One Crazy Fiber Lady

Thanks for the feedback on Victoria’s tattoo.  I’m pleased with it and the Red Sox socks make me giggle when I see them.   Here’s a picture of the artist, Don, in progress.

Don is a friend of JessaLu’s who details cars.  He did the tat on her Amelia and she arranged for him to come to Tina’s Stitch & Spin this past weekend.  Excellent pictures and summary there.  I again thank Tina for hosting and Jess for reminding me.

I got a bonus in that the folks picked the monkeys up at camp early on Friday and took them directly to the boat.  This meant I could go to the S&S alone.   I had the house to myself Friday night!  It was eerily quiet.  I had a relaxing evening and drove up early Sat morning to meet Jess at a diner in Catskill for breakfast.  Have I mentioned I hate the stupid NY State Thruway?  Well I do.  Two lane highways should be illegal!

Sigh.  Anway, I had a stressful drive up as traffic either flowed way fast or slowed to a crawl for no apparent reason other than a dingbat in a crappy car that was too scared to pass a truck.  Add in that my 2.5 yr old Magellan GPS refused to accept input of an address.  I was free to get assistance to any previously entered address, but any street I tried to input in 3 states were rejected for being invalid.  I had to use the Google nav on my iPhone.  But then again, I had battery issues there and a crappy arsed charger that actually drained the battery.  Grrrr.  After breakfast, Jess and I hit the local Walmart and I picked up a good charger and a new TomTom.

There’s also something about driving in upstate NY that turns my car into a animal killing machine.  In all the years I’ve been driving, I had exactly 2 roadkills.  Now?  The last two trips have doubled that!  Last trip was a ground hog, though if it hadn’t of been my car that took the little guy out, it would have been the 18 wheeler behind me.  This trip?  A bird or two.  Sigh.

Moving along, last week was the Trike-a-thon at school.  Alex completed the most laps for his class at 26 while Kat came in at 22.  The school was able to raise $1,500.

Thanks for the donations!  Random number generator selected JessaLu as the winner of the Malabrigo sock and I was able to hand deliver it to her this past weekend.

Gotta write some code.

Craft on!

I don’t have enough time for a proper post today but I wanted to flash a new tattoo.  No I didn’t get one, but my spinning wheel did!

Here’s my Victoria displaying her new body art:

Watcha think?

Details tomorrow I hope!

Craft on!

That’s the best I can say about it.  It is indeed Monday.  And its not raining.  Yet.  Definitely time to start planning out the ark construction and making a list of what to pack.  Oh well.

This weekend was another one of those busy kinds.  My sister stayed at the house with her two little ones.  I’m out of practice with a 2yo and a 6mo old  The little one is a remarkably easy baby that seems to have a big old toothless smile plastered to her face.  Sweet little thing.  The older one is a spitfire.  FUNNY.  SMART.  But boy does she have a temper.   Alex and dad were seriously outnumbered this weekend by the girls, their normal 3 to 2 disadvantage was doubled to 6/2.

It was nice to spend the time with them.  We’ve made plans for me to come out and stay with her the weekend after July 4th.  I’ll get to spend more time with my baby sister and my nieces while my son will get some boy time with his uncle.  Its all good.

Needless to say, I did have much time to knit.  I did make some progress on the new sock though.  Here she is on the ferry this morning..

Craft on!

Been a long week. I’m glad its Friday, even though weekends tend to be tougher than the week. At least I don’t have to catch a train, but there goes the knitting time

I started a new sock this morning on the train.

This has to be the eleventy sock I’ve started in this yarn, Malabrigo Sock in the Tiziano Red.  I’ve been messing with this skein since last fall.  I’ve used a number of different patterns and even got halfway through a plain stockinette sock.  For whatever reason, the yarn didn’t like the pattern or vice versa.  I’m giving it one last chance and cast on for the Gull Wing socks from Socks Socks Socks.  We’ll see.

Have a great weekend!

Craft on!

The twins will be participating in a trike-a-thon to benefit St. Jude Children’s Hospital on June 24th (I know, I just got the form!).

If you would be interested in sponsoring them, either through a fixed donation amount or a per lap amount, please either email me at (risa AT crazyfiberlady DOT com) or leave a comment to this post.  Or you could send a paypal to  me at (risaphil AT gmail DOT com).  Please make sure you don’t choose the option to pay for goods.  We’d like as much $$ to go to the charity and not paypal’s fees.

I offer up a skein of Malabrigo Sock in Boticelli Red to be randomly drawn from those who donate

If we get enough sponsors, I could probably dig up a few more prizes, maybe even some handspun.

Thank you!

Craft on!

In a couple of comments yesterday, y’all seemed seemed as confused by the whole kindergarten in June transition.  In email discussions with you, as well as talking to the ladies at school this morning, it all makes sense.  They transition into the KG for the summer so that the effects of change are over before they really need to buckle down again for the school year.

The school/daycare center they attend is also their summer camp.  So we’ll deal with the no more nap now (2 hour Pre-K nap vs. 45 min rest period) and its after effects for camp rather than interfering with the true learning portion of the year.   It makes sense but wrecks that whole “first day of kindergarten” photograph.  I suppose I’ll take that picture after Labor Day when camp is over.

Speaking of pictures, here are my Red Sox Socks:

Okay I lied yesterday when I said the next viewing would be the final shot.  Sue me.

What am I working on now?  I’ve been itching to do lace.  But not super-complicated-need-reading-glasses lace.  I have one or two of those kind of lace projects laying about.  That’s when I remembered the latest Pi shawl and dug it out from behind my knitting chair.

