weekends are just too short

After such a great weekend, it only seems appropriate that it would be grey and snowy on Monday.

Friday, after checking out the dyeing my spinning friend Rosa was doing, I ran into Joann’s on the way home.  Apparently someone beat me to it as the only two colors left were purple and olive green.  And although that could potentially be an attractive combination, I was looking for something with more pop.  Fortunately when I got home my Dharma dyes were waiting for me.   Unfortunately no time to play with dyeing this weekend.

And a lovely weekend it was too.  I picked DD up from Grandma’s Saturday afternoon and barely spent time with her since she was off to a girlfriends, to go to a concert and sleep over.

A dear friend that I haven’t seen in months was coming over to hang out with me for the night.  And since she is a poor working student, I decided to make something special for dinner.

I stopped at the store, with one dinner in mind, then noticed a new copy of the Cook’s Illustrated on the rack.   I love this magazine.  In this issue was a recipe for Garlicky Shrimp, a quick scan told me I had all the ingredients except the shrimp and some fresh parsley and a fresh french baguette. 

I got home and started putting away groceries and pulling out stuff to prep for dinner.  Cleaned and peeled the raw shrimp, chopped up the garlic and shallots… but where is my big frying pan?  I searched high and low - I even searched the basement and did a quick glance around the yard.  I know she (DD)  burnt the pan as the evidence of my permanently burned stove-top would indicate.  I just don’t know where the hell she hid it.  I HATE THIS weirdness thing she has about hiding my kitchen utensils, dishes, pots and pans all over the house and YES, even the yard.

But since my friend was coming, off I went to buy a new frying pan.  I cannot tell you how much this pisses me off.

New pan in hand, a good friend and a glass or two of wine and my blood pressure was returning to normal.

The shrimp dinner was absolutely delicious!  I served it with lemon slices and some fresh roasted asparagus, and lemon meringue pie for dessert.

It was a delightful evening.  Oh and I picked up DD on Sunday afternoon.  She cannot remember what happened to the frying pan.  Ya right - this kid has the memory of an elephant - she just doesn’t want to fess up.

I wasn’t in the mood for a fight - so I went off to knitting at Borders.

Thanks Abby, Jennifer, Naomi, I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.  I needed that.

I think my knitting is back on track for the Ene’s scarf.  I must have ripped this out 15 times on Saturday.  But after counting and re-counting and checking and re-checking - I still ended up off 2 stitches.  But I took Michelle’s advice and just fudged it.  I’m finally past that point and it’s looking good so far.  <knock wood>

I finished off the garlicky shrimp cold and they were still yummo then settled in for the Oscar’s, Sunday laundry and more knitting.

Monday just came way too fast, it’s nasty grey and snowy.  I wish I could just put the covers over my head and just hibernate a little bit longer.

Kissel Electric Spinner

So does anyone know anything about these electric spinners?  If so, please leave a comment.

Last night I went to the spinning group and we were sharing our space with a book club meeting.  They were having a very interesting discussion regarding the History of Westford, and it was being led by the author and very lovely woman, named June.  She used to be a spinner and knew we would be there as well.

So she brought some fiber and the Kissel Electric Spinner (complete).  I bought it and a 6 oz. bag of cream colored cashmere - all for $70!  I figured the cashmere alone was worth that!

I’m not sure if I will ever use the electric spinner, but it might be cool for plying.  It came in the neat wooden box with three bobbins, and the instructions. 

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I did manage to get home in time to see Grey’s Anatomy, and although I knew the main character couldn’t die, I thought the story line was interesting.

I’m not sure how I feel about the upcoming spin off with McDreamy’s ex.  I think spin offs just dilute the main show and you end up with two so-so shows instead of one really good one.

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OTN:

Ene’s Scarf/Shawl in the Spunky Electric Laceweight, although it’s not going to be on the needles for long.  I cannot seem to get my stitch count correct and right now I’ve tinked almost back to the first chart.  I cannot decide if I want to just add another stockinette row and ‘adjust’ the count accordingly.  I did look for an addendum to the pattern but there doesn’t seem to be any.  Or what will probably happen is I will rip the thing out and start again.  I really really really hate tinking lace.  But if I bite that bullet now I can be back on track for Sunday SnB at Borders.

