One Crazy Fiber Lady

I’m certainly living a lap of wool these days.  Maybe it is a good thing that the temps have dropped a bit.  Ballerina is getting to be a big girl and taking more and more lap.  And she’s most definitely wool.  A nice hearty shetland wool.

I sat outside yesterday after having my lunch and finished the mid-back gusset.  Between the commutes and the ball game watching last night, I’m two stripes short of finishing the striped section.

I wasn’t going to finish the row before the end of the ferry ride so no lazing on the bench picture for her today.  You get the crumpled up lap-o-wool on ferry shot instead.

I’m heading to W.O.O.L. 2008 tomorrow for the weekend so I hope to make some progress on her.  I’m also bringing Ladybug and fiber.  I think I’ll leave the NZAK at home so I can concentrate on the actual projects I have going (Ballerina and baby sweater yarn).  The twins will be with my folks on a boat trip to Kingston NY for the weekend.  They’ll be going with another boat, the dentist, his wife and their two granddaughters.  I have the house to myself tonight as they’re heading to the boat after dinner.  I’ll probably hit the road tomorrow after a leisurely breakfast and miss the morning rush.  I’m really looking forward!  So no post from me until probably Monday when I’ll be enjoying a recovery day at home.

Craft on!

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I know my calendar still reads August but apparently Mother Nature missed that memo.  It was COLD here this morning.  Cold for August that is.  Very warm for say, January.  Naturally my kids both had to wear shorts and Kat insisted on a sleeveless shirt.  At least I got them both to put on sweaters.  Weirdos.  This is what the car reported as I headed toward the daycare center..

And yes, I wore a sweater today too.  Ribby!

Another interesting site this morning.

My office is right next to the South Street Seaport and periodically there’s a mounted cop nearby.  I see him more often in the morning while I’m on my way in.  Usually they are walking along Front Street, but today, they were just standing there.  Hanging out.  Pretty horse.  Cop wasn’t so bad either

Okay.. moving along.  I’ve hit the MIDWAY point on Ballerina now.  YAY!  Two weeks of monogamous knitting and I’ve done a quarter of this sweater.  Damn that’s alot of little garter stitches.  I slogged my way through first first half of the mid-back gusset while watching the Sox-Orioles game on the puter.  Figured out that i can configure my mac with a hot corner so that it disables the screen saver.  I got to sit back and watch while I knit, with ironically the 32″ flat screen tv behind the monitor.  Need to find if i can output my ‘puter video to the tv!  Anyway, here’s Ballerina during her photo shoot this morning.

This gusset is a twin to the one to the right.  After this will be another set of 17 stripes matching the previous one.  Oh yeah, the second half of the sweater is a mirror to the first with the increases now becoming decreases!  Doing some rudimentary math, if I can maintain this monogamy, Ballerina will be done in some 4 weeks.  Yeah, I don’t think I can focus that long either

Craft on!

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Call another section of Ballerina done. I finished the striped section before the center back solid blue gusset while on the ferry this morning. Here’s the requisite shot of her lounging on the bench alongside the East River.

I thought I’d get a slightly different angle to shake it up a bit. The next piece is another wedge shaped inset in the solid blue. After that, the second half is just a mirror of the first. At least I’m making progress.

Yesterday during lunch I took a field trip to Purl Soho for a little mitten yarn shopping. I’ve decided against the cable mitts from Vogue. I actually read the pattern and found two things that turned me off: slipped stitches in the palm and {gulp} bobbles. How I missed seeing the yarn zits in the picture is beyond me. I’ll either return the yarn I bought, or buy a coordinating color or two to make a few Zilboorg mittens. After surfing more, I found the mittens that I do want to make.

I picked up some Cascade 220 in a charcoal grey and the lightests of pinks.  For the lining, I selected a creamy white Blue Sky’s Alpaca Silk.  I neglected to get a picture of the yarns last night, maybe tonight.   I’ll bring them with me to W.O.O.L. this weekend.

