Ummm.... Misc? Orts? Olio? Smorgasbord?

After reading that, you should have gathered that I don't really have anything major to show or tell.

There will be no pictures of progress or completion of needleworks for a while - not long, though. I managed to screw up my left shoulder, and it's rendered useless for a time. I can't lift my arm more than from hanging to about table/desk height. I tried knitting yesterday, and made it through a mere four rows before I had to quit. Even holding the needle stationary, and doing all the work with the right needle (and YOU try doing a psso that way!) was more than I could handle. I can't even wash dishes! Thank heaven I have the dishwasher for backup, even though I hate putting my good pots n pans in it, and my flatware says specifically NOT to.

I did not drown on Monday, nor yesterday. In fact, yesterday, while the rain was pretty steady, wasn't the overwhelming mess that Monday was. This nor'easter has been bringing these narrow, long bands of rain across the area. Monday, the airport registered 1/3" of rain for the same twelve hour period that dumped over EIGHT inches on my head, some 20 miles south of said airport. I live on a bit of a slope, and it was amusing to sit here in my office/studio and watch everything that wasn't tied down further up the street come racing past on the breast of the flow of water. It pretty well stayed in the street, though, and didn't even get close to the house. I have the cleanest gutters you ever saw! Tuesday brought little spits and spats of drops from time to time, but hardly noticeable here, though 20 miles south of here had my Monday. Yesterday was just a soggy mess - alternating between heavy and light rain, and the monsoon levels were further south yet. Today the sun is shining, and the whole world is 15 to 20 degrees cooler, and sparkley clean! The five day forecast shows temps remaining in the upper 70's, maybe making it to 81 at the max. Every year, usually a few days after the Equinox, we have a big nasty storm that breaks the summer heat, and ushers in the heavenly fall that starts the paradisiacal half of the year, and it would seem that it just arrived a bit early this year. Hooray! 'Course, there's still another month and a half of whirley season to go...

If you have somehow missed it, go now to the Yarn Harlot's tale of her adventures in the Big Easy. Some good writing there.

And finally, take Two Lumps.

Who's Kidding Who?

The Weather people, in all their wisdom, declared that there was a 40% chance of rain last night and today. Ha ha ha!

Shortly before midnight last night, I took out the trash and recycles to the curb, in readiness for the early morning (6:30 AM) pickups. Shortly afterward, it commenced to rain. It has been doing so with short breaks ever since, it now being 1PM Monday afternoon. The weather radar shows a band of bright red bordered by yellow not quite 20 miles thick, but a couple of hundred miles long, stretching east to west, moving east, and right over the heart of Jax. Looks like the projected nor'easter is developing well, lol!

Right around noon, the trash haulers finally arrived, and collected an extremely sodden mass of paper and cardboard, which didn't even go into the recycle truck; they just pitched everything, trash and recycles, into the landfill truck. At least it no longer decorates my curb - there are just the empties out there now, and there they will stay until this rain stops! I really wonder, though, why I bothered separating out the recycles, and sorting the recycles into paper, plastic, and glass. I can understand trashing the paper, but surely a bit of rainwater doesn't obviate the recyclability of plastic and glass!

So what did I do this weekend besides watch a lot of football and golf? Well, I spent a lot of time frogging and cussing at MS3, before putting it away until another, more propitious, day. I frogged and restitched on the Historic Country mystery sampler - and didn't quite finish the first motif, but I do love, love, love stitching on linen with the Dinky Dyes silk. Even if three of the four colors in this motif ARE variegated, and therefore must be done one stitch at a time, it's still a pleasure!



And I swatched away with the Tupelo Gold - and got 8.5 sts & 9 rows/inch on relaxed stockinette with 3.75mm needles. Close enough!

Oh, My Achin' Hand

Here is the (almost) before picture of the Wooly Wonka Fibers 100% merino laceweight, in the Tupelo Gold colorway. There's 1400 yds of it there, between the skein and the ball. I *almost* remembered to take the before picture - which is why the ball is still so small - that's the point at which I *did* remember.



And here, many, *many* tiresome hours of hand winding later, is the completely wound yarn, all 1400 yds of it. I really did try to get it all onto one ball, but the thing became so unwieldy that I couldn't manage it properly. And OH, does my hand hurt! So, there are two balls, and I will undoubtedly have to join yarn at some point during the knitting of Bee Field. Ratz!



