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!

Running out of yarn

Sorry, I guess I should have asked you to sit down first. I didn’t mean that the world was running out of yarn, or even that I was running out of yarn. But I got eversoclose to finishing a project last night and probably don’t have enough yarn to make it through the bind off. Which I’ve already started.

I do have some long tails on the project from where I had to join the new skein of yarn. I’m not sure that will be enough to make it, but it won’t hurt.

At any rate, it isn’t a terrible crisis, as I plan to make at least one more of these. And I’m developing a Clever Plan to tweak the pattern ever so slightly so that two skeins of the main color will be enough to make another scarf and finish off this one. The contrast color? I have sufficient. (Famous last words, I know, but I can even prove it with math.)

Sigh.

In non knitting related news, yesterday I took all the kids to a funeral mass for a school dad who passed away last week (on the evening of the last day of school, actually) from brain cancer. Ironically, or maybe hopefully, I don’t know, Connor was one of the kids who sang along in a little choir up front.

The dad was 31 years old and leaves behind three little boys for his young widow to take care of. The oldest will be in second grade this fall. There’s a tuition fund started for them at a local bank, and both parents were from local families, but still this is devastating. I spent most of yesterday just being numb about it, and I’m still not sure what I can do to make anything better. I don’t know the family at all, but at a school as small as ours (about 20 kids per grade through 8th grade) I’ll know them eventually — our kids might be dovetailed in ages.

Knitwise, I have the sideways scarf to finish up, as I described earlier. And I’m also working on a 12 inch miter square for Shawn4Equality’s square drive. I’m almost at the halfway point but can’t remember which decrease is better, a k2tog or an ssk. Please, someone let me know which end of the row I should do a k2tog on to make it come out right. (I don’t like my ssk’s.)

I want to get going on a bunch more knitting (can you believe there are three active scarves on the needles after I finish the sideways one? crazy) but we’re hosting a cookout/open-house thang on Father’s Day and apparently the house needs a little attention.

And next Friday it’s my birthday, and I’d kind of like to cast on a little nice thing for myself that I can finish by then. Any suggestions? Geeky projects welcome.

Logan and his blanket

 

Work is progressing slowly and somewhat steadily on the blanket for Connor’s little brother Logan. As of right now (I need to do more knitting on it tonight) I am almost 65 percent done. It’s 40 inches wide by 36 inches long, and too big to be portable any more.

I am compensating for this by casting on smaller projects to do “in between,” but since I have about two weeks to completely finish and gift this blanket, even my own curious logic fails me this time. There is no between, there is no try. There is only knit in basketweave until I fall asleep, then have a Coke and try to knit some more. If I’m lucky, I quit for the day before I start knitting in my sleep and have to go back.

Nevertheless, I now have finished one lavender slipper sock. Before you yell at me, it’s for my grandmother, and I want her to have this new pair before Easter. Plus, it’s a super quick knit even for me. I could probably do the whole second sock in a long evening, including the seaming.

There’s not much else going on right now. Well, that’s not quite true. I applied for a job at Ravelry, I’m learning how to design and develop web sites, Tommy’s eyes are crossing and I’m trying to arrange an appointment with an optometrist, and we have a relative dying of cancer right now.

But other than that……

Oh yeah, I went past 4000 posts on Ravelry today. So yay me.

Everything

Here it is, Post 300. Long in the making because, well, these benchmark numbers put one under such pressure to perform! Until, finally, it occurs to me it hasn’t been three days since the last post, it’s closer to three weeks and by the time I write the next post there won’t be anyone there to read it anyway.

Emergencies

I have had my share of little panics over the past three days three weeks. Remember that extra little Christmas we had when I found the presents I’d hidden? One of them was a Scout knife, fresh from the factory and twice as sharp. The very next day, said Scout forgetting that putting it on top of his dresser wasn’t exactly removing temptation from his four-year-old brother, we had ourselves a small crisis. I’d tell you all the details, really I would — they were hilarious! — but until some sort of statute of limitations runs out, I’m afraid I’ll have to plead the Fifth lest someone from Children’s Services is reading this and decides I need some time in solitary to reconsider my parenting skills. (Short version: I did not know the knife was on the dresser until we were on our way to the doctor’s office for some skin glue. The reasonable explanations I heard for there being blood everywhere were all lies.) But we did meet a lovely new pediatrician.

