Socktoberfest 2006: Increase One

What the heck. I am in for Socktoberfest 2006 I have been meaning to start my very first pair of socks and the time has come. I have 2 sock yarns to choose from but they are 140 miles away from me at the moment.

Unfortunately, I will also be making my first chemo caps for a beloved family member who is going to kick that nasty nasty c-word to the CURB!

A tisket a tasket

We are having the most glorious weather in DC. It's in the 70's and sunny. Fall really is the very best time of year. I think I groggily heard it coming to an end for the weekend though. Fall puts me in the mood to knit (as does spring, summer and winter) and cook.

Along the knitting lines I cast on with Basketcase last night. It's much lighter in color than it appears here, but I am a slack photog today.















Basketweave is fun. It's less tedious than moss, but more interesting than stockinette. Wonder how I will feel 3 balls of yarn from now.

Knitting on YouTube

I hope this isn't old news yet, but I LOVE this:

Stripey Wrap Unravelled

Oh my, this is just not a good scenario.

There's a hole in the stripey wrap. It is of unknown origin. At first I was convinced that I was dropping a stitch. I don't think that anymore. I dropped and reknit the stitch over and over, but a big hole remained.

So, I have unravelled all those rows between the crochet hook hole and the needle on top.















Ouch! That hurt.

I'm So Over You

The most overplayed story of the week (it's only Tuesday) has gotta be the brawl between two idiot race car drivers. I am a news junkie so I have seen the video about a gazillion times. So, dude who kicked through the race car window - I'm so over you.

Miles O'Brien's space/aviation fetish and Robin Roberts' New Orleans suckupness - I am so totally utterly over you.

News stories about where the stuff lost or confiscated at the airport goes to be sold. You're old, you're over.

George Allen finding a new way to screw up every single day. Mosey on.

Parking lot attendant talking on her phone who answered my, "Sorry if I'm interrupting your call." With, "It's okay." Vamoose.

Natalie Cole's radically new direction singing some R&B as opposed to standards, um, and doing so poorly. It's not me, it's you.

Moronblogging: Good for the English Language

The grocery store across the street from my office is good for the Enlish language. That is what I've decided. I've worked here for about 9 years. That's a long time to search for a decent lunch in a reasonable radius from the office. When I actually do pause to find something for lunch, I often end up at Balducci's. It is technically a gourmet grocery store. I suppose it is possible to assemble a meal from there, as it's theoretically possible to create a dinner from Auntie Mame's cupboard, but it is truly a ridiculous place.

I had a yen for banana bread today. They always have banana bread, or a close cousin. But this week they are all Rosh Hashanah'ed up and only have honey cake. Lots and lots of honey cake. That is really not banana bread. There aren't a lot of go-to substitutes for banana bread. No, they didn't have banana nut muffins either.

I'd been thinking about getting a good box of chocolate for a couple of weeks (we spend our weekends far from anywhere one could acquire good chocolate) and so I perused the Godiva. They had a few boxes, but I spotted some with the ordinary gold wiry ribbon and a bunch more with a wider satin ribbon. It seemed the satin ribbon was the "new" and the gold wiry the old. I flipped them over at the gold wiry boxes were $12 and the satin ribbon $14. It's the exact same 6 pieces of chocolate of course. So I wasn't about to fork over $12 for old chocolate or $14 for new ribbon.

The store was doing its 8 gazillionth inventory of the day. I find that discomfitting. It makes you feel like you're screwing them up if you buy anything. I searched aisle after aisle for some kind of sensible lunch for under $20, but no dice. I got iced tea and a bag of cookies for the office and headed to the mammoth lines. This is another thing that dumbfounds me about the place. I mean, okay, Costco, you can have a crazy line because people figure they're saving soooo much money, but Balducci's? You rape us and then make us wait to pay you? Freakish.

They were also dry mopping the floors. So everywhere I went there was some woman with a giant dust mop pushing around a pile of crap.

As usual, the neighborhood elderly were strategically positioned around the store for maximum blockage and interference.

But mostly, I am continously astonished at how they manage to identify the specific things I'm actually willing to buy there and to discontinue those specific items. It's not the membership card - they discontinued that and its faux benefits years ago.

The upside is that each time I set foot in that place I create five or six new amalgoms of curse words. Often it's just a string of everyday curse words, but oh, the sense of accomplishment in creating something new while standing in line behind another moronic check writer.