A ball winder is looming larger and larger on my wish list. Thank you, whatever drug company manufactured my generic ibuprofen.

Belated Progress Reports

I know, it's not tomorrow. In fact, it's two days after tomorrow. I've really been meaning to join the Procrastinator's Club, but...

I confess I haven't been doing a great deal of stitching, being otherwise occupied with MS3, of which I am now on row 100 of Part Deux. It is going considerably faster, though, as I am not spending *nearly* the same amount of time frogging and tinking as I did the first time through. I'm getting good at 'reading' my knitting!

Back to the point - item the first, the hardanger piece. I have finished the Kloster blocks, and have only one pair of the satin stitch 'ships' to complete. Then it's time to switch to the #8 pearl, for the eyelets and the buttonhole border.
Here it is, without the annoying moire effect:



The "White Musings" band sampler. The first band is star stitch, done in all three fibers. The upright cross is in #8 Perle cotton, the wide saltire cross is 2 strands of DMC cotton floss, and the narrow saltire is fuzzy looking because it's fuzzy thread - Rainbow gallery 'Whisper', to be precise. All are white, and the fabric is 32 ct. Amsterdam Blue Lugana. The second band is the booooring three-sided "Two sided Italian" stitch, in the DMC cotton. It strikes me as being a great deal of unnecessary fussiness to do something that is indistinguishable from ordinary cross-stitch with backstitching on three sides. The band is completed with a second row of the same stitch done under the gaps in the first row. Very dull. The bands get better, though. Here it is:



I'd show you the Historic Countries start, but...

I should have paid more attention to the chart, as I made an incorrect assumption regarding the motif I started on, a grouping of three styleized flowers on one stem, with leaves. I assumed that the three flowers were identical, and that each flower was symmetrical. Wrong. So I frogged the whole mess, and once again have a blank piece of fabric. I would have worked on it today, but...

Yesterday, the post person delivered a nice envelope from Wooly Wonka Fibers, which contained 1400 yards of lace-weight 100% merino in the Tupelo Gold colorway (which is mostly spring green, with odd lengths of yellow and aqua in it. Gorgeous stuff! I put it on the swift and plomped down in front of the TV at 1:30 this afternoon. After I wound off the first couple of hundred yards, (by *hand*, I'll have you know, as I don't yet have a winder) it occurred to me that I hadn't taken a picture of it for you, so I took it off the swift, retwisted it into a skein, and took a picture of skein and ball. Then I put it back on the swift, and started back on winding the ball. And I wound, and wound, and wound, and stopped to fix a quick dinner (cube steak sandwich), and wound and wound and wound some more. I gave up part of the way through Letterman (but did catch Viggo the Handsome in his marvy VanDyke and Handlebar!), and still have maybe 200 yds to do. I must say, though, that after this marathon, a measley 400 yds of sock yarn is going to be childs' play. And to think I was dreading it!

I think I'd rather have my teeth drilled sans novocaine.

Fiberlicious Friday on Saturday

OK, I finally got my act together and took some pictures, helped enormously by the generosity of the post office delivery this week. All KINDS of goodies hit my mailbox! In no particular order:

From the magical dye pots of the Yarn Fairy - I almost don't want to show this yet, as the picture doesn't begin to do it justice, and I want to play around with different lighting to see if I can't get it better. The yarn is light worsted weight 100% wool, and we have named the color "Arterial Blood", which it is, even though this picture makes it look pink. Trust me, it's not.



From the shelves of 1-2-3-Stitch, the home of all good things for the cross-stitch maniac, a fat half of Edinburgh linen, color Ivory, 36 ct.



for use with...

and

which are 29 skeins of Dinky-Dyes 6-strand silk. For those of you who count these things, you'll notice there are 30 skeins pictured. The 30th one is on the far right of the second picture, and is a 'limited edition' release to celebrate the 5th birthday of Dinky-Dyes as a commercial enterprise. It won't be used in the project using the other 29, which is the 12 months Historical Countries sampler being published in 'The Gift of Stitching' eMag. Just as a bit of lagniappe, there is a 'companion piece', one per month, which add up to a 12-piece stitcher's chatelaine.