That was a Wednesday. The following Monday I went upstairs to wake the same four-year-old boy for school, and was met with a zombie. I carried his limp body down to the couch, where he lay all day, eyes glazed, fever burning, unslaked by orange juice. The doctor’s office had no open time slots, so he didn’t get there until Wednesday, when it was discovered he had an ear infection and a teensy bit of, well, pneumonia.

It’s interesting to tell people that your child has a touch of, well, pneumonia. They look at you as if you’re about to breathe some pneumonia on them as well, while the thought bubble above their head wonders do people still get pneumonia any more?

Some of them do, and I hope they’re almost done with it. Because for a whole week, TV sucked, medicine tasted nasty, I was the most horrible mommy on the earth and deserved to DIE, and school became the Emerald City. But we did meet another nice pediatrician.

Meanwhile, I was adding “I am SO going to Knit Night” to the end of every e-mail I was writing last week. The events of the night were undiminished by the fact that one of my brake lines blew out as I was leaving the Beltline on the way to Verona, and were of course completely out on the hourlong drive back. I could tell they were handling differently — I just didn’t know why. But I brought me home safe. We dropped off the van on Monday, and maybe it will be fixed tomorrow morning. And we did get to reacquaint ourselves with the guys who fix my car.

So.

I finished a Secret Knitting Project I can now call the Old School/New School Scarf. Check it out in 2009 Finished Projects. It’s a tube scarf, with colored stripes transitioning from Marquette Warrior to Marquette Golden Eagles. It’s hideously warm and was completed two days before it absolutely had to be.

I finished my January sock for the Personal Sock Club — check it out in Finished Projects as well. I finished this sock yesterday, so technically it’s a January/February sock, and I don’t care to speculate as to when the second one will be finished. I might cast on for it tonight, just so that doesn’t get delayed any further.

Who’s left? The only other active project I have is a Season 16 Doctor Who Scarf. I’m coming to terms with my other projects not really being Works In Progress, but Hibernating Items I’d Rather Not Think About For A Few More Months. But I really would like to get them all wiped out by the end of 2009.

Thanks for reading my 300th post!

P.S. I did some spinning the other night — yes, Wookie roving. I have a spinning retreat coming up in less than a month and thought I’d blow through the open bag of Wookie wool, have fun plying it, and have all the bobbins free for the retreat.

Disorderly conduct

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” — A. A. Milne, the January 18 quote on the Never Not Knitting daily calendar by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

I finally have to admit that I am a disorderly person. (Any husbands present and past who may be reading my blog can skip this post. You already know this about me.)

In the last two days I made a couple of exciting discoveries. The first was that I found the baby-gift wrapping paper and extremely cute baby card I bought for Tommy’s teacher. This was five days after I had to wrap her baby present with other paper and make a different card. The important thing to remember is that in this instance I got the knitting done and the gift delivered on time. (In fact, the baby came this past Sunday.) It was on Tuesday that I discovered that my Special Secret place for the paper and card was, in fact, my Lantern Moon knitting bag.

In retrospect, this made sense. On the day I bought the paper and card, I also made a couple of stops for yarn. I must have tucked them in the bag to keep them from getting folded or crushed (they remain in excellent condition). Short Term Memory forgot to say a word about it to Long Term Memory, possibly distracted by the “all Seventies weekend” format of the radio station we were listening to in the car that day, and there you go. And now, if anyone has a baby anytime soon, I’m all set. Except for the knitting, of course. And that baby would have to be Soon, before I forget again where I put the paper and the card.

Still with me?

Tuesday was also when I discovered that my family was not yet done with Christmas. I was looking for my daughter’s hand-painted red, white, and blue T-shirt from summer school, since the kindergarteners were directed to wear red, white, and blue clothes to school on Tuesday, in honor of some Presidential Inauguration or something. (For more on the significance of this event, see here — I admired the pageantry of the occasion but don’t want to talk politics here.) So anyway, I was in an upstairs back closet where I keep things like Christmas decorations, hand-me-down kid clothes, quilt frames, extra bedding, sleeping bags, and the like. I opened a big blue plastic bin and saw….

Christmas presents. Nine unopened Christmas presents.

Uh-oh.

And now I remembered moving some of the early presents from in from of the master-bedroom closet to this upstairs closet so we could do things like open our closet. Not the we still can, but that’s beside the point. The point is that whoever wrote “out of sight, out of mind” knew exactly what he (she?) was talking about, and probably enjoyed as many exciting discoveries in their lifetime as I enjoy in mine.

