It's Summertime!..Right?

Time for a weather-related rant! (If you want to skip by that, there is knitting at the end...)Yep. It's the good ole' summertime....every-freakin-where else except here! What are we having here? They're calling it "JUNuary." Heh. Very funny. It's been a balmy high of about 53 degrees and raining here all week. And I don't mean a light, warm summer rain either! We're talkin, get-the-hat-and-mittens-back-out cold, damp and rainy! Sigh.

Usually, once I put those flip-flops on for the first time in the summer months, my feet don't see closed shoes until they're so cold in the fall that there is threat of toe frostbite. I had started my official flip-flop season a couple of weeks ago when we had a couple of freak warm days in a row. Well, I finally had to give up and return to shoes and socks this past week or risk sloshing around in puddles with my bared feet.

The Official Seasonal Donning of The Flip-Flops (and sandals) is my small way of living in denial and pretending we have a real summer around here. Yes, sometimes I wear them with a jacket, and have even considered knitting Tabi socks to wear with them so as not to have any interruptions in my summery flow. To interrupt the official flip-flop-wearing season is a backwards move that must never be made, at the risk of encouraging the bad weather juju and summer skipping over us all together this year! The Horror!

Yes, I know I'll be complaining when we get those two weeks of 90+ degree weather in late August that calls itself our summer....but it's JUNE, dammit, and I.want.some.SUN! Not asking for much---just something at least pushing up over 60-65 would be nice about now. Again, sigh.

Okay, rant over for now. I was just sayin' is all...So let's look at some knitting, shall we? I only have one FO to show, but I have a couple of WIP's to throw in as well.

Here's a scarf I made from one of the one-skein patterns from the 2008 LYS Tour, with some modifications that made it a 1-1/2 skein pattern, a little longer and a little wider. My fluffiness does not like to be constricted by a skimpy or teeny scarf. Only makes me look more fluffy, IMO. It's sort of an elongated triangular shape, so it's pretty versatile and can be worn in several different ways: As a small wrap or scarf with the center in back...

(I know, lovely model...)...or centered in the front with the ends left hanging...

...or tied in some fashionable way that I haven't figured out yet...

Sorry for the crappy pictures. I tried and tried but could not seem to capture the color correctly, or hold the camera still, apparently. Here's a blurry picture of the yarn, but is the closest to the actual color, Dark Denim...

I'm not much for most of the novelty yarns these days, but this one has little bits of ribbons hand-tied into it (now, who can resist teh ribbonz), and it's purchase helps a village in South Africa to be self-sufficient. Besides, I really love the dark denim color and I need something to dress up my T-shirts (and flip-flops...grrrr) in the summer, cuz' you all know I roll real glamorous like that!

On the WIP front, I absolutely had to cast on for the ubiquitous and fun Noro Striped Scarf, made famous by the fabulous Jared at brooklyntweed. This is one I'll be working on for a while, as it's great to take along when knitting with other people, since I seem to be incapable of knitting and chatting at the same time without major knitting disaster. I figure it should be ready just in time for next winter.

Here's a final WIP to show ya that I'm loving working on as well, and also one that I can knit without any major screw-ups while knitting with a group...

It's a big, cushy, feather-and-fan-type wrap made out of Mountain Colors Merino Ribbon. The colors so much remind me of those found in a variety of hydrangeas that I love, so I have named it the Hydrangea Wrap. I usually don't feel the love for the ribbon yarns, but this one is soft and easy to work with, and pictures can't do justice to this colorway, which is called Lady Slipper.

Ahhhh. The cool colors of hydrangeas...and of summer. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

This and that.....random catching-up

Finally, a chance to actually make a post to my blog! I think this has been the longest I have ever gone without being able to post, and I've really missed it! I never thought when I started this blog that it would be something I would "miss" if I couldn't do it, but I have.

With such a long time having passed since my last post, I guess this will have to be a post of some randomness and rambling, as one tends to do when trying to make a long story short (something I'm not very good at, but I'll give it a go...). It's just that there are so many random bits, I can't begin to even try to tie them together cohesively. So this will have to be a post of this and that and the other thing, all stuck together so I can quit storing it for later in my poor, tired brain.

