show and tell 2007

 

Finished Objects 2007

1. monkey socks, 2. central park hoodie, 3. another one skein, one day wonder hat, 4. mad cow socks, nancy division by Moirae, 5. mitered bag, 6. aurora cabled sweater, 7. rapid river socks in envy, 8. toe up socks, 9. multi-directional scarf, 10. monkey socks, 11. lizard ridge (knit for charity by bloggers), 12. hedera, 13. puff baby, 14. little raglan, 15. clapotis, 16. monkey socks for swap, 17. sky socks, 18. swallowtail shawl, 19. baby baseball tee, 20. monkey socks, 21. kim’s hat, 22. bff socks

Works in Progress 2007 (uncompleted or frogged)

1. Lorna’s Laces, Desert Flower, 2. failed anemenoi, 3. failed anemenoi, 4. frogged vesper toe-up, 5. madtini – frogged, 6. plain sock, frogged, 7. madtini, frogged, 8. wave socks, wip, 9. fabric for a knitting bag, 10. baby baseball tee, 11. chevron scarf in Mountain Colors, 12. multidirectional scarf, 13. Pearl Buck, 14. miters, 15. baby surprise, 16. plain sock in rare gems, 17. My creation, 18. pomatomus 2, 19. rusted root, 20. wool miters, 21. bayerische socks, 22. ripple and weave socks, 23. debbie bliss argyle sweater, 24. crochet larger than life bag

Warning, the next page is not for the faint of heart.

adventures in san francisco, part one yarn tasting at art fibers

San Francisco, Art Fibers. The hallway to the second floor walk-up is filled with xeroxed pictures of models, whose sweaters have been cut-out and filled in with swatches. Clearly, you are headed to a place of fashion.

And fashion it is indeed, with yarn of every sort, eyelash and chunky. Mohair and silk wool blends are common here. Worsted weight is harder to come by.

Like Habu, yarn at Art Fibers is sold by the ounce rather than the yard. For the most part, the fibers come in a array of colors. Take for example, the Ming I found, a silk wool blend. I had my choice of rust, blue and many other colors (although I eventually settled on maroon). Additionally, many of the yarns are available at a cheaper price in dye hanks. I found it hard to keep my hands off of 1000-yard hanks of lace-weight silk and wool, despite the knowledge that it the silk would hardly make this a suitable fiber for a first time dyer like myself.

Karrie and Carmen arrived ahead of me and were already examining the fibers they keep in drawers. Soon after I got there, Anabel and her friend Christina, appeared and we found ourselves tasting various fibers.

Art Fibers is well aware that none of their fibers come with a set gauge and needle size attached to them. They encourage knitters to knit a sample and have set aside a special yarn-tasting area complete with needles (circular, straight AND double points) and fiber for you to try out your potential purchases. They even have drop spindles for spinners to have their own roving tasting. I sampled my Ming with a US Size 4 and found (not at all to my surprise) that I liked the fiber.

Other products at Art Fibers include needles, pattern books and buttons. The staff here is helpful and will kindly draw up a pattern for you using their knitting software. Unfortunately, the one on one attention can come at the price of speedy check out service on a busy day.

I purchased both the Ming and also these artisan crafted buttons from Vermont.

Overall, I had a terrific time at Art Fibers. I’ll give it a rating of 4 1/2 stars and an E for Everyone.

Art Fibers is located at 124 Sutter Street in San Francisco. It is a very short walk from Chinatown.

photography upgrades

Thursday, I stayed home in order to get the timing belt on my car replaced. It needs doing every 100,000 miles or so and I wanted it done before we go to San Francisco for Thanksgiving. The car has 196,000 miles on it right now. Although it’s only a 1200 mile round trip to San Francisco, I think there probably won’t be much time left to get it done once I start being busier at work. It will also be the holiday season soon and it’s so easy to put off this kind of thing! I can’t let my engine fall out. That would be…bad.

I got off to being semi-productive rather late in the day. I left the camera in the car at the auto repair shop, but I got to thinking about the weather (i.e. all dark gray skies with lots of intermittent water falling out of the sky) conditions and how it has been interfering with my knitting photography. I therefore decided it was time to build a better light box than my previously jury rigged milk carton. I disassembled the milk carton rig over the summer and haven’t reassembled it since moving.

