1520

That’s how many dollars were raised for four worthy causes in my recent Blogiversary with a Cause Raffle!

For Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières; The House that Yarn Built, supporting Make It Right/New Orleans; Knitters For Knockers (a Race for the Cure team); and the Red Scarf Fund of the Orphan Foundation of America.

You guys are AMAZING.

Here, have a bouquet of daffodils. All of you.

How about another flowering crabapple photo to look at?

Ok, Ok, I know. You all want to know who won the Wollmeise!!

Well, most of you probably know her already: The Queen of Contests herself, Chris of Stumbling Over Chaos!

She says she’s excited, not having knit any Wollmeise yet; and what’s more, even before the Random Integer Generator picked the winners, I had already tenderly wrapped the yarn in tissue paper of her favorite color. It was clearly meant to be.

The other lucky winners of wonderful prizes?

Lorette won the Knitters Without Borders Socks that Rock, ever so appropriately since this is her favorite charity and she IS the Knitting Doctor!

Martha in Mobile won the signed copy of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s most recently published book, “Things I Learned from Knitting (whether I wanted to or not)”. This is also ever so appropriate. because Martha is an avid reader of the Yarn Harlot (meaning, of course, that she already has a copy of Steph’s book, but will welcome a signed one!), and because it was Steph’s first published work in KnitLit that led to Martha’s writing and submitting an essay to KnitLit, which led to her becoming a published author. What an awesome story!

Kristin S. won the squooshy, wonderful Unique Sheep sportweight Doctors without Borders colorway yarn. I wish you could all feel this “Footprints” yarn. Luckily, I still have another skein so I can squish it. Boing, boing. I can see from her blog that Kristin likes to knit socks, so I know she’ll love the yarn too! Go see Kristin’s Kiri Shawl which she gave her mother for Mother’s Day!

Lastly, the Random Integer Generator awarded the extra special Twisted Fiber Art yarn in Portal to Norma! Ya know, I think the R.I.G. was doing a great job till then, for a random entity, with matching prize to recipient. But as we all know, because she keeps telling us, despite showing us this and this and this: Norma is not a sock knitter. Well, she’ll just have to use it as eye candy, or make a scarf out of it, or give it away. Or suck up and knit (more) socks.

I guess that wasn’t lastly, because I have one more thing to say.

Post-Lastly:

I want to give a shout-out to some people who were especially particularly generous and, given the nature of randomness and the limited number of prizes, were not recognized by the Random Integer Generator. (Said lack of selection by RIG despite attempts at RIG bribery by people who shall not be named, but whose names rhyme with Fuchsia. The RIG, which is an internet resource since people are not truly random when asked to pick a number, cares nothing for chocolate.)

So, an extra special above-and-beyond thank you to:

Laurie, Kate, kmkat, Sarah-Hope, Lisa, Kathy B, Helen, Lucia, and Sara D M.

(A little something will be in the mail to you too….)

And, post-post-lastly, may I say that I do (of course) put my money where my mouth is and have donated to all the great causes I’ve written about. Well, as I’m currently preparing to send off lovely yarny prizes, I find out that I myself have won a prize donated for the Knitters for Knockers! How exciting! It’s an Ironstone sock kit

donated by The Knitting Basket in Richmond, Virginia. Which looks fascinating!

And, as I was scanning the Knitters for Knockers blog site to download the picture, I saw a familiar name, who I think donated through this blog, so that was rather cool too! (And I saw a Sock Camp friend’s name, also cool. Speaking of Sock Camp — I think the time has come for the great Toilet Paper Cover reveal in the near future. There are at least two people who want to see it, I know. Just to fulfill their thus-far unrequited curiosity, if nothing else, I’ll put it up. Promise not to be too disappointed, though! It did not entirely fulfill my artistic vision….

