November livestock report

My NaNoWriMo writing is going very slowly. Not badly, mind you. The writing is somewhat promising. It just takes forever to get the words down on paper. I'm not out yet, but I am in the "screw Thanksgiving and write 5000 words a day" neighborhood.

To make matters worse, as I was staring out of the window yesterday, I saw Chuckie, and what little concentration I had flitted away as I watched him. He was furiously eating and grooming, alternating with basking in the sun, but by the time I got outside with the camera, he was ready to skedaddle back under the shed and start hibernating.

A few hours later, we were having chilly rains, and snow is in the forecast for mid-week. See you next spring, Chuckie!

As long as I was outside, I looked for the finch nest. After the trek into the wrong neighborhood earlier this year, the finches packed up and moved to the suburbs, aka the middle lilac bush. Now that the leaves are gone, I can see where exactly they have been living.

Meanwhile, Katie found some wildlife of her own.

See it there?

When it gets cool, the ladybugs start heading inside. Their combination of slow walking plus noisy flight tantalizes Katie no end. I knocked this one out of the lampshade to a safer location - safer for the lamp, anyway. She's wrecked more than one lampshade by crawling into it to swat at something, and knocking the whole mess over.

Once the bug lost her interest, Katie resumed mellowness, reposing in Terry's chair where she can be near me, but not too near.

Coming in the next edition of Get A Grip On It: Yarn! Knitting! Spinning! And with any luck, an amazing and inspiring come-from-behind flurry of NaNoWriMo writing.

She writes, a little

Nanowrimo has started, and so has my annual descent into the fresh hell that is fiction writing. This year, in lieu of a big scary story, I am writing "a man walked into a bar" stories. It's all the same bar, and I anticipate having enough through-story that I can call it a novel. But when the chips are down, I can just pick out a character from my little notebook of ideas, and write a thousand words.

And the chips were down today. I frittered away most of Thursday, but managed to eke out 1678 words, and even better, they didn't suck. I thought that was better, anyway. It turns out that, unaccustomed as I am to fiction writing, writing well freaked me out. I squandered most of Friday and all of Saturday. I was already 4000 words behind this morning. Things were grim.

Thank goodness there was a write-in, and thank goodness, Karen's first words to me were, "I'm behind, too, but we are going to get at least 1000 words before we leave." And so we did. I abducted a character from my friend Aser, and by the time it was all over, I had over 2000 words. I'm still behind, but less drastically that before.

Tomorrow, the reality that is a full time job returns to taunt my aspirations.

After frogging about an inch of the Flamingo sock, I have done the tiniest bit of knitting on it. I'm trying to negotiate a toe-up, gusset-and-flap heel on it.

I'm also trying to conquer spindle spinning again. Amy gifted me a spindle and some beautiful teal fiber. I want it to be yarn, but I need to improve my skills first. My first gambit: Predraft the hell out of the fiber. (Nonspinners: Drafting is sliding the fibers slightly apart lengthwise as you spin. Commercially prepared fiber is somewhat compact. Predrafting is loosening up the compacted fiber before even attempting to spin it.)

We interrupt this program

A few weeks ago, someone on the Lime & Violet message board mentioned the Share Senseo program, where you can apply to get a Senseo coffee maker, the kind that makes individual cups of coffee using prepackaged pods) for just the cost of shipping and handling. You take a little survey, and if they determine that you are the sort who will chat up your friends about their product, you are eligible.

I actually spent some time with my personal assistant, Miss Google, looking at the pros and cons of the product before signing up. The major gripes were that cup sizes were small, pod selection was limited, and pods were pricey. Since I don't drink, nor want to drink, a lot of coffee, the promise of small servings was actually tantalizing. The price of the pods seemed less than the price of buying, or brewing, more coffee than I wanted and throwing most of it out. I'm not much of a fuss about coffee varieties. Once it gets past Colombian, my mind starts wandering.

In short, I am their target customer. I filled out their survey, was selected for the special, and sent them my $15.

I've had the Senseo for a few weeks now, and it it exactly what I need it to be - an easy, non-messy way to get a small cup of coffee. By small cup, I mean about 4 oz., perfect for the "cups" with your grandma's china service. You can double the pods and fill a small mug with the two cup setting. I know, for some people, four or eight ounces is merely an appetizer, but for me, it is just about right, especially with a little milk added.