There are a lot of resources on the internet for making your own light box. I used the $10 cardboard model, but there are also some great directions for building a PVC pipe model. Anyway, I’ve already seen significant improvements and I am only using household lamps with no bulbs brighter than 150 watts (one 150 watt bulb and one 120 watt bulb).

must… not… buy

Noro Kureyon Sock. $18.95 per skein, unless otherwise noted. 70% Wool, 30% Nylon, 462 yards. 7.5 stitches to the inch on #2 needles. Here’s a photo of the pure wool prototype, which they’ve improved on by adding nylon to the yarn.

• at the Yarn and Fiber Company Windham, NH. Dearie me. Shipping free shipping to all US destinations and Canada with no restrictions. Does not ship until the first week of December.
• at Bartlett Bulky in Bath, ME. $18.95 per skein, but less if you buy in bulk. Oh my. (8 or more $16.95) (20 or more $15.00). Shipping is going to start at $6.95
• at Main Street Yarn and Fibers in Watkinsville, Georgia. Shipping is $4.50 to $7.00
• at the Yarn Market. $6.49 shipping for each pre-order. Not to be shipped until December.
• at Nestucca Bay Yarns in Lincoln City, Oregon. $18.95 per skein. Crudders, this one is basically local to me. They also sell Simply Shetland kits, including one designed by Eunny Jang. It looks great on the model anyway. I think mine would cost $95.50 including the book. Shipping is $8.00

Why list all these stores? So you can shop locally of course! Think of all the Carbon Dioxide you can prevent by at least getting it from a store nearer you or waiting until your LYS has it. It’s only a matter of time after all. Nestucca Bay is only an hour from my home, so I’ll probably head over there sometime, visit my friend Alex and eat at the Otis Cafe on the way!

yarn amongst the chickens

I went up to with on Saturday to check out the

 

.

I spied ravens, but missed the photo opportunity. When my husband and I went for a walk,
this guard

 

gave him the evil eye. We braved many

along our way. And then, this attempted to Seduce me,

 

but I resisted the urge. I met a wise

 

who made me regret having avoided temptation and sent for

who arrived bearing a skein of Seduction on her back.

 

P.S.

 

I also picked up for Karrie.

knitting on the oregon coast

The Oregon Coast is gorgeous. There are also beautiful wonderful yarn shops on the Oregon Coast, although somehow we only managed to stop at Nestucca Bay Yarns again. While I was once again denied some of their lovely handpaints, I did get to see a lot of the fall colors for Mountain Colors. I also picked up some more Tahki Cotton Classic there for my miters. I bought every color that they had on sale that I hadn’t gotten previously for a total of two additional colors.

I also purchased some yarn to make my friend Liz a hat.

she sells yarn by the seashore

I’m still catching up on my blogging. Just a quick word to my No Sheep for You swap pal in Virginia though. Thank you so much for the Tofutsies! I know it has a little wool in it, but I wanted it anyway, so it’s great to have it. It’s really pretty and I can’t wait to try it (although my queue is huge)! If you have a blog, will you drop me a note with the link, so I can put it here?

In my two weeks in Oregon, I’ve been to three yarn shops in three cities. None of them we’re in Salem. No, it’s not the beginning of a logic problem. The first was in Portland. During the Harry Potter wait, I realized I’d left my size 1 needle behind in the car, but I knew that Knit Purl was nearby, so I used the needles as an excuse to check out the shop. I really liked the variety of yarns they carried. There were several things there that I’d never seen all in one shop, or I’d only seen online, as well as some unique items.

done with sock yarn purchases for 2007

This is my new sock that I’m working on. It’s just a basic sock, only I’m knitting it all continental style. I’m wondering if anyone wants to do a continental along. You could join if you were new to continental style and trying to switch or if you were a new knitter, learning continental knitting. Isn’t the Sweet Georgia heavenly? This is Afterglow and only one of many skeins that I will show you in this post. I’m adoring it’s utter lack of pooling.

eating your way through your fridge (project spectrum)

Warning: skip to the next page for actual knitting content.

