Doing a little part

A few bloggers I enjoy have gotten on the intarwebs to tell us all to vote NO on Prop 8. Alas, I cannot do this. (ETA: I CAN make a donation. See here for a really good reason why.) As much as I would like to travel to CA to cast my ballot to strike down constitutionalized discrimination, I am not a resident yet. So, if you are a resident, do please see through all the hype and lies that the opponents are spewing and strike down that bit of bile. The world can only get better if there's more love in it.
I CAN, however, toddle over to my local Arizona voting place and say NO ON 102! Prop 8 in CA is getting all sorts of airtime everywhere, but here in lil ol' AZ, 102 is quietly sliming along like a slug, and I'm disgusted. Here's my biggest qualm with the whole idea - why the hell does anyone CARE who else gets married? Do I give a rat's ass about two guys calling each other husband and being recognized as such by the state? (Well, yes, I do, which is why I'm voting NO, but you know what I mean.) It doesn't affect me ONE BIT who else gets married around here. Those people who will wring their hands and say it devalues marriage should look around and see what marriage looks like in the news in this country. Check out these people. They're all legal, and doing a great part for the institution of marriage. How about this guy? How about the couple (can't find the link now) who came up with the plot to sell their 6 yr old into sex slavery for a mobile home and a car? Are they upholding the values of marriage? Are they thinking of the children? If we're worried about the state of marriage, why isn't adultery and divorce illegal? (Tell me that one, Anita Bryant.) Are we straight married people worried that someone will take away our Members Only jackets? C'mon, people, we're better than this. Sorry to have to argue this, but "because all humans deserve basic rights" is apparently not enough of a reason.
/political rant

And now for fibery news.
Um, I got nuthin'. No wait! I got sock batts! Custom blended by Lynn in Tucson, who borrowed a drum carder and all the wool bearing animals within a hundred miles felt a shiver of fear. (I think if she weren't having so much fun making this stuff for herself she'd have a lovely etsy shop. I for one would shop there.)



(No, there aren't sparkles blended into the fiber, those came from the tissue paper it was wrapped in.)

I'm still knitting along on my projects, and they look roughly the same as before, only longer. Exciting stuff, I know. I was thrilled to find not two but FOUR more balls of the alpaca I'm using for Faina. I was a little concerned that it was going to be too short, since I'm just shy of half way as it's written and it's about two feet long. I'll be adding a repeat to that puppy now that I can. I have 12/30 repeats done on Aunt Helen's scarf, and a few more rows on Linden. Chugging away, I am.

Mama's canine helper.

Sunday recap

This was a nice weekend, I'll say. The weather was fantastic thanks to a fast moving storm that brought rain and wind to the area, then cleared out and left blue skies. (I don't mind blue skies when the temperature is nice.) Yesterday we had a high of 82, and today we never made it out of the 60s. HEAVEN.
Yesterday we drove down to Willcox to let Bug run in the punkin patch with his buddy S. They must have run miles, back and forth, S's mom and DH chasing them while S's dad and I stood in the field and watched them and laughed. (Hey, Mama don't run, and C told me he didn't want to just leave me standing in the field. Heh, smart man.)



Finally the only way we could get them back to the tractor for the hayride back to the barn was to carry them.



Two of the three loves of my life. (The third is currently not available for closeups without heavy-duty equipment.)



The boys were in heaven with all the tractors.



Today I did my housecleaning and sat on my butt looking out the window and knitting on various projects. It was all I could do to put the sea silk aside for the beaverslide or the alpaca, but I managed it. The alpaca doesn't photograph well, mostly because I'm too lazy to pin it out to make it look right.



Linden is just a big rectangle (well, truth be told it's a trapezoid) but here it is.



It's the sea silk that I'm loving most right now.



Of course, being lace it looks like boiled ass without blocking, but I'm loving it. I switched from scarf #1 to scarf #2, as I liked the waviness better. That picture does nothing for the color of the yarn, though. Here's one that shows a little better the glow of that fine stuff.

Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies.

Or brownies, as the case may be.

Today, I gotsa whole lotta nuthin'. My hormones are kicking in, full force, and it forces me to alternate between weepiness and hating everyone and everything. Mostly I feel the hate. I also feel the urge to bake. I don't know if the two are related.

