On The Road

I have never tried to blog on my mobile tablet device, so I am about to find out how it works.

The Yarn Harlot says she now only ever wears brown on airplanes, so given that she and  I seem to share a propensity for spilling coffe on ourselves, I decided to follow her brilliant advice.  The best part was that, since it would have been OK to spill, I never even did so all day!

I did take a picture of my knitting in LAX  (using the camera on my mobile tablet device) while we waited for our flight.  Let's see if I can upload it to the blog now.

*****time passes. I attempt to use a googleplus app to backup and access my camera roll on my mobile tablet device*****knock me over and fan me with a brick; it actually worked!

RIBBING FINISHED--about to begin K1, K1below vertical stripes

Seth and I were the only ones doing anything other than just sitting/eating or looking at their phones or other mobile devices (she says self-righteously as she taps away on her mobile tablet device on the coffeeshop's free wi-fi.

So we spent the night at the Grant Street Inn in Bloomington, Indiana. It was very nice and conveniently located. Of course most things are pretty convenient here as it's fairly small.  Actually it's a really lovely Midwestern mid-sized town.  Lots of nice shops in the downtown area.  One of which was a very nice LYS called Yarns Unlimited just off the courthouse square.  I had a moment of fear that it had closed because the street numbering was weird--even numbers on one block and odd on the next.  It is at 115 Walnut and there was an empty storefront next to 118!  Luckily we persevered.  I bought 3 skeins of locally dyed organic cotton/bamboo worsted weight yarn.  Ohh I'll take a photo! 

*******time passes, photo taken, photo uploaded ******

******oh crap,  just lost another 1/2 hour work on this--photos, writing, the works******

  We are here to meet a student to help get his bass all set up nicely and then we are stealing it to put it in the instrument competition at the Violin Society of America convention in Indianapolis.  Seth is 

almost done and the Soma coffee shop has gotten about 10 bucks out of me, and I  am about to throw this mobile tablet device in the trash.  I think it's time for some actual hands on leg warmer knitting time!

******* got Seth, got bass, ate a a sweet place called Finch's Brasserie, drove to "Indy", ensconced self on couch of adorable little VRBO 2 person house in a regular old real neighborhood just south of downtown , heated up ginger tea from Soma; now to find out if maybe this works better if not sharing wireless*******

Well, I got the links to work, but you just can scroll up and down at all. And on the MTD (mobile tablet device) there are no up and down arrows on the keyboard. I am going to try again to get the pictures in here.

*******manages to add 2 pictures in "only" 15 min.******

It is DEFinately time to put down the MTD and pick up my DPNs!!!

Spring Sprouts

     

Spring is in full swing here in Eugene. The flowering currants and Oregon Grape are blooming on our curb. The Hellebore (Lenten Rose) has been looking great for weeks. Seth has put in a bunch of lettuces. Saturday Market has started up again with it's piles of early carrots, garlic greens and salad mix. Spring rain is coming down. 

 

   It rained on our Spring Creek Elementary Spring Art show, but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm.

 

   I peeked in my knitting basket and discovered several small projects which have reached the cotyledon stage as well. With proper care they may develop into full fledged finished objects over time.  

   Noro 2 row 1x1 Rib scarf,

an attempt to make myself like sock yarn by doubling it up so I can knit on needles I can at least see (I love the effect of the different striping patterns together), 

  

      

and the Fiber Trends hedgehog pattern. Everyone who has done it swears this is right so far and will infact eventually become a hedgehog! Gotta have faith.

Happy Spring, everyone. May it come to you soon if it hasn't yet!

That was a long day

     O.k., o.k.! (How on Earth should that be punctuated? I said it enough as a teenager; there's surely some way to write it. ANyhow...) I know it has been well more than a day since I said I would post pictures. This one is going to be heavy on the folks for all their friends since they (the folks) never use a computer themselves. (Is that "themselves" right, Kate?)

     Jake and Susan came to visit us in early March and we had a swell time. I took a half day personal day on Friday and we all (including Charles and Reida) drove up to Salem (Oregon's small, and not terribly exciting capitol city) to go to the Mission Mill Museum. It's an old wool mill so of course Reida and I were in our glory. It operated until the late 1950's. Now Pendelton (you know their shirts and blankets) is the only remaining big commercial wool mill in Oregon. Here we all are in front of a huge automatic loom. Nothing was running today, but I did see the loom run once, and it moves so furiously they have to have a thick plexiglass wall to save you from death if the shuttle flies out of control.


We also saw the oldest frame house still standing in Oregon -- fires and "urban renewal" are forces to be contended with in the West even more so than in the East or Midwest-- which had very tiny rooms (four families lived here when it was built to house the movers and shakers of the Mill works (engineers. managers, etc) and super cool long skinny windows.

