How I Spent Sunday at Stitches West

I got to meet Ravelry's Jess and Casey! And they had a way cool portrait up in the ravelry logo made of tiny pictures of other things--you know the style. [Turns out those pictures are everyone's avatars on ravelry!!!]

And they were nice enough to humor me and take a photo.



Here are two parts of the felted "gossamer" scarf I made in one session today. It needs a bit more battening down. I got really excited about this type of art and went and bought some roving and even a silk "hanky" for embellishing the very top. So much fun!
Time to go grade exams. Sigh.

Shoulder Pain Signals Excessive Knitting 8^(

I have had, for about 24 hours, a lot of discomfort in the front of my left shoulder, across to my collar bone. Hurts when I let my arm dangle, and if I prop it, the pain gets better. This would seem to indicate that I overdid it in knitting last week. I'm going to take some NSAIDs and use Tiger Balm, and thankfully I'm too busy with schoolwork again to get much time for knitting. Sigh. Maybe by the weekend I can try again for short periods. Wish me success!

I Know! I Can Hardly Believe it Myself!

I have become a knitting machine in my own right (see yesterday's entry about the group Tricot Machine). Not musically, just in FOs. Things don't even have time to get on my "projects" list on ravelry before I have already finished (or essentially finished, woven ends included) them. Last night it was a baby bonnet from One Skein Wonders (which I ravingly reviewed last year--they should pay me!).

So last night, it was this little bonnet for an as-yet-unknown recipient (our school is having a wave of new babes--hope it's not the water, as I'd rather someone else do the baby-having nowadays!). Mine looks in dire need of blocking and softening agents (time to try conditioner as others have suggested on knitlist in the past), and that small globe for a baby's head is just weird. But I am proud of myself and for only missing one YO in the quest for lace edging that ribbon can be run through.

Now that vacation is ending, I need to act serious about the papers waiting to be read and graded, not to mention some department things that will take me at most two hours but which I have been casually ignoring for the past 192 or so hours (but who's counting?). Ah, now it all becomes clear--the knitting machine was having fun avoiding being a grading machine!!
Ciao and cheers,
~Stacie

Have you seen this amazing short film?

In the most amazing sort of way, it's about knitting! I understand that more than 700 intarsia panels were knitted by Montreal tricoteuses (OK tricoteurs too probably) to make this come alive. It is amazing and cool!



I love how the man in the animation/knitting looks like Cat Stevens back in the day! So cute! The music, sung in French, is haunting, and the images of these intarsia people tobogganing is something you'll never forget!

This duo, Tricot Machine, makes strange, lovely music in Quebec apparently. More on their myspace page, including links to other youtube vids of them. But none so cool as the knitting one.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=105380712

(Just a warning for those who hate sites that start up with music and scare the bejesus out of you--this link begins playing a song about three seconds after the main page loads.)

In other news . . . working on a felted purse that I knit up LAST NIGHT out of one of my midnightsky fibers skeins--a tiny purse but when defuzzified it should be a sweet little bag. Pictures at 11.

Diversity WIP and Two FOs (Bonus blog entry! The story of how, yet again, the dealer provides the dope for free until the customer is hooked but good)

This WIP is my Diversity Scarf, about 3/4 done. If I could keep the pattern straight, I'd be even doner, but last night I got the pattern rows wrong and realized it after I'd done three of them. Argh. And tinking gazillions of stitches is not hard but definitely feels counterproductive! If this were the first time I'd had to do it on this scarf . . . but it's not. Ah well. My mind doesn't see patterns the way others' probably do, so I mistake my way along until it becomes inescapably obvious. As for a recipient, I am inclined to keep this one 8^) but I will start to have a bit of a problem with more scarves than outfits to wear them with if I don't watch out. On the other hand, this scarf could well be a gift. I know several people who might like it. ;^)


Voila two scarves I've been working on here and there for almost a month--dark blue/purple is Lush in Yarn Harlot's Scarf pattern (the easiest and apparently most impressive scarf I've ever gifted before), the left photo being truer to the real color. The light blue scarf below is doubled O-Wool in robin's egg, knitted in twin rib. (I purchased mine some time ago from Granola Yarn.)

(That lovely feline gracing the scarf is Pippi, the cat that thinks she's a baby even though she's bigger than our other female, Cleo. Pippi is always all, "Hey, what about me? Come pet me!" right before she throws herself down on the floor in front of me to be noticed. Not a little drama queen there!) The Lush scarf is a belated Christmas gift (a Valen-mas gift?) to my friend Aleia. The O-Wool scarf I am starting to want to hide in my closet (it's too warm for scarves now, here in Paradise) for next fall. I never used to wear what I knitted, but I guess I've passed some internal test because now it's more likely than not, unless I start something with a specific person in mind.









