So, this one time, at Sheep and Wool…

…we had this little party, and about 40 people came? And had cheesecake? And won door prizes?

And then we all got massively tired and wished we could sleep for weeks and weeks. But we did take some pictures. They’re not great, but they’re pictures, and they’ve already taken Stage One of their journey and now actually reside on the computer rather than in the camera.

I’ve got a few things to do first (like shower, and run out for diapers and wipes) but I want to take advantage of this being a 3-child school day and put up a very nice blog post with some of those pictures and lots of words.

Here’s our display at the Country Store on Saturday morning. I don’t know why the camera was doing that! (Hi Brandy!)

Here are some sheep (including Shetlands). Check out the horns on that Jacob!

Four-day-old lamb, 2008 WI Sheep & Wool

 

 

Shetland sheep, 2008 WI Sheep & Wool

 

[/Jacob Sheep, horns and all!]  

The feed is sweeter in the other pen!

 

Here is the food at the Afterparty before anybody had some. Chocolate chip cookie pizzas in three flavors, pizzelles in two flavors, chocolate dipped pretzel sticks in four varieties, and two types of cheesecakes with three fruit toppings. Coffee, soda, water, etc. The wine was a door prize ONLY.

 

Chocolate dipped pretzel sticks

 

 

Cheesecake bar — New York style and chocolate mint chip

 

 

Chocolate chip cookie pizzas

 

Here are the door prizes, almost all of them. Some people came to the party and dropped more items on the table.

And here is the TARDIS I made just for the party. You won’t believe how cool my children think this is, and where it is now.

Off to do errands, then I’ll fill it in later.

A tremendous thanks to everyone who attended, everyone who just stopped by the table to say Hi even if they couldn’t come, everyone who helped in any way, and especially to Cheesehead with Sticks, who really made it all possible. I really hope there’s an event like this next year, even if I’m not involved with planning and running it.

September 11: OK, I almost give up. Sorry about the formatting. If I can figure out how to fix it, I’ll do so one picture and caption at a time, saving in between. Meanwhile, I’m on with the rest of my life.

I’m not panicking

No matter what I tell you, I’m not panicking about the Sheep and Wool Festival. All this week I have managed to stay right on my baking schedule. I even received the key to the party site a few days early, and was able to transfer some of the desserts to the fridge over there. I’ve been taking ticket reservations, making sure I could set up a table at the festival to hand out said tickets, collaborating to design a flyer for the party, noting all promised door prizes, and making arrangements to meet everyone who has volunteered to help me.

You may notice that a baking schedule was perhaps not the only schedule I should have established.

Today, for example, I need to cash a check at the bank, purchase the rest of the party supplies, get more cheesecake ingredients, make at least one tabletop display, get flyers and maps copied, bake said cheesecakes, and start setup at the party site.

One child will get home between 11:30 and noon, so I need to be back from my errands in time to meet him. Then I do tasks with the two youngest underfoot until 4pm, when all four are home.

If you’re coming to the festival and still need a ticket, my table will be set up 8 to noon on Saturday in the east vendor barn (Country Store), near the Handspun Skein Contest area. Mention my blog and I’ll give you a hug! Or just a ticket if that’s what you want.

Hmm, let’s talk about something else. This week I cast on for a Doctor Who Scarf. If you’re a fan, it will make a difference to you to know it’s a Season 12 scarf make with Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport, 42 stitches wide. If not, the only thing that might interest you is that it’s almost 9 inches long right now — just a baby. These scarves can get to 20 feet long when stretched out. But it’s for me and I am trying not to impose a deadline (though I hear TARDIS Day is November 23 and it is the traditional gift on that day). I work on it when I want to relax, or if I’m watching BBC America or SciFi Channel.

And… apparently I’m not working on anything else right now. The “boots” are done but one of them needs to be re-seamed. Everything else is just sitting around waiting for the party to be over.

Life after Ravelympics

If I didn’t have the Sheep and Wool Afterparty (and the upcoming school year) to occupy my time right now, I’d be feeling kind of low. The post-Ravelympics period is kind of dull.

No deadline for urgent knitting. No support to give to others’ urgent projects on the other side of the ocean. No photo sharing of completed projects.

Christmas knitting will have to fill the void!