Even on my best days, I can somewhat be the queen of the non-sequitor and non-sensical segway. But now that the last of my brain has been squeezed into a dried apricot by my current schedule of 14-hour days, a string of non-sequitors might make more sense to read. Oh well....if it gets confusing, you can skip down to the actual knitting content near the end...

"Graduated" from training at my new place of wage-slavery. Yes, there was an actual lame graduation with presentation of a certificate in front of the rest of the current slaves. We were told at about 4pm the day before that each class had to present something---skit, speech, song, whatever---to the attendees. Say What? My 5 fellow trainees and I looked at each other in horror. This couldn't be good. Suffice it to say that out of desperation for something to do at the last minute, I made the mistake of joking that I play the ukelele.....

Just a message to the wise: If you are ever desperate for lame ideas for a needed performance, don't ever let jokingly slip to 5 desperate nurses that you play ANY type of musical instrument, as you will then be forced to play said instrument in front of about 150 co-workers you barely know. You know, just to cement your new professional reputation amongst the colleagues. Not only that, you will then be forced to write a lame SONG to sing along with the bad ukulele playing!

Let's just say that there was an ugly scene at graduation of me playing the ukulele and all of us singing a song I wrote to the tune of "Tiny Bubbles" (a la Don Ho----sorry Don, don't roll over in your grave too hard...). There is a tradition of "Aloha Fridays" at my new place of employment, so it did fit in with a theme, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, especially since I added in lyrics about the training making us need a cocktail----mention of cocktails seems to please crowds of nurses, for some strange reason.

And oh, yes, this performance was complete with lei's and bubbles being blown by our trainer and fake cocktails with little umbrellas in pink plastic martini cups for all. Good times! But let's not forget that all of those other rat-bastard fellow trainees got away with a little bad singing, while I had to play a musical instrument (badly) in front of over 100 people!!! Let's just say I really took one for the team on this one, and those bi-atches (and I call them that in the most loving way) owe me BIG TIME!

And in a totally random change of subject......Have any of you ever entered contests on anyone's blog and won? Did they actually send you a prize? I only ask because I have won only once, which I mentioned gleefully on this blog a few months ago. And what did I receive as a prize?....Nothing, nada, zip!

Edited 7/25/07 - I am happy and relieved that the contest blogger mentioned above just sent me an email explaining the circumstances. Said she sent a package in May (which I didn't receive), and then wrote an email later, which she inadvertently saved rather than sending it. Thanks for emailing....I feel much better now that I know what happened (and that it wasn't intentional or due to a bad life turn...).

Official Knitting Content:

While the past 6 weeks have been like a never-ending freeway roadtrip with extended daily breaks of brain-draining confusion at work and occasional 4-hour peeks at my own bed, I have actually managed to knit a few rows here and there. Not much, mind you, and not enough to be particularly satisfying, but at least I got to touch some yarn and knitting needles, which made me feel a like I remember how to knit. Humor me here, I'm trying to feel better about pictures of very little progress....

Some progress on my Mermaid Wrap....

While taking the pictures, I really started to notice how the yarn is patterning in little "boxes" of color. Not sure I'm crazy about that, but I still love the colors anyway. However, I think I still would have preferred this pattern in it's original semi-solid color.

Here's a picture of very little progress on my Tofutsies socks---two cuffs. Believe me, I've tried to let these see the light of day once in a while, but working on size zero needles after 9pm has not exactly been within my abilities this past few weeks...

The MD Moss Grid Hand Towel has fared a little better. It's about 3/4 done at this point, and beginning to feel like a bit of a boring slog, but I'm hoping I can actually finish it soon!

And finally, in a last-ditch effort to feel like I could actually have an FO, I decided to make this cute little cup cozy out of Fixation yarn. We have these plastic cups at work that sweat like crazy when filled with ice water, and I saw this pattern for a Java Jacket that Chris wrote up and thought it was kinda cute! Besides, I needed something to work on that I could knit with no time available and minus a brain....

I have to say I wasn't sure about the actual usefulness of this cup cozy in the beginning, but after road-testing it for a few days, I can say it actually works really well! No drippy water cup on my desk all week! I liked it so much that I'm making another one in a different color to carry around in my purse for those drippy iced latte cups in as well! And better yet, it only took me (the world's slowest knitter) about 2 hours to knit up!

Instant satisfaction and a cute pink FO---just what I needed!

(Pay no attention to those poor, ignored, unseamed and unfelted, clogs in the background...)