Also, I have truly gone over to the dark side. I bought crocs. I kindof love them so long as I don't actually LOOK at them.


(BTW, the color in this photo is not good - my skin is not terribly sallow, I am wearing bright lime green socks. Yes, I really am. With blue shoes, and brown pants. And a pink shirt. If Bug has taught me one thing, it's that "matched" is relative.)

They make good preggo clogs - I can wear socks and have a more enclosed shoe, they're loose enough that they won't cut off circulation if my ankles swell, and they didn't cost me a gajillion dollars. Keep your Louboutins; I have blue rubber mary janes. Bug wanted to buy some too, but since he has many pairs already, I told him no. When we got home, he immediately kicked off his (croc) flip-flops and put on his blue (croc) clogs, and said proudly, "Look, I have blue shoes too!" The kid is a (croc) fiend.

Knitting-wise, I am making progress on both Linden and Faina. I would like very much to start knitting on the Sea Silk which came over the weekend but Faina is taking up my size 4 tips, and my size 3 circ hasn't arrived from Knitpicks yet. (I know it has been mentioned before, but how on earth is it that I can order from Knitpicks, and two days later I order from The Loopy Ewe, and Loopy's package gets to me before I even get a shipping notice from Knitpicks? Is Loopy that good, or is Knitpicks that ridiculous, or both? I swear Kelly has a spot in the warehouse where people put things to "marinate" or something before they officially get mailed.) Anyway, I'm going to have to ration the sea silk a little or I'll never want to finish the horribly scratchy alpaca Faina (cuz seriously? everything is scratchy next to sea silk). We won't even talk about the Beaverslide - it's yummy, but y'all, it's no sea silk.

Also, I am sad. I ordered Nancy Bush's new Estonian Lace book several months ago, thinking it would be a lovely present to myself near my birthday. Today I got news that it's going to be a month late at least. Alas. (Not that I have TIME to knit any Estonian lace these days, but STILL.)

And in a Whose Kid Is This moment, here is some kid:



Sitting happily on my couch, watching my TV, surrounded by my son's books and colors and paper. He's not my kid though - he wouldn't eat the caramel apple unless I took the caramel off. The weirdo.

Saturday at last...

First, if you're inclined in this heinous economy, consider sending a few dollars to fund the project of a teacher in a low-income area. And just maybe Alice will remake the Love is a Battlefield video.
I made it through the week, surprisingly. I finished my heinous deadline (the one that, had I missed, I likely would have been sacked for), made good progress on the next one and even learned a trick to work from home that allows me to finish things without having to jump through hoops, so my next deadline should be okay too.
I saw the midwife yesterday and was happy to see that even though the Noob is measuring big, I haven't gained any more weight (I gained too quickly in the second trimester and they suggested I "slow it down" - don't worry LynnM, I'm eating PLENTY) and my blood pressure is great. I'm pretty thrilled about that stuff.
I even went to City Court AGAIN to get ANOTHER copy of my speeding ticket so I could take care of driving class. (DH threw it away while cleaning out my car. I'd be mad if he weren't already doing me a favor, and if I had taken care of it when I got it, or better yet when I got the ticket originally, it wouldn't have been an issue.)
Nora told me to take it easy and stop nesting for the weekend. I wish I could. I washed walls today. I washed THE SOAP DISPENSER, people. I clearly have a problem.
Knitting-wise, I made some progress on Linden whilst sitting in City Court. Aran-weight yarn makes for quick knitting. :-D It also makes for sore wrists, so I've been alternating Linden with Faina. Size 4 needles after size 9 needles feel awfully strange, but it's nice alternating the different textures of the super soft alpaca and the chunky, tweedy wool, too.
Some graphic proof that I purl looser than I knit, even when I'm making a conscious effort to tighten up... I manually tightened the last six stitches in a row of purls on Linden and got this:



Two extra inches of yarn from six purls.