After the Afterparty, that is. I have two official sponsors for the party, one of whom has already sent Actual Money, and this week is Recipe Test week, which nobody seems to mind so far. Yesterday I baked a chocolate chip cookie pizza, and today I should get ingredients for the more upscale version (dark chocolate chips, dried cherries, and slivered almonds) as well as for Real Cheesecake. I thought about doing the mini cheesecakes, the kind you do in the muffin cups with Nilla Wafers in the bottom, but I’ve never done the recipe before, and it took more cream cheese to make a dozen of those than it did to make a whole actual cheesecake. So.

If you’re planning on coming to the party and haven’t told me yet, please RSVP! If you can volunteer with setup or cleanup, that’s even better and very much appreciated. I have lists for both, and don’t want to leave someone out.

I will be at the Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday morning to hand out tickets, flyers, and maps, and to pick up the rest of the door prizes. I should be outside the East vendor barn.

Knitwise, what am I working on?

Cotton footies for my grandmother — just have to re-seam the second one.
Mystery project (Whovian) — this is a striped scarf that will need a lot of ends woven in before I can start knitting again.
Mystery project (Christmas) — haven’t picked this up in a while.
Tyrone, Cursed IHS, Lace stole — yadda yadda yadda.
Bamboo socks — need to find black yarn for the toes. Anyone have a ball of Crystal Palace Cotton Panda in Jet Black?

Mmm, time to test some cookies!

Big Tom

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.
— Steven Wright

Happy Birthday #2 to my little man — my friend Jen calls him Big Tom since he’s been underweight and behind the eight ball for so long. But he is catching up fast. He is such a sweetie and a ham.

Of course, the State of Wisconsin thinks he turned two yesterday. Silly trusting me didn’t bother to double check his birth certificate until after his first birthday, so apparently I need to do some legal filings to get it corrected to his real birth date. I was going to get this done in time to be a birthday present — but I didn’t.

My oldest son has wrong information on his birth certificate, too, oddly enough. Right after he was born, someone said brightly, “Look! Right at nine o’clock!” Everyone in the room turned to look at the clock, which was one of those enormous schoolroom types that you can see from the other end of the hallway. It read 8:50. Sure enough, when the birth certificate came, it said 9:00. That genius was the person responsible for reporting accurate information to the state. Sigh.

Anyway.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the comment contest. I met a bunch of new (to me) knitters and read a bunch of new (to me) blogs, got a lace washcloth pattern to work on, discovered that there’s a whole blog dedicated to tracking knitting blog contests, and found out a lot more than 10 people read my blog. (Who knew! Well, now I do.)

Congrats to Molly Bee for winning! She has yet to pick her prize package.

I guess now I need to knit, and write about it, and post some !@#$% pictures every once in a while.

And everyone has been so kind not to bring this up, but I haven’t been mentioning much chocolate in the blog lately. I certainly haven’t stopped eating it.

That may change. There’s a local (within walking distance) pizza place that would like to offer desserts, and when I stopped in to tell the owner I was thinking of going to baking school, and would he be interested in my homework, he about flipped. I just bought a new pizzelle maker and will be making some samples for him soon. If that works out, I may be baking at his shop one or two nights a week. So I will have dessert pix to share! If WordPress lets me share them.

I’ve also got the WIS&W afterparty to bake for, and I gave myself a pretty ambitious menu to learn. But I’m one of those people who needs deadlines. Desperately. So blast it, it’s time to get started.

But knitwise… I decided to cast on for the bias square for the Doctor Who afghan. The plan is to collect enough squares for two afghans — the U.S. one auctioned to benefit Doctors Without Borders, and the U.K. one auctioned to benefit a hospice that helped care for David Tennant’s mother when she recently died of cancer. They are easy peasy 4 inch garter stitch bias squares, not even mitered squares (I guess that’s next), made from sock yarn. My first one is more than half done, and my plan is to just keep making them until I run out of leftover sock yarn. NOTE: I am NOT coordinating this effort. It originated in the Who Knits? Ravelry group (come and join us!), and I am just making tiny little squares.

I may start doing this with larger amounts of oddball yarn, too, and just tucking them away until I have enough for an afghan for myself. Maybe I’d better put an explanatory note in with them in case I get hit by a bus and somebody finds this bag of squares and thinks WTF.

