Crab cake

It's official, I need a long weekend. All week long, my co-workers have driven me so crazy. This is what I put up on my desktop yesterday after all the annoyances:



Yeah, it's time for a long weekend. We're going shopping tonight to stock up on food, so we won't have to leave our house all weekend long. You can bet that this will be in the cart:



I did have a lovely fibery lunch with Jillian today. It's always fun to see what other people are working on and J has the greatest ideas. I muddle along making swatch after swatch and have a good time, but don't come up with anything fabulous. J throws the coolest stuff together and it always looks great. She's my knit design inspiration.

She talked me into buying some new Maggie Jackson yarns (yeah, twist my arm). I left them in the car, but I'll snap some pictures this weekend. One of them is a cotton/linen blend - very cool. It's a triple strand yarn that feels a little harsh, but I saw a swatch and it knits up soft. With that blend, it will only get softer as it's washed and worn.

Saw some new colors of Koigu - gorgeous purples and oranges. I'm also an Interlacements slut. The colors they put together are so amazing. The skein I picked up has purple, pink, orange, and blends of those colors. I am in my glory with all the fabulous oranges I've been seeing. You can't have too many orange yarns - that's my motto these days. Interlacements has also cut their skeins in half. Instead of spending $40, the skein was only $15.

Now I just want to go home and knit.


In other news, I had this dream last night (don't you just hate when people start a conversation with this?). I weighed 700 pounds - don't ask me how I knew the number, it was just in my head. I was a pyramid of fat with my head on top. My hands were sticking out my sides (think Violet Beauregard in Willie Wonka) and my feet were buried under suet. All I could think about was "how am I going to drive to work like this?" I think that means I need to go back to the gym. I've been using my allergy attacks as an excuse to "baby" myself. I eat whatever I want and haven't worked out...well, in a while (months). Time to step up and be the stud that I am and start sweating again. Who's with me?

Pioneer, schmioneer

Yeah, we lost power in the gigantic storms last week. It went out on Friday afternoon. Let me just mention that I live in the frickin' country. My husband's criteria for living in a house is that we have so few neighbors that he can pee off the back deck, at any time, without anyone seeing him. Yes, my mother-in-law lives right next door to us - he doesn't actually pee off the back deck, but he wants the option.

So, when you live out in BFE and there are only about 12 other houses on your dirt road, the power company doesn't care about you. Not when there are 899,999 other customers (who all live in neighborhoods) without power. We had 3 field hockey games, 2 ice hockey games, 1 dress rehersal, 2 dance recitals, and a study group going on this last weekend.

On Saturday night, I told Hub that he'd better get his quarters together, we were going to the laundramat and then to the health club for a shower first thing in the morning. We were very lucky. There was no one in the laundramat and we sailed in and got everything washed and dried in an hour and a half. By the time we left, people were lining up their baskets of dirty clothes waiting for the washers to be open.

The community center/health club isn't. They wouldn't let me bring Sassy in for a shower because she was underage. Besides, "half the town would be bringing their kids in here for showers if we let yours in."

"Hmmm," I said, "I thought that was part of being a community center."

Sassy had a sponge bath in the kitchen with water we heated up on the grill. I'm not a pioneer woman. Give me water or give me death.

Needless to say, there wasn't much fiber going on at my house this weekend. I did have the lovely experience of reading by candle light (and managed to avoid singing my hair). I finished up The Well of Lost Plots on Friday. What an amazing book. I'm in love with Jasper Fforde. Also started and finished Black Rubber Dress, by Lauren Henderson. I can't wait to read the other adventures of Sam Jones!

Mac, over at Go Fish has put together a summer reading list. Thinking this is a good idea, I've cribbed it and have put together a small list of my own. Of course, I still have several books in a bag at my house courtesy of Jillian - so those are really at the top of the list (there's another Sam Jones mystery in there somewhere), but here's my official summer reading list:

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
Not Wanted on the Voyage, Timothy Findley
For Rabbit, With Love and Squalor: An American Read, Anne Richardson
House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III

What's everyone else reading this summer?

There's so much to tell...

DC last week was fabulous! I was also very HOT!! I'm a wuss, I'll admit. I came from Michigan and nice 60 degree weather and was dropped into high humidity and 90 degree days. I hate walking out of the hotel to hail a cab and having pit stains from the (minimal) effort. And what's with federal buildings? They all said, "The air's on...", if that's what passes for air in those buildings, I'm glad I don't work for the government.