Through a tremendous stroke of luck, there were two presents for each child, and one present for Mr. Chocolatesheep and myself (the very present I specifically asked for, and was feeling a bit irked about not having received).

So this evening, just after an early dinner of Spiderman macaroni and cheese (one word: avoid), the kids opened a new round of Christmas presents and were thrilled with everything.

I’m not sure why I can’t go through the plastic bins that hold my yarn stash and find a collection of mysteriously completed projects, but I’m working on building up my karma to increase the chances of this.

Whoever’s in charge of karma? Could you just do those raglan decreases on Tyrone? I swear I’ll do an excellent job on the crew neck band and even look up the Lily Chin invisible bind-off thingy from Knitty Gritty.

le sigh

Knitwise, after wasting three hours last night untangling a skein of yarn from the utterly botched frogging of a scarf that used the only skein of the Secret Project yarn available within forty miles….. I’m just happy to have gotten anything done today.

Personal Sock Club: I need to do about 5 more repeats on the leg of the first sock. I’m doing Retro Rib and it calls for 17 4-round repeats, but I’m worried my big feet will make me run out of yarn, so I’m going to do 15 repeats. Or maybe 14. We’ll see. Right now, at about 10, it would just look stupid. I hope it picks up speed when I get to the heel. I know I don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting the pair done by the end of the month, but it would be nice to have half the pair done.

Secret Project: I’m almost through the second third. Now that I have the yarn infusion I can (hopefully) steamroll to the end before the deadline of January 30. This is one of those “absolutely, positively must be done” kind of dates. It’s looking possible.

Doctor Who Scarf: This is the Season 16 Scarf I’m doing in yet more Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport. I’m almost done with the first column of Chris Brimelow’s pattern, which is something like 330 rows. That’s doable tonight.

Honestly? I know I have a lot of UFO/WIP projects in the bins, but I’m not working on them. And I don’t plan to. There’s quite enough on my plate right now. (Mr. Chocolatesheep? Wave to me from San Diego if you’re reading this.)

Tonight is for Scarf knitting and sock knitting and Blackpool.

Chilly

You may have heard this already, but my region is expecting extremely cold temperatures over the next couple of days. I know, I was trying not to start each new post with a weather report, but this is kind of special weather.

Pretend you’re on Match Game ‘77 for a minute. (Those of you born after 1977 may skip to the end.)

Gene Rayburn: “It was so cold in Wisconsin the other day—”
Richard Dawson, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, et al.: “How cold was it?”
Gene Rayburn: “It was so cold in Wisconsin the other day, that they cancelled Thursday classes by 5:30 on Wednesday afternoon.”

I know, it doesn’t have the same ring to it as “It was so cold that Beth froze her BLANK off,” but this is a pretty big deal for us. Tomorrow morning it’s supposed to be -20°F. Wind chills tonight and especially Thursday night may be in the -40° to -45°F range. So finding out the day before was amazing. Our school district was even listed individually, which probably only happened because not everything in Milwaukee County was closed on Thursday yet.

So. The kids are all home tomorrow, and we’re not planning to open the door except to let Daddy leave for a brief business trip to sunnier, warmer Texas. Personally, I plan to knit. A lot. I don’t know what they have in mind.

Knitwise, on Tuesday I finished a little baby blanket for one of Big Tom’s therapists. The poor woman was on bedrest awaiting induction tonight, only to be told she’s not ready and has to stay on bedrest until 39 weeks are done. Ugh ugh ugh, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But let the record show I finished the knitting, washed and dried it, and wrapped it up and wrote a card. (Don’t tell her I can’t even find the cute baby-gift wrapping paper and adorable card I bought for her last Saturday.)

Me: “I’m sure I put it in a Secret Special place.”
James: “Why don’t you make a map of your Secret Special places?”
Now there’s a good idea. For now, I’m just glad I had almost-appropriate wrapping paper that could substitute.

Other than that, I’m working on the first of a pair of Retro Rib socks — but very, very slowly. I got in one repeat at the Webelos meeting last night, and one repeat this afternoon. I’m also working on another Doctor Who Scarf, but I think I’ve managed two rows on that all week. It’s so far under the radar there’s dirt on the plane’s undercarriage. I haven’t done anything on the Secret Project except buy more yarn for it. 