And the final goodie, from the good folk at Amazon -



I've only had time to skim the first quarter of this so far, but it's a fantastic book, I know already. It's in the same genre as those marvelous little volumes once written by English country vicars on the most abtruse of subjects, but in exhaustive and loving detail. Only this one has PICTURES, lots and lots of PRETTY pictures, and even charts and patterns, though they're almost an afterthought. Anything you wanted to know about the knitting of lace in Victorian England is in here, as far as I can tell.

This is now quite long enough, so I'll save the progress reports and pictures for tomorrow.

PS: Revenge is oh, so very sweet! Go Sooners! Oklahoma 44, Miami 13. PHFFFFTH!

Goin' Mo-bile

This afternoon I went to the grocery store and bought bread and cereal. I went all by myself. I know, Big F****** Deal, I can hear you thinking. Well, it IS a big deal, because... I once again have a POWERCHAIR!

The lack thereof was really beginning to wear on me, making me more than somewhat depressed, which is why there has been no blogging. Until you've been there, you have no idea what being dependent on someone else, particularly when that someone else isn't too terribly enthusiastic about giving up what little free time he has in order to fetch and carry for Mom, does to a previously independent spirit. I have been trapped in the house for most of the past month, and am/was going stir-crazy.

This chair, however, is not the chair I've had for the past four years. That one has died - or at least its extremely expensive control "computer" chips have done, or that's what the repair guy thinks is maybe going on. He spent almost three weeks trying to figure it out, and finally confessed that it was beyond him. He felt so bad about it that he's selling me a new (to me, anyway, it's actually used) chair for a ridiculously low price, and he's taking it in small payments with no interest.

I am FREE! Cue the Who in the background...

On the needlework front - I have finished the first half of the symmetrical version of MS3, and am on row 91 of the second iteration of the first four clues. When I finish the second, it gets married to the first with a vertical panel of the doubled border. I will also knit a second one, with the symmetrical wings, which are utterly beautiful, but just can't be joined well with the abstract geometry of the rest of the stole.

I am also eagerly awaiting the delivery of the Tupelo Gold yarn and the pattern for Anne Hansen's "Bee Fields" stole. This is a yummy design, and the yarn is gorgeous. We're doing an informal Knit-Along for this one, on The Lacey Shawl group at Yahoo, and I'm already behind, as it started Monday and I'm still waiting for the yarn and pattern. Not the Other Anne's fault, as I couldn't pay for it until last Friday.

I'm also awaiting the arrival of a serious quantity of a yarn from Jennifer which we have dubbed the "Arterial Blood" yarn, as that is the color we were aiming for. This is for a Secret Project, about which you will learn more in due course.

I've also started the first couple of rows of a band sampler, and am currently working a band of something called "2-sided Italian stitch" which is both extremely boring and somewhat mis-named, as it actually has three stitched sides. There are two bands of this, one over 4 threads and one over 2. The over-4 band is first on the chart, and I just might somehow overlook the second band, I'm already so bored with this stitch, and I'm only about a quarter finished with the first band.

I've gotten more done on the Hardanger piece, as well - but haven't worked on it a great deal as the MS3 stole has been in the forefront.

Tomorrow, with a little bit of luck, there will be pictures.

True Confessions

First off, I was looking at old posts, and realized that I've not posted ANY pictures of MS3 since Clue 1! I am sorry - and herewith rectify the situation: instead of a grey blob, which is what I look at every day, I slipped it onto some 14" needles, so I could spread it out; pinned it, after a fashion; and took some lousy pictures. This first one shows the full length of the fabric, though the farther end is hiding in the shadows. You can at least see there is one. The white dots are the pearls.

This second picture is a closer view of the middle, between the two chevrons:

And lastly, the topmost section, the cats' paws/hexagons/daisies, as various knitters of the stole have called them

Now, about those confessions:

Some background.... Firstly, I am a contrarian. It's not something I'm particularly either proud or ashamed of, it just *is*, rather like having green eyes. If 99% of the world likes A, I'm sure to prefer B. Secondly, I am an American/English/"throw" knitter.

So, the knitters of the no-longer-mystery stole are virtually unanimous in hating/being bored to tears with, the 2.5 charts worth of the cats' paws. (what you see in the picture is approximately 1/4 of the total length of them, as the chart is written, before lengthening the stole, about which I am still undecided) I, on the other hand, am enjoying them immensely! There's just enough to them to keep me mentally alert, without requiring the rigid attention to detail that the more complex areas of the design have required. I can knit AND watch football/golf/tennis, without slighting either.