Other than the business I was there to attend to, the trip was great. I met a friend on Wednesday for a trip to Knit Happens. It's really a cute little shop. I had heard so much about it from other bloggers that it just seemed too good to be true. I'm always amazed when small shops manage to pack a ton of yarn into a place and not have it feel crowded and junky looking. (I'm amazed, because this is what I attempt at my house and it always looks crowded and junky looking.) Anyway, yes, it's a small shop, but they have great stuff - Rowan, Debbie Bliss, Trendsetter, some pretty cool sock yarn that I forget the name of, and tons more.

Who was in the shop when we arrived? None other than Wendy! I approached her and mentioned a mutual friend and we chatted for a few minutes. I didn't introduce myself - which I didn't think about until later, so I'm sure she thought I was some weird blogger stalker.

I was looking for a cabled baby sweater pattern and the clerk (I think it was one of the owners) gave me a stack of Miss Bea books to page through. Found just what I was looking for here . If you haven't seen the Miss Bea books - go look, they're wonderful, very well written and the pictures are just so damn cute!

On Friday, I had the whole day to myself! As an aside, my boss always apologizes to me for making me travel to these meetings. Um, right...5 nights alone in a hotel room, eating fabulous meals in places where the Hub and kids would never cross the threshold, and a whole day to do whatever I want...I laugh at him every time.

Anyway, back to my Friday. Started off at the Textile Museum. It is, by far, my favorite place in the city. The people are so nice and the exhibits are well organized and interesting. There was a group of school children there while I was going through. I could hear these kids wherever I was in the museum (it's a very open design). They were having the best time trying on wrappers from different parts of the world and figuring out how they looked best. Every now and again, the docent would shush them a little, but they were having such a good time. It was a lot of fun listening to them.

Took the metro over to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This place is huge!! Three floors of art by women. I must admit, I was a little disappointed when I first went in. I love paintings as much as the next person (okay, maybe a little less), but how many of the Madonna and Child can one person look at?

They do have a great exhibit running right now called Nordic Cool: Hot Women Designers. It features women designers from Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. There were paintings, photos, textiles, furniture - all kinds of things. It was a very nice exhibit - well put together and interesting.

After that I was exhausted and wanted to go someplace to sit down and eat. I kept telling myself, "you haven't been to the third floor yet" - that's where parts of the permanent collection are. So, I went back up the stairs and saw this:



It's The Springs by Lee Krasner. I know it doesn't look like much on the screen. In person, it's 43 x 66 inches and just fills your field of vision when you stand close to it. What I most love about museums is how close you can get to the paintings and really see what they're made from. This painting is lovely and I've found something new to go visit while I'm in DC. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who returns to visit things I've seen in museums. My other favorite is a Rodin sculpture called She Who Was the Helmet Maker's Beautiful Wife on display in the Hirschhorn. You can go see her for yourself
here.

There's more, but I've gone on a bit long already. I'll be back with pictures of what I've done in this busy, catch up week.

Lazy Alert

Okay for 2 days now, I've schlepped in my ball of Rowan Calmer and the attached swatch...but I'm too damn lazy to make my way to the scanner and scan the thing. So, I finally pick up the goods and make my way across the office to the computer with the scanner attached and someone's using it. I feel a little funny asking someone to stop working so I can goof off. You're going to have to wait to see it. Trust me, it's gorgeous. The yarn is lovely and I really like working with it. Now I just have to sell my first born to be able to afford a sweater's worth.

Have a fabbo lunch with Jillian and kidlets yesterday. Mr. Henry cracks me up! J told me he loves the backpack and when she put him in it, he got the most contented smile on his face I've ever seen. After about 10 minutes of walking around, his little lids were very heavy and he drifted right off to slumberland. My friend Isobel wasn't having a very good day. She did demonstrate a very nice handstand for me and showed me how she dressed up Shaggy in Velma's dress (I love it when little girls giggle). Don't worry J, in a few days, she'll be right as rain.

I'm off this afternoon to have my hair highlighted and cut. I feel like I'm letting Gloria Steinem down by admitting it's because I'm going on a business trip next week. I can't have these people (most of whom I see 3 times a year) thinking I walk around like a sheepdog most of the time (which I do - but I can't let them think that!). I knew once I started highlighting that it would be one of those "personal hygiene until I die" things, but it didn't stop me from doing it.