As I said, I'm not terribly picky about varieties, but I have purchased a few pod packs besides the one included with the coffee maker. I think the Colombian and Kenya blends were somewhat better than the generic Medium Roast, and I wasn't too crazy about the flavored "Paris" coffee.

Cleanup is easy, since the coffee is completely contained in the pod, and most of the parts that come in contact with the actual coffee, as well as the water reservoir, are removable.

One downside for me is the size of the unit. The footprint is about 12" x 9". I have a small kitchen with limited counter space, so this takes a huge hunk of it.

All in all, I am happy with the Senseo. I don't know that I would have spent the money to buy one at retail price, but I'm glad I have this one.

If you want to try getting your own freebie, go here. If they turn you down (the cads! How could they?), I still have the discount coupons they included. Write to me at gmail if you want one.

Why am I writing all about coffee today? Because Nanowrimo has started, and I am already looking for any excuse not to write. But I have started. That's good.

Caught in a Web

Yesterday, I gathered up all of my unfinished knitting projects and assessed how long it would take to finish them. I mean, I have a shawl that just needs to have fringe attached, and a bag that needs an i-cord handle. There is no excuse for those to still be unfinished.

So today, I finished them right?

Wrong. Today I was seduced into working on the Charlotte's Web shawl. I bought the yarn the last time I was in Omaha, with the help of crackerjack enablers Eliza, Minnie, and Tara.

The shawl is knit with five different colors of variegated yarn - sometimes alone, and sometimes in alternating rows. The order above is the order they will be used, starting with the neck edge on the left.

This is my third attempt at making Charlotte's Web. I tried it a few years ago, with different yarn. I had little lace experience and no stitch markers, and it quickly became a disaster.

Since then, I have bought stitch markers at almost every new yarn shop I visit, the way some people buy postcards or souvenir spoons. I started the shawl with this yarn a couple of weeks ago, but I messed up the lace pattern. Repairing it turned out to be more time-consuming than starting it over. Now I am through the first single color, and midway through the first alternating section.

Can you see the white thread about a third of the way up from the bottom?

That's dental floss. Because of the earlier problems, I decided to use a lifeline. I threaded a needle with the dental floss, and ran it through a row of stitches that were known to be correct. Should there be another unfortunate incident, I would only have to rip back to the lifeline. So far, knock wood, everything is fine. I did drop one stitch, but with some deep breathing and a pair of double point needles, I was able to repair the damage.

'Tis the season

National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner.

I have absolutely no ideas this year, and I expect work is going to be more stressful that usual, due to an unanticipated absence on the team. But after five years, it's just what I do in November.

The October weather is certainly cooperating for indoor activities like writing - and knitting. It has been blustery, and today was rainy off and on.

I started the month with the intention of getting some knitting projects finished before it was time to write. Instead, I have been starting projects. The Knit Wits went to Iowa City, and I started a new project in the car on the way back. I've started not just one, but two, lace projects, and I've made two baby hats.

Just winding this ball of yarn was a project, requiring me, T, and some borrowed equipment.

It doesn't look so dramatic here, but this is a pound of yarn - enough for a sweater. It's about five inches tall and seven inches across, and it is destined to be a shawl. The only reason I haven't cast on yet is that I need to photocopy the pattern first, so I can scribble on it at will.

Most of the photos I have taken with the cell phone recently were blurry, but this one was good. And it makes me laugh.

Surprise and delight

T and I went out for lunch at a nearby deli. As I was waiting in line to order my sandwich, I noticed that one of the women in front of me looked familiar. I caught up with her again at the cash register, and said her name. She turned around and said, "Oh! It IS you!" She invited us to join them, which we did, and had a delightful visit.

We were friends in college, and for awhile we lived across the hall from each other in the same apartment building. Then she moved out of state, and I hadn't seen her for, gosh, close to twenty years. She and her partner moved back to Iowa to be closer to their aging parents.

And here is the kicker. She works two blocks from my office. What an amazing world.

This evening, T and I went to my co-worker's wedding. She is a fiend about organization, and it paid off. Everything was tasteful and beautiful without being ostentatious. The one thing that went wrong was really out of her control - the limo had a flat between the church and reception hall.