Judging by the various discussion groups and assorted blogs, most knitters seem to hate purling, and find it more difficult than knitting. Not me! The working needle just rocks back and forth when purling, spitting out new stitches like clockwork, instead of having to interrupt the smooth motion in order to stick the needle into the stitch from the left side required in knitting. On the other hand, the reason I am a "throw" knitter rather than a European/Continental/"scoop" knitter is that I cannot, for the life of me, overcome the awkwardness of the purl stitch! I know people do it, but I'm not one of them, alas.

I have abandoned, to all intents and purposes, the cable-patterned Grape Heather socks, at least for the time being. I need to frog them back to the toe, because it occurred to me that given the way my feet swell, the last thing I need is bulky patterning on my instep! I will eventually finish them, using the cable pattern only on the leg.

Instead, I have been swatching some FlockSock yarn in the "orange sherbet" colorway, which looks good enough to eat! This yarn is a lot more fun to knit than the super-sock of the Grape Heather, and it's a lot prettier, as well. It's not much heavier to the eye than the Zephyr, but it's glossy and firmly spun. I should have taken some pictures of the swatching, but, as usual, I forgot. I'm just not used to the insatiable appetite of the blog for visuals! I'll get there, someday.

The Fall National Passtime

As the seasons have once again rolled around to the time when groups of otherwise reasonably sane men spend an inordinate amount of time and effort, not to mention bodily injury, attempting to determine at which end of a meadow an oblate spheroid of leather should rest, I rejoice! I must confess that I actually enjoy the game for its own sake, but the real reason I love the season is that it gives me license to sit in front of the TV, ostensibly watching said games, but in actuality doing needlework, without DS attempting to guilt me for not being June Cleaver, Compleat Housekeeper, he being a feetsball fan himself of Major Proportions. Mind you, he has reason to complain, as I figure that as long as we have clean coffee cups in the morning, my duty is done, and to hell with the dog hair piled in the corners. I do get to it eventually...

Yesterday, I was able to complete the stitching on the second of my designer's models, a more difficult stitch, as there were problems with the chart about which Decisions had to be made. I still need to do the finishing, but it will be ready to go to her on Monday. And forgive me, but...

I'm usually even less given to tooting my own horn than I am to throwing pity parties, but every so often I can't resist. This from my designer, after receiving the first completed model: "I absolutely LOVED your stitching and ... finish. Absolutely beautiful, stunning work." Ego-boo is soooo nice!

Today was a Banner Day, as there was not only football, but a matinee of golf, as well. As a result, I was able to do 30 rows, or 2,970 stitches, of my neglected MS3. That not only recreates everything I had to frog before laying it aside, but another few rows in addition, so I'm ahead of where I was, and a much happier camper! Tomorrow looks to be a repeat. And next week starts the US Open (tennis), which is also great knitting/needlework fodder! Ah, fall!

One of these days, I'll post pictures again, I promise. Right now, I'm either doing things I CAN'T show pictures of (more models from my designer, these in silks!), or they fall into the category of "you've seen one picture of a grey blob, you've seen them all". I really, REALLY wish I was one of these speed demons that can knit an entire sweater in two days, but I'm not.

There is no situation so dire that, by dint of application of the least degree of stupidity, it cannot be made infinitely worse.

Which, lengthy as it is, is the title of this post. Let's take it in chronological order, shall we?