I also have to pull together all my sock yarn.  This may or may not be a good thing.  A woman at work wants me to teach her how to knit socks and since she doesn’t know where to get sock yarn by Monday, I volunteered to find something in my stash for her.  She already says she knows how to knit so I thought I would teach her the magic loop since I think that will be the easiest method, and since she doesn’t know how to knit on dpns (yet). 

I was hoping my first installment for the Socks That Rock Club would be here in time but probably not, so I’ll just start the second sock for regia silk, the first is still on dnps, or maybe something from my stash will sing to me.

Stuff to add to your calendar

Tonight is SnB at the Java Room - see ya’ll there.  I have some lace tinking to do :(  I hate lace tinking.

Tomorrow is the 4th Thursday of the Month Spinning at the Westford Historical Museum.  I’ll be there too.  I would really love to be able to spin at least a little bit every day, but that just isn’t possible so I really need to have these structured spinning evenings.

Oh and I just saw this notice that Vickie Howell of Knitty Gritty is going to be at Willow Books Cafe(speaking and signing her new book) Knitty Gritty Knits, on Sunday, March 4th at 3:00pm.

I also see the Harlot is calling for all knitters to descend upon NYC en masse to show the muggles just how strong our numbers are.  Tee-hee I wish I could go.  It should be a blast.  Maybe we could have local gatherings to support the ginormous NYC one.  On second thought that may scare the muggles and in my not so humble opinion would give them an idea of just how massive a group knitters really are.  Then the politicians will start courting us as a voting block, pollsters will want out opinions on all sorts of things, there will be a box to check on the next census _ Knitter   _ Non-Knitter.  We just won’t be able to blend in and just be that weird person sitting at the back of the room or on the “T”, doing ’something’ intently with pointy sticks and pretty string any more.  So I ask you do we really want “them” to know how many of “us” there are out there?  Maybe I’m just being a little too paranoid.  But as ‘they’ say, “ just because your a bit paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

SPA 2007

Friday I had the car packed and ready to roll.  I picked up darling daughter right after school and dropped her off a quickly as I could at the Fairly Odd Parents.   She was bitch’n at me the entire ride that she hated school and wanted to go to a private school, she had no friends, people laughed at her… blah, blah, blah.   I couldn’t drop her off fast enough.

Finally on the road in blissful peace and quiet.  I made to Portland and checked in around 5:00pm.  I wrestled all my stuff to the room in one run, because it was so bitterly cold, I didn’t want to make multiple trips.  This also meant the computer stayed in the car.  Fiber, clothing, knitting projects and spinning wheel were the priority for this weekend.

I got my stuff stashed, called the Harpy to see where she was… they hadn’t left yet,  so I grabbed a knitting project (my hand-spun socks) and headed off to the lobby.

I sat with Linda (think snow) and had a lovely chat with her.  She is one amazing knitter.  For ‘fun’ and her own amusement she was knitting toe up socks (not the PLURAL) on DPNs.  You know the Anna Karenina socks where you knit one inside the other one on DPNs.  I can only aspire to her level of knitting.  I also got to chat with several other knitters and finally Harpy and soon to be hubby arrived.  Once they got settled we headed to the bar to grab a drink and a quick meal.  Or so we thought. 

Can you imagine having a totally filled hotel with guest that you KNOW are probably going to eat there and that some of them will want to eat in the bar AND you’ve had this ginormous group of people the past five years, but you DON’T put waitresses on the schedule.  Although the food was good once we managed to get it, the service just plan sucked.  Even after waiting almost a hour after finishing our meal for a check, we just money and blew out of there.  After all there is only so much 80’s disco music one person can take.

We were a bit tired so I headed off to my room to get into my jammies, watch a movie, knit and plan my attack for the next day.

I decided to have breakfast delivered to my room rather than go down stairs.  This allowed me my favorite quiet time of the day.  The sun was coming up and hustle and bustle hadn’t started.  And I enjoyed a nice cuppa coffee, with my knitting and could just ‘be’.

I got downstairs before the hordes and staked out a spot for my wheel and small circle of buddies.  Jena followed shortly and brought her new Louet. 

Notice that she is smiling here as she learns to spin but we did hear a lot of “poop” and “boogers” from her all day.

Once I replaced her spinning fiber of unknown heritage, with some lovely Finn, she started to really get the hang of it.