Scribbles and Salamanders

It's been a relaxing weekend at the river, but the afternoon is ticking by and soon it will be time to get in the car and drive back to the city. At long last I got off my duff and took a pic of the scribble scarf that's been off the needles for a couple weeks.

I think Sallie Mander, who I spotted on the back deck yesterday would look lovely in the scribble scarf. It would go perfectly with her tail.

barely a knitter

You know, when I think I knit too much, I need to just remind myself of this:















Jane Bolsover knit an entire English garden. Neatorama clued me in. The article is here.

And then you know, I'll realize that I barely knit at all.

Holding My Breath and Exhaling at the Same Time

It's Friday, after noon on Friday. I had to head into the office for a bit to squeeze out a couple tricky client things. It felt good to get those things done and to get through a conference call afterwards. So it's that rare Friday when "done" coincides with the end of the week.

Up late last night I did a little more knitting on Mocha Latte and noticed Buzz was taking a strong interest in the Mocha part. He took enough of an interest that he chewed the working yarn in half. I guess that was Buzz's way of telling me to get some sleep.














But at the same time I am holding my breath, we're waiting for lab results for yet another dear family member.

At the same time, I am coming into the home stretch on catching up with Grey's Anatomy. I have seriously watched 36 - really? 36 episodes of this show since Monday. Wow, that is a lot of craziness.

This Knitter Gets Around

Well all week I have been sprinting from one meeting to another. I've been blabbing about (we call that marketing people) my company ad nauseum. But along the way I managed some knitterliness.


















Woo hoo! I am in the Knitting Blogs ring. Welcome lookeeloos!

Yesterday I went to the season's first Stitch N' Bitch neighborhood gathering and had a blast. All I had on hand to bring was some champagne we bought to celebrate the sale of our house - since a year later we are still waiting for that magical occaision. I knit and talked until after 11. Rowdy knitters I tell you. There were a couple of knitters, a couple stitchers and lovely bitching. I got quite a few rows of Mocha Latte done:



















I'm calling that Mocha Latte because I've been working on it while watching Grey's Anatomy. And those doctors are seriously all about mocha lattes. I've also been thumbing through the last of the anniversary gifts to arrive, the just published Not Your Mama's Knitting.

Marriage Made in Heaven

Wow, this could just be the perfect knitted item for my little world. One husband obsessed with SciFi. One wife obsessed with knitting.




















I'd like to point out that this is not me. This is not even my concept.

Blame: http://bleuarts.blogspot.com/2006/09/free-pattern-leia-hat.html

Holy Stitch

There has been quite a bit of yarn action lately, just not a lot of photographic action. I arrived at the river Friday to discover my mother had gone buck wild at the LYS sale that day. She was the first to arrive, got there before they opened and had to drive around until they did. Then they didn't have all their stuff out. And she got two huuuuuuuuge bags of yarn for (she claims) about $80. The discount rang up as over $700.Whoa, that's what I call a yarn sale. And it's my birthday present. Ah, good timing being born.

I haven't even really gotten into the bags yet. I am saving them for when the luster wears off my replacement yarn from the Fredericksburg yarn shop from Friday that I needed to complete the stripey thing. I have some favorite yarn stores which I can shout from High St in Harrisonburg (it's high people), but let's just suppose a yarn shop were less desirable, what would I do? Would I tell you that they have silly excessively crafted shop policy signs hanging by the register that restrict what you can say and do with whom and when at the shop. Would I tell you that the place just kind of creeps me out and that the staff makes you feel like you trudged into their living room? Would I go on about how my husband would have liked to find a restroom he could use, but was stymied again by a "No Public Restroom" sign at this less than hospitable...knitter's um, cottage? No, probably not.

I did finish the scribble scarf - though no photographic evidence yet. I also finished the Sirdar Snuggly hat and gave it to the utterly mooshable one year old Christopher this weekend. He proceeded to scream bloody murder when I put it on his head, but his mom swore she'd wrangle a picture for me. I had to make pom poms. I don't really think pom poms have much of a place in this world, but one place they can be is on a baby's hat.

Knitting in the car on the way home from the river, I noticed a dropped stitch. After messing with it for a couple minutes, I switched to my other WIP and left stitch fixing for home. This would be one of those times that being spatially impaired is not handy. I watched video on the web over and over to see how to right the stitch. And I do finally think I did it, but there's still a hole. Hmm. (And I dropped and reknit the stitch repeatedly so who knows.)

