Xmas gift preview

I got on a large Subversive Cross Stitch kick, so everyone gets one this year

Have you looked on top of your fridge lately?

Holy crap guys, how the heck does it get so dirty up there? Honestly, all I do is put stuff on top of it, it's not like I stand on a ladder and cook up there or anything. Even the cats don't go up there (I think).

As you can tell I got on a bit of a cleaning bender today. Since I've been home, I have started to notice things. Like the dust buffaloes roaming the dessert of our home and the cat hair that is collecting into little kittens all over. I don't even mean to spend 3 hours cleaning, it just kinda morphs into this "lets sweep, o crap look at all that dust, lets dust, lets pull everything off the shelves and rearrange, lets mop, o look now this room looks so much cleaner than the other room now I have to do the same to that room" and that gradually escalates into me on a stepladder with 409 cleaning the top of the fridge.

God help us all when I get to the basement.

I leave you with kittehs sleeping through it all as if the mess had nothing at all to do with them

I missed October

I have no idea what happened, but October just didn't exist in my blogging mind. Oh, lots of things happened, but for some reason the blog didn't get blogged.

I'll try to catch you up now, starting with today. Today I did a very adult thing, I had a physical exam for life insurance screening. Hopefully you're all saying I'm way to young for life insurance, but with this whole I don't have a job except for the lovely work for yarn set up I have over at Crafty Planet, I realized that if something happened to my husband, I would be living in a cardboard box with all of my yarn trying to knit scarves to sell for my Miller Genuine Draft Lite habit. And that just made me sad. So I convinced the hubby we needed life insurance, which also entailed an exam by an extremely young medical assistant. The hubby offered to come home from work to help supervise the exam in case it was "weird", I think he had visions of me propped on the dining room table with my feet in stirrups and Dexter trying to get the lady to play ball. Thankfully, it wasn't that weird. Though it was weird, don't get me wrong. The teenager was way overly made up for the appointment, didn't wear gloves or ask to wash her hands before drawing blood, and the whole urine sample thing was just strange.

But there were no stirrups. Maybe I should tell him there were so he can be freaked out for his own exam?

I've also been in a bit of a stretch of knitting scarves. I love scarves. Really. I love matching them to my outfit or mood or mismatching them depending on what Mulder looks like when I show it to him for his approval.

This one is a neckwarmer that buttons in the front, it's pretty, but it looks a bit odd on. Maybe it will be better with a jacket?

This was done in Noro Silk Garden, cast on 280 sts and knit sideways garter stitch until it was wide enough. I love this one!

This one was a bit of an obsession. Crafty Planet got a bunch of Malabrigo Rasta in that was gorgeous, but a bit expensive and low on the yardage, only 90 yards for $22. But then a coworker worked up this scarf and I instantly had to have my own! It's so lovely and smooooshy!

This last one kinda kicked my ass for a while. There are 24 rows, but only 23 are written out. So naturally, I knit about 2 feet of the scarf knowing the whole time that the cables looked off, but hoping that knitters hope that if I kept on knitting it would look fine magically when I knit the next row or the next row, and eventually I just gave in and looked at the pattern again and lo and freaking behold there was the 24th row. I had knit for 2 feet losing a row every 23 rows. Those cables were off my friends. I'm secretly happy I didn't take a before pic, because it really is stupid how off those cables were and I just kept knitting and hoping and knitting and watching Hawaii 5-0 distracting myself with Alex O'Laughlin's oh so lovely shirtless self. The blame isn't entirely my own.

But it sure is lovely now

The last pic is of what I think is the 2nd part of my Mom's Xmas present. Yep, it's still yarn. Technically it has been 6 different scarves, but I didn't like any of them, so they are all yarn again. Maybe wrap the box of yarn with an IOU for when I finally decide on a scarf pattern I like for it?

Sweater kick

I am on a serious sweater kick. Maybe it's because I actually got a sweater knitted that fit me, or that it's getting colder, but I just finished another sweater, the Mondo Cable Cardi from Chic Knits, knit in Cascade Eco Duo, a lovely lovely yarn that is 75% alpaca and 25% merino which makes it oh so warm and oh so soft and drapey. I knit a little shorter for the body as called for because alpaca tends to stretch, and I didn't want it down to my knees. The top photo is pre-buttons, and the second is after the buttons were added.
This photo shows the nice color of the yarn better, it does have a very subtle striping effect that isn't too weird.