New acquisitions on the stash enhancement front:

Yarn Rescue--a lovely thick and thin skein of "Full Drama" that begs to be made into a scarf.









Green Mountain Spinnery of VT: "Clove" and "Vincent's Gold" Mountain Mohair, Sylvan Spirit in Moonshadow (looks gray in photo, more brown actually), and a skein of New Mexico organic for making baby things.









from Granola Yarn (Midnight Sky Fibers for these first two, some SWTC Terra in Garnet)









Last, but not least, the story promised in the title above. Saturday we held our retreat, a school function that happens every February whether we want it to or not, and at that event, Queen of Purple Yarn and I teamed up for our one hour recreational pursuits. As we have done for several years now, we invited other teachers who wanted to knit or crochet, or to learn (QuPY is a wonderful teacher--I, not so much). She and I agreed ahead of time to bring several "kits" of yarn with needles and cast-on stitches, and as it happened we had a few takers on the instruction part of things.

So our colleague, Masako, learning how to knit, happily worked on her super bulky skein and got several inches done, but clearly she would run out well before a scarf could be made. So I said, "I have another ball of that yarn in the stash at home that I'd be happy to get to you next week so you can finish the scarf." She started to fret about getting me my needles back, etc. "Oh, but I want to pay you," she said. To which I drily offered the equivalent of "There is plenty more where that came from," to which I hear laughter across the room. Then Queen Purple and I started a pissing contest about whose stash was bigger (I'm willing to concede without seeing hers because she works off and on at Purlescence, which to me would be worse than being a kid in a candy store.)

But I digress. The point being that I was happy to provide Masako with all the yarn she needs to become well and truly hooked on knitting. Yes, I sleep fine at night, since the price she might pay for this particular addiction seems quite small. And sadly, unlike for the pusher man, I get no $$ compensation for my efforts. ;^)

Happy knitting, all.

Thump!

I have been tagged by Kathy, my librarian/knitter friend from school.

4 Jobs I've Held:

1. Jack-in-the-Box grunt (window) (nothing like smelling like the deep fat fryer after you leave work!)
2. Secretary
3. Copy editor
4. Teacher

4 Movies I've Watched Over and Over Again:

1. A Room with a View
2. The Lion in Winter (well, not again and again, but several times!)
3. Jane Eyre (BBC production, mid-90s)
4. The Christmas Story (Jean Shepherd--the tongue frozen to the flag pole movie)

4 Places I've Been:

1. beautiful Okanogan, WA 8^)
2. Paris (the one in Europe)
3. Hamburg
4. Vancouver, BC

4 Places I've Lived:

1. Dayton, OH
2. Boise, ID
3. Seattle, WA
4. Palo Alto, CA

Part A: 4 TV Shows I Watch:

1. Law and Order SVU or CI
2. CSI Miami
3. anything on the Food Network except Iron Chef
4. the show formerly known as Masterpiece Theater


Part B: 4 Radio Shows I Listen To:

1. none
2. still none
3. even more none
4. radio is for listening to MUSIC!

4 Things I Look Forward To:

1. Friday afternoon and evening
2. Visits with my sister
3. Time knitting at home while watching a movie with DH
4. Having my family all under one roof, at one dinner table

4 Favorite Foods:

1. Good sushi
2. Chicken Piccata
3. Nibby Bars (Scharfen Berger--dark chocolate)
4. my mother-in-law's "roast beast"

4 Places I'd Rather Be:

1. Seattle
2. In my armchair knitting
3. On a sandy beach somewhere in Hawaii
4. Wine tasting with DH

4 People I email regularly:

1. DD#1 and 2
2. DH (short, text-message-like emails)
3. Teachers in my department
4. My sister

4 People to Tag:

1. Jejune
2. Amanda
3. Gingernut
4. Vegan Purls

Takes a Licking but Keeps on Ticking!

Wow, so little time to knit. But I am feeling much much better after that nasty bout of the flu. Sometimes it takes a lousy case of something to realize that it's good to feel good. 8^)

I knitted two tiny hats for a soon to be hatchling, one even smaller than this! But the two will probably keep little skater dude in cool chapeaux until he's too old and it's too warm for hats.



I have been trying to finish the scarf I started for my friend Aleia (supposed to be a Christmas gift!) and here it is, February! But, it's getting there.

A few new stash acquisitions and some strong recommendations: 2 skeins of from Kristine of A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland, California. Silk/merino blend in a washed-out red/pink color called "gulabi" and another skein, this of 80% yak and 20% merino in a nice brown called "truffle." What to do with them, I guess, will become clearer when I get to them, but I am actually thinking, shock of shocks, of making a scarf or a hat with each.