Honestly, I’m trying to lose weight. But through exercise, not through dieting. Although, today I’m skipping my walk in favor of cleaning the bathroom and other similar activities.

Also, this is the time of year where one tries to eat the contents of their refrigerator. I don’t mean all in one go. I’m not Joey! Crud. Just listen to me. This is the time of year… What’s really going on is that this is the time of year where my husband I move. Even though we managed to stop in Colorado for four whole years, we still had three residences. No one wants to pack that can of beans you’ve been carrying around for the last four years. Or the prepackaged soup mix you were given for Christmas in 2001. It’s still good. You’d think we’d have picked up better shopping habits by now. But it’s no good. We enable each other through the Asian foods section. Ah well.

Wonder when I’m going to make the Beignets. My husband brought back a mix from New Orleans a few years ago from THE Beignet place. Someone remind me the name of it and I’ll post a picture. It’s the one on the corner in the French Quarter and I believe it’s still there.

Anyway, I’m getting plenty of exercise cleaning and moving stuff around to take Project Spectrum Photos. There are pink, yellow and green books. And then there are green books.

 

 

 

some semi-fos

Here are some shots of the the Nordic Mitten from Interweave Knits that I showed you the other day. I am very disappointed by it and so will probably set down the project for a while. I wove in most of the ends, but the thumb is also a bit short and I should fix that. The cuff is tight, despite the fact that it seemed fine earlier and there’s a very wierd puff between the cuff and the hand. The pattern asks that you use smaller needles on the cuff and I’m thinking that was a bad idea. I will either scratch this mitten entirely or finish the set, give it to small person (probably impossible because I have small hands and anyone smaller that these would fit will not necessarily have smaller wrists….), or just go ahead and make a new set for me at a later date. I’m quite grumpy about it. I will probably do the thumb in a week or two and then wash and block them in the hopes that the wrist can be blocked to a more comfortable size.

twin cities knitter’s picnic / day of knitting

Rose Garden, Lake Harriet, Minneapolis, MN

For those of you who don’t already know, there are tons of knitting groups available online. Joining them is a great way to meet new people and advance your craft. That being said, I went to the Twin Cities Knitter’s Picnic today and had a blast. I met at least 30 other Twin Cities area knitters out by the Rose Garden at Lake Harriet. It was a beautiful day for a picnic and our host got us a great fountainside spot in the shade.

I passed a pleasant couple of hours in a shady spot, listening to the gurgling fountain, knitting and oggling everyone’s projects. One woman had an incredible looking shawl. I did a little more work on my second Baudelaire sock. That’s right, the SECOND sock. I finished the first one yesterday, but without a photograph it seemed pointless to bring it up, but whatever. I can throw the photo in here later.

I also went back to work on the Conwy socks and I’m doing the toe for the first one tonight. It’s wonderful in the Bearfoot and everyone admired the yarn. I thought they were a bit dense at first, but someone said something today that reminded me that they will wear well (unlike my Baudelaires which aren’t at the best gauge in the world at 6.5 stitches to the inch). Obviously they’ll be warm too. I’d actually forgotten all about how socks wear. I think in the back of my mind I know that I usually lose socks well before they even have a chance of wearing out. Part of this is my lack of concentration and part of this is because I have a wonderful cat who loves to dig around in my sock drawer, remove the socks, and transport her sock babies around the house in her mouth. I look under the bed every couple of weeks and rescue 80% of them. I find the others behind the dryer when I move and in other strange locations.

I met several fellow bloggers at the picnic. It was very exciting to match up faces with blogs. Among the bloggers were, Christy from Purling Away, Knitty Mama along with the adorable knitty baby, Nancy from Clicking Sticks and Tipper, from Daily Fiber Therapy. Rina took the picture shown above. She took more and they can be seen here. One blogger, Chris of Stumbling Over Chaos, even had her own blog card. I’m jealous and I think I’ll have to make up a few before I go off to see Stephanie. I want to impress, but I’m sure she has her own card.

I can’t remember everyone’s names and blogs but I’m sure I’ll get my hands on a more complete list soon. When I do, I’ll be putting up links on the newly created Minnesota page. I realized that my sidebar was rapidly becoming a mess and that the best way of coping with it was to give Minnesota resources their own page.