Next on the list is starting the second Panda Cotton sock, so I can work two heel flaps right in a row and have a cigarette. I’m figuring it will be Just. That. Exciting. (I’m kidding, folks. I have never smoked anything I was offered.)

Knitwise the other projects are the Red Heart tube scarf, the MCY IHS, and Tyrone (sigh). I will probably knit that lace washcloth before I start any of them! That’s just the kind of knitter I am. I have to have a plan so I can thwart it.

ETA (edited to add): The Yarn Harlot has just shamed me into putting Tyrone at the top of the list. If anyone can encourage me through the weird first few raglan rows of sleeves-meet-body, please comment with said encouragement. I haven’t touched the sweater since last October, and it’s quite likely I don’t know what I was doing, or what to do next.

Contest time!

Hi folks….sorry for the lack of posts. The Internet connection is continuing to be crap, but now that we have DH has rearranged the living room, it seems to be better. (I know, WTF. It’s like the “magic” sticker on the big VAX servers in the Olden Days. Don’t touch it and everything will be fine.) Not knowing when I’d get dumped has kind of tarnished the relationship, yaknowwhatImean?

But anyway…..I just looked at my blog stats and saw the Comments total is at 987. You all know what that means, a goodie bag for the 1,000th comment! (Nothing for you, Mister Spam. Move along.)

I don’t know for sure what the prize will be. Odds are high that it could be a styrofoam head on which you could pose your latest knitted hat. Or, you could pick What’s Behind Door Number Two: a classic Chocolate Sheep care package from good ol’ Wisconsin. This will probably involve both yarn and chocolate. I’m planning an intimate party for 200 during WI Sheep & Wool Festival this year, so maybe I can test some recipes on you. If that sounds good, comment away!

Back to the knitting. The brioche scarf got totally frogged and converted to a tube scarf so I can have something for my hands to do when my brain is otherwise occupied. So that’s grinding along. In fact, I think that’s how I’m going to use up all my acrylic: cast on for tube scarves on 16-inch circs. Merry Christmas!

I’m a few inches (6!) into the first of the Crystal Palace Panda Cotton socks. The pooling is fabulous, like a fractal swirl around the sock. I think one more inch and it’s time to knit me a heel flap. And now that the Yarn Harlot herself has annotated Page 144 of Knitting Rules for me, I’ll never forget how to slip those stitches again. (Hint: the needles are tip to tip.) But before I get to that point, I’m going to take someone’s advice and cast on for the second sock and work it up to the heel flap, too. Then I get to do two heel flaps in a row, squee! (That may also mean I have to buy another set of size 2 dpn’s, oh darn.)

I did one repeat on the IHS-with-cursed-yarn and set it aside again. Just not in the mood, I guess. There are still at least three skeins to be wound up, so it’s miles to go before I sleep, it’s for me, there’s no deadline, yadda yadda yadda.

The Packer Hat was mailed out, and I never heard from the guy again. I don’t know if he even received it. I think I’ll just assume he’s on vacation in Door County or something. Hey Brian, give me a shout out when you get back.

I haven’t been brave enough to pick up the Tyrone sweater yet — what is my problem? But in other Backyardigans news, my BY blog Backyardiknits just got a comment from a Spanish language Backyardigans fan blog. I just finished adding them to the blogroll over there. See how trusting I am that my connection will be stable long enough to do such things?

OK, I’m not brave enough to try to add a picture. I’m sure there’s something I want to say that I don’t want to lose in the inevitable failure to connect.

Top Chef related: I totally called out Nikki on this one, though I would have been thrilled to see Dale go home after this episode. Whenever someone’s this poisonous and they get the feedback and they get to go on to the next round, it certainly doesn’t discourage them or their tactics. And bravo Stephanie! And Richard for giving Stephanie his prize sight unseen. She deserved it.

What else is going on? Mr. Chocolatesheep has a state of the art iMac in the other room so he can make other magazines at home in his spare time, when he isn’t at work making magazines. It is freaking awesome. It is so freaking awesome I knew he wouldn’t mind if I snuck away and did a blog post. Mind? I don’t think he noticed.