I'm also taking a couple pairs of pants to be shortened. Do I leave things until the last minute? Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

Wait till I get started!!!!

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti


The Princess Bride has got to be one of my favorite movies of all time. Rob Reiner is a genius.

Swatch Yarns

Here is the small collection of swatching yarns I've purchased recently:


Let's work clockwise, shall we? The red in the upper left is Rowan Calmer, which is 75% cotton and 25% microfiber. Next is Dale Svale, 50% cotton, 40% viscose, and 10% silk. Then comes Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool, 65% wool, 35% silk (notice I bought the green and not the muted yellow - I really wanted the yellow as well). Lastly is Maggi's Aran Tweed, 100% wool.

I'm currently working on a swatch with the Calmer. It's really lovely yarn - lots of bounce and very cushiony. The microfiber addition to cotton was a good idea. This yarn will have some memory, but will drape nicely. I'll show that swatch tomorrow - I'm about halfway through a pattern repeat of the Elann Dancing Vines Tunic. I'm not sure it will work quite right for this sweater (a little too bouncy), but it does show off the pattern stitches well. Also, it's a little pricey ($11.25/ball) for a giant tunic sweater.

Here's my other swatch-in-progress


This is Jaeger Trinity, 40% silk, 35% cotton, 25% polyamide. The swatch is knit on 3.5 mm needles, which may look a little big, but anything smaller and I think the swatch would be boardy. One weird thing about this yarn is that periodically, I would have a huge stitch. I don't think I was doing anything differently. Just every now and again I noticed a huge stitch, like I wrapped twice and then dropped a wrap. Very strange.

I like the hand of the swatch, a little crisp and crunchy, but also drapey enough to make a nice summer sweater. I did a seed stitch boarder and then did an increase on either side of a 10 stitch panel every other row. You can see that the piece has a pouch - too many increases. Next time, I'll allow a couple of rows in between the increases to make a nice gentle slope.

I also threw in a pleat (which doesn't quite show up in the photo). I've never made a knitted pleat before - I don't think this was the yarn to try it with. The swatch pleated nicely and the yarn falls beautifully into the folds, but the pleat itself looks like the dog's breakfast. I put 16 stitches on a double pointed needle, placed that behind 16 stitches on my working needle and k2tog for 8 stitches and then ssk for 8 stitches. My problem is with the "join" area. Here's a close up:


Apologies for "over-exposing" but I think you can see the area I'm talking about now. See how the stitches on either side of the join pull away from each other. I know it's because of the decrease stitches, but how can I make it look more, well, pleat-like? Next time, I think I'll try it with 15 stitches behind and do a triple decrease in the center - slip 1, k2tog, psso. The Elsebeth Lavold skein will be a similar looking swatch. I'll keep you posted.

Spring Cleaning

I'm still on a bender to get my house cleaned up. I don't know what it is this spring, but I just want everything clean and organized. I've noticed this is a trend in blog-land. Consequently, there's not much going on the fiber front. We've been staying up too late watching way too much hockey (Go Red Wings), but I'm too exhausted to knit. I've been half-heartedly spinning, but not much of that either.

Lately, I'm swatch girl. The last couple of times I've been to the yarn shops, all I can pick up is 1 or 2 skeins of something I haven't tried before. Last week, Jillian and I went to the local shop and they finally have the Elsbeth Lavold silky wool. It's so yummy. I wanted to buy several skeins, but contented myself with 1 in the muted yellow. I've got a dream sweater in my head and I think this might be the yarn for it.

Next week I'll be in DC. I'm really dying to see Knit Happens. I have a friend in the area (newby knitter) and we're planning on having dinner and shopping. She always knows the newest, best restaurants in the area. Good food and good yarn - I love DC!

Now, I just have to get through the prep for our meetings and 2 days of meetings before I can splurge. I have to go in a day early, at the request of my boss. I told him I'd be happy to go...on one condition, that he pays for me to stay an extra day. Of course he agreed (what a good guy). Anyway, I'll be wandering through the Textile Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts on Friday. Anything else I shouldn't miss?

I'm happy again

I think Spring has finally arrived in Michigan. We actually slept with the window open last night and woke up to the birds singing this morning (okay, we actually woke up because the cat came running through the house and bounced on our bed on the way to the window to try and get the birds - but it's close right?).

