Good knitting mojo

The Yarn Harlot was in Denver yesterday, so you know where I was. Hubby even left work a bit early so he could take me down to the Tattered Cover about two hours before the event. I was glad we were able to do that - they distributed tickets to everyone in line, and one brave soul had been there since 7:30 am! (The event started at 7:30 pm.) But not to worry, the Tattered Cover does have enough chairs for this sort of event - I think the guy said they had 262. Stephanie herself even commented on it. I hope it made up for the lack of oxygen at this altitude!!

Despite my hopes of being a photographer, taking a photo of a speaker from within the depths of the audience with a tiny point-n-shoot just doesn't produce the best quality photograph. Especially when you are a short photographer sitting behind a taller person. But, here are a few pics from her speech.



The Sock gets its photo taken with the Denver crowd. (Apologies to Stephanie for the less than stellar photo.)


Her speech was fantastic. If you have the opportunity to go to a Harlot event, I highly recommend it. She is a fabulous speaker - very funny, as you would expect. Lots of great stories to share. But perhaps even better is that sense of being among your people. I have never been in such a large group of people who get it.

Normally I am very shy and awkward in a social setting where I don't know anyone. (Thus my making my hubby take me and drag our daughter along instead of letting them stay at home. But, truly, asking my family to be in a fabulous bookstore for a few hours is no hardship.) However, this situation was different. I never know what to say to people that I don't know, but with knitters it's easy. You ask what they're making, what yarn they're using, what technique is that? And voila! The ice is broken and you can talk about all sorts of things.

It was also very cool to bring my knitting bag right out in public like that and know I wouldn't be alone. Seeing all these knitters hanging out in the line that snaked among the shelves, knitting, spinning, taking photographs for their blogs, eyeing everyone's handknits - it was amazing! And a lot of fun. I even got to show off my Pimlico to Cindy, the lovely woman next to me in line who also sat next to me during the speech. (She even offered me the aisle seat when I went into the row first.) It was way too hot to wear the shrug, but not weird at all for me to dig it out of the bag to show it off. And I got to fondle her Tofutsies yarn, which I will of course have to buy for myself now.

Then was the signing, and I admit, I was nervous! At least I wasn't shaking too badly, and didn't turn deep beet red like I expected. Must be all those good knitting vibes. I brought the Regia sock that has been stalled since the terrible events at my daughter's gym and told Stephanie that it needed some knitting mojo. She was happy to oblige.

(And, yay! Hubby only managed to take one photo, and it's pretty good! This never happens to me...)

Of course, the Bohus was there for us to admire and covet. Stephanie even said we could fondle it, but I was afraid to touch it. It's a thing of beauty.


And, one more sign that Stephanie "gets it." For the signing portion of the event, Stephanie announced that they would do something that they hadn't warned the Tattered Cover about, which was "pre-boarding" for those with small children, or someone with them who would cry if they had to wait very long. The poor guy from the TC was like, "But I gave everyone their numbers!!" Stephanie assured him that we all respected his numbers, but that our babies did not. Hubby and daughter were off in the children's section, so I called him and told him to come on up. C was very happy to see me, and very tired as it was past 9:00. She was so good and patient while we waited in the line to get my book signed. Thanks, Stephanie, for an all-around perfect evening.

Ahh, springtime!

This is why you don't pack up your winter things in March in Colorado.




This is also why one of the first things the hubby and I said to each other after the stager left last week was, "Pack away our winter stuff? Is she nuts? How long has she lived here?!" You're really never safe doing that until maybe late April. I even remember stories in college about people moving out of the dorms in May during a snowstorm.

I packed away most of my sweaters, but left a few favorites out. Yesterday I had pause when I put my Sorels in a box, but luckily that box hasn't gone to storage yet. And so far there's not a lot of accumulation, so my Docs are serving me fine for footwear. And I sure as heck wasn't going to pack any coats.

So, am I feeling smug and superior to the stager now because I didn't listen to her advice and was right? Probably. Am I being immature? Probably. But, hey - I had to pack a whole box of knitting books away. I'll take what I can get right now.

Photos! (Don't faint!)

Thanks to some encouragement from the lovely Spinnity, I have found the motivation to finally post some photos. It really helps to know someone out there actually wants to see them!

First, we have the raglan for my daughter.