About 4 weeks ago, my chair suddenly decided to quit working. I had no idea why, and we took it into the shop for repairs. Shop says $200, give or take a couple. It needs new batteries. So there it sat until last Wednesday, when funds were available. Picked it up, and on Friday, I wended my way to the grocery store, about a mile distant, and a trip I can normally make several times in a day with no problem, and no need to recharge the batteries. About 2/3rds of the way there, the chair started a mild version of the complete non-working that sent it to the shop in the first place. First application of stupidity - I continued on to the store, instead of immediately calling my then-available DS to come and get me. The chair quit working entirely again, in the store, in the middle of the way. I got a very accommodating stock clerk to push me to a wall outlet, thinking that somehow the batteries hadn't been fully charged. After half an hour or so, the chair was working again. I came home, with some problems, but not anything serious. However, I did notice, at the store when the clerk started to push me, when I moved the tab that controls the engagement of the electric brake, making it possible for the chair to free-wheel, that the tab was so hot I could barely touch it. Aha! A symptom! Something in there is overheating, causing it to bind up, effectively stopping the chair in its tracks. Now we come to a major application of that same stupidity. On Saturday, I realized that I didn't have the 5 lb. bag of sugar in the pantry that I thought was there, and therefore a run for sugar for my coffee was vital! Half a block away from the little corner store that's only 5.5 longish blocks away, on the way back, the chair totally locked up. OK, it's a pleasant, if warm, afternoon. I'll just wait for it to cool down, and be on my way. Wrong. With sundown rapidly approaching, I was getting somewhat desperate, as DS was at work, and couldn't possibly get away. The man in front of whose house I was sitting, with whom I'm dimly acquainted, offered assistance. So I left the chair at his house, and he brought me home. The chair goes back to the shop tomorrow. MORE money I don't have.

I sat down Sunday evening with MS3, with the results posted previously. This morning I picked up MS3 again, and knit away happily. No problem, I thought... wrong again. I had finished a row, and was admiring the thing, as I am wont to do, and saw something that looked a bit odd, two rows back from where I was. Seems I had forgotten to do a yo. Knew there had to be something else as well, as the stitch count at the end of the row was correct. There was, a missed decrease, of course, but not at the same spot! I tried laddering down to the yo, which was the first one, and screwed it up royally. Frog. After getting all the stitches back on the needle, I was missing 5! I didn't want to screw with it for another 4.5 hours, so decided to frog all the way back to the lifeline.

Enter the stupidity factor. After setting the lifeline at the end of row 200, and Clue 3, I somehow forgot to do the next one, which I've been doing at the end of the WS row just before the edge beading row - every eight rows, in other words. I was going along so well, though, that I didn't bother with the next TWO either. So from row 227, where I noticed the error, I'm now back to row 201. There is a tiny mote of light in this tunnel, though, as the part from the previous post with which I wasn't happy is history in the frogging.

It is time to put aside the knitting for a couple of days at least.

I'm also having a recurrence of a health problem with which I shan't bore you, and is merely bothersome, as opposed to incapacitating in some way. I wish I could just put my entire life on hold until the planets realign more favorably, or the gods relent, or whatever it takes to get things back on an even keel. Since this isn't possible, I shall retreat into reading, and maybe even get some housework done. Maybe...

At least I've got the sugar to make lemonade from all these lemons.

Some Days You Get the Bear

and some days the bear takes it 6-0, 6-0. Today (yesterday, actually - I just realized it's after midnight) was one of the latter, regrettably. I was working on MS3, of course. I sat down with it, and ticked off 14 rows (7 RS, 7 WS) with nary a problem, smooth as glass, so I was feeling pretty good about things. Then I hit row 219. You'd think a row this simple wouldn't be any sort of problem, wouldn't you? I mean, you have this mindless edge, k1, bead 1, yo, skpsso. How could you screw that up? Then you have 16 measely stitches of the border - maybe a little more complex, but still! Then it's all decrease/yo combos separated by three knits across to the other border and edge. I spent FOUR AND ONE HALF HOURS on this stupid thing! First, I came to the end of the row and only had 98 stitches. No biggie, I dropped a yo, right? Pick it up on the WS as I go. It's a piece of cake. Nope... I tinked, I knitted, I tinked some more, I laddered, I knit, I tinked, over and over and over and over again! I had as few as 97, and as many as 103 stitches at one point or another. You think it's maddening reading about it - you should have been doing it! Or rather, you should be really glad you weren't. I'm still not real happy with the edge - but I've got all the elements in the right places now, even if it doesn't look like it, and I'm hoping that blocking will improve things. I'll try and remember to post a pic of this area tomorrow. I'm too dispirited tonight to mess with it.

All in all, with yesterday's happenings, it hasn't been much of a weekend. But that can wait for a better frame of mind.

I just HAD to share this with y'all - I just now happened to stumble across it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzCs2VwJqTw

A Minor Achievement

I have reached a milestone, of sorts, on MS3. I just finished the row, #210 in Clue 4, that completes the second chevron, and am now ready to embark on the acres and acres of cat's paw or daisies or hexagons or whatever you want to call them. This means I'm only 90 rows behind where I should be for the release of Clue #5 tomorrow morning! In truth, I'm far in advance of where I really expected to be at this point in time, so I feel a certain giddiness. I begin to believe that I will actually finish this thing in a reasonably timely manner! Whee!