We spent last week mucking out the basement. The kids were on Spring Break anyway, so it was a good time. Every couple of years we try and get a dumpster delivered to our house to take the junk away. We've lived in this house for 12 years and have used the basement as a cache for everything we couldn't bear to get rid of. My advice to myself now is - GET RID OF IT!! It doesn't get any better just because it's been sitting in the basement for a couple of years. Hub replaced the windows and I ripped out the carpet in the living room. My plan was to make it look terrible, thereby forcing Hub to do something about it. It worked. We went to Lowe's last night and checked out all the different brands of laminated flooring. It's truly staggering what they can do with wood and plastic these days. Anyone have horror stories about laminate floors?

My only fiber time last week was crunch knitting. Hub and Little Big Man go to a fishing tournament every year at this time. Last year, Hub came home with a request for some hand knit socks for the raffle table. "Cool," I figured, "I have a whole year to finish 1 pair of socks." Um, yeah, I didn't start the damn things until April 8 - they left for the tourny on April 15. They turned out nicely and the guy who won them was very pleased. I didn't take a picture because I was sick of looking at them every waking moment. Hub and LBM didn't catch one fish - not one. He always tells me, "Catching a fish isn't the point, just being outside in the water is the point." Riiiight.

Here's what I'm happy for today:
seeing the sun
being back at work
not having to knit with 2 strands of Kid 'n Ewe
that Hub didn't win the weekend trip this year (it was a stay in Nepal - oh sure, I'll bet there's fiber there, but who wants to be on a plane for 24 hours!)

Study Group Outlines - Woolen

Here's what I meant to post yesterday:

Spinner's Flock Woolen Yarn Study Group

Purpose: to spin a "woolen" style yarn with different twists, plies, diameters and to discover correct uses for this type of yarn

Preparation of Fiber
. Beginning with raw fleece � your choice of fleece � you will need 1 pound
. Save a lock of the raw fleece for documentation, if you wish (protect it from future moth damage)

Wash the fleece
. Document how this was done, what soap was used
. Save a lock of the washed fleece for documentation
. Weigh the washed fleece to determine loss from washing

Prepare the fleece for spinning
. Document use of equipment used � cards, pickers and/or drum carder (what kind), pickers (what kind)

Spin up woolen yarns
. as singles and plied yarns
. of varied angles of twist
. of varied diameters (wraps per inch)
. document for each spun sample
o Wheel / spindle used
o Wheel � whorl ratio
o # of twists per inch
o angle of twist
o # of wraps per inch
o # of yards per pound
o # of plies
. each spun yarn sample (singles and plied) should be 5 yards each, but allow for another yard or more to document each samples for twists/inch, angle of twist, wraps per inch.

Make sample swatches from the handspun
. Document for each detailed method of making swatch (knit, crochet, felt, weave, etc)
. Size of equipment used (loom, needles, etc)

Discuss appropriateness for each sample spun as related to type of wool used.

Discuss appropriate end products that can be created from each sample of yarn.


So, where am I in the process? My wool is washed and weighed. By the way Emma, you were right - my merino went from being 1 pound to .58 pound - I lost almost half of the weight in grease. There was some vegetal matter (vm), but not a lot and most of it was big enough that I could just pull it right out. I brought my drum carder into the house from my studio last night and fed the Mr. Clean wool through, just to see what would happen. I think I should probably use a different drum cloth with finer teeth, but this will do nicely. The wool fed through and I got a pretty decent bat out of the practice run. I'm being very anal about keeping notes on everything. It doesn't feel like homework, it's been really fun. I'm anxious to get started spinning though. Sassy will be helping me with the carding - that ought to be interesting!

Weekend Project

So last weekend, I got together with some spinning friends to start a study group about (what else) spinning. I have the outline and am planning on posting it just in case anyone wants to play along at home. We haven't had an official meeting yet, but we did decide on some of the guidelines. We are all starting with a pound of unwashed wool (any type). We'll be spinning woolen and we are to keep a record of whatever we do to the wool (washing/carding/type of wheel, etc). I dug around in my stash and came up with some unwashed Merino. Here is what a pound looks like:



I must admit, it's pretty disgusting. I was worried about using merino because I've heard so many horror stories about not getting it clean the first go round and having it seize up after the wax and grease re-harden on it. I decided to give it a go anyway. Here's my pile of clean wool:



I figured I should start with boiling (or near boiling) water to make sure to get the most grease and wax out on the first wash. So, I boiled water on the stove in my biggest pot and poured it into the stopped up sink**, dribbled in a bunch of dish soap (Ivory), wisked the soap around and gently lowered a colander full of dirty wool into the sink. I let that sit for about 40 minutes - the water was still so hot it hurt my hand to reach in and unstop the sink. Poured in another pot of boiling water and lowered the colander again. Then I rinsed 2 more times (for 15 minutes each) in the hottest water I could get from my tap.