Now onto the next sweater, you'll have to wait and see!

Just a few things

Just a quick post to update you on the things I've been knitting since leaving my job:
A pair of fingerless mittens: Pattern Endpaper Mitts from Ravelry

A pair of socks, pattern Crevasse on Ravelry

A baby sweater, pattern Baby Yoda on Ravelry

A sweater (yes, THE Sweater) that turned out lovely btw, pattern Cassidy on Ravelry

A blanket, pattern Modern Log Cabin on Ravelry

And a few hats, can't for the life of me remember the pattern name, but they're on Ravelry too.

I've also been working a bit here and there at Crafty Planet on Johnson St. in NE Mpls. Please come by and see me on a Sunday afternoon! I can't tell you how awesome that place is and how much I love working there! Finally, a job that feeds my yarn and fabric addiction!

I quit! & why I can't have a dog

This is my neighbor's dog. As you can see he is a very happy, playful dog. Much to my neighbor's dismay, he did not come with an appropriate warning about her yard though.

I have also just finished my last day! More than 9 years with my company and there were some tears but also cake and pizza which always helps, and I'm off!

I want to make it perfectly clear that my decision to leave had NOTHING to do with any bad feelings for the company or any job problems. Despite the normal crap that happens over 9 years, my job was the best I could have asked for at the best time in my life with the best coworkers and boss ever. Seriously. I didn't always love it, but that comes with the job. I left because it is the right time for me to move on.

Stay tuned for epic doing nothingness to come!

Houston, we've got sleeves!

These are the sleeves to my Cassidy cardigan, blocking. They will look better when they dry and are on the sweater, I swear.
This sweater is a serious deal for me, as I knew it would be. Not only am I knitting from a chart, but I learned the proper way to do a mattress seam on a sweater, and *gosh* does that ever make a difference! I am actually pretty excited about the finished product!

In other news, we got an automatic cat feeder. It is set to go off and dump out a specified amount of food 3 times a day, so now we don't have to worry quite so much about being home to meet the cats needs.
This is what they all look like when they hear it dump the food. Dexter gets there first, cuz he's a big bully, Mulder usually moves in, and Itchy gets it last. We were worried that they weren't all getting enough, so we upped the amount a bit. Now it seems just perfect.

We hoped this would help to alleviate the problem of herd of kitties running to food bowl because they're starving. And it has. A bit.

Wanna freak out a knitter?

Best way to freak out a knitter is to have a creepy squirmy brown bug appear in her yarn.
I promise it is the fastest way to get said knitter to scream, grab yarn and bust into husband in the bathroom and shake out all the yarn in the tub.
The yarn is now in the freezer, just in case, and all surrounding yarn has been checked.
Googled, and it didn't look like anything other than a small baby centipede that probably crawled in the window.

Snot bubbles

Itchy has a cold. This is him at the vet this morning. He had been wheezing and making sounds like he had a squeeky toy in his throat, sneezing violently and not eating. Not even hissing when I picked him up. So you know that he feels yucky if he's not hissing. So I took him to the vet, the lovely vet that sees Mulder, and he promptly had a violent sneezing attack that made him look like Elvis while blowing snot bubbles. Definately a cold she said. She's so nice.
He got fluids sub-q (under his skin) and some stuff I got to try to make him take. Luckily, he's not feeling well, so instead of landing me in the ER with another tetanus shot and antibiotics, he just blew more snot bubbles at me.

And yes, I did take my camera to the vet for the sole purpose of taking his picture and blogging about it. So??????

Moving right along

Now that I figured out the chart pattern with the help of the lovely Angela from The Knitter's Palette, I am moving right along. I am about 2 inches away from being done with the back!
I believe it is turning out quite lovely. I am using the same yarn I used in the Fiddlehead mittens for my mom, Berrocco Ultra Alpaca worsted weight in Blueberry mix, which is my new passion. Thank goodness my new passion is reasonably priced and available at the Knitter's Palette!

