Wanted: strap mojo

Maybe I’ve been a little too cocky about the knitting lately. I have a group of Christmas presents I need to finish within a week’s time for early delivery, and I’m almost done. Maybe I’ve been letting too many people know that I’m almost done with them?

Yesterday I finished an Everlasting Bagstopper project. It’s a great free pattern and a quick and fun knit. I made one at this time last year.

And, this time last year, I researched a bit on Ravelry and found the perfect strap pattern I wanted to use for it. It was great, knit up quickly, attached securely, all that stuff. I gave the bag as a Christmas present and it got rave reviews (i.e., it’s actually being used).

So, last night I sat down to make a long single strap for this one. Cast on, knitted a few rows of garter stitch to help anchor it to the bag, then….. nothing worked.

Oh, wait, maybe before I slip those stitches purlwise I ought to have the yarn in front of the work. That should do it.

Frog, rewind, cast on, knit garter stitch. Try new method.

That’s not doing anything either.

Where’s my i-cord edging???

Frog, rewind, stuff in project bag.

Does anyone have a favorite strap pattern to share? For now I’m just going to pretend I’m making a very very narrow cotton scarf, and see how that goes.

Mike fright

Wow, you *are* out there! I took a look at my blog stats just now, and my views jumped from an average of 5-30 a day to 150 hits yesterday.

Today’s post title comes from the episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati” when DJ Johnny Fever realizes people are actually listening to him, and he becomes too scared to go on the air.

I’ll try not to do that. But I am flattered as all get-out that there are that many people out there curious as to what I might write. I’ll try to make it worth your while.

Meanwhile….

Knitwise….

I have lots of Christmas knitting on the needles. My brother asked for his own Doctor Who scarf for Christmas, so that’s no secret that I’m working on one. But it might be his birthday (May) or next Christmas before it’s done. Sorry, Ben.

I’m also working on a few more pairs of cotton slippers, an Everlasting Bagstopper, and a shawl for me.

This shawl. Anyone remember the black-and-blue wool-silk blend I was using ages and ages ago to make another Irish Hiking Scarf? I finally realized it was way too heavy for a long scarf, and the colorway was obscuring the cables. So I frogged the whole thing (and there was much rejoicing) and started a Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl. It’s a free Ravelry pattern, which I found by searching my specific yarn to see what other knitters had made with it. I was trying to get a few rows done on it every day for a while, but I’ve missed a few days lately. At any rate, it’s for me, so it’s being done somewhat in the background until all the giftknits are finished.

Thanks again for reading and commenting and sticking around to see what I do. It’s so nice of you!

Hello, is there anybody out there?

Sorry sorry sorry. Ravelry got busy, and Facebook invaded (need a Farmville neighbor or another member in your mafia?), and my life took some curious turns, but I’m back and everyone is well and I have kept knitting.

Unfortunately, it’s been almost exclusively Christmas knitting, so I don’t know how much I can share. Hmm.

What else happened? I lost some weight, I gained it back. I threw a big party at Sheep and Wool and next year’s should be twice as big. I stopped exercising and I started again. (lather, rinse, repeat. what else is new?)

I want to start writing again. What do you like to read?

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!

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.

Vultures!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unclear

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

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

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

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

No prizes today. Just share your wisdom.

The Deer of the Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Search me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello garter stitch my old friend…..

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.