It took me 2 days to get those 8 batches done (the batch in the upper left corner was one I did with Mr. Clean to see if that would work - it did, but left a nasty smell on the wool, so I decided against that). I'm waiting for them to dry completely so I can weigh them again to see how much I lost in grease. I'll post the group's outline tomorrow. Come on Amy, you know you wanna...


**Just an aside, if you're going to use boiling water for a project, it's not a good idea to pour it into a stopped up sink and let it sit for 40 minutes at a time. The plumber's putty that seals the drain basket melts in boiling water, leaving you with sheepy smelling, dirty water in the cupboard under your sink. Hub suggests you use a bucket to hold the boiling water.

And the wheel, goes round...

This is the first spring that I've officially had Start-itis. Seriously, it really hasn't hit me with this magnitude before. I have 3 different spinning projects going. Here's what's on the Journey Wheel:



That roving is called Sapphire and it's from my friend Liz. She has an amazing color combination sense. Her rovings all sell out when she brings them to our guild sales. I was very lucky and she still had some of this available. Go check out her other colors.


This is some silk I bought at SOAR last fall at the Treenway Silks booth. Can you read the tag? It's the Spice Market colorway


And here's what it looks like on my Schacht:


I think I'll be spinning this up and trying some of Lynne Vogel's techniques to get the colors to stay separate. They all look gorgeous together, but I would like to see them individually.

I also have something going on my hand spindle, but I think I've shown that before. In any case, I didn't snap a picture of that this morning.


It's a short entry today, because I got my eyes dilated at the eye clinic this morning. I'm still wearing my sunglasses indoors and I still look stoned. I went to the clinic because I'm really tired of wearing glasses and would like to just have those funky reading glasses. However, I hate having my eyes messed with. I told the tech walking me through all the diagnostic machines that I was leery about this procedure because I couldn't close my eyes and not watch (I have to avert my eyes when they take blood or give one of my kids a shot!). She laughed. So anyway, has anyone had this done? Is it worth it? How much does it hurt (because I'm such a baby - despite two natural childbirths)? Someone reassure me, dammit!

I may not have been blogging...

but I have been busy.

Here's my first offering from the yarn I got from the Great Stash Redistribution project. This is Tivoli Santos, 100% cotton yarn:


Doesn't Kit look warm and cozy? She's been sleeping with the blanket for the last couple of weeks. Sassy is very happy. It's a simple stockinette stitch body with a garter stitch border. Thank goodness it's so small - having all those ends hanging off the back of the piece while knitting is definitely not my favorite part of intarsia.

I started a pair of gloves from the orange and purple alpaca yarn I bought when Jillian and I took our yarn trip last spring. Discovered that 7" double pointed needles cannot be used for fingers and took a trip to the yarn shop to buy short ones. As it turned out, they didn't have short US 1s, but they did have this lovely yarn


It's Interlacements Toasty Toes. This stuff isn't cheap ($32/skein), but Knitter's Review says there's enough for 2 adult-sized pairs of socks. As you can see, I'm making gloves - my first. The colors are so gorgeous, I didn't want to hide them in socks - I wanted to show them off on my hands. Have I mentioned that I love the Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns? That's where I got the pattern for the glove and it's so easy to follow. The orange and purple gloves have been abandoned temporarily. I couldn't deal with 2 intarsia projects at the same time! They'll be done before winter starts again.

So, I mentioned that I worked up an alternate ending to Karen Baumer's diagonal scarf. Here are the ends of my scarf:


The way the pattern is written, the last triangle continues being knit in the same direction as the previous triangle - I'm anal, it bugged me. (Please note, the left side is the last triangle.) Here's what I did: start the last triangle the same way every other triangle was started. Continue in pattern to the middle of the triangle (I had 80 stitches, so I did the pattern until I had 40 stitches on my working needle).