Next thing to cast on? Maybe that can be what I judge comments on. What should be next on my needles. Socks for myself? My Dale sweater I actually bought the pattern and the yarn for? A knitted thing for my Birthday Buddy Swap on Ravelry? Or a mitered square for a Doctor Who afghan?

I’ll be in touch with you, number 1000.

Still reeling

Knit Night was awesome. (Gee, can you tell I was an English major?) The Sow’s Ear was packed and rockin’ when I got there. There were even knitters on the porch!

It was all pretty overwhelming, and when you go into a busy packed place like that when they’re celebrating, you always feel like an outsider, a party crasher, an interloper. The kind of feeling that makes you retreat to the yarn wall and pretend to browse, all the time wondering, where the heck is the wine, anyway?

Lucky for me Molly Bee tracked me down and I scored a chair in what turned out to me Knitblogger’s Row. Between Molly and S.A.B.L.E. and Dale-Harriet and her daughter the Lovely Mary, I was in heaven and gradually I got brave enough to go up and get a piece of cake. (Still didn’t see the wine, though everyone else seemed to have some.)

I can’t even begin to describe the evening. It was loud with talk at first, then later in the evening as the younger/louder knitters left, the conversation was punctuated with the distinct sound that wooden sock needles make when they strike a well-polished wooden floor. The colors of the yarns and FO’s on the wall as a customer art show were intoxicating.

Some of you know I taught myself to knit from a book, and have rarely seen real live people actually knit. Everyone here was knitting. Everyone. At the same time. While talking and eating and drinking and laughing and…. I thought my head would explode.

I stayed in my chair and nibbled at my veggies-and-dip, and cranked out inches and inches of my Wonder Skein Bias Scarf, feeding off everyone else’s conversational energy. Had a little root bear, hoarded a piece of chocolate chunk biscotti, knit a little more. Listening and listening.

Molly Bee had to leave just a few minutes after I got there, but she did introduce me to Dale-Harriet. I think it was love at first sight and we are already trying to work out future meetups. I would adopt her but I think both my mother and Lovely Mary would think that was kind of unnecessary.

One of the best parts of the evening came after the young-un’s took off (pikers!) and the knitting conversation regularly included “Elizabeth,” she-who-should-need-no-introduction. It was wonderful and I was so glad I already “knew” Elizabeth. Whether the knitter liked or disliked a particular pattern of hers, “Elizabeth” was always spoken of with reverence — not as a god or goddess, but the way you would refer to a beloved, wise friend. Which, of course, is what she is.

Otherwise over the weekend:

• Celebrated my BIL’s birthday (my son informed said BIL that he is “catching up” to me. Thanks honey)
• Received a handknit sweater (a regift, and it’s not knit by anyone we know, but still, it fits perfectly and somebody handknit it)
• Got more boxes stored in the basement
• Reorganized some rooms
• Watched the Packers game (and of this We Shall Speak No More)
• Knit enough of the Wonder Skein Bias Scarf that I can feel the end in sight
• Got our tickets for They Might Be Giants’ Milwaukee show (!!!!!!!!!)

I’m still enjoying playing on Ravelry. If you’re not addicted enough, try this: Click on Forums, then on the Radar tab. And don’t blame me!

Urgent chocolate bulletin

I have just received the following messages from Chocolate Headquarters:

• When you thoroughly comprehend this, you will be able to research more efficiently.
• Many articles you unearth have everything you are looking for.

Reminds me of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond film where the other operative kept trying to give the nonsensical pass-phrase: “The lion sings at midnight,” or whatever. It’s about as subtle as Will Ferrell’s “Do you like luxury?” skit on SNL.

Anyway, that’s today’s chocolate news. I am still recovering from my foolhardy boast that I hadn’t made a mistake on my Red Scarf, because the very next time I looked at it, I had. And for a brief moment I thought, Maybe this is the kind of mistake that only I will be able to see. Then I gave myself a mental slap and reminded myself that I am knitting this for an orphan. And I un-knitted four rows and fixed the stitch and proceeded.

I am getting lots of experience with tinking back, but I definitely knit more quickly when I’m going forward.

No new work on the IHS. A few more inches on Red Scarf. Seriously thinking about pulling the plug (i.e. working end of yarn) on the Dianne cap. Haven’t peeked at Tyrone yet. Yet, next Monday I will cast on for a new project using the Wonder Skein.

