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.

Transitioning

Lately I’ve been looking at all the things I’m trying to do, all the things I’d like to do, and, frankly, all the stash I’m trying to use up, and I had a teensy tiny epiphany. The comfortable kind, the sort that sneaks into your head and gradually makes itself known without blowing anything up.

I don’t have to do so much of this stuff all at the same time.

I’m always amazed when somebody comments that I’m so productive, or so organized, or so efficient, because I’m really none of these things. It’s probably more accurate to say I’m easily bored, and attracted to new hobbies like a raven to a glittering piece of foil.

But now I’m looking at the knitting as a skill set rather than a lifestyle, and it felt like a weight was truly lifted. It’s easy to be obsessive about the knitting (even more so if you have the money and time to knit as much as you want), fun to collect patterns and yarn and cyberfriends (and easier to do these days than it used to be), and entertaining to keep up with the trends and magazines and knitalongs and swaps (especially for those us who didn’t used to be joiners, so much).

It’s also kind of exhausting, especially if you suddenly realize you have 3.5 kids in school (well, maybe 2.75, depends on how you do the math), and two scout schedules to juggle and a book to write All By Yourself.

So I’m kind of scaling back. There are lots of things I can do well enough, and I’d like to start taking turns with them. My little Scouts will need scrapbooks, and I can do those. If someone needs a scarf, I can make one. Christmas cards? Well, maybe I will buy those one more time, but I can make the birthday cards for next year with my stamps & stuff. I can spin to relax, and make my own stitch markers with the beading supplies.

But, as Steven Wright said, *not in a row….*

So. A new plan. My favorite thing in the world, and this year it’s three months early.

Finish the WIPs, and make Christmas gifts. If I feel flighty or bored I can work on those things first. There is certainly a variety of unfinished work that needs to be done, and (mostly) nice yarns to do it with.

Next. The Book needs to be written, the pattern booklets need to be begun (any knitting or quilting designers out there that want to be authors?), and I need to move into something that can be paying work that interests me and can be done no matter where I live.

I have an idea, and if you can guess it based on this information, I’ll send you a prize package. The deadline for comments is September 27.

Hey, that’s my Ravelversary!

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.

We have a winner!

All hail blogless Elaine, who tells the tale of a UFO that’s celebrating its silver anniversary! Pictures and words are coming to me soon of her sweater-in-pieces. For her quarter century of angst she wins a Wisconsin yarny prize package and the chance to hijack this blog and tell her story at a date in the near future. Congratulations Elaine!

Thanks to everyone who owned up about their UFOs! (Some of you made mine feel very young… on the other hand, I haven’t been knitting much more than two years, and did you notice my oldest UFO was about a year and a half? Shhh!)

Ah…..it was a pretty good weekend for knitting. Mr. Beth sent me off to Knit Night at the Sow’s Ear, where Dale-Harriet and I once again nearly had to be kicked out of the place. She thinks we may have been neighbors in 1780, and I suspect she’s right. There’s no other way to account for it. I met up briefly with cowgirlpurl and got friended by lotuscat as soon as I ordered my sandwich. (Ain’t Ravelry grand when it intersects with Real Life?)

I got to chug away on Luke’s stocking and found out I really love two-color Fair Isle. I have since finished the heel flap on that one. In other knitting work, I’ve done my nightly repeats on the Irish Hiking Scarf and have now finished 39 repeats. That second skein is going down quickly. Now Mr. Beth wants a matching sweater!

What else have I been working on? Oh yes, the Secret Knitting Project for which I will need to dye some yarn this week. And I just got to 51% of the Red Scarf, so I’ll have to update its progress in my Ravelry notebook. I set up a quilt frame (all the parts I still have, anyway, thank you Jack) so I can finish up some of those UFOs. But that’s a whole freaking different post.

And yes, yes, I will have to do something about the picture situation on this blog. I totally agree with you.

Bring out your undead: A UFO Contest

Today’s the day, Post #200, and the kickoff of the Chocolate Sheep Oldest UFO contest.

Allow me to begin with a confession. I took the Knitting Daily UFO survey the other day. My answer was “5.” As soon as I left the survey I thought of one more project I should have included. Okay, 6. Not so bad. But last night…. I made an Actual Written List and found the answer was really NINE. How bad that is depends on whether you’re thinking “original answer plus four” or “almost double the original answer.”

Anyway. Here are my UFOs. After you read about mine, tell me about yours, along to a link to a blog post about your oldest UFO. Only link to your oldest, not to each/all, or I can guarantee you will be getting a trip to the Spam Bucket. (See this post for more on the Spam Wars.)

Number Nine: Packer Hat, still a twinkle in my eye
This is a commissioned item that is in the test phase. After I produce one Packer hat in the goof yarn, I need to make the real thing in wool. I already have the wool, and another current project’s success convinced me this one will be easier than I thought.

Number Eight: Luke’s Christmas Present, conceived 10/14/07
I decided to make the Christmas stocking. I cast on 72 stitches so my circ would be full. It’s going to be wicked huge but it’s so much fun. Right now I’m just playing with two-color Fair Isle until I get to the heel flap.

Number Seven: Secret Knitting Project, conceived 10/11/07
Easy knit, just taking a while and I will have to get more yarn.

Number Six: Red Scarf, conceived 9/19/07
Okay, so I’m slow. I’m almost halfway through and I missed the deadline for the Red Scarf Project, so it will go to someone who isn’t an orphan. Or perhaps I’ll wrap it up nicely until the 2008 deadline.