Healing from a (yarn) tragedy...and other knitterly tales

After the horrible event that occurred with this beloved skein of Sea Silk and Mermaid Wrap, I felt that I should immediately try to replace it to try to erase some of the trauma....you know, get back on the horse that threw you and all that....and also because I am hopelessly impetuous! Unfortunately, there was no more available at my local LYS in the beautiful blue/green color I had, so I decided on this one...

Do you think it's a worthy replacement? I wasn't so sure I wanted to go with a variegated colorway, since the previous skein had subtle color changes in similar shades and the solid appearance showed the stitch pattern very well. But I wanted to get my Mermaid Wrap cast on again asap, so I thought I'd give this one a try. Though after it was wound into a cake, my love for it immediately grew! The colors remind me of sherbet---very summery!

Of course, I had to cast on Version 2.0 the minute I got home and I made a little progress...

Here's where I left off yesterday, and though the stitch pattern is not quite as clearly defined as in it's predecessor, how can you help but love these colors?

I think it will be beautiful when it is finished! I'm anxious to get as much done on it as possible because I am starting a new job next week, and won't have much knitting time for a while (sniffle, sniffle....goodbye to the knitting freedom of temporary unemployment....). Though I am happy and excited to have a new job, the first five weeks will be intensive training five days a week, so I'm sure the brain burnout will slow down my knitting progress. Not like it needed to get any slower, but...you know....

One of the fun small projects I worked on while on my vacation was this headband made from Cascade Fixation...

It was a quick, fun knit (and yes quick, even for me!) and I even got to wear it a couple of times while looking fashionably color-coordinated on my vacation. I was even fortunate enough to have it modeled by a very cooperative cute husband....

...after I twisted his arm and promised I would crop the picture so he would be unrecognizable! Now that's a real man!! Allowing himself to be photographed in a girly knitted thing at great risk to his manly image....but still, he did it! Again, he has gone above and beyond the call of husbandly duty for my knitting, even though he believes me to be in a cult! One of the many reasons he is so loveable...

And finally, how many of you who know me or have seen evidence of my yarn-shopping abilities would actually believe that I went on a weeklong trip without buying any yarn? Silly rabbits!

To my credit, I must say that I was actually inside of a yarn store on several occasions on several days without buying anything---zip, nada----for the entire week! However, we had one little hour to kill before we checked in at the airport, and we had just had lunch next door to the yarn store I had been visiting all week long.....

Well, you know the deal. I finally broke down and bought something, but I think I deserve credit for waiting until one hour before my flight home! (BTW, if you check out the website of the Alamitos Bay Yarn Company, you will see listed on their site a "Knit & Cruise" listed. We went on one of those while we were there and it was such fun! More on that later...)

And you might be saying as you view this lovely Lorna's Laces (in the Devon colorway), "OMG, she actually bought more SOCK yarn!!" But you might be wrong. Yes, it is rightfully sock yarn, but you will also notice that there are three skeins. No, I won't be knitting three socks, but I do see a lovely lace wrap of some sort in this yarn's future!

I really wasn't going to buy any yarn while on my trip, and resisted temptation without much effort...until I saw the colors of this yarn. I imagined myself wrapped in varying tones of turquoise laciness and envisioned what it could be.....and it jumped into my carry-on! You really can't blame me, can you?

HEY!.....

Is anyone still out there?

I'm back from my vacation! Isn't anyone going to stop by and say Hi?

Yes, I'm back and I had a GREAT time! I brought back a couple of friends with me from my visit to the aquarium in Long Beach! We go there every time we visit So Cal and it's always so much fun! If you are ever out that way, be sure not to miss it. One of my favorite parts is visiting the Lorikeet aviary, where you can feed the birds little cups of nectar (Lorikeets don't eat solid food).

How 'bout another round, bartender...Can't you see I have an empty glass here?...

It was a great week and I hated to leave my beloved beach :( We did lots of fun stuff, along with some 'just sitting around like a lump' thrown in (after all, it was vacation....). Cute hubby and I are not the types to schedule every minute of our time, on vacation or otherwise, so we did whatever, whenever. So some days we were lazy and others we were out all day and evening, depending on how the mood struck us!