Finally, last night I sat down to knit and listen to the Sox game on XM.  Now, my bedroom is on the Southwest corner of the house.  Unfortunately, the antenna for the XM needs to face North/East.  I get signal to some extent, but it tends to cut out.  Alot.  I finally had enough last night and remembered an email I recently to try MLB.TV for free for 5 days.  What the heck, I decided to give it a try.  How cool is this?

I love my Mac

Craft on!

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This weekend was very much a mixed bag.  I was happy it was the weekend, but not happy with it all at the same time.  I woke up with a hearty headache on Saturday morning.  In all true, I went to sleep with it Friday night after playing the expansion pack to Puzzle Quest far too late.

I had an 11:45 dentist appointment that didn’t help matters.  My dentist is starting to replace my old silver amalgam fillings with new fangled material and I have a bunch of fillings.  Some of the Novocaine seeped into my jaw joint and stiffened the hell out of it.  I couldn’t open my mouth.  However, we were working on the last two lower teeth and well, the dentist had to force my jaw open.  I hate to say it, but it is still stiff and a bit sore, but nothing like it was on Saturday.  Add that to the existing headache.

While the kids played in the pool, I tried to ignore the head and jaw and took to outside for a bit.  Here’s the garden this year:

It is right up against the back of the house, across the walk from the pool.  Got a picture of bandit as a bonus.  This year we have basil, oregano (the two unruly plants closest to Bandit), peppers and a couple of varieties of tomatoes.  There really isn’t anything like fresh off the vine tomatoes!  And we’ve had some vandals this year too.  This is what some furry vandal left on the ground in the garden..

This vandal didn’t even bother to knock down the tomato!

Fortunately they’ve left more than they’ve damaged so we’ve gotten to eat a goodly bunch of these red yummies.  I spent the winter putting Bandit’s droppings in the soil so it is nicely enriched this year.  He’s earning his keep.  Sorta.  And now he’s blowing his tiny little fuzzy coat so I’m going to get some fiber from him too.  We’ll see how much that works out to be

Saturday evening the twins had a birthday party to go to.  With a DJ and clown!  Not great with a headache.  But it wasn’t so bad.  First party for a 5 year old that really took into account that the parents stay.  Had tasty adult beverages for us, as well as yummy adult food on top of the juice and pizza for the kids.  I hung out with a couple of the other mommies and had a pretty decent time.   AFter getting the kids to bed, I finally felt good enough to knit and watch some TV.  Saw Michael Phelps hit the 8 medal milestone and turned in for the night.

Sunday was a bit better, but I still had the headache.   I hung by the pool knitting while dad swam with the kids.  I’ve made significant progress on Ballerina and here is where she is now. The requisite East River bench shot.

Notice that I finished the back raglan striping.  I also did the first of three blue gussets on the the back.  The current striped section calls for 17 stripes and increases on 3 of them.  Thank goodness for the new swiss army knife like gadget that now lives in my purse.

Thanks to the help of StitchMinder, I’m tracking on the top counter how many stripes are left to do (can set it to count in reverse), stripes between increases (second counter down) and on the last counter, the number of increases I’ve done!  I loves this app.  BTW, you don’t need an iPhone to use it, but can also get this bad boy on an iPod Touch!  The next thing I need on my iPhone is the equivalent of the spreadsheet I’ve been toting around on my Palm Pilot for years, yarn yardage requirements…or a quick cheat sheet for the kitchener stitch since I can never remember how to start it.  I think I’ll develop something like that for my Learning to Program for iPhone  project.  Any other suggestions as to what would be good in a knitting app?

Oh and the pink Sony headphones?  I realized in the car this morning that I’d left my Sennheiser earphones at home.  Kat loaned me these.  They are hers for using with the DVD player in the car.  What a sweetie?  But yes, I’ll be using the apple earbuds I have at the office for the ride home.

Craft on!

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So yesterday I mentioned that I was thinking about doing mittens. Seems like a good idea yes? I need a small purse project and I’m somewhat out of love with socks again. And we can always use new mittens. I headed for my knitting bookshelf in the basement and came back with this small selection:

Why yes, I do have a few mitten books. I spent the next hour flipping through, getting all excited about a pattern, mentally reviewing stash and what Modern Yarn carries only to pile em all back up and move em back to the basement. I also sort of decided to let the twins have some voice in what I make them this year. I went back to knitting Ballerina and took it happily off to SnB last night.