 Charles and Reida went back home then, but the rest of us ate dinner at a little McMenamin's called Boon's Treasury, where Herbert Hoover played on the roof as a child (?!), then we went to (insert tootling trumpety sounds announcing big event) Michael Feldman's Whadyaknow live radio show. This might not sound overly exciting to many of you, but anyone who knows that I am a Public Radio addict may understand. I listen to A LOT of Public Radio and Whadyaknow is my absolute all time favorite show. Once I got over the disappointment of realizing that "mezzanine" means not-connected-to-the-floor-where-he-might-talk-to-you, I relaxed and had a most excellent time watching how the magic of radio happens in the magical Elsinore Theater (Salem does have a few bright points I guess).

So, we went home and went to bed, then we got up on Saturday and drove out past Charles and Reida's, grabbed them and the dogs, and headed south. We didn't make it more than about 15 miles when we stopped at King Estate Vineyards and (excellent) restaurant for a fancy brunch. We continued on down to Coos Bay then turned East though a teeny town (outpost?) called Allegany (yes, the first white settler was from Alleghany, PA, but he didn't know how to spell it!) up a creek called Glenn Creek, so we obviously HAD to take Dad there. We went on a few short rainy walks to Golden and Silver Falls Sate park. They are truly amazing--probably the most impressive I've seen in Oregon! Mostly though we hung out in the house eating, playing and knitting.



I thought I had finished my Bacardi Cardigan, but as you'll see in a future post it was not to be.

     

     

On the way home on Monday (another personal day) we went a bit farther south along the coast to a beach just near Charleston wher we saw a sea lion rescue attempt and the world's longest bull kelp, which Dad and Seth and I used as a jump rope! We also saw a huge jelly and not much else. It was beautifully clean and nearly deserted. The dogs had a great time racing up and down the beach. A few miles more southward is Shore Acres. The gardens were closed, but the rocks there are darned impressive. the waves were not a huge as we've seen them, but they were much less scary for that!

            

      

     

 

 

The rest of the week was a bit more sedate (except Mom might argue that being dragged to my classroom to help with a crazy silk painting art project, and then running the car battery down at the art store and having to call triple A was not a sedate day) involving more good food and general hanging out even though I did have to go back to work. It's always fun to have them visit. We are truly lucky to have such largely agreeable parents/in-laws. Life is hard enough without having to deal with bad relatives!

Sick Week

I've been sick with a nasty cough all week. "Unfortunately" I've been too weak/out of it to correct any papers (and grades are due next Thursday), but I have managed to lie around and watch sci-fi movies and knit a bit! I'm writing this with a splitting headache while I drink my smoothie, but I wanted to show off my entrelac scarf. Entrelac is a way of knitting in little connected squares across your work instead of just back and forth in regular rows. The advantage that I can see is that with color changing yarns, (such as Noro's silk Garden #246) the colors clump together instead of making (cough, cough) skinny stripes. Knitting it is like a puzzle. It's really fun. Seth's mama gave me a class to learn how to do it as a Solstice present. I think having someone hold your hand through the process at first is almost required unless you're extra good at figuring out weird written directions.

I got a little spinning done on my Hunting Jacket singles as well. I'm all excited to finish the third single and start plying from my new tensioned lazy kate which Seth made me for Solstice. He made me one a few years ago, but my new WooleeWinder bobbins are too big for it! I know it looks like there are already 3 on there (and so there are) but two are the same because I got confused. The three singles are supposed to be #1) commercially dyed and white merino/bamboo #2) some commercial but mostly home dyed and white merino/bamboo #3) home dyed wool (mostly Shetland cross).

Speaking of cross, being sick sure makes me cross. We were going to go to Stumptown again for a really cool show at a really cool venue, but maybe I'll get some more knitting (or, cough,cough, some grading) done anyhow.

One down, still 16 to go

Well, I don't know where it is, so I can't take it's picture, but I recalled last night that I have an unfinished hooked yarn teddy bear floating around somewhere so that's one more U.F.O, so even though I finished the Stormwater Scarf, I'm STILL at 16. Crikey!

Remember I said Real fiber addicts have way more? A woman in my knitting group hurt her hand and isn't allowed to knit for several weeks, so she's spending her time ripping out old projects she has decided she'd never finish. She called it "a massive yarn reclamation project." Several weeks worth of ripping out?! I sit in awe of her knitting fanaticism.  P.S. Get well soon, you know who you are!

I didn't used to believe in U.F.O.'s!