I was going to post (and in fact wrote most of) a major rant having to do with the lack of Congressional action regarding the deplorable state of the Federal Highway system, as demonstrated by the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis, but lost heart. I mean, what's the point? So you're spared - at least this time. I'll just say that, while my heart goes out to those who have injured and lost loved ones, anybody who is surprised that this occurred hasn't been paying attention.

It's a New Month!

Crazy Aunt Purl has posted some heartfelt thoughts on life, here, that are so worth reading, I had to share them with you. I have been there, and, to a certain extent, am still there, and her post is/has been a real kick in the keister. So I wish us both luck! To quote an old T-shirt, "Patience, hell! I'm gonna go kill something!" (said by one vulture to another).

One more day and a wakeup, and I will once again be mobile! I will get my chair back once again from the shop. It's been three weeks, mostly because funds to pay for the repairs have not been available, but as of Friday, they will be! It means no "goodie" shopping (except for some special yarn I have commissioned from the Yarn Fairy and some cross-stitch patterns I've been saying "someday" about for a while, and are being discontinued forever [would link, but even the link is gone. Pam {and also} is holding them for me, bless her!]), and a lot of less than usual quality dining, but it can be done, and will be. ANYTHING, to get away from this house, and get some vital business done! AND, DS made noises, when we took the chair to the shop, about "It's about time you got a new one, isn't it? Maybe Christmas..." so I've got my fingers crossed, big time!

On the needlework front:

One of the models I've been stitching is done, completed, finished, and sent to the designer! Work proceeds apace on the other.

Got a bit done on the Hardanger, but not enough to be worth another picture.

Finished Clue #3 of MS3 yesterday morning, and started on Clue #4. At least until Friday, I will be working on the current clue, but then I fall behind again...sigh. It's going to be soooo beautiful, though! I'm too tired to mess with trying to take a decent picture of progress, sorry.

The Lacey Shawl is taking up less time than it was, but still keeps me busier than I would like. I fear we are in no small way responsible for the shock Anne and Anne are in, as the members of the group have fallen in love with the Bee Fields shawl and stole, and have been ordering and ordering and ordering! The KAL on BF will start in September. This right after Triinu Andreassen was swamped with e-mails and requests for info from the group. She's been pumping out and mailing copy after copy after copy of her design, and the KAL on that will get underway about the same time MS3 is ending.

I find myself wondering if this is some sort of trend. After the HUGE stampede to join MS3, and then Triinu's shawl, the reprint of the Icelandic Shawl in Knitting Daily, and now Bee Fields, it seems to be some sort of pattern. I hope this augers well for Kitri (the Shawl), when it finally gets released!

A New War to Fight

Since I have gone rather berserk on this knitting thing of late (I'm presently on row 185, Clue 3 of the MS3, with Clue 4 released this morning, sigh...), I have noticed a huge new problem in my life, one that requires action both swift and thorough. There is a need to commit warfare, in fact. The enemy is insidious - having been around, if not particularly noticeable, throughout my long span living in Florida, approaching 30 years now, but has now revealed his true colors. He comes in many sizes, from teeny things less than a quarter-inch long, up to huge, the size of hummingbirds! The latter, thank heaven, stay outdoors! By now, if you're any sort of fiber junkie at all, you know that I'm talking about ...

.

.

.

.

MOTHS!

Hitherto, they have not been of any great concern, another part of life as she is lived in the Sunshine State, where a BBQ Christmas dinner on the patio is not uncommon, and bugs of every possible description abound. They were most bothersome as they clustered about the lights beside the outer doors, as they are wont to do, and one must wend through a cloud of them to get into and out of the house after dark. There is also a frequent progress of fur babies through these same portals. "Bug" lights are of no use, so moths in the house are commonplace, if annoying in front of the TV and flying around light fixtures. When one is sufficiently annoyed, one swats, and that's that.