The Knitter’s Palette

I also went by the Knitter’s Palette on my way home from the picnic. I had thought about doing this earlier, but had not managed to organize myself enough to download directions. Fortunately, Betsy had. (To the best of my knowledge, Betsy does not have a blog so I can’t include it here.) The Knitter’s Palette is a relatively new shop in Lakeville and it hosts a knitting group from 1:00pm to 3:00pm every Sunday.

I thought it was a very nicely laid out shop and full of wonderful yarns like Lorna’s Laces, Trekking XXL, Andes, Rowan Big Wool, They have a decent seating area.

I bought some pretty blue Trekking XXL. I had to.

As a bonus, they are next door to Kowalski’s market, so I picked up a couple of treats to take home. My husband was pleased because he scored a can of his favorite brand of caffe espresso coffee, Caffe Nero’s Medaglia D’oro. He’s been rather unhappy since it is not available at Cub, Just Food (our co-op), or Whole Foods.

I had a lot of fun today, but I paid the price in exhaustion when I got home and had to have a two hour nap. The latest cold that I had caught is still stuck to me by a thread. I get wiped out very easily and I’m planning to head to the doctor’s office to make sure I haven’t got another sinus infection. I honestly thought I was well enough to hang out with people; clearly I haven’t been getting up very much lately. I hope it wasn’t contagious. There was an adorable baby there, but I did not handle him if that helps.
Word Press and Badges

Somehow, I just figured this out today after a dicussion at the picnic and some exploring in the help files. I still think an actual tutorial is needed, so here you go.

To insert a badge into your blog on wordpress.com go into the sidebar widgets section of your presentation page. Drag a text widget into your sidebar and customize it by double clikcing on the widget. Common code includes <a href=”the link here”> <img src=”your image link here” width=# height = #</a>.

Here’s an example.
<p><a href=”http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kotr-sock-kal/”><img src=”http://threefates.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/kotrbutton2.gif”></a></p>

Center the entire thing by enclosing it with <div align=center> and </div> and you are off and running.

For the image link, the best thing to do is to save the image to your desktop by right clicking on it. Open up the post page and upload the image. Drag it into the post, select the image and click on the little image picture. A window containing the link will pop-up. Copy the link and ditch the post.

*It is not polite to link the image back to the source. This is called stealing bandwidth and is highly uncool.*

I think my battery comes tomorrow, so look for images then. They will likely go straight into the posts they belong in.

welcome to dundas, mn

Obviously we finally got internet access. It’s speedy and I love it.

Dundas, MN

In July of 2004, the estimated population of Dundas was 748 people, which represented a 36.7% increase over the population in 2000. This means we can call Dundas a rapidly growing community. They are going to have to change the stickers on the sign to add my husband and me to bring the population up to a nice 750. Actually the sign coming into town says something completely different.

It’s a small town. We have two bars, a restaurant and a post office downtown. We have a couple of businesses in a strip mall that starts in Northfield. I think we have the KMart and the Menards, while Northfield has Target, Cub and McDonald’s. (No envy here.) The city even delivers the mail and pick up the trash. We were able to get cable and wifi installed with no difficulty at all. So we’re sophisticated and hi-tech. We have to go three miles to the nearest coffee shop in Northfield, but there are lots of coffee shops over in Northfield.

The nearest yarn shop is digs in Northfield, which sells a lot of things besides yarn. They have tea towels, furniture, fabric and assorted knicknacks. The yarn is very nice and they carry a lot of hip and trendy yarns that the stores back in Colorado didn’t have. This includes: Trekking sock yarn, Crystal Palace and some absolutely insane Japanese fiber. I’ve forgotten what it is called, but it comes on little grey bobbins and I’ve only ever seen it before on the web. I don’t think they have the best selection of sock yarn, but for that I can go off to the Yarn Garage. They do have lots of Brown Sheep Nature Spun, so I won’t be lacking for yarn.
The Yarn Garage place is crazy, but in a good way. They must have 11′ ceilings there and the yarn goes all the way to the ceiling and hangs from it too! They had lots of of great yarns and I can’t wait to go back again and see more of them. I got some solid color Lorna’s Laces there. I’d been looking for solids for a while because of my earlier trouble with the lace knee highs.