Remember, you're making a stitch and then doing a decrease right afterward for the pattern. Once you get to the mid-point (on the triangle, the mid-point is the right side), you don't want to continue making a big triangle, you want a right angle. So what you need is a double decrease. I made the stitch, did a k2tog and then did a psso (slip a stitch, knit a stich, pass the slipped stitch over the knit stitch). I think it worked out pretty well. There was some confusion when there were about 5 stitches left - I don't know if you can see it, but there's a sort of bulb on the left side of that last triangle. I was so pleased with myself that I got this far, I fudged it and I'm extremely happy with it.

Let me know if this doesn't make any sense. It's a lot easier to do it than to try and write it down.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I told my husband he'd better come home with some of this:



if he wanted to continue living in my house. I fully expect a 6-pack in the fridge when I come home tonight. It's the least he can do for me.


So, I've been procrastinating (what's new?). I don't know if it's that I'm waiting for Spring or waiting for my sister-in-law to leave, or what exactly I'm waiting for...but I'm waiting. I did manage to finish Kit's blanket. I washed it and layed it out on the table and Sassy's been dancing around it ever since. "You know, Kit's cold. When does she get her blanket?" It was dry last night and I grabbed the camera to take a picture and the batteries are dead. Sassy had Kit sitting up and draped the blanket artfully and everything. It's off to Target today to pick up batteries.

I finally started on the gloves I bought yarn for when Jillian and I tripped to Grand Rapids last Spring. Discovered I have to knit them on US 1s and that I don't have any short 1s. I guess a trip to the yarn shop is in order.

Spring break is coming up for my kids in about 3 weeks. I convinced Hub that this is the perfect time to attack our basement. He bought a power washer last fall (to clean his boat) and I talked him into power washing the walls and painting with that water-repelling paint. Our basement gets so wet in the Spring, so I'm hopeful that this will take care of some of the problem. Hub thinks this is a good time to replace the teeny-tiny windows that are down there to let more light in - a good plan! We also need to muck out the junk. I don't know why, but the garage and basement seem to collect stuff. We're all semi-packrats...well, you can imagine how much there is in the basement. My plan is to get a dumpster and throw tons of it out; anything that's still useful will go into a garage sale pile; anything that anyone wants to keep needs to be justified (me included). I even recruited my parents to help. My dad is great as long as he has a project - he'll stick around for the whole week if I can keep him busy!

I was just over on Pioneer Melissa's blog and apparently she's doing it too! I guess I'm in good company. Anyone want to join an "Organize Along"? After the basement, I need to tackle the living room. It's had 3 different big paint swatches up for the last 5 months. It's time to fish or cut bait.

Diagonal Scarf

Here it is in all its diagonal glory:



It was so cold on Friday, that I sent Sassy back into the house to get it for me to wear. I'm happy to report that it's warm and soft - a lovely scarf.

We had the most gorgeous day here yesterday. My niece and nephew were with us the whole day and the kids played outside. It was amazing! They had so much room and so many different things to do that no one had a fit and they all got along. The age range is from 12 down to 6 - unbelievable that they were good all day.

I took Sassy and my niece to the Spinner's Flock meeting and my niece said "I want you to make me a sweater." When I asked her what color, she pointed to the multi-colored blue roving I had just bought and said, "Outta that nice blue stuff right there." I was spinning it up yesterday (who can resist the call of the new) and she came in every couple of minutes to check on my progress. "I can't wait until I can wear my new sweater!" What a kid.

Okay, I suck

...but I have a really good excuse. My crazy sister-in-law is living with us. She's sleeping in my studio (which is unheated and is located in the back of our pole barn - where we park our cars), so I don't have a lot of time or space to play with my yarns. I drive her to work and back home everyday. Who knew it was so stressful to sit with an adult for 25 minutes one-way and not speak one word!! I like the quiet as much as anyone, but geez, say something. Oh well, Hub promises that it will only be a short while - it's already been a month and I honestly don't know how much more I can take.

Enough. Here's something to celebrate:



Another eBay haul. I lovelovelove the color of this yarn. I just want to touch it, it's my next swatch project.

I finished my diagonal scarf and took a picture of it, but haven't had time to upload. I was flipping through the Knitblog webring and found someone (I think it was Matt from Threadbear) talking about how the end triangle didn't match. It's not knit in the alternating direction - so I messed around with it and came up with a solution. Did this bother anyone else or are Matt and I the only anal retentive ones? I'll post a picture soon.

Time to go home - another 25 minutes of silence. Oh joy...