLE! Hi Dale-Harriet!) that I have already started packing the knitting bag. Wow, how sick is that. (Probably not that sick once I check around on Ravelry. But.) Our little “Hog and Blog” group is looking to formalize ever so slightly, to the point of trying to claim a corner of our own at the Knit Night. Wow, sitting together. Who knows what could happen next!

Rugrat attack

That’s all I can claim…. it was a long week with my parents visiting, during which I somehow had less time to read blogs, let alone write on my own. It’s been a couple of days now and things are somewhat settling back into their usual chaos.

I have a new FO — the Puppy Tstocking. I love it and want to make more.

So, naturally, I cast one for another Christmas project, the First Year Ravenclaw scarf from Charmed Knits. I’m working on it only when my son’s not looking, so he’ll still be surprised when he sees it in its finished form. Why this is going to work when he was along on the trip to the LYS where I purchased the yarn for the project, I don’t know. It’s just one of my little quirks that I think it will.

IHS fans, rejoice, I’m nearing the end, even though I’m getting in just one repeat every few days. And none all last week.

Unfortunately, I had my Red Scarf project with me on Sunday and managed to snap one of my Lantern Moon size 5s right in half. It made a soft but beautiful sound and as soon as it happened I knew just what it was. Luckily it wasn’t the needle holding the live stitches, but still. I had made a conscious choice to bring the project with me, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to knit a stitch, and here I was. The project is on a nice sturdy Susan Bates Quicksilver and it just. isn’t. the. same.

So I’m back to working on all these projects in small portions, being Mrs. Mom the other 23 hours of the day.

Props to Mr. Beth, who stopped by a yarn store before/after going to the Wisconsin game, and picked out a skein of alpaca/merino blend for some socks. OK, they’re going to be for him, but still he gets 20,000 points.  What a nice guy!

Blog broke, make blog go!

Thanks to Mr. Beth who just called to tell me that all he could see on my blog was his guest post with his review of Perilla. When I checked it out, that’s all I could see, too. And when I clicked on Comments to review my spam, it kicked me out to the same ol’ site view.

At last I got into Akismet kind of sideways, deleted the usual stupid but innocuous looking spam comments, and ta dah, site restored.

No clue why. Hope it sticks.

So, as long as I’m here…. all the puppy Tstocking needs is some Kitchener on the paw, and then I’m going to pick up stitches at the top of the Tstocking and knit a white faux mohair cuff in stockinette, which I’ll turn down. (I know I could have done this differently, but I didn’t think of that until after I got started.)

Then I need to hustle on to the rest of the Christmas knits and quilts.

I am stalled on the T-shirt quilt again, but I did wash and dry the backing material. I even got a letter from the woman I’m making the quilt for. She’s probably quite upset at how long this is taking me to do. I started with the best of intentions and should have pushed through and gotten it done in a couple of months. Instead it has dragged on for over 14 months and I am pushing to get it to her before Christmas. She does not know this, because I am afraid to open her letter and I don’t dare call her. I just want to finish the project, now that I have all the materials. (And her mailing address!)

My other work avoidance is the craft store directory. I don’t know how I’ll make the time to work on this, but I simply must. I truly believe it will get a grand reception all across the state, but it is going to be a LOT of work. Now I know why Crazy Aunt Purl kept her bookwriting under wraps. It’s tough to not be getting it done when everyone knows you’re supposed to be working on it. I hope that putting it out there, a little bit, will be creating the kind of pressure I need.

Time to go see what everyone else’s blogs look like. I wonder if they’re all featuring reviews of Perilla? Pretty sneaky, Harold.

Death to geek knitting mojo

I had a brilliant idea a couple days ago, Ah-tell-yew-what. I had just finished the giftknit for my brother, and came up with Version 2.0b, which would have utterly surpassed it in geekiness. It involved something like five or six cables across 40 stitches, the center of which would have spelled out a secret message in Morse Code.

Once again, I got all jazzed, and this time I got out the paper and pencil and started working it all out. How many to cast on, where the mirroring cables were, how they were flanked by twisted-stitch minicables, calculating the rows needed for the secret message and using that number to calculate how often the other cables would cross….. It was a complicated thing of beauty, and I was already writing out the pattern for the ends, then the cabling setup rows.

Then I looked at the yarn I had planned to use for it, and took a moment to ask my son if he wanted a cabled scarf in the yarn with a secret message running up the middle. I showed him the in-progress Irish Hiking Scarf as an example of what it would sortoflooklike.

He said No. (Nicely.)

He wanted a Ravenclaw House Scarf from the Charmed Knits book.

He has mentioned this a couple of times before, so it should have come as no surprise. However, it did a fine job of sucking all the geek knitting mojo right out of the room.

Tracking down and buying the appropriate yarn for that project was the only good thing that happened to me on Thursday (thanks Knitch, I blogrolled you), but still. It’s a bit of a letdown, and between the Ravenclaw scarf and the other things I want to finish before Christmas, I won’t have time to get back to ubergeek knitting until after the holidays.

At which time I have a self-imposed deadline to produce the first draft of a book.

Does anyone make a knitting machine programmable by computer?

Sigh.

Knitwise, I’m ready to start the toe decreases for the Puppy Tstocking. Another IHS repeat. That will probably be it for tonight, pending whatever there is to see on Ravelry. But I’d like to get Ravenclaw started, so I can be working on it when my Eldest isn’t here and he will be utterly surprised to see the FO on Christmas morning.

AND my parents are visiting this week. I have my Dad thinking of how to make a niddy noddy out of fine woods. And a tabletop skein winder, and a Lazy Kate, and a reeler (see Foxfire 2). I sent my parents back to their hotel room with Foxfire 2 (thank you local library), three Richard Schneider books, and three copies of Spin-Off. Perhaps if I infest their brains…..

Mom is almost converted to crochet and quilting. As soon as gardening weather passes, we’ll see.

Editor’s Note: From now on, I’ll use bold for subheads and for Ravelry names. It seems to have sprung up as the way to refer to Ravelrers, and it made sense to me.

And we had frost if not freeze last night. The grass clippings looked like shaved ice. If you decide to comment, include the current temperature! Brr!