I text messaged the other buddies that were coming up for the day, to let them know where we were because by this time it was clear that not only was this going to be another successful SPA weekend, it had also grown exponentially and there were spinners and knitters in just about every nook and cranny of the hotel main floor.

Even with the mad house, Liz and Lucia managed to find us.  By this time the room was jammed with people and humming with energy and excitement.   We decided to go and check out the vendors.

Lookie what I came home with!

 

From the top,  Merino Lace (approx. 1320 yd per skein) in Black on the left and Burgundy on the right.  This stuff was a steal at $12 per skein!  I think I got this at the Unique One table!  Two skeins of Spunky Eclectic Lace (800 yds per skein) in Autumn and Your Majesty - I love her stuff!  The cone is Lambs Pride Worsted in a really pretty dark fuchsia color.

Oh and I got the shawl stick pin from the Unique One too.

Now for the fiber.

One the left is 4 oz. of lovely 50/50 Wool and Mohair hand-painted roving.  Just below that is a sample of that lovely Llama Down that I love.  Unfortunately he was not a vendor so wasn’t selling his wares, just handing out lovely samples.

On the right is my take from the fiber sandwich.  Christine (one of my spinning friends) put out this idea and several people participated.  Basically everyone brought some fiber to share - it was weighed first.  I brought 3.6 oz. of lovely cinnamon alpaca roving.  So after we spread out lots of layers of various fibers we broke of a bit of the ’sandwich’ that equaled the 3.6 oz. I had brought and this is what I ended up with.  It should be fun to spin up.  Everyone took the same amount is ’samples’ as they brought with them.  It was lots of fun.

Later in the day when we were back in the big ballroom spinning.  I spied another spinning friend just up for the day.

You probably wondered what I worked on while I was there.  Well this is what I was spinning.

 This is from some of the Finn roving that I hand painted.

 I cannot wait to see it all plied up.  I think I have almost 4 oz. or enough to make some nice mittens.

 Oh and I did finish the Fugly Socks from the Fugly super-wash roving that I dyed. (Cherry Red, Chartreuse, and Gun Metal).    See!  It just goes to show you never know how it’s going to turn out.

 

I arrived home safe and sound Sunday afternoon.  I cannot wait until SPA 2008!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T minus 24 hours and counting

Tomorrow at this time I should be with in minutes of arriving at the Doubletree in Portland, Maine.

Tonight the packing gets finished, tomorrow a few errands, then pack the car, pick up DD at school and drop her off at the fairly odd parents and then I’m FREE! and on the road.

I cannot wait.

Oh the weather outside if frightful…

The snow started around midnight last night.  Just a light snow.  I awoke around 5am to the sound of sleet hitting the roof.  There was only about 2 inches of snow, but the sleet is still coming down.

Fortunately today is a scheduled work from home day, so I didn’t have to brave the roads.  Listening to the local news, this was a good thing.  Accidents on all the highways around my town.

According to the local reports, the sleet will last most of the day and then turn to more snow and possibly rain, then by the time the home commute starts we are supposed to plummet into a deep freeze.  Can you say skating rink?  I think I would prefer the original 2 feet of snow predicted.

I don’t think I’ll be making it to the Java Room SnB tonight - even though the thought of yummy cupcakes and spiked coffee drinks are calling.

I’ve put some homemade beef veggie and barley soup on to simmer.  I’ve had my scheduled conference call, and I’ve even blocked my sweater, although I’m not sure I’m going to like it… it still may get frogged, I’m hoping that the blocking helps.

I did go spinning last night and along with a couple of regulars, some new people came.  I tried spinning some of the wenslydale fleece the shepard brought us a few months ago, but I decided I didn’t like it.  It feels so soft, but spins up very coarse.  Not to mention all the second cuts I kept having to pick out.  I might try washing it and then combing to see if that makes a difference.

This weekend is SPA!!! I cannot wait. I’ve already planned to take Friday off, so I can spend the day cleaning out and packing the car.  After school I’ll drop DD off at the fairy odd parents and then I’m off.  Hopefully the storm will be over and the roads clear and dry. It does look like it’s going to be bitter cold again this year in Portland.  Br-r-r-r!

Recovery is a painful thing

My poor laptop got some nasty virus late last week.  I have no idea how.  One would think with all the firewalls, anti-virus protections, etc. that it would be immune, but alas something got to it and got it good.