And I am number 1654 in line for my Ravelry invite. As if I even have the time.

I know this doesn’t sound very positive. There’s a lot going on here and I’m pretty tired. I hope to have some quiet knitting time soon. Not to mention learning how to spin. Treadle, treadle, treadle…..

We interrupt this message for a bulletin from chocolate HQ

Lately this blog has been mostly about the move, sometimes about the knitting, and only rarely about the chocolate.

That is all about to change. Just yesterday I received an urgent message from Chocolate Headquarters. It was disguised as spam but I caught it in time before it was discarded by the spam filter (whew!).

Much of the sites that you will locate dealing with this matter are very knowledgeable, while many aren’t.

The message is clear — you must trust your own judgment when it comes to assessing chocolate. I have tried a few bars of new-for-me chocolate, with varying amounts of cacao, and interesting spice combinations. I think it’s a Hershey product but I will have to keep the packaging next time so I can share it with you.

The only bad thing about it, is it makes Special Dark seem like milk chocolate. Which is not what I intended.

Knitwise, I finished the baby-tsock gusset and now just have to knit around 10-11 rows before starting the toe. I also completed a repeat on the Irish Hiking Scarf that I had begun a few days ago, continued later, and, well, you know. So I didn’t get to the intarsia before Craig Ferguson was done. And that’s just too darn late. So tonight I plan to get to the baby-tsock toe, do another IHS repeat (a full one this time) and start writing with string again. I really think this will go better this time, since instead of trying to do mosaic knitting I will be doing something closer to fair isle (I don’t know why I’m calling it intarsia except it doesn’t go all the way around).

That explanation is as clear as snarled alpaca, I see. But it’s progress just the same.

Last of the thirtysomethings

Tomorrow is my birthday. My kids are 8, 4.5, 3, and just-past-one, and I will be turning forty. Normally I don’t regard my age at all. I came late to the parenting gig after spending a decade in troubled relationships, about which that is already ’nuff said. I try to ignore the chickie-poo tattooed and pierced moms I will necessarily be hanging out with as I take my kids to school and pick them up — it is what it is. Besides, now that I have acquired Instant Knitter Friends, age differences seem to make no difference to them.

But the 4-0, which seems to mean “I have to buy a Miata now” to men (these days, maybe it’s a Mustang), means a different set of things to women. Basically, I now have doctor appointments to dread, and I have one eye constantly monitoring risk factors and mortality. With the two normal eyes plus the one in the back of my head constantly targeted on the children, I don’t know where this other eye is, but I assume it’s there. Maybe it’s the sector of my brain newly dedicated to clicking on links about breast cancer and ovarian cancer and menopause. (What fun!)

Tomorrow I am going to try to shut this eye. I know, it’s the first day of being forty, I should let it do what it needs to do. But it’s my eye, darnit, so here’s the plan.

* The first thing I eat or drink tomorrow morning will have chocolate in it. Instant mocha coffee, chocolate chips out of the bag, chocolate chip mint ice cream — I don’t care. We’re going to start this day right.

*  I am buying myself the cake I want. For about a decade I have wanted an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Nobody asked, I didn’t tell, I never had one. Tomorrow is the day. I will even share it with the kids. I just want a little bit.

* I am going to knit. Right, how is that different from any other day? Tomorrow I am not going to feel guilty about it or wait until I conquer the world to have five minutes to myself. I’ll just knit, right in front of real live people. If they complain I’ll just remind them that it’s my birthday and I get to do one thing that I want to do. This is it.

* As usual, I will call my mother just about lunchtime, and ask if she’s feeling better now. I just think it’s the considerate thing to do.

That’s tomorrow. Here’s yesterday. The weekend showing went okay, but the house only finished in the middle of the pack with the show-ees. (They want something with more character. Boy, will they live to regret that! Kids these days.) The good news is it showed better than most of the other houses in the same price range, so we’re on the right track.

While they were looking at the house, we caravanned (motorcycle followed by van full of kids) to Milwaukee, dropped off the motorcycle, and returned home. I cast on slowly for the HSS but was worried about dropping stitches off the size 1? 0? needles, so put it away. Then I cast on for the racing knitting, but only knit a few rows before I found myself patternless. (More about that tomorrow.) I put that away too.