In other news, I just finished sending in all my edits to the new issue of Knitcircus, so that will be able to go to the printer very soon. I like helping out on the ‘zine and I am just so impressed with the designs of Elizabeth Morrison. You should see her finished items in person. They all have such personality to them, and some of the yarns just glow. My own stuff just looks like stuff.

Top Chef Bulletin: Ariane got sent home tonight. Hosea pretty much threw her under the bus by allowing her to butcher her butchering of a lamb without telling her he had much more experience or offering to help. She didn’t even know how to tie up a roast properly. For goodness’ sake, I could have done a better job at it by remembering stuff I’ve seen Jacques Pepin do on television. So it’s sort of fair, and sort of not. She wasn’t going to make it to the finals anyway. Next week: Restaurant Wars. Bwahahaha!

The day before the travel day

What happened? Is it time to go? Where are my clothes? What am I taking?

Oh yeah.

I thought we were on track with getting ready for a week away from home, when I saw the 2-3 inches of wet snow on the ground this morning. OK kids, now I’m serious about the mittens and the hats and the scarves. And by the way, pick up a snow shovel on your way out. kthxbai.

There are a couple of knitting projects I really should be working on today, but in reality I’ll be doing dishes and laundry and making lists and packing for the kids. So any knitting will probably be just stress-release knitting. I started a little garter stitch scarf for my daughter that’s perfect in that role — filling the Garter Stitch Void where the Doctor Who Scarf used to be. (I’ll probably start another one after Christmas, if there is anything after Christmas.)

We currently have 20 Connor Caps logged in here at Hat Central. Today’s the last day I’ll be receiving mail before the deadline of next Monday. I’m preparing myself hoping for an onslaught of the remaining 180 hats then, when I go to the post office to pick them up.

If you haven’t emailed me for my address before 2pm tomorrow (Tuesday), just contact Sara (Spitfire) at the email she left in the comments, and she’ll get it to you.

And while I’m gone, try a visit over here. Apparently I have a German twin! When I update my blogroll in 2009 I may well make a separate section for Chocolate Sheep sightings around the world. If you see one, please let me know about it!

Yesterday I purchased a 66 qt. plastic bin, 200 feet of clothesline, and 200 wooden clothespins for transporting the hats to school on Hat Day and displaying them between the basketball hoops. Does anyone know if 200 feet of clothesline is going to be enough?

It’s come to my attention that I haven’t posted a picture here of my Doctor Who Scarf, fully fringed. So here’s one!

 

Season 12 Doctor Who Scarf, fringe and all

Endless petty pace

Everything is going forward. There is so much going on it’s like we did Hands Across America and all decided to walk to Starbucks together. We’ll get there, and all at the same time, but it’s going to take patience and coordination.

I finished almost all of one of the Christmas knits I’m making (including weaving in the ends, thank you). And I started putting the fringe on my Doctor Who Scarf, then realized I should have done it from the other side. Last night I sat on the couch, and undid each fringelet and turned it around. The fringe is 75 percent done now, and will be finished before Friday.

Everywhere I look, I have a project sitting and waiting for me to give it some attention. Yikes! NaKnitSweMo, Christmas knits 1 and 2 and 3, Bamboo socks…. we won’t even mention the Senior WIPs like Tyrone and the cursed IHS and the lace stole I started on Mother’s Day. Nope, won’t mention those at all.

I just got done shuffling my sets around on my Flickr account so I can post pictures of all the Connor Caps as they come in. I have lost track of how many people have asked for the mailing address, and I know quite a few hats are already in the mail.

If you are knitting or crocheting for the Connor Caps project and are not in the Ravelry group, here’s an extra bit of information I don’t remember mentioning here. I have recently found out that Connor collects postcards. If you want to include one with your hat, I will pass it on to my son to hand-deliver to Connor.

We’re also taking six-inch squares to be seamed up into an afghan. They can be knit or crochet squares, and there’s no deadline. I’ll set one eventually, but this is the wrong time of year to be announcing deadlines for anything. It’s too overwhelming.

Yesterday I got to go with my son to another classmate’s birthday party. Most of his class was there, and it was held at a skating rink. Do you remember all your elementary school skating parties? This was great, and they even played some AC/DC, which was what I used to skate to. Skating to the old school funk was really fun. I want to have my son’s birthday party there, too, so I picked up a schedule on the way out. Would you believe that they have an adult skate during my Wednesday morning free time? With free coffee? I am SO there.