The Sweater Theory

I have always had in my mind that no matter what or how much I knit, I am not a "real" knitter until I can make myself a cozy sweater that I want to wear every day of my life. This theory does not apply to anyone but myself. But until I can make myself "THE" sweater, I have not yet arrived.
Enter sweater class 2010. I have made sweaters, but in my mind, not a single one is 'THE" sweater. None of them can be thrown on without a bit of coordination. So until this year, I was still on the hunt. Knitter's Palette decided to host a make a sweater of your choice type class, and I was in.
First mistake was in the choosing of the pattern. I couldn't just choose one with shaping and seaming, no no no. I had to go for cables, and CHARTED cables nonetheless. I have never worked from a cable chart ever, but shoot, LET'S GO!
Picked favorite yarn. Ordered, bought, wound in a delightful little ball. Get pattern, look over. Decide it's confusing, but decide to wait until class to have a full on freak out.
Go to class. Gosh, this is confusing, but I got some good guidance from lovely Angela, and onward we go.
Second mistake. I went home fully confident I could make the back all by my lonesome. Never should have left the store. Should have sat there and knit until I finished the back because I have now re-knit the same piece 4 times. Partly because I failed to read, partly because Itchy thinks alpaca is awesome, partly because I can no longer count, and finally because I thought I would get fancy and write out the charted instructions so I could read them but still couldn't count so I ended up knitting for an hour and had one less row and one less stitch after ripping it all out.
Put the fucking knitting down...take a step back....
Picked up those needles, pulled out the fucking pattern, threw out my notes, and read from the chart...very very very very slowly.
Mother-f-ing success.
Only 2 hours spent to get 2 rows in.
If I don't get the best sweater out of this I quit knitting.

This little girl was hanging out at work this morning when I got there. She was hungry, shaking, cold, wet, and hurt badly on her back foot. She was also the cutest and sweetest thing on the face of the planet

As you can see, her foot is about 3 times the size of her other foot. Some asshole put a tourniquet on her and almost cost her the whole foot. Her entire paw was sliced open on the pads.

I think there is a special place in Hell for people that neglect or abuse animals.

We called Animal Control, and a very nice officer came and took her along with a coworker to the animal hospital. They won't have to amputate her foot, which they were afraid of, and she might not need stitches if they can help it. The coworker wants to adopt her, but is afraid of the expense. She did hear from the officer (who has rescued and kept 3 of his own dogs) that said the station could impound her for 10 days, then she could come get her at a lesser expense than having to pay all the vet bills out of pocket.

Medium

Did anyone else watch the season finale of "Medium"? I kept thinking to myself, she gets to spend her whole afterlife in her pajamas! Yay!

Kill me now

All I have to say about this week is that I actually had to complain to my boss that my coworker was clipping his toenails at his desk. And she's threatening to call HR in to mediate the situation. What in the name of everything is there to mediate? How do you mediate NOT clipping your toenails at your desk?
A better idea would be to mediate me NOT waiting in the parking lot for him to come out and ramming my car into him over and over and over back and forth until his toes become severed from the rest of his body.
THAT would be a better idea.

Shepherd's Harvest pics

Just for kicks, I got a picture of all 3 boys together. I was playing on the Wii fit and they were all rapt, as they should be. Of course Mulder is in his king position on the pillow, Itchy on the arm, and Dexter on the cushion.
This is the sheep dog demo I got to watch a bit of. I was pausing to drink some hot coffee, it was freezing. The dogs were pretty cool, and fun to watch.

This is a knitted wedding dress I saw. The woman that knit it wore it for her wedding, as well she should. I would wear it every day, and end up 50 years later covered in cobwebs in a dilapidated mansion.

Those were the best photos. I had a blast, came home with enough fiber and yarn to spin and knit for at least another year.

Whatcha eating?

I really suck at feeding myself. This has become more apparent this week on vacation as I try to fend for myself and not rely on my daily frozen lunch in the microwave for my main meal of the day.
Today out of desperation for normal-ish food and something new, I made hard-boiled eggs for the first time ever in my life. Really. It was a feat to behold. I even had to look up how to do it on the Internet. Seriously. I paced for the whole 10 minutes they were "simmering" which I'm not really even sure I know what that means, thinking the whole time they would explode on the stove just like the time my Mom put them in the microwave and they blew the door off.
When they were done, I ate them with trepidation. They smelled good, they tasted good, but for about 2 hours I was beset with the idea that I would have food poisoning because I didn't do it right. Which I don't by the way. I'm fine. I think.
So I've realized I'm probably going to starve to death by this time next week if I don't get some ideas soon. I HATE TO COOK. Seriously. When I lived by myself I was so freaking proud of myself for making a spaghetti dinner that I thought I was queen of the world. I do that about once a year. Macaroni & cheese from the box is my cooking. And I only do that once a week or so. A plate of bacon used to and still can be a nice dinner. Add an egg if you have them, but they're easier to cook when you float them in the bacon grease so you can flip them. Rice-a-roni is not a side but a well thought out meal.
So what do you make? Is there anything in a box I can make other than pasta? A can of something other than ravioli? No. I willnotmakeramen.