And a sure sign of fall:

Because I enjoy punishing myself

I switched my blog template for fall. Punishment double. To me, the defining feature of fall is the ability to sit outside on the deck and drink my morning latte without sweating a puddle under my chair or being eaten by mosquitos. During my two pregnancies, I have been unable to tolerate milk or the acid in the coffee. (I assume it's that, since I have plenty of caffeine in other things.) I'm going to miss out on the whole entire fall season of deck-sitting-coffee-drinking because I had to go and be all knocked up. I can have all the tea I want, but I'm sorry to all you tea drinkers, it's just not as good. This might actually be a forest for the trees moment, but I'm whiny so I feel all put out. So what did I do? Pick a coffee theme for fall. (Cuz blogger has crap for good Autumn templates, even from those sites that have actual GOOD templates (which is NOT the actual blogger.)
However, blogger also sucks in that all my sidebar items are ...
Okay, wait. JUST as I was typing the above sentence, I got an error message that Blogger couldn't autosave my draft. Is Blogger the beta of Skynet?
...back to the sidebar. All "gadgets". Not hardcoded into the template anywhere. This makes it all neato to add them in and fix them, but when replacing a template, one must save the code in each gadget to a Notepad file separately. "Download the entire template" only gives you the template. Not the gadgets. Those of you who are more code-savvy than I might realize this, but I didn't until after I uploaded and overwrote the template, and so. Sigh. I'm missing some sidebar content because I couldn't be bothered to care enough about the rings and buttons I'd had up there before.
And also, can anyone tell me why my nifty and offensive tagline of swears is off too far to the left?Thanks to the DH of Lynn in Tucson for telling me how to fix the subtitle. Now my offensive taglines can be clearly seen! Woo!
That being said, the weekend was not a total loss. There was... [gasp] KNITTING! Not just knitting, but PROGRESS. I finished my portion of the secret project, and made progress on the second Charade sock, and hold on to your knickers, FAINA.



It doesn't look like much, but it's twice what it was when I pulled it out of the hole it had been stashed in. A little "knitting maturity" goes a long way with this one, and I have had few of the chart-reading and YO-making problems that plagued me in the first attempt.
I organized my knitting basket and put only those projects that I'm actively working on in the basket, and removed all the rest of the yarn to the stash area. I might have worked on Gust too, if my needles hadn't been in Faina. I partially swatched for Linden. I even WASHED the swatch. Holy crap, do you hate me yet? (How about when I tell you I also cleaned much of the house, finished my laundry, made the Bug some playdough and baked both cookies and pumpkin bread? It's amazing how much you can get done when your kid wakes you up at 5am on weekends as well as weekdays. You totally hate me. It's okay, I'd hate me too, if I didn't have cookies.)

Is it too early to be nesting?

So I've been thinking. And cleaning. Those two things are things I generally prefer NOT to do in great quantities, but hey. I've been thinking a lot about what to clean next, what to pack up, what we can do without for a few months, etc. And I've also been looking at my blog. Specifically, at that list of WIPs over on the sidebar there. The other day, I was randomly thinking about some strange conglomeration of things, when I remembered one of the members of my blogroll likes to start the year fresh, with respect to projects. (I can't remember if it's Jared or Dave Daniels, or both.) The idea is to finish up what's on the needles and rip what isn't finished, IIRC. When I first read that a year or two ago, I believe my reaction was somewhere along the lines of "that's nucking futs." This year, though, the idea is growing on me. I mean REALLY. Look at that list.
Votive sleeves: I have 2 1/2 left, and I want to finish them for Christmas. Assuming I can still find the wire, that should be eminently doable.
Monkey socks: I have the better part of one done.
Gust: still in the early stages
Lace: I still have doubts about this one - it's a secret project and I don't love it. I'd be avoiding it simply because I don't want to face the inevitability that it needs ripping.
Charade socks: one down, one to go
Slippin' Slidin' Socks: not on the list. Early on, could probably rip without much anguish if I needed to. I think I have, maybe, an inch of cuff done.
Garden lattice socks: need to rip back half of the one finished sock, so if I ripped the whole thing I prolly wouldn't cry.
Faina: I struggled with the charts. I still love the pattern, and I'm much better at reading charts (and lace, for that matter) now. Maybe it's time to let Faina out again.
Sonnet: Going to rip it. No question.
Haiku: needs to have the sleeves and buttons sewn. C'mon, yo, leaving it like that is almost sinful. Finish that dude.