One fun thing I got to do was meet up with a fellow knit blogger in L.A.---G-girl!! We struck up a friendship through our blogs and email over the past several months, and she seemed like so much fun, I just had to meet her when I was in her part of town! Cute husband and I were in L.A. seeing a few sights, and we met G-girl and her super-nice fiance' for lunch at a great Mexican restaurant. Both her fiance' and my hubby were a little skeptical about the meeting..."Why, exactly, is it that you two want to meet....?"

The poor SO's just don't get the whole knitting and blogging thing sometimes. Cute husband keeps emphasizing to me that he fears I'm in a cult! He says that since we all have a strange language, culture and habits that others don't understand, it's obviously a cult! Silly men.

Anyway, we all had a great time and spent a fun couple of hours together! The guys seemed to have lots to talk about, and of course, G-girl and I didn't lack for conversational topics! No knitting accomplished, but lots of fun chatter and gettin-to-know-ya! G-girl and her fiance' were both great, and G-girl even brought me a present!

Thanks so much, G-girl! The stitch markers are soooo pretty and I love them! I brought her a little gift as well (the chenille flower face cloth on my last post), which I hope she enjoys! Both cute hubby and I are looking forward to getting together with them again---hopefully when they can come to Seattle!

I did manage to get a little knitting done while on my trip, but not as much as I thought I would! I worked on a great wrap made out of Sea Silk, which after a couple of trips to the frog pond for gauge issues and an unfortunate mistake, was coming along quite nicely. Unfortunately, I can't show you a picture of it, because it met with an unfortunate demise last night while knitting on it. While pulling the yarn up from my center-pull yarn cake, the yarn suddenly burst out in a huge lumpy tangle from the center! What came out of there was too ugly to even describe, but I spent until 4 a.m trying to untangle and rescue it, but to no avail.

Usually I'm good at the untangling thing, but I am sorry to report that the patient died on the table! The more I untangled, the more the yarn stuck and knotted itself, and I finally gave up in despair. After about 5 hours of tedious effort to salvage the yarn and project, I was so frustrated and pissed off that I chucked the whole thing!! It was truly hopeless. I can hardly believe how evil a gorgeous hank of Sea Silk can become when it tangles. And the worst part is, I REALLY can't believe that I had to trash an entire hank of Sea Silk!!! Ouch! I am heartbroken. I have untangled many a tangle in my time and am usually always successful, but never have I come up against one like this! I was too horrified to even take pictures before I removed it from my sight foreever! I have no idea how that happened, but it REALLY sucks! Now I am afraid of the Sea Silk and wondering if I want to replace it and try again, or if I will just move along and try to recover from the trauma and sleep-deprivation of the whole ugly incident....The wrap was soooo beautiful knit up---I can't believe it's gone because of terminal and irreversible tangling. Ugh.

Here's a picture of something I started that has not turned evil.....so far....(That is, if you don't count that whole uneven ball-winding thing)...

I finally cast on the Tofutsies socks. I thought that size 1's would be small enough, but had to start over on size zero's. Knitting on size O needles is not my preferred way to go blind, so these will definitely have to be daytime knitting! The colors are great, though, and the yarn feels really soft knit up. At my knitting speed, it's gonna take a while to finish these---I'm hoping at least before the end of 2007! :)

It was such a lovely weekend in Victoria, until.....

It was such a lovely and relaxing weekend in Victoria, BC. Here was the view of the inner harbour from our room window...

And here is the fun and delicious gift that was waiting for us in our room when we arrived....

The large teacup is made of chocolate and is filled with chocolates and dried fruits. The small cups are chocolates as well. In the center is a canister of the Afternoon Tea Blend served in The Empress Tea Room.

We had such a nice time...We relaxed, had a sumptuous Thanksgiving meal in the hotel's restaurant, toured around town, and had an absolutely beautiful room. I also visited a great yarn store, Beehive Wool Shop, where I bought some new yarns for a couple of new projects. I even had lots of time to knit happily, while sitting in a comfy armchair in our room with a view of the harbour.

On Friday while driving around the area, we spotted a little tea room and decided to stop in. The shop was run by a charming Scottish woman, and we had the best afternoon tea EVER!

The rest of the weekend continued this way until it was time to return home on Sunday. That's when THIS showed up!

It even started to snow in town in Victoria, which is really unusual! This is a view from the car window on I-5 around Bellingham, WA. Very beautiful to look at, but it was an absolutely treacherous, 2-day trip home. A trip that ordinarily takes about 5 hours, including border crossing and ferry crossing, took us two full days!