Now, however, there has become Stash - small as yet, granted, but certain to grow, as there is more on order, and more on the list behind that, ad infinitum. And I have become *aware* of moths in an entirely new way. Moths and wool do NOT mix, not no how, not no way! All the wool presently resides in zip-lock bags, inside a drawer inside a chiffarobe, where moths don't seem to congregate. The one "working" bag, the one containing the MS3 stole, is opened frequently, as unless I'm actively knitting, the stole goes into the bag, for protection against 6 cats, spilled beverages, and fallout from meteorites crashing into the street in front of the house. And, of course, the moths. This bag also contains, besides the stole, the charts, the row counter, the ball of perle cotton for lifelines, and the container of pearls, a large-ish loosely woven bag, filled with fresh-dried French lavender. I am told that lavender, among other herbs, repels moths, or, more accurately, causes the wool to fail to attract them, since the moths track on scents emitted by the wool (and you thought "wool fumes" was a joke!), and the lavender covers them up. Even if it doesn't, it smells pretty.


And Now For Something Completely Different

Happy Man On the Moon day, y'all!

Water Under the Bridge

Oh, my! have I been remiss in my blogging! I do apologise, and offer the following lengthy post, divided into segments, as atonement.


July 2/3


This is Chart A of Clue I of the Mystery Stole 3 completed. The sharper-eyed among you may have noticed that it's on a different needle than the previous pic. I had bought a brand-new pair of 14" Inox #4s for this project, eagerly awaited their arrival in the mail, and cast on with them immediately. By the time I got to the point of where the previous picture of progress was taken, I had fallen completely in hatred. They were horrible! They were sticky and unpredictably grabby, and I was constantly wrestling with the stitches. A very nice lady on the KnitList was destashing, and offered a bunch of old needles for sale for a reasonable price, so I bought them. Among them was a pair of 10" Brittany birch #4s, to which I immediately switched the stole. Wow! The Brittanys are smooth, yet grippy, and bent in exactly the same places my own hands would bend them. I like them as much as I hate the Inox. The stole is proceeding much more easily now.


July 4


Of all the words written regarding 'the nation's birthday' this year, I found the Tsarina's celebration of her grandfather's birthday to be the most meaningful. Russia is a poorer nation today because so many people like her family left there. The USA is a far richer nation because so many of them, and so many like them from everywhere in the world, chose to come here. Happy Birthday to the melting pot!


July 5


Here is Chart A of the stole completed, once again. It doesn't look much different from the previous picture, does it? It is, though. In fact, it's a completely different piece of fabric! What happened was, a cat decided the knitting was an extremely dangerous and fierce dragon. In the process of bravely attacking and killing this threat to domestic harmony, the knitting was destroyed past any hope of salvage. That'll teach me not to Put Things Away. In a way, I'm rather more pleased than not. I never did like the way the bottom point looked on version the first, and I fought it and fought it and fought it, every stitch of the way. Version the second has been much better behaved, and knitted up about three times faster than the first. I actually got ALL of this done in one (rather lengthy, I admit) sitting! Don't the pearls look pretty? They probably are too large, but I don't care. I like them!


July 6-10


I've done it to myself again. I follow links in blog posts. I find out all sorts of fascinating things that way, and end up in some strange places, when the links have links and so ad infinitum. (The 'net is quite possibly the greatest invention since the printing press, IMHO.) In this particular case, I saw a picture, and fell madly in love with the subject. I posted on both the KnitList and the MS3 list (which grew from just over 4,000 to 6,910 people after the Harlot blogged about it! USA Today interviewed Melanie yesterday.) trying to find more information about it. No immediate answers, but a LOT of people expressed interest in knowing the answers when I got them. The result is I am now a List Mom! The picture on the home page is the one that started it all. As of this morning, 384 people seem to share my passion. I wish this blog had as many readers!


July 11


And this brings us up to date. In between e-mails, and ListMom chores, I have been knitting, and Clue 1, all 100 rows of it, is finished! Here it is:



It's only finger-patted into shape, of course, and will look much, much better when blocked out properly. I took this photo at 2:30 this morning. I somehow believe that I will end up adding the "slow bee" button to the blog, though. I'm still way behind, unless I can complete all 50 rows of Clue 2 before Friday morning, when Clue 3 is released, anyway. Care to estimate the odds of that actually happening?

God, I feel old tonight.

Back when I was a young teenager, I had two idols, one of whom was Bubbles. I was even introduced to Bubbles once, which impressed me enormously, then and now. Today, my world, and yours, is a worse place, because today Bubbles died.