Number Five: Baby Surprise Jacket, reconceived 8/20/07
For the date on this I’m using the most recent time I cast on. I think I will find myself in good company with this one. I had meant to make two, for twins. Well, those babies have been born already so the urgency is passed. It’s sheer stubbornness (and not knowing what to do with yarn that is, well, so magenta) that keeps this sitting on the needles. With no actual knitting, just 160 cast-on stitches.

Number Four: Tyrone sweater, conceived 8/15/07
I got Tyrone up to where the sleeves are attached and the raglan decreases are starting. It needs some think time, as it’s tough to get the needle tips in the right position to knit. More experienced knitters assure me it’s just an awkward phase.

Number Three: Salt & Pepper Sock, conceived 6/19/07
I’m dating this one from the day its mate was cast off. At this point I’m scared to look in the project bag and find out I took the dpns out… because if I truly liberated the needles I might not be able to figure out which size I used. Uh-oh.

Number Two: Irish Hiking Scarf, conceived 3/6/07
I’m still working on this one, I swear! About a repeat every other night. And I like the pattern enough that I’ll probably start another one as soon as this one is done.

And the Number One oldest UFO at my house is….

Elizabeth Zimmermann Moccasin Socks from Knitting Around.
Conceived probably in 2006 but I can’t find an exact date. I got to the heel flap work, couldn’t figure out what the hell she meant, and set them aside. They aren’t even in the Active Knitting basket any more, so became Forgotten About.

That’s it for me, what about you? I will take comment-entries all weekend and announce a winner on Monday. Happy Knitting and shoot down those UFOs!

Post 199

Okay, folks, time draws near…. time to haul out your UFO’s and see whose is the oldest. I think I have listed my little rules a couple of times already, so just search the last few posts if you don’t remember.

On post 200 I will list my own UFOs and their likely birthdays. I will do my best to be honest!

Today’s knitting has so far only consisted of the Secret Knitting Project, so I can’t say much. But I did do one repeat of the IHS last night, and even two episodes of Remington Steele didn’t screw me up.

Off to the airport to pick up Mr. Beth….. hmm, what shall I knit in the car on the way back?

A couple of advantages

…to not being able to post new pictures yet….

It sure is easy to work on Secret Projects! And about that We Shall Speak No More.

It forces me to concentrate on my writing and my word choice.

It makes me wait for Something Worth Writing About to happen before I post.

Usually. Right now I’m just trying to move forward to post 199. This happens to be post 197. So peek into your knitting basket and figure out the birthdays of your UFOs. On post 200, as I mentioned before, comment with a link to your oldest UFO. Oldest project wins some Wisconsin swag — local yarn or a made-by-me knitting bag. Plus a couple of the usual-type goodies I like to throw in.

So, what am I up to? A Secret Knitting Project, the Red Scarf, and measuring for mittens. It’s getting cold up here, folks — a few days ago we went from a high of 86 to a high of 49 with a 40 percent chance of rain. I do have the scarves I knitted last/previous year for the kids to wear, but they need mittens, too. And it seems a shame to be sitting on Yarn Mountain, in the middle of Needle Forest, and have kids waiting for the bus with cold hands. Yesterday I took hand measurements for the Wonder Twins and myself. Still have to swatch in the round to see what gauge I’m getting with my thrift store yarn.

And here’s a question…what would you knit for a growing puppy for Christmas? My brother and his [knitting] girlfriend have adopted a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy. I haven’t seen him, but my mother reports that he’s the size of a small bear. I want to knit something cute for him (NOT a felted bed!) but I’m not sure what. Actually, I do have an idea, but I don’t think it’s as good as yours. So, what would you knit for the big lug?

Ten to go to 200

Hey…. since I just mailed a prize package to Michelle at Boulderneigh (after lo these many days… sorry), that means it’s time to announce another contest. My two hundredth post is coming up, and I know how we all love contests.

The prize: your choice of Wisconsin fiber/yarn (sheep or alpaca or llama), or a custom knitting bag made by yours truly. We can work out the details later.

How to enter: On post 200, send me a link to a picture of your oldest UFO. Be brave, little soldier. We’ll all take a look at it and sympathize. I will call post 199 something terribly creative like “Post 199″ so you’ll know when it’s time to let the skeletons out of the bottom of your knitting basket. Oldest UFO wins, so please tell us when you started the project.

Who is eligible: Every knitter on planet Earth. Don’t be shy!

Meanwhile…. if I have been absent from my blog (have I?) it’s because I’ve been at Ravelry checking things out. I need to take a bunch of stash pictures and update my notebook tonight after the kids go to bed, but I did stumble on a “library” feature where I can show you some of the knitting books on my home shelf. You can only add what Ravelry already has in its database, and searching is not very AI, but I came up with a lot of things they already knew about. I wonder what you’ll be able to do with this feature when it’s fully enables. These girls are seriously clever.

Knitwise I have done just about squat. I worked on Red Scarf for a few rows after the kids woke us up rather explosively at just after 6am today (nobody was sick, they just thought it was time to get up — wrong). Big Tom himself got really sick on Friday night but seems to be all done with it, so he’s probably still on for surgery on Monday.

So I’ll have to kick butt on the IHS before I start my Ravelry time. That site has so many undiscovered features, I’m beginning to think that having a kitchen timer next to the computer might be the only way to keep my life in balance. But before I do that, I need to find a photo that truly represents my Chocolate Sheep identity. Any ideas?

A shout out to Mr. Beth, who is attending the Milwaukee Brewers game with his brother. If you see a crowd shot along the first-base line, and think you see a friendly biker sitting next to Corey Hart, congratulations, you found them! And go Cerveceros!