It's true. I used to have one or two (maybe three!) fiber projects going at a time. I thought you had to finish them before you could start a new one (I used to think the same thing about books!). Was it a question of duty, or did it simply seem too decadent to indulge more? Whatever it was, it's gone now! Much to my tidy husband's chagrin I'm sure, I started hanging out with a much wider collection of Knitters and Spinners (not to mention reading the Yarn Harlot) during my sabbatical year. One of the many epiphanies I had (O-kay, one of the few, but still, a few epihanies is a heckuvalot better than none!) is that I realized that fiber love, much like familial love, can expand to encompass as many people, I mean projects, as you could ever meet! Now there are U.F.O.'s* flying all over my house.

I think I managed to corral most all of them here. Time to count!

1. Alpaca/Merino/Silk blend. Spun as close to laceweight as I could (first effort ever) using a worsted draw. It's really more like fingering weight. It is intended to become world's largest Elizabeth Zimmermann PI Shawl (which will be my 2nd ever lace project to knit).






     

2.   Supplies for beaded ornaments. I made a bunch last year and hope to make more this year. I should have looked at the pattern company's name, but you can buy a little kit and then reuse the pattern. They're like little socks you slip over a glass ornament. It sounds a bit tacky, but they're really lovely! Really!

3.  Homespun+FunFur+FiberTrends=irresistable  cuteness

4. Random bulky wooly ends for pot holders.

5. Felt pieces for cloak idea

6.  Kumihimo cord braiding is great to stuff in your purse.  You can do really complicated stuff, but I'm totally satisfied with the basic one which is pretty mindless. I got the kits from Carolina Homespun at the Northwest Regional Spinner's Association (NWRSA) conference last spring.

7.  My sister sent me this cool, renewable, fair trade, etc., BANANA fiber yarn. It's pretty thick and stiff in a way, but really silky smoothy. I'm bound and determined to find a way to make it into a new back for a wonderful old tapestry cat pillow I inherited from our grandmother. Suggestions?

8.  I bought this spindle, made by Janis Thompson and her family at Dyelots.  Some of the fiber too. Some of it I dyed (chartreuse and cadet blue), some she did (green multi). It's my first spindle project, so it's a bit on the bulky side and the whole color repeat plied together definitely pushes the spindle to it's capacity limits! I think it will make some fun soft slippers.


9.  Needlepoint bookmark kit I bought at the Tintagel Castle Ruins in Cornwall, England when I ran out of traveling projects. This was of course in the Spring of '05! I really only have about 2 hours left on this. Needlepoint's just not my favorite I guess.

10. My second spindling project. I took a "different ways to use colored roving / different plying techniques class" from Beki Reis-Montgomery at the NWRSA conference last spring.  Too cool. This will make some crazy socks. Although I love Wearing hand-knit socks, I don't really love sock knitting, but I figure that spinning the wool on a spindle will take so long that I'll hardly ever have to knit them!

11.  This is a gorgeous sweater that Seth's mom knit for him eons ago, but which he never wears because it's too warm, that I would love to steek and turn into a super sweater coat cardigan, if I can get my nerve up.....

12.  My friend and NIA teacher and I got together and did some dying of purply wool. The bag of colorful Romney locks was a gift from Rolly Thompson of Fox Hollow Farm after she won it back after donating it in a raffle at NWRSA. I want to try that wrapped yarn technique that was in SpinOff a few issues back.

13. This is the wool for my hunting jacket concept  (maybe E.Z.'s adult surprise jacket?) that I wrote that giant blog about a few weeks ago.

14.  I had better finish this one quick before my dear friend reads this!  We were in the Beehive Wool Shop in Victoria B.C., Canada when I was oohing and ahhing over a shawl made of a really expensive skein of Handmaiden SeaSilk, and my friend slyly said, "You could knit this for a very dear friend."  I couldn't afford the full skein, but a few months later I found a half sized skein at a shop (I can't remember the name, but it was in a lovely historic home) near the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.  Almost done. Even the half sized skein is like a million yards!

15. My wonderful mother in law gave me a gift certificate for one of our LYS's (Soft Horizons) for my birthday last year, because I discovered that though I love to spin wool, I really need cotton cardigans for work. The yarn is O-wool Balance (50% organically grown cotton, 50% organically grown merino wool); the pattern is the Bacardi sweater from No Sheep For You. This one I actually managed to put on my Ravelry site (Laurarose).  Of course I can't leave a pattern alone now that I've read E.Z., and I'm trying to make a yoke top....

16. Homespun Navajo/chain plied wool and silk yarn (I even won a 3rd place ribbon for it at The Black Sheep Gathering (in June '07).  I'm trying top down one piece construction as described in Barbar Walker's classic tome (all her books are tomes!) Knitting From The Top.  

Stash storage all tidied up:

Some "Real" fiber addicts have many more U.F.O.'s than this, but I've seen enough of them to be a true believer. I guess I had better stop blogging and get back to stash busting!

*Un-Finished Objects