Not that I'm hyper or anything but the Knitting Blogs ring opens in 38 minutes.

Stashticipation

Oooh. My mom called tonight to tell me there's a sale starting tomorrow at the river LYS. She's going to get there early to get "dibs". And Jac and I are headed to the Fredericksburg LYS tomorrow to hopefully get more of the stripey wrap yarn.

1.5 cars are repaired, we're waiting for Jac's car's final estimate (this is a "take the transmission apart" scenario), which could be either one or two of our first born children. My car is now running better with one repair, one known defect, and one ticking timebomb.

Do you detect upbeat? Really? It could be the four day weekend that started for me a couple hours ago. It could be the progress I've made on the brown wrap thing I'm knitting.
















It doesn't look like much progress for a week's work, but I did frog the whole thing the other day and start from scratch. I've actually also spent quite a bit of time wandering the web looking for luscious knitting paraphernalia.

Yearning for Yarn

It was a busy day at work both of life and work. With the car repairs and house pricing, the day was pretty wearing. I didn't get a chance to have either breakfast or lunch and yet, what I was really longing for was to get my hands on my yarn. It is the color of chocolate at least.
















I was faaar too lazy to get up and grab my camera, so I took this with my phone. That also means extra goodies because I downloaded my camera pix so I have some new morons to blog about and such that have been trapped in my phone.

This car's license plate is AGNT 007.















On the way home today we spotted a Mini with the license plate BDGT BMW which was pretty cute.

Separated at birth? (Lexi's liver colored nose is an ever so special distinction from "show" wheatens.)














And lastly, I spotted this quite a while, but it's Head On in the wild. This has got to be the single most irritating product advertisement known to man. Though that Citibank identity theft commercial with the weight lifter whose card was stolen by an Idol wannabe is closing in.

A Tale of Tow

Or what would be if I could afford for a car to be towed.

Remember when this:










Was what I had to contend with in the world of car repair? Sure, the car is keyed practially the whole way 'round, but it works.

Make that worked.

Our old house went on the market in May 0f 2005 (yes I said 5) and we were encouraged to anticipate a speedy sale above asking price. Today we lowered the price again, now about 20% less than the original price. Ouch. So Jac's lemonola car which apparently needs a new transmission at 42K miles has been hiding out in the garage. My car finally clanked enough that I thought I better get it to the shop. Anyway, lotta houses, few cars. Where oh where is my knitting?














I did frog out that lovely Mission Falls and start over. I wonder if this makes me a process knitter. I really just like the act of knitting. Though I am seriously yearning for a snuggly shawl to throw on now that it has gotten cooler. I cast on again with fewer stitches, this time starting with moss stitch. Pretty. I am going to have to conjure up a little something for a one year old boy who is coming to visit this weekend though. Perhaps the Sirdar Snuggly hat I've nearly finished will work.

Moronblogging: Giant Chatass

Every once in a while when I am in line in a store, my cell phone will ring. Usually it takes me a second or two to figure it out because it's not like my phone rings every four minutes. When that happens I:
*Rapidly locate and silence the phone
*Consciously answer in a voice that is appropriate for someone calling me from the other end of the telephone rather than from the other side of a Megastore.
*Whip out and work my "Oh my Gosh I am so mortified face." That I am trying to master before I have children who may have up to 15 seconds to do something inappropriate before I can whisk them out of earshot.
*Get off the phone as quickly as humanly possible.

These (okay, somewhat draconian) measures let the sales clerk know that I am aware they are there in front of me and that they are my first priority, not this dumb piece of plastic and precious metal dangling from my ear.
















That's all completely wasted on this Giant Chatass who was on her phone the whole time she was in line in Giant Food recently and then proceeded to treat the cashier like she (Giant Chatass) was doing the cashier a huge favor by allowing her to interrupt her to, you know, pay.

Giant Chatass got me up on my soapbox too because I made no attempt to conceal the moronblogging photo capture. When I got up to the cashier I let her in on GC's impending microfame.

Retrobloggin'

The skies really conspired to make my blog fall behind. Let's catch up.