And bless her heart, she made sure that the whole event was kid-friendly, since a lot of their friends had toddlers. At the entry area to the reception, there was a basket with crayons and coloring books and Gummi candy for the young 'uns. (Bags of caramel corn for the adults, too.) She made the books herself, with clip art of wedding things. They were brilliant, and the kids had a great time coloring while we waited, and waited, for the limo to arrive so we could eat.

Dinner time

Chuckie--

A squirrel by our oak tree out front--

Princess Katie and her dihydrogen monoxide habit--

Emergency vacation

It's a long story that I won't bore you with now, but many of my September travel plans have become confounded. T and I did get away last weekend, though, for the Iowa Star Party at Whiterock Conservancy.

I wasn't even there 24 hours, but I met a nice cat who looks a bit like Katie, except this cat liked strangers.

Lectures were held in this barn.

We had the best meal I've had in awhile.

Grilled pork chops, scalloped potatoes, green beans, cucumber salad, and homegrown 'maters - oh my! There were also brownies, but T's plate was already overfilled. His brownie is on my plate. I didn't take a picture of my plate, because I didn't want you thinking I was gorging on brownies. Ahem.

Despite the many food-like names for the following, it is not good eating.

Cow pie, cow patty, cow chip, meadow muffin... We were camped in a mowed-down cow pasture, so one had to be on alert at all times when walking about.

I didn't have any mindless knitting, so I started some.

That's a toe-up sock in Opal Flamingo. Yes, I'm using circs, and it is going okay. It's up to about four inches now. I used Judy's Magic Cast On from Knitty, and it was slick - no provisional stuff to worry about.

TOFUtsies at last

(Warning for any Rockin' Sock Club members who happen by: There be spoilers here. If you don't want to see them, don't look too closely at the cat picture, or at anything after that.)

The Tofutsie socks are finished.

I stand by my claims that the yarn splits like a son of a *st*itch, and pools in a way that I would not have chosen, but it knits up into a lovely, soft fabric. The yarn, if you haven't been following along, is a high-tech mix of wool, cotton, soy silk, and shellfish shells.

Katie is stunned to see the camera out.

She had a nice surprise today. The hot weather and rainy weather finally gave way to a gorgeous late summer day, with clear skies and pleasant temperatures. I was able to open the windows and let her, and the house, breathe some fresh air.

Another advantage of the nice weather: The guys are finally starting our third renovation project of summer, putting new siding on the garage. It was supposed to start a month ago, but the contractor broke his hand, and then the weather got challenging. I'll be glad to see it done.

Okay, on with the spoilers. The August RSC kit arrived yesterday, and I love it!

The yarn is Flower Power, the pattern is Summer Of Love Lace Socks, and the package includes two temporary tattoos. I cannot wait to cast these on. I need to hurry, too, because the time frame for making shorty lace socks is drawing to a close in the midlands. I wound the yarn today, as well as some Fleece Artist that I got at The Studio in Kansas City.

The Fleece Artist had a break in it, which is why there are two unequal balls.

In writing news--I have no writing news, but next weekend is the Piker's annual folly, 10 K to Labor Day. The idea is to use Labor Day weekend as a warm-up for NaNoWriMo by writing 10,000 words in three days. I think T is working at least one of those days, so I should get some writing done.

Shooting with the camera

My new cell phone has both a camera and one of those teeny little Micro SD cards, which allows you transfer pictures to your computer without having to pay to e-mail them to yourself. For those times when opportunity strikes and a real camera is out of reach, this little sucker is handy.

Then at Office Depot the other day, we found these little doohickeys that let you turn your Micro SD card into a USB drive. Score! Now you can see the kinds of spontaneous things that entertain me.

Katie had to go to Miss Kim's for a few days while we re-did the bathroom. This pathetic face dogged me all the way home.

KnightStar, of course, is always very excited to find a chess set in public - at Starbucks, for example. I set up the pieces to humor him.

He refused to play me, though, since I had few more than the standard 16 pieces.

I did get a couple of squares sent off to the Greensburg project.

When the Knitwits went on the yarn crawl a couple of weeks ago, we stopped at a rest area, and saw this sign.