Did you know there is a Roller Skating Association and a National Museum of Roller Skating? I didn’t, but I do now. Thank you Wikipedia!

By the way, I had a good weigh-in last night. You two pounds? Bye-bye and bye-bye. You are not welcome here. Hit the road!

Late night knitting at home

Thank you, economy. Due to gas prices and many other checkbook-related factors, I won’t be able to go to Late Night Knit at the Sow’s Ear tonight. Waves to Dale-Harriett, Lovely Mary, Heather, Annika, Melinda, Yo Jane, Mary, Donna, and everyone else whose name I’ve forgotten……

The only thing really making this bearable is that my DH suggested we have Late Night Knit at home and I could teach him to knit. At that point I figured he was just trying to make me feel better, which, frankly, was actually good enough. But then I suggested I teach him to spin instead, since he was really more interested in it, and his eyes just lit up.

Wish me luck! Has anyone taught their Significant Other how to knit, crochet, spin, weave, or …?

Sigh. Knitwise I have been devoted to the Scarf. The end is in sight. I try not to unroll it or measure it, so that’s why I don’t have updated progress shots. I just keep working the pattern. The kids are starting to get impressed that they can all have part of it on their lap as I work on it. Now that would make a good picture!

But I really need to finish my WIPs so I can move on to the next phase of my life. Brother Ben’s Christmas Stocking needs to be next, then Bamboo Socks, then whatever yells the loudest. Nobody wants knits for Christmas, so I’m not making any.

Genealogy has been taking me over. In a flash of generosity I started looking for unanswered lookup queries on places like the RootsWeb board. I have binders and binders full of family sheets from various parts of my family, but haven’t touched anything in almost ten years. Hmm, was that when I moved to Wisconsin? I can’t work on my own people from here, but maybe I live close to someone else’s ancestors.

As it turns out, I do! And the local genealogical society here has an awesome collection of fantastic materials. I’ll be joining them at the beginning of the year! I currently have four lookup projects going, an appointment to do a photo shoot at a cemetery next week (yes, I have a different definition of “me time” than most people), and I’m finding new leads almost every day. I love love love tracking these people down. Maybe I’m just channeling my inner Trixie Belden.

I’m using this quarter of lookups as a trial period for myself. If I enjoy all the parts of the process and start to get more efficient, it might be time to take a couple of seminars and start working towards becoming a certified genealogist.

So things are okay here — just lean, and changing. But now it’s time to knit.

Ravelympics, Day Two

 

August 9

7:00am — Turn on Olympic games, log on to Ravelry to see how everyone else is doing. One team member has not only completed an entire Rose’s Wrist Warmer, they have posted a picture to prove it. Go team!

8:00-noon — Work alone (mostly) and with children (sometimes) to clean and vacuum three rooms.

12:00pm — Break for lunch for kids.

12:30 — Shower time! Hooray!

1:00-2:00 — Bath and shower time for four children. Load everyone into the van and drive to Milwaukee.

3:00 — Meet up with husband, who has mashed one hand with a hammer while helping his father renovate the garage. Given flak for not-sympathetic-enough reaction.

4:45 — Go to Brewers game with DH and 2 BILs. While on the way to the stadium, I knit 2/3 of one round on DH’s socks in progress.

5:00 — Bag inspected before I enter stadium. “Just knitting, sir.” I am allowed to enter, even though DH whispers “Terrorist!” immediately afterwards.

5:05 — Use scissors from knitting toolkit to cut hang tag from new baseball cap.

6:00 — Game starts, and I never touch the knitting. Too exciting! I see a complete game pitched by Ben Sheets, who also picks up an RBI in the bottom of the eighth inning. We beat the Washington Nationals 6 to 0, and after taking a couple of pregame pictures to show how great our seats were, I never touch the camera again.

9:30 — Back at in-laws’ after World’s Fastest Baseball Game to pick up kids and take them home to bed.

10:00 — Arrive home, discover that more yarn for my Doctor Who Scarf has arrived in the mail. I love swaps. Update my list of yarn needed for Scarf (I have 9 skeins of the 16 I need).

10:30 — Log on to Ravelry. Support team by speculating on our mutual psychological makeup.

11:00 — Knit 1-1/3 rounds on the sock, then enough rows to finish the gusset. Now I have made it to the foot on each sock of the Parallel Pair. Soon they will be Socks.

12:30am — Go to bed without having taken the Rose’s Wrist Warmers out of their project bag.