On the last episode of Magniferous, I was about to head out into the rain for a week's vacation near the lovely Chesapeake Bay. That's when Ernesto came to town. He was so unassuming, so casual, non-chalant, really just a depression barely a tropical storm. But oh, did Ernesto blow. So Jac and I loaded up two loaded cats (it's the only way they can travel) and a happy dog and headed to the river. We stopped in torrential rain on the way down and I knit half the way there.

When my mom told me the power was out at 11am Friday I figured it would be back on by the time we got there Friday night. We had quite a family gathering in the works and this was no time for rain for a waterfront vacation. But, when we arrived Friday night, the lights were still out. Our two houses shared a small generator - just enough to keep the fridge and a single light on. It was warm and rainy. The docks really showed what had come through. One neighbor's dock was swept off it's mooring into pieces, travelled 50 feet and lodged in pieces into our shoreline. Another neighbor's dock was wavy - rising and falling where the tide had pushed it. Our big dock lost it's first couple feet from the land.

And the family kept arriving. Three more sisters and their mates and an uncle would join our regular group. We sat in the dark eating improvised grilled meals and knitting by candle light. The power was out for four days and three nights. The days were okay, the nights were long and dark. We yearned to plug in the big tv in the Mud Room and watch a movie. Instead, we knit and talked. I made huge progress on the stripey rectangle (until I ran dangerously short of yarn), whipped up a couple of ipod cases for my sister. Since we'd just had our anniversary, Jac and I were stocked up on books and hobby fodder. At least I could knit without power. He was out of luck with movies for a while. My one sister's trips to the river are mythical misadventures - she and her husband have had illness, accidents, animal ailments, unprecedented drive times, and anything else the Fates will allow. This time the power was out for their entire visit. It came back on a couple of hours after they hit the road.

The rest of us played Pioneer House and Jac counted down the minutes to the promised return of power. (Unsuccessfully.) When power returned, we really did rejoice in a way people usually don't think to do these days. We spread out and powered up. But the satellite internet wasn't operable. It wouldn't be for the remainder of the week. This meant both no knit surfing - and no work email. Unfortunately for me, not being able to check work email just contributes an impending doom feeling to the atmosphere, "What's in there?!?" Anyway, the antidote for that is trips to the yarn shop and boy were there. Two visits to the LYS there (no website, the horror), a completely frivolous "sure I'll drive all day with you to and from the airport so I can check out the yarn shops in another town" trip to a closed shop and the most divine Yarn Lounge where I indulged quite a bit and found some decadent yarn in the 50% pile - seriously. I asked if I could take some pix for the blog and they were happy to let me. A girl could really get used to the Yarn Lounge.


Then, just when it seemed Yarnventures were winding down, on Saturday we made a trip to Gloucester to visit a lovely little shop. It had both stitching and knitting things but neither was cheated. Mom offered an early birthday gift of sock yarn (socks, really, me? I can make socks? Well, anything is possible. Could be possible. Eventually.), and lovely notions and a booklet on sock knitting.

Saturday I cast on some Mission Falls 1824 wool into hmm, the beginning of a very wide rectangle. I have knit a whole ball of the yarn and it's so short that I'm concerned a garment of this may be millions of dollars. It reaches from my neck to my wrist, but I am secretly wondering if it's (hmm, not that secretly) too wide to ever be of use. Can't decide. If there were a pivotal frogging point THIS WOULD BE IT. Hmmm.

The first day back at work is always tricky - could go super fast or super slow - today was a combination. I had no real down time and yet 2 to 5 was several days long. It's just the nature of the thing. I did FINALLY relent and take my car to the repair shop to have the timing belt replaced. That means tomorrow (off again, yeah, must be nice) I will have no choice but to be at home all day - knitting and catching up on both the house and blogs.

The most daunting pall by far was difficult news about a dear family member's health. It's not remotely blog fodder, but it has taken up a fair amount of residence in my heart and mind lately.

Rivahbound

Ah, Friday of Labor Day weekend is here. We are headed to the river to spend a whole week visiting with family and such. I have only the scribble scarf on the needles right now and I need to cast on something new, but can't decide what. Maybe I really will work on the scribble scarf on the way to the river. It's going to be raining quite a bit courtesy of Ernesto, but days off are days off.

I have to drug the kitties soon because they're river bound too and they hate being in the car. A lot. Lexi knows something is up because I have been steadily making trips through the rain to the car.