I mentioned my mitten book excitement and how I couldn’t settle down on a pair at SnB. I was also looking at a newly restocked collection of Rowan Felted Tweed. Paige suggested Jared’s mittens in the new Vogue Knitting. So…

+ = mitten project.

I actually bought enough of the Felted Tweed so that I can fudge a coordinating hat and perhaps neck wrap of some sort.

While I was at it, I flipped through both Vogue and the fall IK.   I have to admit, I’m underwhelmed by the IK and am not sorry that I’ve let my subscription lapse.  As to Vogue, I’ve never been a big fan as there were far more of the “what where they thinking” kind of projects as compared to something that I would actually knit.  I have to say, I really like this issue.  There were at least 4 sweaters that I’d love to make and a whole collection of mittens.  Awesome.

No, I haven’t started the mittens yet, need to dig out the DPN’s, so I worked on Ballerina during my commute.

The short rows are getting quite long!  I’m this close..

.. to finishing up this striped section and working the solid blue gusset that sits next to the middle back stripes.  You know, that sentence makes no sense even to me and I KNOW the pattern! Suffice it to say that that little clump of blue stitches on the needle are what are left to be eaten up in the “short” rows.

I’m somewhat amazed at how much progress I can make on a particular project when working solely on it.  Project monogamy:  who knew?!  I haven’t touched anything since Ballerina returned to  active duty.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve made this much progress, but I am.  I do need to put something in my purse as Ballerina lives in my small tote bag and doesn’t go everywhere with me.  I’ve been caught sans knitting recently, like on the iPhone line, because of that state.  I did pick up some new sock yarn last night as well, and nearly started the a pair this morning, but I hates the circs that I brought.  Cable is far too enthusiastic for me.  I might have to venture out at lunchtime and pick up new ones.  Maybe Century 21 for a new purse and then to Seaport for DPNS.  sounds like a plan.  Then I can knit this yarn….

I know, socks??!  What a concept

Craft on (and have a wonderful weekend!)

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…not for me mind you. I’m still worried that ya’ll are tiring of this, maybe not now but another couple of weeks as it slowly creeps along fatigue will creep in. I’ll have to toss in something else to spare ya. For some odd reason, I’m not feeling the sock love. Shame since there is all that sock yarn, but that won’t go to waste, not with the NZAK sitting next to me. Oh yeah, I’m working from home today.

For probably the first time ever, I had a thought yesterday on the ferry that perhaps I should start working on hats/mittens/scarves for the shorties (and me) prior to the cold weather setting in. Instead of waiting for frozen fingers to start th projects, I could really start now and actually be prepared. I know. Shocking. Scared me too I wonder if getting Folk Knitting in Estonia from the IK Hurt Book sale probably has something to do with the desire to knit cute mittens eh?

While we wait for warm accessory inspiration to settle down into actual project, I’ll continue making progress on Ballerina.  I had extra knitting time yesterday between lunch with Kim and Deborah (who I had yet to meet!).  Lunch ended all too soon as I had a 2pm technical conference call with a client.  At least I was able to knit while on the phone.  Befuddled my coworker who was in the room with me while she watched me knit as I explained the configuration requirements of the software program I’d written.   And then last night, after finally getting some late work done, I settled down with Ballerina and the Sox game on ESPN.   I think I made decent progress, what do you think?

I think she’s coming along nicely!  It continues to grow one stitch at the hem edge every 6th ridge.  I’m tracking that with the help of this new app on my iPhone.  StitchMinder.  It’s pretty good.  Good timing too.  I was planning on trying to write something similar myself.  Picked up a couple of books on Saturday from B&N on coding for the Mac.  Signed up with the Mac Developers group and downloaded the iPhone SDK (software development kit) only to find that I needed to have Mac OSX Leopard installed.  I was still running Tiger, but fortunately my MacBook came with Leopard in the box if not on the computer.  I dug it out from where I had stashed the disk and got to upgrading. All is installed and I’ve started learning the language.  It isn’t much different from the others in concept, just the syntax.  Shouldn’t be too hard.