After several false starts on different socks that I tried on the trip here, I began a pair of Conwy socks (not mine) from Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road. I’m using the Bearfoot from Mountain Colors in the Wildflower Colorway. I think it’s coming along nicely, but it’s slow going. These are size 0 needles!

The summer issue of Knitty is here! I am going to have to make either (or both) the Baudelaire socks or the Widdershins socks. Do you suppose the Baudelaire socks are named for Lemony Snicket’s characters? Nope, they are named for a decadent poet. I might make the Baudelaire socks in violet anyway. Tee hee.

countdown

Estes Park, Colorado

I should have started a countdown nine days ago. Tomorrow the movers come and take our stuff and hopefully show up with it sometime soon in Minnesota. My computer is going to go in the truck while my husband’s computer is coming in the car. He’s got a nice portable lap top and it has his life’s work on it so he gets priority that way… So this is going to be my last post for a bit. I’m not sure how long it will take to get internet access in the new apartment, but I’m sure I will get some knitting done in the sixteen or seveteen hour trip to Minnesota. (I added a couple of extra hours for eating and pit stops).

I finished the embossed leaves socks this afternoon while having the oil changed in my car. It’s always good to get a car with 169,000 miles on it tuned up before you drive it across the country. It’s not dead yet though, it’s a Honda Civic after all. For some reason the second sock took me longer than the first. I just kept missing yarn overs. They don’t match perfectly, but it’s close enough for me!

While out on Tuesday, I found some more Mountain Colors for my ostritch plume scarf/shawl and the perfect book for my trip, Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush. I haven’t picked out what to knit on the road, but I promise to show you what I did when I get computer access again.

The following lists contain personal opinions and I hope everyone takes them that way.

The Top 5 Things I will miss about Colorado:

1. All the new friends we made
2. 300 days of sunshine a year, beautiful scenery, incredible wildlife, and the lack of mosquitos.
3. Short driving trips to New Mexico and other places of scenic beauty.
4. Wonderful bookstores
5. Decent Mexican Food

The Top 5 Things I don’t regret leaving behind (Warning: Personal politics listed below):

1. The Christian Right, G.W. Bush Stickers on every other car, the fear of being political and other inflexible, close minded attitudes towards life, the universe, and everything.
2. The lack of water (which causes among other things dry, itching and flaking skin), rain, and foliage. Hail in July, high winds and other weather weirdness.
3. Insane drivers and other things that have caused accidents, near broken bones and other bodily injuries.
4. Large trucks parked in compact spaces. I’m talking about trucks with an extended cab and extended bed.
5. All the information I learned about helicopters, machine guns and everything technical I know about the Army (I hope.)

Top Five Things to be Concerned About in Minnesota:

1. Winter: “Forty below keeps out the riff-raff.”
2. Summer: The mosquito is often referred to as the state bird.
3. We know two people in the entire state.
4. It’s the Midwest.
5. I don’t have a job yet.

Wish us luck. Minnesota here we come.

hello from new england

I am on vacation, so you aren’t going to get another post for a couple of days. I went to the 15th reunion of a program known as The Mountain School over the weekend and am now visiting my family in Raymond, NH. It rained A LOT and the power went out every time we sat down to eat, but I had a really really good time. I worked on a hiking trail, ate a lot of good food, watched the sheep graze and reminisced with my semester mates.

While I have my digital camera, I don’t have the cable that connects it to a computer, so I can’t show you what I’ve bought or what I knit. I bought some Koigu at Charlotte’s Web in Exeter, New Hampshire.

I finished the Pomatomus Socks and my iPod holder, both of which I will photograph and dutifully post when I get home on Friday. I’m now about to start a new pair of Lace Knee-Highs from the Winter 2004 issue of Interweave Knits using Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn in Green Mountain Madness.

I also had a brain storm about left over sock yarn. I’ve put this on the web in the form of the North American Sock Yarn Exchange (NASYE). Please send in your comments about this on this page for now. It will take some time for me to set up the other page.