Mr. Beth: “We have a two and a half hour drive and you have no knitting?” So eventually I picked up the socks again and carefully worked on my 1×1 rib cuff.

I just dread the first five rows or so of sock cuff. It takes about that long for my stitches to hang together, and until then I am a nervous wreck. It may sound strange to tackle that part in a moving car using double-pointed needles, but it’s the only time I’m not going to be constantly interrupted to provide a drink, stop a fight, clean a room, or change a diaper. So I do my best. As of now I’m still in that tentative zone, but my goal is to finish the first cuff tonight.

I also put up brackets for a curtain rod for the bathroom window, which Mr. Beth framed on Sunday morning (replacing the handyman’s framing from Saturday morning). Pictures coming of that, too!

So I’ll see you tomorrow, with my ice cream cake and my knitting. When I will perhaps be a little bit wiser.

P.S. Happy birthday Sheila, my birthday buddy from March 99 Moms! The card is in the mail. No really, it is. 

Spam Quote of the Day

Hello ))) I know that you don’t like this spam, but theese sites are amazing.

Just to give you an idea of exactly how amazing these sites are, each URL contained the phrase “wet-party.” Not exactly a Continental cast-on video tutorial, is it? Now that would be amazing.

Progress und chocolat

It was a wet weekend but it turned out to be very productive. We looked at houses yesterday and found one that was a dream come true (and it wasn’t on our original list; it was sort of an afterthought by the realtor — “there’s one close to here that’s vacant, want to take a look?” ). After we saw it we went ahead and saw the other contender we’d planned to see. For a while they seemed to be equally good, but it didn’t take long to sort through the mental lists of location, neighborhood, post-move expense, etc., to decide which one we really wanted.

So as soon as I get this typed up, it’s time to tidy up around here before the realtor comes over. I hope he comes with a big honking FOR SALE sign for the front yard.

Props to the showing agent’s daughter, too. She is visually impaired, but a crochet addict attending college in the Chicago area. She sells her crocheted scarves for $7 each and donates the money to benefit the homeless. Way to go!

Also major league props to Mr. Beth, who pointed out every craft store we passed on the trip. By the way, we saw a new quilt store in Janesville. They were unloading a truck’s worth of items into the store as we passed. One sign said “Quilt Central” and another said “Quilt Center,” and I don’t know which one’s right. It’s probably not their first quilt shop, I suspect. And Janesville also has a Ben Franklin, a Jo-Ann’s, a Scrapbook Superstore, the Dragonfly Yarn Shoppe, and goodness knows what else. I will have to check my database. You lucky Janesville crafters!

It was a looooong drive yesterday. But almost all of it was knitting time for me. I had the Harlot one-row scarf along, but my main project was the Hogwarts proxy sock. (After talking with Mr. Beth, I think I should refer to it as “Rock Ridge,” after the fake town built by the townspeople in Blazing Saddles. The poor thing is The Sock only until the other yarn comes in, after which the other sock will be The Sock.) Believe it or not, I cast on (onto size 1 dpns!) in the van, and got the whole cuff knitted. Complete with two stripes of contrasting color, which is what, four color changes? Didn’t drop any stitches or needles, either.

I took a status picture this morning, but won’t have time to upload it until after I’m done with the realtor. Sorry! I didn’t take process shots in the van, either. Frankly, I just didn’t think about it. I was too stressed out that one of the needles would slide out and I would have to kill someone. With a bigger needle.

This sock had better fit. I’m using the Tsock 101 formula, but not using Jennifer’s yarn, so I had to recalculate on the fly based on the gauge on the yarn’s ball band and the stated foot size of the recipient. It seems small to me, so once I got past the cuff I switched to size 3 dpns in the hopes it will loosen up.

Ah…yes….did I mention the chocolate? Since I had to get camera batteries anyway, there I was with a credit card at Walgreens. Hershey’s Special Dark-covered almonds. Russell Stover Triple Chocolate Mousse singles. And right by the checkout there was a bin of bagged Hershey’s candies, two bags for $5. I got peanut butter filled Kisses, and Special Dark candies with dark chocolate truffle filling.

I can stop any time I want to.

I strongly suspect that I don’t want to.