Talk about terrifying! Cars were off the road right and left on both days. The highway itself was sheets of hardened ice and snow, with a strong wind blowing. Somehow, we must have taken a wrong turn and ended up in Siberia! There was over a foot of snow in our travel area over the two days we were trying to get home.

The first day of travel, we got across on the ferry, then drove to somewhere approaching the border, where we were stuck for hours. We finally gave up and thankfully found a hotel not too far from our travel route. We checked in, starving and exhausted after over 7 hours creeping over just a few miles. Here's a view from our hotel window the next morning....

We then set out on the road again, and had a fairly easy drive to the Canadian border. The Canadians were well-prepared and all of the roads were plowed and sanded. After the border, the rest of the trip was a real white-knuckler! I-5 south of the border was even more treacherous than the roads the day before. The roads had not been plowed or sanded for hours. We crept along and held our breath, and finally made it home safe in about 6 hours (usually a 2 hour trip from the border). We didn't even stop for food or a break---we just wanted to get home in one piece! Here's a view from the car window on the second travel day...

For those of you from a snowy climate area, this may seem overly-dramatized. However, conditions like this are rare in this area, and for some reason, they are never prepared. The coniditions have been so icy, some say the worst they've ever seen. I'm grew up in a southern climate myself, so I am never too happy when they say the "S word" on the weather forecasts. But this last couple of days has had even long-term snow veterans feeling a little shell-shocked!

As I watched the news last night, finally snuggled safely at home, I saw that people sat on the icy roads in gridlock for up to 8-10 hours in the evening after we arrived home, even overnight, trying to get home! Many ran out of gas in the gridlock and had to abandon their cars and walk home! Even the Metro buses pulled over and told riders that they could go no further and the riders were on their own!! Yikes! I much prefer less adventurous times around here, weather-wise!

I'm also a little worried about my dear husband----he needed to go to work this morning. It took him a couple of hours, but he got there safely. I'm just hoping he can get back home again this evening after the ice freezes over on the roads again---it's supposed to be in the teens again tonight!

The funny part of this whole adventure is, I never, never, never travel on Thanksgiving weekends because of all of the crowds and bad travel conditions. But just this once we thought we would go ahead, since the certificate for our room would expire December 1st, and we really needed a relaxing weekend away...

Let's just say my policy of not traveling over the Thanksgiving will resume, effective immediately! It was SUCH a nice weekend overall---a little rainy and chilly, but we had a really nice time overall. But I think I produced enough stress hormones on that drive home to overcome any relaxation gained over the weekend. I can live without another road trip like that for a very long time!

And I was worried about it being a little too rainy last weekend......silly me! Today sounds like a perfect day for staying home and working on my knitting projects! I've already felted my booga bag for Norovember this morning, and I'm going to felt two little mini-bags I knit while in Victoria later today. Here's a picture of my happy little booga bag drying in the window...

Have a happy, warm and dry day, everyone! Hope you can curl up in a nice, cozy spot and knit contentedly----that's what I'll be doing, for sure!

>^..^< >^..^<

A finished Meathead, and words of wisdom from the Divine Miss M

My Meathead KAL hat is finished! I had to think a while about what kind of embellishment I wanted to add. A crocheted or felted flower was my first thought, but that didn't seem enough to make my hat unique---lots of flowers on hats already! So I decided to pay tribute to what makes each of us (and our meathead hats) unique in our own little way.....

This is supposed to be a picture of the tag details----but once again, Blogger has decided to cut off the bottom of my picture (I guess that's one of those little things that makes Blogger "special"....)

Thanks to Bette Midler for the perfect quote:

Cherish forever what makes you unique 'cuz you're really a yawn if it goes!

Words to live by!

Meanwhile, cute hubby, the Stash Alpaca and I are off to Victoria, BC for the Thanksgiving weekend! I'm really excited to go away for the weekend. Even if it is going to be cold and raining----it's still away!

My only hope is that it is not windy, because then the ferries get cancelled, which will bring the whole trip to a grinding halt! I'll tell ya right now, I'm going to Victoria this weekend if I have to swim the Georgia Strait myself!

Just have to remember to bring along a waterproof bag so the knitting won't get wet while I'm swimming.....

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

>^,,^< >^..^<