(Definitely not the best photo.) Knit top-down following the Incredible, Custom-fit Raglan Sweater pattern. I did the sleeves in a 2x2 rib, just to add some interest. (My original idea was to copy another sweater she has that I loved with ribbed sleeves, a kangaroo pocket and hood, but she nixed the pocket and hood idea.) The yarn is Patons Shetland Tweeds Chunky in Deep Red. Knit on US 10 Addi Turbo, size US 9 for the neck. A pretty fast knit, even for me!

And here, the one decent artsy photo of the Pimlico.

I love this baby - but it's very warm and of course the weather has been way too hot lately for a big merino shrug. But I will definitely be getting lots of wear out of it. Those cool spring nights are far from over. I wanted to have a great, artistic photo of it, but the wind was crazy and hubby was getting ready to hop on a plane, so we didn't get any functional pics where you can actually see the shape of the shrug. I'll have him snap a few more tomorrow when he gets home.

Yarn - Koigu Kersti in, um. Yeah. I keep finding the tags for this yarn all over the house, but now that I want one there isn't one nearby. I think I posted the color earlier. I knit the larger size to accommodate my larger bust, but since I am very short-waisted I didn't knit the body quite as long as the pattern called for. I think I was two pattern repeats short? Anyway, I'm glad I did that - it would have been much too long otherwise. This length is the perfect, slouchy length on me. Needles - Addi Turbo, of course. Size US 7 and 8. Lantern Moon US 7 dpn's for the sleeves. A big accomplishment for me, actually. I think it's the first sweater I've completed for myself! (My other finished sweaters have either been for my daughter or the one cardigan I knit for a boyfriend in college before I knew about The Curse. And I never even gave him the damn sweater! But getting rid of him was really a blessing in disguise...)

Finally, we have one of my new projects: Tahoe.


I fell in love with this sweater the moment I saw it and bugged the hubby endlessly until he let me buy the yarn! (I'm supposed to be on a yarn diet...) I'm doing it with the Debbie Bliss Cathay called for by the pattern, but in color 12015, lilac, to coordinate with the purple Koigu I already had in my stash. (See? I'm trying to be good.) (Stop laughing.)

I've ripped it out twice, but this third time does seem to be the charm. I was a bit intimidated by the hem business as I've never done one before, and had read about knitting the hem together with a working row to save on sewing later. I gave it a whirl, but the first two times it was really bulky and ugly as I was trying to pick up a normal cast-on edge. Then I did some research and found the better idea to use a provisional cast on, then unzip and pick those up when it's time to knit the hem edge together with the body. That worked great, and I'm quite happy with the results.

I'm also working on the Jill Hoodie for my DD. And you know me, I'm doing it in the colors shown. I haven't snapped a photo yet, but I'm up to the first green stripe in the ribbing. I haven't been working on it much because I was trying to get the Pimlico done, and now Tahoe has my limited knitting attention.

So, there you have it. Was it worth the wait? I hope so. The shrug itself definitely was.

Why I'm not knitting

Well, first, a confession. I have been knitting a bit. I've dragged the Pimlico to my daughter's gym for a few weeks, and finally finished it last weekend! I can't believe it. And my latest excuse for no photos? No photo shoot yet for the shrug. Not due to the weather, which has been lovely - actually too warm for a merino shrug. And, for the first time, not due to my laziness. But, what has been going on around here? Well.

Anyone who knows me in life knows I can't tell a story in brief. But I'll try to cut to the chase first, then leave the babbling for anyone who wants to keep reading. We are buying a new house, which means we have to move out of our current house. Ok, people do it every day, not a big deal, right? The problem comes from two things. One: we decided to buy this new house the way I tend to buy things like shoes or lattes. Very suddenly. One day, my husband stops by the model home at a new development up the road and brings home some floor plans, and one week later we are signing a contract for a new place. Part of this agreement was that we'd have a listing contract for our current house in THREE DAYS. (Ask me how much I freaked out when I thought that meant my house had to be on the market in three days...)

Which leads us to the second problem. I am not Martha. (Hi, Martha. Love you. Can't do it.) My house is very cluttered, and rather dusty, especially in the corners. Now, it's not unsanitary around here. No dirty dishes under the couch, old pizza boxes, that kind of thing. Just lots of stuff with some dust on most of it. (I have two cats, a four-year-old, and no housekeeping service.) So, I have spent the past two weeks or so boxing up a great deal of stuff, throwing out a great deal of stuff, giving a great deal of stuff to Good Will, and mucking about in a great deal of dust. It's looking better around here. Not perfect, but better. We're hoping to have the place actually ready to list and show by the end of the month. I think we'll make it.