After many attempts to inoculate, and rid my laptop of said virus with no success I had to call in the professionals idiots from our IS department.  Their solution was to do a brain wipe of the PC.  Ok… but should it take an entire day?!  Me thinks not.  I handed over my pc in the morning with much trepidation and finally got it back late Friday afternoon.

I still had to spend most of today reinstalling applications, etc. and trying to get my PC back into some usable form. 

Sigh… it’s been long and painful.

Fortunately a few weeks ago my company was giving away some memory sticks and I managed to snag one.  Of course the first thing I did was to copy all of the knitting patterns I’ve collected on-line over the years had stored on my laptop. 

See there is a knitting goddess!

This weekend I did very little.  One of my fingers was hurting, I suspect a touch of arthritis, but fortunately it did not impact my knitting too badly.

I moved along quite nicely on the Ene’s Shawl, but alas I’ve determined there will not be enough of this yarn to finish it.  Pooh.  I did find some beautiful shiny coppery silk in a lace-weight in my stash, but I just don’t see it for this pattern.   So,  tonight, I’m going to dig through the stash to see what else I can find to do this shawl in. 

I also felt compelled to purchase the book Victorian Lace Today  when I was at Border’s SnB Sunday afternoon.  The song of the lace siren is very very compelling.  So although I may be on a stash diet.  I’m never on a book one.

Hot off the presses!

 The Wednesday SnB ladies can now participate fully and start the American Team of Drunken Knitters . 

See the Java Room’s announcement!

The Java Room is excited to announce the introduction of fine wines and spirits at our cafe!  We are serving a special selection of red and white wines, as well as coffee cocktails.  A sample of what you’ll sip:

** A Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, a Sonoma Valley Pinot Noir, an Italian Pinot Grigio, a German Riesling…and for those interested in something warm, a Cafe Mudslide, a B-52 Mocha, a Spiced Chai Lullaby, and many more! **

We will debut the new liquor line on Valentine’s Day, this coming Wednesday.  Please bring your sweetheart all day long for drinks, decadent cupcakes from the famous NYC Magnolia Bakery (you may have heard about them from Sex and the City) and other food fare.  Pianist Richard Schubert from Methuen will entertain us from 7:30 to 9pm with standards and show tunes from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, as well as swing and jazz.

See you soon,

The Java Room 

14 Littleton Road
Chelmsford, MA

Is it Spring yet?

I wish I could just pull the covers over my head and hibernate for the rest of the winter.  It’s just too hard to get out of bed when it feels like you are living in the Arctic Circle.

Work also announced more layoffs and more jobs being outsourced to “more cost effective locations”.

I needed to go to knitting group last night, but I had a new dilemma… what to bring to knit?  I had finished my cashmere/alpaca beret (it still needs to be blocked), I need to block and finish my Garnstudio sweater, but I have to block the sleeves to continue the construction.  And alas, all of my blocking is currently on hold until the temps get up at least above freezing.  You see I have no space to lay out the stuff, except in the back (3-season) room and right now its cold enough out there to be a spare freezer.

I’m not in the sock knitting mood right now either, so the pink Regia Silk was destined to remain in the bottom of the knitting bag next to the half knit sock and there was literally nothing else on deck.

So on the way home I’m thinking about what I want to knit and I realized that lace was once again singing the siren song.  I needed to start a lace project.  I remembered Ene’s Scarf that I had wanted to do when I first started to knit lace, but at the time it seemed too hard.  I hadn’t mastered the chart yet.  So I run into the house, locate the book and do a quick rummage through the stash I found some yummy alpaca lace-weight in gorgeous heathery copper color already wound into a ball.   I just wish I could remember the yardage, or for that matter where I got it and what I got it for, found a circular that was empty that seemed to be the right size and off to knitting I went.

As I was reading the pattern through before getting ready to start casting on the 375 stitches I decided that this is going to be a fun pattern to knit.   I think it’s going to be beautiful, I just hope I have enough yarn to complete it.

I guess like the Fool from the Tarot, I’ll just have to step off the cliff with a leap of faith.  I hear you all laughing out there.  If not, it will just be a big practice swatch.

A little help from our friends.