Walking Sock Goes to the Recital

A good mom goes to her daughters’ dance recital on Mother’s Day weekend - and enjoys it immensely.  But limited knitting occurs, especially if Good Mom has to work that morning too.  Walking Sock got a little lap time, though.  Here’s some of what it saw:

 

Two lovely classical ballerinas, my two being on far left (faux Degas painting-ified) and right front, above (dancing to Tchaikovsky’s “Theme from Romeo and Juliet”). (Click if you want to see them other than as Tiny Dancers.)

Preteen in yellow leggings below in Teen Jazz Funk, doing “No Harm” (really an Oompa Loompa remix, don’t ask, insanely cool dance, though).

(Preteen in middle front below, as mom has fun with photo effects.)

And then possibly the coolest, funkiest dance of all, Dads & Daughters, doing “Soul Man”; you don’t have clearance to see the Dad, but he was right up there with Jake or Elwood, and rivalled his dancing daughters for stage presence.  They were awesome! Though the Gothlet does not really have four arms, only the two that are up.

(And I didn’t get dress rehearsal pictures of the Gothlet’s Jazz number to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride & Joy”, or her very excellent, most favorite Tap number, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, or her Music Theatre Dance, “Welcome to the 60s” from Hairspray, complete with a bearded ”Edna”.  Or the Preteen’s Music Theatre Dance, “Coffee Break,” from “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”, which was a showstopper and also an earworm; I had just gotten it out of my head from dress rehearsal when the performance came along….Ah, well, my lack of camera that night saves you some gratuitous kid pictures!)

Prize drawing will happen later today for my Blogiversary raffle, and I’ll notify the lucky winners by email, then announce them tomorrow.  Good luck, and thanks so very much to everyone who so generously donated!

Bouquet in the Sky

… for Mother’s Day.

(Click to embiggen.)

Happy Mother’s Day, to my own wonderful mom, and to all mothers and mothers-to-be out there!

This is a Sunday Sky, rather than a Saturday one, but yesterday’s was not photogenic; gray and dreary, as was this early morning’s. But by the end of the late service at church:

it was gorgeous.

Hope you all had a wonderful day!

And, remember, about four hours left if you wanted a chance to win amazing prizes by donating to great causes….time is just about out!

I is for Icicle

Not so much this kind of Icicle

but this Icicle!

Yarn Pirate Booty Club Icicle yarn; Merino/Tencel, the December 2007 yarn.

As soon as I saw this yarn, I thought Scarf.

So when International Scarf Exchange 6 came along, and my scarf pal requested “anything but pink or earth tones”, I knew this yarn was meant to be for her. Particularly since this is a late spring exchange, and the Tencel blend feels ‘cooler’ to the touch; so this can be worn as a decorative fashion accessory now, or wrapped around the neck under a coat later in the year, for some extra warmth.

I debated and looked at patterns and swatched.

And in the end, came back to the first pattern I thought of:

The Waterfall Scarf, from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders (designed by Linda O’Leary).

(Here it is on Ravelry, for Ravelers; for those not on Rav, here’s a knitblogger showing her lovely version.)

Unfortunately, I’ve already had to frog it. I misremembered the directions as “repeat row 1 and 2 to desired length” when I was knitting it while away from home (at Sock Camp; I didn’t want to take the book and the directions were easy. Ha!.) And with something as easy as that, who checks?

But the directions really read, “repeat row 2 to desired length.”

Ooops.

So now I’ve started again, and have little to show you. Especially since this is a dropped-stitch pattern, where all the fun comes at the end when you deliberately drop stitches. Otherwise, it’s all twisted garter stitch, not as fast as I thought it would be to knit (particularly in fingering weight, even though the yarn is awesome), and not so exciting to knit.

But, before I frogged it, I did drop a column of stitches just to have fun and get a preview; so now you get a preview too.

Since this is the Waterfall scarf being made in Icicle yarn:

The obvious name will be the Frozen Waterfall Scarf.

You heard it here first, folks.

I is for Icicle.