I’ve tinkered with it every now and again, but it is by no means much further along than the last picture I showed of it on Rav.  I’m in the 640st per round section so I have a little ways to go yet.

Finally, I wanted to hit on the commute thing again.  I’m parking at the less frustrating drive “lot” (well actually next to a friend’s house about two blocks away from the station) with the human frogger crossing.  I had to stand there for the full length of the light last night and decided to take a shot of what I have to cross:

That bridge is the railroad trestle.  I’m on the ’station’ side while the car is on the other.  Complicating things here is the fact that there are two townships involved, one on each side of this divided highway.  These cars ignore the crosswalk that I’m standing in and whoosh past you.  35mph speed limit?  HA HA HA HA.  That’s a good one.

Craft on!

I finished the second Sox Sock this morning on the train.  I’m going to spare one a further picture of a red and white sock with corrugated ribbing.  You saw it on the first one.  I’ll pop these guys up again as a FO, but I’m bored of them and no doubt y’all are too.  Oh and someone please remind me that I don’t like corrugated ribbing on DPN’s please!  Oy.  Took 2 complete train rides (unusually long time) to finish 12 stupid rounds over 60 stitches.  It seriously cut into my reading time too.  Couldn’t corrugated rib and read the paper at the same time.

Sorry for the whining.  I woke up with an awful headache.  Oh and the kids were less than cooperative this morning as well.  First they didn’t want to get up, then neither wanted to get dressed.  Alex had a snit because mom wouldn’t let him wear a hole-y t-shirt to school today.  I finally got them into the car and they fought all the way to school.  Sigh..

On a positive (and slightly scary) note, they are transitioning into KINDERGARTEN this week.  Starting next week, they’ll be there full time for camp.  Damn that was fast.  I thought they had until fall to start.   They looked so little next to some of the kids who will be transitioning out of there.  There was one boy who had to be 5′  Maybe I’m exaggerating a little.

I’m going to leave this with a little photo exhibit of this weekend’s activities:

Craft on!

Here we are, another Monday.  At least it isn’t raining. Yet.  Yup, more of the wet stuff forecast for today.  It is definitely time to build an ark.  This weekend was an interesting one.  Saturday, the folks took the kids to the movies.  They were supposed to go to the boat, but with all the rain, they decided not to.  I stayed home and did a little spring cleaning in my room.  After they got home, the kids took a little lay down quiet time.  About 5pm, they all piled into the car and headed to the boat.  I had the house to myself.  Well the cats stayed behind, but they’re quiet and stay out of the way, mostly.  Boy was it quiet!  And odd.  What did I do?

1.  Finish the main knitting on the fair isle cardigan.  I just have to sew the steek and do the button bands now.

2.  Cleaned out the overflowing sock yarn basket and removed the non-sock yarns from therein.

3.  Weeded out a bunch of dead to me yarns and put them up for sale on Ravelry (Rav link). Same with a few rovings that I had around.  I have way more to go through, but its a start.

4.  Watched 2 baseball games & spun on two different wheels.

5.  Did the finishing work on the Strawberry Latte Sims Socks.  Wearing em today incidentally

6.  Stayed up way late and slept in!  Lazed around in bed with my downloaded Sunday New York Times

7.  Further organized and cleaned out my bedroom/hobby room.

8.  Did a few ridges on Ballerina.

All in all, a pretty decent weekend.  Very productive.  

Why yes, I can read the paper and knit now with the bonus of not getting ink on my fingers!  I get to start the corrugated ribbing on the cuff on the way home.

I have lots of photos except I took them all on the big Canon, which of course, I didn’t get downloaded last night.  I was exhausted for some reason and turned off the light at 9pm.  I’ll get them tonight and spread the love over the week

Craft on!

The response to my question yesterday was overwhelmingly in favor of regular but smaller posts.  So I shall endeavour to provide that!

To say my brain is fried is a bit of an understatement.  Last week, it took three squirts of my perfume into my hair before I realized I wasn’t holding hairspray.  Or the morning I tried to put the coffee pot into the fridge rather than back on the hotplate.  So I knew better than to take something intricate to SnB last night.  I did sock.

I made it past the heel and about a third of the way up the cuff.  I’ve rounded third and am heading from home!

What’s that?  You see a new gadget?  Huh?  Where?  Oh yeah, right behind the sock.  Yes, that’s an early birthday present to myself.  I bought it used on Craigslist and got it this morning on the way in. Sweet.  

Speaking of this morning, thanks to the persistent weather pattern and the incessant rain, it was a tad foggy out.  You could see NOTHING on the ferry.  

That’s looking eastward from the ferry as it was pulling out of Hoboken.  So yes, somewhere in the soup is lower Manhattan.  Pretty darn unnerving to see it totally disappear.

Finally, I wanted to show you the very lovely yarn bowl that Jessica bought me as a thank you for feeding Stitches while she was away.

How sweet is she?

Have a great weekend!

Craft on!

Have y’all had enough of my posting daily yet? Tired of seeing the Sox Sock?

Well in case you aren’t {hehe}, I apparently have the burden of knitting the Sox to a win and have kept up with my responsibility. Even though once again I did not knit during the game with the Yanks. I actually had to work a bit from home last night. Spent an hour or so debugging a system and fixing an error so the QA team in India could make progress last night.

Here the Second Sox Sock as of this morning the train:

I worked on it while reading Stephen King’s UR on my iPhone Kindle App.

Okay peeps, are you tired of the short but regular postings and wish I’d go back to sporadic, but long arsed full of stuff version.  Or do you prefer an amuse-bouche to a 7 course meal?  (Why yes I watch alot of cooking competition shows!)  Inquiring minds would like to know!

Craft on?