What I have is, at most, two lacy scarves, six socks, 2.5 tiny candle holders, and finishing up a baby sweater. In the writing of this post, I've already decided the secret lace needs to go. (I have this feeling that there are other things, but if they've been UFOs so long that I can't remember them, they're getting ripped.) I also have the better part of four months. Really, that should be doable.
Even if I throw in Linden, I still think it's doable. It starts to get a little dicey when I think of knitting lace shawls for my aunts for Christmas, but I was still batting that idea around and I hadn't settled on it yet. I obviously am not going to finish my summer knitting goals, but hey, at least I got a little mojo back. I think I might be talking myself into this idea of finishing up the year's (and last year's) projects before moving on into '09. Do I sound like an annoying go-getter? Do we hate me yet?

Defeat or Impasse?

At what point do you admit that the cool idea you had isn't working out?


[sigh] Argyles.

I love the idea of the Gryffindor argyles, and I can scarcely stand to make striped socks like everyone else, but really, they weren't working out. I haven't given up on argyles in general, but at this time, they're too complex, and I have too many other complex things to finish. [sigh again]
So, any ideas for maroon and gold socks that aren't horizontally striped? I have considered checkerboard, checkboard-on-point, and barberpole stripes, all of which would be stranded and therefore a helluva lot easier to do. Should I just suck it up and do plain ol' stripes and quit being s'damn picky?
As for the rest of my projects on the schedule, I had a modicum of success. I actually did knit a few rows on the eyelet sweater, I knit quite a bit on the blue Vermont socks (they're my work knitting too), and actually picked Faina up, although I didn't knit on her any. I would feel better about all of it if I could FIND the shrek lace. Dammit. I might actually have to clean or tidy something to find it, which is drastic measures indeed.
And now for the requisite bug picture:


Box-o-Bug

Wow!

Who knew there were so many cool bags out there? I really really need to shop more places than Target. So far I have it narrowed down to either a Kecci, a Timbuk2, an Amy Butler, one from Ellington, or a lexie barnes.
Actually, I found features in all of those that I like, and some that I have concerns about. I love the hidden backpack straps in the Kecci, I love the versatility of the Timbuk2, I love that I can make my own Amy Butler, I love the look of the Ellington, and I love the double zippered pockets in the lexie barnes. Oh, to be so wealthy that I could design one and have it custom-made...
(Actually, there are probably a zillion perfect bags out there, but WHY won't people show me the insides? I need pockets, people!)
Anyway.
Ahem.
So, it turns out that I also suck at charts. So far I have ripped probably as many rows as I have successfully knit. Oy. Faina is proceeding, and I have finally gotten to the straight part with the proper number of stitches, but I have come to the conclusion that I MUST have no distractions when I knit, and I must count at the end of every row. And it would be nice if I had one of those bouncing balls, like in those old singalong shows, to mark my place as I knit each stitch.
I have no knitting with me, because of this, and I feel naked. I have no sock on the go right now because I am preparing for Sock Madness. The first pattern will be released this weekend, and I want to start it right away. I have my yarn and needles all set and packed to go camping at the lake with me. I will have to drive 30 miles to the nearest town to get the pattern, and I'll be hours behind everyone else because I have to wait until the library opens and hope like heck they have the right program I need to open the file, and then drive back. I don't expect I'll get a whole lot of knitting done during the days anyway, since I will be busy chasing The Bug away from the mud at the edge of the lake. (I'm pretty sure this kid was reincarnated from a previous life as a mud skipper.) However, I will also be bringing my headlamp, so as to knit in the evenings, after Bug has gone to bed to dream his muddy little dreams. I only hope that there are no charts involved.

Mild disappointment

I wore my lovely fetchings all day yesterday, and they kept my hands nice and toasty. They did NOT, however, keep their shape. I used Shine Worsted, which is a cotton/modal blend. I should have anticipated this based on what I've read, but I have not been knitting long enough, or enough types of items, that I have had experience with the way various fibers wear. Anyway, they did lose their shape, but Pixie suggested a few days ago that, instead of ripping the original version, I could tighten it up with stretchy nylon filament. I will toddle off to JoAnn's later today and get some of that stuff to thread through a few rows at the fingers and the cuffs, and I suspect that will do the trick. In the meantime, I have some Regia bamboo/wool blend sock yarn that is trying to convince me that its beautiful colors should not be exiled to the dark confines of my shoes...
In Faina news, I picked her up again last night, and realized that I'd made a mistake somewhere in one of the previous rows. I ripped, and ripped again, and ripped some more, and finally, about six rows down, was able to find a good row and find my place again. Negative progress on the Faina. ...sigh... Oh well, it's all about learning the whole chart thing. (That's what messed me up the most - I ripped two rows and went down two rows on the chart, trying to get it to line up. It took me the better part of an hour to remember that the chart only shows HALF the rows. ...sigh...)
Also, is it just me, or, now that you know how to Make Good Stuff with your knitting, do you suddenly feel like you can improve almost every product on the market? I have been thinking about getting a chart keeper, and before I have even seen the thing, I'm think I could cover it in fabric, make it look like a little book, with a sweet little snap closure, and... Gracious, there is not enough time in my working-outside-the-home life to get all Laura Ingalls again.