(P.S. It’s ironic that I’m hearkening back to winter when it FINALLY seems to be spring. The leaves have just burst forth, a few flowering trees are starting to bloom, my tulips and daffodils are going great guns; our two weeks of spring are here!)

Bonus Front Yard Friday Eye Candy

I swore I hit publish last night; ah, well, here are last night’s tulips!

On coming home from work tonight, the front yard tulips were so pretty in the setting sun, that I had to share. Double bonus Front Yard Tulips!

Apricot Beauty.

Prism.

Back Yard Eye Candy

I love the color of these tulips.

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Time’s running out to enter the Blogiversary Raffle! Donate, then email me before midnight Sunday, May 11, to have a chance to win fabulous prizes!

Sign from Above? One Hopes Not.

While out and about in the neighborhood, I spotted this sign.

If this were my church, which it’s not, I would gently suggest changing the sign. I know what the intent is, but the mental imagery is — unfortunate.

All right, just one more story

How the Flagellum Got its Kinks:

A bedtime story for knitters, with pictures.

First, the wool yarn was dampened.

Then, it was wound around an old-fashioned hairpin*. Over, under, over, under.

Next, a paper clip held the yarn.

Last, the impatient knitter blow-dried the flagella.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The paper clip came off.

The hair pin was unwound: under, over, under, over.

Look!

Kinky flagella!

Now it’s time for bed. Lights out!

*Used in this house for ballet buns. An opened-up paper clip could work too, or other household objects I haven’t thought of yet.

Post-Weekend Knitting Update (with flowers and a ‘bug’)

This isn’t everything I have actively going, but here’s a selection of progress, and one FO to show you.

This will be a little scattered, though, after a night spent cleaning up after poor little Gothlet’s episode of projectile vomiting (either stomach flu with a miraculous recovery, or the consequence of overindulgence in decorate-your-own birthday cake at a friend’s birthday party, with a rather huge frosting to cake ratio), and then staying up to keep an eye and ear on her.

To counteract that mental image, let me show you the current state of Forest Canopy. A little here, a little there; I’m now past the number of repeats written in the pattern, and I think I’ll use both skeins of Socks That Rock that I have, to make this a nice big shawl. That means it won’t be done for a while, though (I have several time-sensitive projects). Here it is, posing with a violet.

And here’s a violet close-up, Wisconsin’s state flower, may I add, and one of my favorites. The photo rather echoes the colors of the Forest Canopy yarn, doesn’t it? (Undertoe colorway)

Next up, the Walking Sock, one finished despite little walking having happened recently. This was also a traveling sock; I turned the heel while waiting in line for the Yarn Harlot to sign books, and also knit it in the security line and on the plane to Sock Camp. It liked flying, I think.

So, I knit it on the Yarn Crawl, a bit at camp, and finished weaving in the ends on the ferry home. I like it for a very spring-ish sock!

Basic toe-up sock with eyelets in the leg, and a picot hem.

Meg of Twisted Fiber Art’s Kabam bamboo/merino yarn in the Sherwood colorway. I’ve started the second, and now am to the ‘walking’ part. So now, hopefully, I can get walking again!

By the way, Twisted now has a new website and just had their grand opening. As you might expect, all the yarn & yarn available for preorder sold out within the day, but keep checking, there will be regular updates now.

The sock also liked being outside with the wildflowers, like these dents de lion.

Now, the so-impressive Finished Object. (Or maybe not so impressive. But cute!)

My mother is a retired medical technologist whose specialty was microbiology (specifically, anaerobic bacteria). So for her birthday, I made her her own pet bacteria.

Somehow, this just had to be E. coli, though I feel it’s a beneficial member of the intestinal flora. (And here we are, back to the GI theme. What goes around, comes around.)

Look at that face. Would that micro-organism hurt a soul?