Rest in joy, Beverly Sills, as you lived.

Day One of the Shawl

1200 D1
Originally uploaded by lynnegh.

This is actually from yesterday, as I couldn't take a picture until this morning, but this is how far I got before becoming so tired that I was spending much more time tinking and frogging than I was knitting. For some reason, I just could *not* get past row 23! At one point, I had to rip it back to row 15 to catch a group of running dropped stitches - so the top few rows have been knitted at least six times. Sigh...

I do really, really like the way it's looking, though, even just spread out on the needle. The pearls are soooo yummy with this yarn!

This is a swatch for my newest project, the Mystery Stole 3. The yarn is Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight, the color is pewter, and the beads are 4mm pearls. Melanie's supplies list calls for #8 seed beads, which are 3mm, so I was a bit concerned about how these 4mm would work in the pattern. My fears are allayed, however, as Clue #1 was published early this morning, and the larger beads will, I think, be fine.

This is my first experience with laceweight yarn, and I approached it with a certain degree of trepidation, given that it looks so delicate, and my involuntary twitches tend to be hard on things delicate. However, this yarn is very sturdy! It's also a joy to the hand, and knits up nicely.

The actual stole pattern is nothing at all like this swatch, though. This week's clue is for the first 99 rows, but it's not as onerus as that number would lead you to believe. The shape is triangular. The starting cast-on is only two stitches, and the work doesn't actually achieve the full width of the stole until the 97th row.

When my needles arrive (I hope this afternoon!), I'll start on the pattern, and do a pin-out and picture for y'all when I've got those first 99 rows done. Depending on how fast I get it done, I may well entertain you with pictures of ever larger grey blob.

Your Immediate Attention, Please!

CNN is having a poll regarding leisure activities - it's rank your top ten, and one of the possibilities is knitting. You know what to do with this -

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/leisure/your.picks/index.html

so why are you hanging around here?

An Almost Total Eclipse of the Mind-Body Connection

As one ages, one's body is less and less inclined to go along with whatever wild-hair notions the mind comes up with, and add a double-barrelled infirmity on top of it, and one becomes a sloth, for all practical purposes. I am in that condition, at least for the moment, until the infirmity decides it's done doing its thing for the moment, which will happen, sooner or later. In the meantime, I suck down such nostrums as the medical community seems to think will be of assistance, and wait for better days. It's not nearly as bad as the siege of two years ago, when I was reduced to eating with a plastic spoon, as anything more substantial brought with it the probability of doing major physical damage to myself and my surroundings. There has been, in the past few days, some pretty "odd" stitching, though, let me tell you! Fortunately, though, nothing that couldn't be fixed occurred.



Since needlework has been curtailed, I've been reading blogs like mad, and also the incredible amounts of mail that the Mystery Stole 3 (see the button? It's still open for new members until July 6th. There are close to 3,000 of us now!) has been generating. I'm really looking forward to this project, as it reduces the number of sharp pointy ends to only two, and the yarn, while gossamer, is also quite sturdy. (I'm using Jaggerspun Zephyr lace-weight, which is 50/50 merino wool and silk - no picture yet, as the yarn hasn't yet graced my mailbox, though it's on the way.)


I'm in the process of doing the finishing on one of the models I'm stitching. It's going slowly because I want it to look really great, which means I have to work very methodically. Perhaps I will soon be able to post a picture.



Progress on the sock has been minimal, as six skinny sticks with a total of 12 sharp pointy ends are just a bit more than I can deal with at the moment.


Here is the progress on the Hardanger for Day 4. I know it's been many more days than one since the last picture, but this work was actually advanced just this much from Day 3 in one day. I've been hoarding the picture. Clicking it will take you to a much better version of it.






And this last bit is for Knit Tech, with lagniappe. The blue in the middle is the silk I mentioned in the "ribbons" post - though the richness of the fabric just won't photograph worth a darn (or at least I can't do it - I'm still learning this camera). The green, likewise; it's another piece of silk I found as an unbelievable bargain. Both are darker and much more intense in color than in the pic. The brocade (and doesn't it go well with the blue silk?) is actually, gasp, polyester, but it still looks and feels goooood. Oddly, it's actually a bit lighter in color, and how this could be in the same photograph, I have no idea.