Found:
One incredibly cute burgundy corduroy jacket hanging out in the basement along with 2 sweatshirts and a cardigan I thought I had lost. Discovered while on the hunt for winter jackets to donate.
Done: Donation of 4 garbage bags of clothing. Absolutely none of which came from my closet. They were all leftovers from last years purge.
But hey, gotta start somewhere right?

Something weird

There is something weird that happens when you decide to do ALL of the laundry that's been sitting around. You suddenly realize a lot of odd things all at once.
1 You have a crapton of clothes
2 You still have nothing to wear and you hate it all
3 Except for the super cute burgundy corduroy jacket that yes indeed is missing.
4 You do not have enough hangers
5 Someone came and stole all of your underwear except the crappy stuff.

Sexy Man

Mulder got a bath last night, and just wanted to show off how sexy and sleek he looks now that he is de-dandruffed.
Mulder is a bit of an "older" gent. He's having more laziness with the cleaning part of his routine, choosing to favor the sleeping over the cleaning. So he needs a bit of help especially with the de-oiling of his fur. At one point I swear the little bugger was actually liking the shower, he sat back with his head up so we could spray his chest with the nice warm water from the fancy shower head we got just for him.
But then he growled.
Bugger.

Pictures Schmictures

Yes, I know I promised landscaping pics a while ago.
YOU try living my life for 28.2 seconds and see if that's on the top of your to do list.
Just sayin...

This is the after shot of the pond. LOVE IT! They took out all the grossness and added goodies like real pretty rocks and redid the water bowls so they don't get so yucky.

This is the backyard. They pulled EVERYTHING OUT and redid with cedar mulch, that smells like freaking heaven, and planted cute little evergreens everywhere.

That's the front. The bushes are a gorgeous bluish hue, and they should get about 5 feet around. Let me tell you, I'm watering those things like I've never watered in my life. Well... I haven't...

Anyhooo....

There ya go.

One week to go until my 2 week vacation. I'm going to Shepherd's Harvest in Lake Elmo and that's it. NADA. Well, I threatened the DH that I would clean the basement, so I might follow thru on that. Other than that, NOPE, NADA! Plan to get my knit on, my spin on, and my beer drinking on. Not in that order.

1st sale down, 1 to go

I know I owe you pics of the landcaping, but all you get right now is the loot I got from the MN Textile center's garage sale. Lets just say it was worth it as always!

Can't tell you what it is, but these buttons are going on Mom's Mother's Day present. I got out the whole button box (old wine box) and went thru all of the buttons, and these are what I came up with.
I cut the tulips from my yard today because the landscapers come on Wed and are gutting all of our plants around the whole yard. And the squirrrels eat the tulips as soon as they bloom anyway, so I grabbed what I could:

This is the front yard. They are digging out everything and planting nice clean easy to maintain evergreens. No flowers for the squirrels, no crap to have to weed. Nice low maintenance evergreens

This is the pond. I love the pond. I don't even really mind cleaning out the pond and refilling it. But Eric hates it. So this year, the landscapers are going to clean it and re-do the rocks and such so that we get nice water flow. They are also pruning the lilac bush around and over it so it gets more sun and less crap in it.

The metal cow from our friend Mike stays though.

This is the side and back yard. They are also getting rid of all this crap that the previous owners thought was great and giving us more evergreens!

That is all for now.

I will hopefully get some nice "after" photos when it's all done!

Stupid Slippers

I joined the Ravelry bandwagon and got the French Press slipper pattern. This is my first attempt:


I made the medium size, I have a size 7.5 foot. Totally turned out too big. Felted for over an hour and now they are in the dryer trying to shrink them down. They are so big that putting them on makes me look like a Xmas elf without the bells on the toes.

So far the pattern was easy, the seaming is a pain in the ass, and I agree with other Ravelers on a few things:

1:7$ is too much for one pattern

2:Not specifying the type of make one that works best is a negative. I used the m1 by lifting the bar below, which caused a hole, which shows on only 1 of the slippers and not the other.