SnB tonight so expect more progress on Ballerina, even if I am working at home today and will lose the commute knitting.  I hope to make it up at the store

Craft on!

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I gave ya’ll a chance yesterday, but it seems that Ballerina is a fan favorite.  Maybe not quite the appeal of Kauni Damask (which should be back in work shortly - I do want to wear her to Rhinebeck), but popular nonetheless.  Okay, this morning I stopped knitting a row short of where I could have on the ferry so as to get a good flat picture.

I finished the sleeve bits last night, including binding off the provisional cast on.  At some point, I’ll go back and sew the seam.  I’ve moved on to knitting the back, restoring the side seam stitches that have been hanging about on a spare needle since starting the sleeve.  With that done, I am now finally back to using ONE needle

The back IS longer than the front.  Every couple of ridges, there is an increase at the hem edge.  That is what I’m tracking with that pink yarn running in and out.

And a closer look at the striped raglan seam progressing on the back.

That’s about it, I’ve got to go finish up a custom SQL script for a customer who totally screwed their implementation last year after being warned a number of time who now want it cleaned up.  Sigh.

Craft on!

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It appears the little derailment in Ballerina I had yesterday was short term. Much like this one that futzed up my train line. Fortunately the derailment was beyond my station so my actual commute wasn’t really affected.  They were stopping trains east of the problem and busing folks west where they’d take another train.  Yuck.  NJTransit spammed my text alert system with multiple notifications of the situation. Nice that it works! Didn’t get the stupid messages when I had the Mogul on Sprint. So far AT&T is stellar not to mention the iPhone itself is worlds cooler Made even cooler when I found eReader available for it in the AppStore for free. I’ve been an eReader user for years now and installed that free sucker without hesitation. Downloaded a few books from my library and I’m rarin’ to go. LOVE IT. Anyway… Ballerina is back on track now too:

You can see the raglan “seam” shaping up nicely. Upon closer look, I’m awfully close to finishing this sleeve business and getting on with the back:

The eagle eyed might notice that the stitch count doesn’t match again between the top and bottom needles.  Well, there’s a good reason for that.  I changed my mind about the whole three-needle bind off.  I was doing it right but examined the resulting seam after a couple of reductions.  I didn’t like it.  I moved to the bind off as called for in the pattern.  What do I plan to do with the other side?  Take a length of the yarn, splice it to the end where I cast on those stitches and simply bind them off.  I’ll sew the remaining seam and should be able to clean up the weirdness.

Is everyone bored of this sweater by now?  Are ya’ll hoping I’ll move onto some more interesting yet faster project soon?  Just so many ways for me to show acres of garter stitch on 3mm needles.

Anyway…

Craft on!

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Oh yes, we have serious trouble. I made a boo-boo with Ballerina. Yesterday afternoon while the twins (and their grandfather) took a nap in the backyard, I moved me and my laptop back inside to watch the Sox. I pulled out Ballerina to work on as I watched the game. I hit the point where the edges of the sleeves were to be bound off in stages, about 2 stitches ever ridge. Good right? Yes. Making progress.

This morning on the train I did a basic count to see how many more repeats I was in for and did some counting. There were different numbers of stitches. Frak. I spent the remaining ride trying to figure out where the heck I’d gone wrong. Just as the train was pulling into the station it struck me. I don’t do the three-needle bind off very often and had screwed up the process at the beginning of each row.

What was going on was that I was knitting together three stitches from each needle to bind off the two, but then on the next ridge, repeating it. But since the third stitch from the previous ridge, which was now the first live stitch was bound off with one from the back needle, I was really reducing an extra back stitch for each ridge. Doh. I started tinking it, but that’s alot of knitting with small needles and grabby shetland. I couldn’t just frog it because the other side of the sleeve is a provisional cast on. While it is grabby shetland, with the way my luck is running, the whole sleeve was unravel bottom up, not to mention it is harder to find those freakin stitches. Soooo…I went back to the first occurence of stupidity and picked up each stitch in that row. I spent the ferry ride on the active side and will hit the other side on the way home.