Yarn, a sample of Twisted Fiber Arts Scorched colorway, Playful base, knit on size 0 needles for a firmer fabric so that the stuffing wouldn’t show. Pattern modifed from Bacteria by Beth Skwarecki.

“The bacteria gets to go outside, why can’t I?”

P.S. If you haven’t already, check out my Blogiversary Raffle, and consider donating for a chance at some great prizes, including Wollmeise! Raffle ends May 11th, 2008, at midnight.

A Month Of Saturdays

I’m so delinquent; I haven’t put up a Saturday Sky in a month.

Because I’ve been gone every Saturday till now!

Well, Saturdays, let me show you them.

First, this Saturday just past (at least the good Saturday Sky part).

That was, however, not how it looked in the morning, when I took the Preteen to a 7 am babysitting job and the Gothlet to a 5 K Girls on the Run run/walk. No, it was 41 degrees and raining nicely with a 20 mph NW wind. Brrr! And then I went to work. And then the weather turned nice. (You know you’re working/blogging too much when the only way you know it’s gotten nice outside is that your WeatherPixie is wearing a sleeveless shirt under a virtual sun.)

So the rest of the day, not too newsworthy, other than I got dragged to went to “Iron Man”, by with my husband and our friends (it was the guys’ idea), and it was actually really a blast. I enjoyed it! I didn’t knit (no stockinette project in a suitable state), and my fingers hardly twitched, so you know it must have been pretty ok.

Last Saturday:

Neenah!

Knitting classes with Lucy Neatby, Janet Szabo, and Margaret Fisher (the ones I took), and a road trip with three friends, plus meeting up with a Sock Camp friend, makes for a great weekend.

Unfortunately, I did not specifically take a Saturday Sky picture: my brain was full at lunchtime when we got sprung for a bit!

There is SaturDayLight coming through the windows of this cool coffeehouse where we had lunch:

Karla, Cheri, and me — whoops, Lee’s taking the picture.

Here she is with Karla:

This place was great; the Aspen Cafe, I believe? Look at what you can have for breakfast.

We drove over across the state Friday night, and I had classes with Lucy Neatby Saturday morning and afternoon. My hands were tired, my brain was full, but my heart was happy! Lucy Neatby is amazing. I know I said this already, but if she’s giving a class anywhere within reach of you, GO. She is an incredible teacher. And something of a genius. The first class was all about short rows (I learned things I didn’t know, including the Japanese short row, which I’ll be trying at the next opportunity) with Lucy’s cast-off variation as a bonus. Then, after a short lunch break to settle the brain cells, an afternoon class about her Magic Buttonhole and Double Band for cardigans. I’ve never been happy with my buttonholes or button bands. You should see my swatch! (Gee, I should photograph my swatch and show it to you, how’s about that! ‘K, I will, and add it in.)

Another short break, and then the banquet, with good food, great company, door prizes (which two of my three knitting companions won!), a Show and Tell (I showed my Lopi EPS with a length problem), and, wait, look, who’s that over there?

In the center picture, in the purple (more blue-ish in real life, as I recall): Blogless Carla from Sock Camp! Yay! We were at different tables at the banquet but got to hang out at lunch the next day and nostalgically relive the events of the week before last (and moan about how hard the re-entry to non-Sock Camp life was). What fun! I had just reminded Carla two days before the classes, that we were only a state apart, when she happened to mention that she was going to a knitting seminar in Neenah, Wisconsin, having no idea that I would also be there. Synchronicity….

After the banquet, the wonderful owners of “Yarns by Design“, the really great yarn shop which put on the “Midwest Masters” Seminar, opened up the shop late. They are a US distributor for Lucy Neatby so had some hard-to-find things, and a nice shop ambience.  It’s rather fun to be shopping for yarn when everyone else in town is drinking beer and bowling (seriously; there was a bowling tournament in town too).

Here are my friends waiting for me to finish checking out, since I tried my hardest to make it worth the shop-owners’ while to stay open late. (The shop had been full, but everyone else had gone back to the hotel by this point.)