Some of you may remember that I lost a dear friend this past year to non-hodgkins lymphoma.  Dena was a very special person,  she had a passion for life, her family, her friends and was determined to leave this world a better place.  I think she has.  Much of Dena’s passions now live within her daughter, Isabel.  Now Isabel and a friend of the family are currently training to walk a half marathon in May 2007 as members of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in memory of Dena, if you are so inclined to give a little please go here.

And thank you for caring.

Why I Love Knitting Socks

I was planning to post this entry on Friday, but I was unfortunately bitten with the horrible-no-good-nasty-gastro-intestinal-virus-from-the-ninth-abyss-of-hell.  I survived. 

Since this past weekend we celebrated Brigid’s Day (Imbolc), the triple goddess of the arts, poetry, smithcraft and healing.  In spite of the nasty bug that bit me, I did manage to light a candle and asked Brigid to fire my artistic imagination and to bring me some inspiration.

I hope everyone had a nice celebration especially since that nasty little rodent, Phil, did not see his shadow.  Spring is on the way.

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Another contest Check out over at Pointy Sticks podcast site. You enter by commenting on why you love sock knitting.Here’s what I wrote.

The first time I knit socks on dpns was interesting. It took some getting used to the multiple points, dropped stitches, ladders, but I finally got the hang of it. This was also the first knitting project I had picked up in quite a few years, so my tension was, shall we say, not quite uniform.I persevered and refused to be bitten by the infamous second sock syndrome and I actually managed to finish two socks. I couldn’t really call them a pair, since the only resemblance was that they were knit from the same yarn. They were more fraternal twins.

Then I heard about knitting both socks at the same time, and thought that this might just be the answer I was searching for. Now I had to learn to wrestle with two circulars which were like wrestling with a metal octopus. But once I finished that pair of socks, I was hooked. Since then I’ve even tackled the magic loop with some success.

I love the construction of the sock, the magic of turning the heel. I love the instant gratification of reaching different points along the way. I even learned to love the Kitchener Stitch.

Lately I’m back knitting socks on DPNs and they actually come out looking the same now.

I love knitting socks; I love all the different yarns for sock knitting, self-striping, hand painted. I love watching the colors change and how they pool in different spots. I love the various wools, blends, and luxury yarns that are available to knit socks from.

Knitting socks is just so satisfying on so many levels, not to mention that you get to wear them. And there is nothing like wearing hand knit socks.

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On the spinning wheel:

I finish spinning and plying my fugly roving that was one of my failed dyeing roving experiments. I still cannot believe that people were commenting on how ‘pretty’ it was when I was spinning it on Saint Distaff’s Day. It just goes to show there is no accounting for taste (mine?). I have to say, that although it’s not ‘my’ colors and not in my opinion anything spectacular, I did manage to get it thin enough for a 2-ply sock yarn so eventually this will become fugly socks. I just need to set the twist.

Good news! Last night I arrived home to find a box in my mailbox. At first my heart skipped a beat thinking it might be the first shipment from the Socks that Rock Club. On closer inspection I discovered my three extra bobbins for my WooLee Winder! YIPPEE! Now I don’t have to keep winding the singles onto my ball winder and plying from center pull balls. I’m always afraid they will end up in a tangled mess. Although the fugly stuff worked out plying quite well from center pull balls.

I am planning on dyeing up some more roving to spin at SPA, but unfortunately there was a mishap on the ordering of the dyes through an online coop group. Apparently the person thought they had mailed the order and check, but apparently it never made it out from the depths of her purse so it’s going to be later than SPA

Maybe I’ll just have to suck it up and order some myself…. sigh.

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On the needles:

You know you are sick when you cannot even concentrate enough to knit stockinette in the round.  But on Sunday I was feeling much better and I needed to get out of the house.  So off to Border’s to meet up with the Nashua SnB ladies.  Half way there I realized it was Super Bowl Sunday so there was a very slim chance anyone else would be joining me.  But as I settled in with my coffee and bagel and Ipod with podcasts to check up on, Naomi appeared and then Karen (both blogless) and we had a lovely time chatting and knitting until 4:30ish or so.

I worked a bit on my grey sweater.  I fear I may need to re-knit the sleeves.  I’ll know better once I block the crap out of them.  I also started to work on beret from the gorgeous green and purple hand painted cashmere that I’m stranding with some purple Ultra-alpaca.  I cannot believe they discontinued this color.  It’s so pretty.