(click to biggify)

Oh well. Thought I was further along that that

Now for some monumental news of a good type rather than a brain dead knitter type, the twins learned to swim!! Last summer I paid for swimming lessons through the Y where a teacher came to the house and tried to give them lessons in our pool. Most days Kat wouldn’t even get in the water with her. Call it a waste of yarn money. This summer, I opted to skip that (with the ‘rents blessing) and dad has taken to given them basic swimming lessons himself, first getting them to blow bubbles and all that. This weekend there was significant in that they went from jumping into the pool with tubes on and just putting their mouths into the water to blow bubbles to really swimming. Donning goggles, Alex swam from the steps to the ladder. Really swimming. A few hours later, Kat did it too. AWESOME! I watched them jump off the edge of the pool and swim to the stairs. While they need to learn at some point to turn their heads to breath but this is a huge milestone. THEY CAN SWIM!!!!! When they are ready to do something, they really do it. Bravo my babies.

Craft on!

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I didn’t get as much done last night as I wanted to. First, I’m just working later. We had a new CEO join the company who has questioned my boss as to what hours the development team works. As a result, we’ve been requested to at least be in the office for core business hours: 9-6. I’d been leaving a smidge before 5:30 so as to catch a 6:01 train and get home somewhere around 6:45 so that I could have dinner with the kids. Now I’m leaving a smidge before 6 and on a 6:34 train, not walking in the door until 7:15 or so. With the twins going to bed around 8:15, they can’t exactly hold dinner for me. I’ve been having a quick bite by myself after I get home and then try to round them up for bed. Ugh. Not ideal, but you gotta do right? We’ll just make an extra effort to have quality family dinners over the weekend. This started late last week so I’m still in a bit of an adjustment phase.

Last night the little peeps decided to trade the regular bedtime routine (jammies, teeth, spongebob) for playtime in Kat’s room. I agreed and broke out the XM (Sox beat the Royals - YAY) and MLB The Show. Is it weird that I’m listening to a game while playing another one? I took a picture of my favorite corner in my room. I love the juxtaposition of the sock yarn basket and the electronic goodies. Pretty much sums me up, eh?

Why yes, I have a few game controllers on my dresser

After getting pretty well beaten by the CPU in baseball, I took a shower, trying something new with the hair. I decided to see how much curl I can eek out of it. My hair isn’t curly and it isn’t straight. It is the middle ground: wavy! Means that with work I can do either curly or straight and it stays pretty well. I picked up a few products yesterday during my lunchtime outing along Fulton Street and hope that it helps the curly aspect a bit. I am at a the monthly crossroads though. The bangs. Every four weeks or so, I need to make a decision: do I cut the bangs or let them grown. For the last year or so, the scissors have won. What do you say?

(Please to ignore the dopey look and eyebags, ’tis allergy season still. This was the best picture of a half dozen. Why is it so darn hard to get a shot of yourself without looking truly dorky?)

Once I finished futzing with the hair, I sat down to spend some quality time with the Ladybug. As the baseball game ended in Kansas City, I finished the first of the 4oz of Ultraviolet.

You can just make out the second braid sitting in my spinning basket waiting its turn. Very yummy stuff

I’m still working on Ballerina and she’s progressing nicely. I finished up the 17 sleeve stripes this morning on the ferry. Yesterday I spent some time with Excel and the pattern creating a cheat sheet for tracking what all has to be done. You can just see it peeking out from under the knitting. I’ve got three columns: color, neck edge notes, hem edge notes. The pattern has a few too many of those “AT THE SAME TIME” directives that this will be time well spent. I can see each ridge and what has to be done.

This morning’s huge rainstorm had the benches a tad damp so I couldn’t take a full picture. This is the end of the sleeve. The pink is the waste yarn where I provisionally cast on the sleeve stitches. I started the solid blue section on the other side of the stripes shortly after taking this photo. It will have both short rows for the sleeve/back raglan “seam” as well as staggered 3 needle bind off for the sleeves. Its all good.

Craft on!

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