But this brings us to the stager. This is a woman our realtor uses to help "stage" your home to show to its best advantage. (Think like what they do on "Sell this House" or that kind of program.) I was freaking out at the thought of having this woman in my home. On one level, I knew she wasn't coming to judge me, just help the house look its best. But, really. I knew I was going to feel judged. I can't dissociate myself from that kind of thing. So I was very worried.

I have boxes and dusting cloths and all sorts of stuff all over the place - it looks like a work in progress. I figured she'd know that. But what does this woman tell us? To clean the carpets, get rid of the clutter, and fix a hole in the wall where we took down an old phone. (And that we should show the bathroom without a bath mat. WTF???) Does she really think I don't know that? I'm surprised she didn't say, "And don't have that dirty plate on the counter."

She also suggested painting the bedroom sage green - a color she pulled out of our bedspread. Something I could have done. I really felt like all the time we spent with her was mostly wasted. I probably shouldn't have agreed to let her come until I had gotten rid of a lot of the clutter already, but I figured I could add her suggestions to my list and it would save some time. Her suggestions about which artwork to leave on the walls, and where, and which to take down was about the only thing I wouldn't have come up with by myself. And, being me, I just feel insulted and like this woman thinks I was going to show the house in its current state.

I know I need to let go of it. I'm trying. But I've never done this before, and that puts me in a large zone of discomfort. I wish we could fast-forward a few months and be done with the worst of it. (Let's hope my house isn't on the market for months and months and months....) I'm trying to focus on the big goal, and that works most of the time. Now, just explain to me why you don't show a bathroom with a bath mat? (Which does match the shower curtain and towels, by the way, so it's not because it doesn't go.)

Oh, and don't get me started on when she picked up my Yarn Harlot book to try to show me what sage green was. I know my colors, thank you, and keep your mitts off my knitting books.

(ps - no offense to you professional stagers out there. I know it's a hard job, sometimes working on a severly limited budget or circumstances. I just expected more out of this meeting - furniture arrangement or drapery ideas or something. Now that I've vented about it and let it sit for a while, maybe all she had to offer was clean and declutter because everything else was perfect. Ha ha ha!!!)

100 Books

Not much knitting to post about, because while I have indeed been knitting, the miles upon miles of k3,p3 rib at the collar of the pimlico just isn't much to post about. Also, I have been very busy with a new non-knitting project that is eating up all my knitting time. More about that later. So, here is some new blog fodder, just because...

100 Books Meme

Look at the list of (100) books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you want to read.
Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.
Movies don’t count.

Note: Yes, I am counting books I was forced to read in junior high... ;)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) (Yeah, I know. Don't take away my official Geek Card...)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) (shut up. thank you.)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) (LOVE this book. Go read it. Now.)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens) (OK - we read some Dickens novel in junior high, but I honestly don't remember if it was Great Expectations or a Tale of Two Cities. I guess then, by rights, I don't get to bold either one.)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) (Again - go read this. Now.)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

The Greatest Day in a Knitter's Life

[To four-year-old daughter] "What sweater would you like to wear today, honey?"

"The one you just made."

Ahhh. Does it get any better than this?

The need for speed

Wow, do I have some FO's going on. DD's raglan is done. One of the Anemoi's is done, and the second has been started. I'm done with the body and sleeves of the Pimlico and am working on the edging. I have some photos of the Pimlico, but none of the Anemoi or the raglan, so I'm holding off on posting pics.

Ok, you caught me. I'm being lazy again. I'd rather be knitting than messing with the memory card and photos right now. But, in good news, our household has finally leapt out of the 90's and we now have DSL instead of [gasp!] dial-up. So, posting photos should be nowhere near as painful as it used to be.

However, this new speedy internet is throwing a serious monkey-wrench in my browsing habits. My usual MO is as follows:

1) Fire up e-mail
2) Start loading blog/message board/online shop I want to browse
3) While page is loading, knit, drink tea, watch tv, etc.
4) After data has loaded, read page
5) Click link to next page to be read
6) Go to step 3 and repeat
(Somewhere in here, the mail program beeps to tell me it's done getting my mail, so I can finally read that too.)

I tell you what, I got NO knitting done during my morning browsing today. My hands were hardly free to knit with all the fast loading and clicking to be done. What's a girl to do with all this fancy technology? (I know! Go buy yarn in a tenth of the time it usually takes....)