I've lived in the Midwest my whole life, but I don't remember ever being cautioned to keep the livestock in the vehicle. It seems like a good idea, though.

Still here, still knitting

Amy pointed out, quite correctly, "You haven't blogged much lately." True enough. The weekend after we painted, the Knitwits ran away for a quick yarn crawl. I got some yarn. I haven't taken pictures. I also got some snappy new shoes, perfect for showing off socks.

In photography classes, they always tell you to pay attention to the background as well as the foreground. It's good advice, and if I had heeded it, you would not be seeing this:

A toenail on the hall carpet. Katie is notoriously bad at picking up after herself.

The weekend after that, I came down with a cold. It is now in the "endless cough that won't go away" stage.

Fortunately, I was never so sick that I couldn't knit.

Off the needles: The mystery stole. I had a needle slippage event, and it was quicker to frog the little bit I had done than it was to repair it. Since then, more of the pattern has become available, and now I'm not sure if I want to make it or not. I'm waiting to see it finished - by someone more ambitious than myself.

On the needles: I replaced the mystery stole with the Mystery Sock at Socktopia.


Yes! Those are circular needles! I'm trying socks on circs again, because I hate being defeated by mere knitting. The ribbing looks a little funky, but once I got into the pattern on the leg, it evened out somewhat. It's a good thing I used circs, though. The leg pattern is over 32 stitches and 14 rows. DPNs would have been a pain in the patootie.

The yarn is some Meileweit I have had for ages. I picked it because it was near the top of the sock yarn box. I think it is too busy for this pattern, but by the time I was into it, I didn't want to start over. Here it is stretched out to show the lacy parts a little better. There are also cables along each side.

Semi-finished

The living room is sort of put back together. Here, from one direction, featuring one of my housemates:

And the other direction and other housemate:

The doors still need to be done, but that will have to wait until later.

The scarves had to come out of the closet in order for T to paint the door frame, though. I didn't realize I had this many. And I wear almost all of them.

Here's a question for you plant people. We've had this plant three or four years. It used to grow straight, but now it leans. What kind of plant is it, and what can be done about it?

That's not helping

As T was painting trim last night, he said, "You know what it looks like? Mustard."

There's light at the end of the tunnel

...and it is Yellow.

We painted half of the living room Saturday, and finished it today. It had been pale peach. Now it is gold, which I love all to pieces. Here it is at the midway point.


The trim was supposed to be a medium gold, but it turned out to be a fairly bright sunflower gold. I compared it to the paint chip. It is definitely not the same color

Katie hid out for awhile, but eventually her desire for attention won out over the funny smells and the way we had rearranged her space.

Next up: Paint the rest of the trim. Start putting furniture back in place. Clear off the bed. Sleep.

Home repair: Phase 2

(No, you didn't miss Phase 1. We had the front steps rebuilt. We forgot to take "before" pictures, so "after" pictures would not be especially impressive.)

Last week, we had our shower replaced. Before, note the wavy walls, the icky grout, and an actual hole where the tile has fallen out.


And after - the tile, and the issues pertaining to it, all gone. This week, Terry painted. I wanted it to be a little more sagey green, but it ended up minty fresh. That's okay, too.


There's not a picture, but we also got new flooring. (No pictures. It's vinyl. It looks like fake tiles. It was the cheapest thing they had at the carpet and flooring store. It's fine.)

Here, Katie studies the obstacle in the hallway while the flooring was being installed.

Our next project, starting tomorrow: Decide on a paint color to go with the blue carpet, barely seen above, and paint the living room. We're thinking maybe gold, but we haven't actually spread the paint chips out on the carpet yet.

Somewhere along the line, I ordered a few things from KnitPicks.

From front: The sock needle set, some sock yarn that was on clearance, lace weight yarn in case I hated the charcoal yarn, and the Koigu pattern book. I wasn't going to buy the Koigu book since I wasn't really interested in most of the patterns. But Miss Violet reported on a recent podcast that the Keepsake Shawl pattern in the book is markedly different from the standalone pattern (as in, correct), so I figured it was a worthwhile investment, especially at 40% off.

Oh, yeah - the charcoal yarn. Frogged it. I'm perhaps the only person who can lose stitches by dropping one end of a circular needle. After spending about 45 minutes painstakingly unknitting and still finding dropped stitches, I decided I could start over and be ahead in time.