Walked yesterday: 1 mile

Faina progress

Here is my sweet little Faina:




It doesn't look like much progress since the last progress photo, but there is some. I have three rows left on chart A, but I was too tired to finish it last night. The weekly tiredness is cumulative, so by Thursday or Friday night, I'm falling asleep at 8:30. Also, Wednesday night I worked on it some, but I wasted most of my evening trying to figure out why the stitches weren't lining up. Turns out that the loopy thing means ktbl instead of kfb. La tried to straighten me out yesterday; she told me, "and the loopy thing ALWAYS means Ktbl ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS except for when it doesn't". So helpful.

Anyway, this weekend it's supposed to be warm and sunny, so I aim to spend some good time outdoors with the Bug. I'll see how it goes with the scarf, but really, when it's close to 70 and sunny, who thinks of scarves?

Walked yesterday:
1 mile

Begone, stash weasels!

For I have cast on Faina.


Cute little scarflet.

Despite the fact that I had to cast on three times, I am enjoying this. It's a straightforward pattern, although it IS the first time I've tried to knit from a chart. Thank goodness for almost-all-purl WS rows. (And can I just say how it messes me up that the right side rows are the even ones? Apparently my brain is full, and that concept won't fit in there will all the rest of the uselss trivia.)

I have spent the rest of the weekend dealing with this:


Why are we always out of blue food coloring?

In happy news, I can say that sealing the grout from stains was a good idea.


Green beans make me happy.

It feels like folly to be starting an alpaca scarf for myself on the same day I'm contemplating turning on the air conditioning.

I heart NOTHING!

I think I got tired of using "heart" as a verb about the time I heart Huckabees came out. Oy. I do love hearts in everything but jewelry, though. (A few years ago, as we were watching yet ANOTHER stupid Zales commercial with that awful piano riff and they were showing the standard diamond heart pendant, I said, "GAWD I hate heart jewelry." DH paused a minute and said, "Gee, I wish I'd known that about a week ago." However, he got me a little watch with overlapping hearts on the band, and I swear it was the only piece of heart jewelry I've seen in the world so far that I've ever really loved.)
Anyway, that was random.
Today is the start of the Fainalong! (That makes me want to say Mackerelly. Mackerelease yourself. Oh yeah. Apparently I am all about the random today.) Anyway, since I doubt my poor long suffering husband would be unlikely to consider "casting on a scarf" as romantic - even if I was naked - I will wait until tomorrow.

Quickie Friday

I am feeling better today, thank goodness. DH also got the walking death, but he seems to have gotten an abbreviated version and is on the mend as well. He didn't even have to go to the doctor for the miraculous waiting room cure!
This weekend is my father's 80th birthday, so my little family is packing up to head out of town and celebrate with ol' Daddy-o. A little car knitting will be had, and maybe a little Bug-nap knitting too, but I am not holding my breath.
In the meantime, La asked for some Faina prep photos. I will be knitting my Faina from some stashed Knitpicks Andean Treasure in Embers Heather.


Mmmm, alpaca....

Ignore the weird ghosting from the label, and the color is fairly accurate.

I had originally bought this yarn to hold with Shimmer in Maple Leaf to knit myself a Clapotis. I think it would have been pretty, but I have already knit one Clapotis, and I want to move on. My motto is "Life is too short to knit the same pattern twice (unless I wanna)" and right now, I dunna wanna. Any ideas for my laceweight? I am not a great fan of variegated lace, so it should be a reasonably simple, solid pattern - I don't like meshes and prefer designs with the elements in positive space. Oh great knitbloggers, gimme your ideas!

On an unrelated note, don't you wish these were growing in your house?


Beauteous tulips