3: The sides are too short. I may try to mod by not decreasing as much for that middle part.

Things I like:

1: Easy peasy pattern.

2: Even if you are a beginner knitter, if you think about the construction of the slipper, you can modify the pattern to fit you better.

3: It uses up scrap-wool stash. Even if using the scrap wool stash is purely an attempt to perfect the $&#! thing.

Yarn dyeing for Easter

We don't celebrate Easter. So today we installed another ceiling fan, put in a new shower head, and I dyed some more yarn.
I soaked the bare yarn in some water and vinegar while we shopped at Home depot, came home and spread out the yarn in the backyard over some plastic and mixed my dyes. Today I used the Neon food colors you can get at the food store. I put the color into separate squeeze bottles and played with the colors.
Here the yarn is soaking up the sun rays in the backyard to heat the color into it:

Here is the yarn before I wrapped it in the saran wrap:

I haven't got the faintest idea if this will work at all or be a miserable failure, but I spent part of the day outside in the lovely sun with a beer and yarn.

That's success any day in my book.

No time to write, must spin, or is it knit?

Two of my favorite events are coming up very sooooooon, so soon in fact I can't spend any time blogging. I have to spin. Knit. spin. knit. spin. or is it knit????
The first is the MN Textile center garage sale in April. I blogged last year. Hence the reason behind the must knit. I always buy toooooo much there. It's not really my fault though. It's the yarn. It calls to me. It just feels so lonely and unloved, it needs a home and friends.
The second is the Shepherd's harvest festival in May. This is a spinners dream, and the first year I went which was 2 years ago was right before I got the wheel from my Mom and I still bought too much. Fiber is way cheaper than yarn, and has so many wonderful possibilities that aren't being held back by being yarn already that it's just way too much fun to buy too much.
So sorry for the short post, but you knitters/spinners understand right? Gotta make room!

Post blocking

This is a DROPS sweater that I made. It took a long time because it is knit and seamed (remind me to modify for in the round next time!) So while this is being blocked because the bottom hem in the back rides up a bit it is on the floor in my sewing room on a towel like this:

And then I put another towel on top of it and a book on top of that to hold it down. I DO NOT WANT Itchy to get his little sharp claws into this and claim it as his own chewy toy.

Thanks Gwen for the comment, yes, it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

I'm posting a pic of the post blocked bag. the corner is curled up a bit on the flap, and the back has a spot where the yarn is chewed, but it's not so bad. :(

When you block at my house

When you knit a bag and felt it and then try to block it at my house, Itchy claims it as his. He licks it and licks it and growls and bites when you try to get him off it.
The mystery of why things never look as good as they should after blocking is now solved.

Wicked in Malabrigo

I've been working on the sweater "Wicked" from Ravelry for the last few days. I found enough Malabrigo for sale by a fellow Raveler for the sweater, so I had to wait to cast on which actually was a bit painful. I haven't knit anything in Malabrigo for a few months now, so I was itching!

The colorway is "Applewood" I'm on skein #2 and just getting to the bust line. I tried it on with some lifelines, and she actually fits!

Top down seamless sweater to the rescue!

And a hat too!

I had so much fun knitting the mittens that I found a hat pattern that went well with it.

It's the Flora hat from Ravelry, and it's a free pattern. I used the leftovers I had from the mittens, and only used about 1/2 skein of each color.

If you look close the white parts are small leaves coming off of a small vine. The vine isn't "popping" quite like it should, but I can't find anything to block the stupid thing on other than my head. And I don't want to wear a wet hat around blocking it until it dries. Any volunteers?

Finished!

The Fiddlehead mittens are finished! The white you see on the bottom is the lining that tucks inside for extra warmth. I must say I am sooooooooooooooooooooo pleased with myself! Clearly the most intricate knitting work I have ever done, and I pulled it off! Thank you to the wonderful knitters that not only taught the class at Knitter's Pallette, but also were part of the group! I've not had so much fun in a long time!


Yes, Tracie, I will try to remember to bring them on Saturday. Looking forward to it!

More fun

I did some more dyeing last night. This photo is the closest to the true color.

1/4 tsp scarlet and 1/4 tsp blue with 3 tbs vinegar.

I am in love with dyeing yarn.

Now just to stop dyeing it and actually knit something with it!