Why did I do it? It's a Mystery.

Last week, at almost the very last possible moment, I signed up for the Mystery Stole 3 Knitalong. How it works: You sign up for a Yahoo group. Every week (for six weeks, I think) the designer posts a portion of a pattern for a lace stole. Just knit along with the pattern, and at the end you will have a completed lace stole.

The first obstacle was that the designer specified that the stole would look best in black or white. I don't have any black or white lace weight yarn on hand. I ordered some charcoal Lane Borgosesia Baruffa from the Loopy Ewe, and natural Bare from KnitPicks. Sheri got the charcoal yarn here in record time, so it won the right to move on to the swatching step.

Here's a tip. Don't swatch lace at Stitch 'n' Bitch, especially if the gang is chatty. This is perhaps the most error-ridden swatch in history, but man, did I have a good time knitting it.


Go ahead. Laugh. God knows I did. There should be six neat little arrows like the one at the upper right. No matter. The point was to see if there was enough variation between the yarn-over holes and the plain knitting - and there is.

Step 2, and my second moment of folly, was beads. Beads are optional, but I thought, "What the heck? As long as I am trying new things, I may as well go for broke." So I headed out to a bead store. I know nothing about beads, but I found the 8/0s, and picked one that looked nice with the swatch.

The pattern recommends adding the beads as you go, rather than threading the yarn ahead of time. That requires a teeny crochet hook that will go through the bead. A size 11 slips through the bead, and just barely holds onto the lace yarn.


Finally, today, I started the actual knitting. This is the first 20 rows.

There's still quite a ways to go. The test knit blocked out to 80 inches long. This is about 2 inches.

T and I went through some of the antiques in the hutch today. Katie helped.


For her efforts, she is getting to spend the night with her cat sitter, or as she thinks of it, Kitty's Worst Nightmare. It's not really because of this. Our bathroom remodeling starts tomorrow, and we thought she would be too stressed out by having strangers in the house making noise all day. Going to Mia's house stresses her out, too, but she's been there often enough to know where the good hiding places are.

Mo' FOs

T worked on the Fourth, so I knit. I finished the Opal 6 socks. Amazingly enough, this is the first pair of blue socks I have every finished.

Then, because the neighbor kids were shooting off firecrackers, I kept knitting late into the night and finished the Blue Jeans bag.

It still needs a handle (the pattern calls for a three-stitch I-cord) and a lining, but those should both be easy to accomplish.

At last week's yarn crawl, I limited myself to sock yarn.

From left: Opal Flamingo, Smooshy, Panda Cotton, and the current installment from the Rockin' Sock Club.

The Panda Cotton hit the needles tonight

The pattern is Broadripple from Knitty. The Panda Cotton (actually bamboo and cotton) has some elastic in it, so I'm hoping it works up similarly to the Cascade Fixation of the original. At the moment, it is looking like it might be a bit large, but it is really too soon to tell.

Tonight, Amy returned from her visit to Patternworks bearing gifts. It's a bamboo and wool blend, in very pretty shades of blue. Thanks, Amy!

Even more visitors

This weekend, knitters Alcariel and Mamateja came to town for a party. They joined the KnitWits Friday night for knitting at Borders. Alcariel brought her wheel and started spinning some new roving, which caught the interest of several people. Mamateja worked on her socks for the Rockin' Sock Club.

Saturday, I joined them for a yarn crawl. We covered three stores in 2.5 hours, and *ahem* yarn diets were abandoned. Not by me, mind you. I only bought sock yarn, and (say it with me, knitters) "Sock Yarn Doesn't Count." One is a sport weight, which will be hitting the size 3 "insti-socks" needles as soon as the current sock is done - and it is close.

It turns out Alcariel and I have similar color preferences and are drawn like moths to the bright, rich blues. There was a bit of tug-of-war when we saw this Jordana Paige knitting bag at Purls. After ogling its features and trying it on for size, I backed off and let her buy it. I figured I can go back any time to get one for myself - or put it on my Christmas list.

Saturday night, Terry sweet-talked me into going the observatory with him. Although it was full moon, it was clearer than it had been for several days, and there were a lot of visitors there. The night's big attraction was Saturn and Venus, which were less than a degree apart.