The next morning brought an also wonderful class with Janet Szabo, known for her cable work and original designs in particular. This class taught a method to convert stitch patterns from being written (i.e. in a stitch dictionary) in the flat, to being written and charted (yay!) in the round. I had muddled my way through this process in designing the Wedding Pi shawl, and although a couple patterns were a piece of cake to convert, the last one (Bell Lace), has a variable number of stitches before and after the main pattern repeat on every row; does NOT have plain purl-back rows; and has a changing stitch count with every other row (the actual stitch count of which Barbara Walker does not give you, just that it reverts to the original number on the last row). I’m surprised I have any hair left, after pulling it out so much. It made me feel better that Janet told us in class that that was really hard. I really enjoyed her class and learned a lot; I think we analyze things in the same way.  And she knows & works with one of my teachers at Sock Camp, J C. Cool!

Another quick lunch (I did get a picture that day)

(The yarn shop is the second blue awning, halfway down the block.)

Then my last class, taught by Margaret Fisher, the Long & Short of Knitting Alterations, to which I brought my too-short Lopi sweater. We learned to put in ’safety lines’ and cut our knitting without even the help of a stiff drink (though the fact that it was only swatches helped). We learned/practiced grafting. The crochet provisional cast-on was shown.  And then we discussed sweater alteration strategies (my proposed plan was endorsed about the Lopi EPS sweater, i.e. cutting just below the colorwork band above the ribbing, unraveling the ribbing, knitting this reclaimed yarn into the body of the sweater to lengthen it; using ‘new’* cream-colored Lopi yarn to knit downwards, possibly with a second colorwork band to disguise the slight color change, and then knitting a hem rather than reknitting the ribbing (my body’s changing since 1983, fancy that!). Possibly the same for the sleeves.

*Actually old cream-colored Lopi from about the same vintage, but it’s been stored all these years and is noticeably brighter.

After our last classes (we all took different ones, but ended up in and out of each others’, other than me & Lee, but we were roommates!), then back into the car and home. We made a driver switch at the location pictured below, and I couldn’t help but think that our husbands probably thought we were here all along (Click pic if you can’t read it.):

And thence, home.

Whew.

OK, no big details about the rest of the Month of Saturdays, as this post will take forever to load anyway, and it’s late.

But here’s my first Saturday in Seattle:

I got up before the sun rose in the Saturday Sky:

before the dew was off the grass.

And wandered around the ornamental trees and flowers around the hotel and surrounding buildings.

Then, on the hotel shuttle bus on the way to the airport, The Mountain (Mt. Rainier) was out! (Bad picture, color-enhanced.) I have a number of other pictures, (this was yarn crawl day on the Knotorious Knitters bus!), but not as many pictures as I should, because I ran out of battery before Bainbridge Island.

This was a gorgeous day in the upper 70s, not humid, light breeze, amazing.

The next Saturday: was NOT.

When I got up early on Saturday, on Orcas Island, Washington, here’s what it looked like from my room balcony.  

I didn’t get a photo of the Saturday Sky from the bay that morning, but if I had, I bet it would have looked like this, which was the snow moving in across the bay, the day before.

And then a snowy thus slower drive to the ferry; an uneventful ferry ride other than the ferry being a bit late due to weather and some sort of drill; a bus ride to the airport accompanied by increasing tension, as two of our number (CeCe and Carla) had an earlier flight out of SeaTac, for which the weather and the ferry were going to make them very significantly later than desireable. (They made it, in the nick of time.) And my somewhat eventfully delayed flight to Minneapolis:

 (the white patch is the storm that delayed my flight considerably and led to the need for de-icing, as seen when we finally got airborne, click to embiggen if you wish)

  Finally flying out of the bad weather,  then eventual arrival truly back home.

Makes me tired all over again just typing about it.

More to come, promise. Like actual Knitting knitting.

Back to the laundry!