Etherknitter

Ten on Tuesday: Favorite places for online shopping

I have read only Carole's post.  I cannot read more.  But that will not stop me from adding a few of my own.

1.  Loopy Ewe.  Isn't it safer to just delete the Monday afternoon updates heralding the evening's fare?  If I am smart, I do just that.  OTOH, often enough, I do not.  Let us say no more.

2.  Etsy.  Mostly yarn.  Sometimes inexpensive bling.  Knitting bags.  It is best to not go to the site.

3.  Amazon.  I echo what Carole said about Amazon Prime.  It saves money over the year, but then takes it back in merchandise that arrives at your door without shipping cost.  They are very smart.

4.  LLBean.  I have had multiple T-shirts fall apart from Land's End.  The stitching at the neck separates, tears.  I have transferred my allegiance. 

5.  Treenway Silks, Schoolhouse Press, Webs.  Specialty purveyors of special temptations.  Amazing silk yarns and fiber from Treenway.  I snagged an exquisite Gotland fleece from them this year.  Schoolhouse Press, source of all things weird.  A book on twisted traveling stitch patterns found its way to me from them.  Webs is self-explanatory.  Demons, they are.  Demons.

6.  My two favorite wine stores.  Very smart marketing, this email stuff.  *Reply* is painless until your next visit there, and you find out how many times you hit *reply*.

7.  Sanguine Gryphon.  I currently need nothing.  Thank g-d.

8.  Twist Collective.  Res ipsa loquitor.

9.  Patternfish.  What a great repository of patterns past and present!

10.  iPhone app store.  I've slowed down.  I need to synch and get 4.0 software so I can have tabs for my gajillion apps.  I love my apps.

Look who came to dinner!

 

Post Turkey Post

Thanksgiving quietly stole knitting energy.  Volt, and the Isager scarf are mostly st st.  For that reason alone, they are building millimeters of size.  Nothing else has seen the light of progress.

Lynn DID challenge me to a toe-up sock project.  Her gauntlet-throwing seemed easy:  start a toe up sock by March, 2011. 

Yeah.  Sure.  I can do that.  I can try that.

No one had mentioned that Judy Becker's cast-on is impossible to do on dpns.  I spent internet time researching/cataloging/bookmarking alternate toe up cast-ons.  There are many.  I have met the goal.

Alas, the toe was the illusion of a goal.  Now the foot/gusset/heel/heelflap needs to be addressed.  Internal debate goes like this:  maybe it would just be easier to sic Mr. E on the Ethersock calculator that tells me when I am half done with a sock.  But, no, that is into the gusset (per prior calculations), and would represent too much work to rip back on a routine basis.

So I see little alternative.  Lynn's challenge was a tease, and I am now sucked into the toe-up world.

The psychic weight of WIPs dictates December as a finishing month.  That will allow a cleaner count of yards knit in 2010.  (More on that in a post closer to January.) 

Days of food shopping, cooking, cleaning, then feasting start the holiday season at Thanksgiving.  Bright knitting, warm wools, contented spinning all lie ahead these winter months. 

Thanksgiving marks the first day of the Holiday Indoor Rower 100,000 meter Challenge.  The Mr. and I are both participating again this year.  I can't say that it is a painless way to get or stay in shape.  But it is an excellent antidote to turkey bloat, and the external motivation helps us stay the course. 

 

 

 

Apparently not myself

I am obeying KellyR's sage advice.  Knitting for people who don't yet exist has its moments, and this is not one of them.  In place of the marathon baby blanket, Volt is making progress.  I am FINALLY past the blinding black yarn, into the dark grey stripe.   I was almost on my knees.

The simple pattern (mostly st st) doesn't protect the unwary knitter from the madness of counting.  Many Ravelry entries concurred.  Two different systems of stitch markers (one for RS, one for WS) finally keeps counts on track.  No more shifting small stitches across needles, cables, and joins, counting over and over as numbers differed, protecting the needlepoints from losing the more recently worked brethern.  The stitch count shifts one away from the marker on the WS.   I saw the original shawl at Stitches, knit by Grace Anna Farrow.  It was breathtaking in its beauty and in the number of stitches invested in it.  I am somewhat less than 20% done, and still enjoying the knit.  There is vague, far-off,  threatening music playing in my futurecast, as I muse over the dozens of yards of attached Icord yet to come at the finish.  I am not turning up the volume on that tune until I get there.

My psyche is mourning the passing of fall.  That is the only possible explanation for the upstairs WIPs.  The Isager booth at Stitches had a very clever knit/purl ribbed scarf in Mr. Etherknitter's favorite colors.  (He fairly glows when he watches me knitting it now.)  The two colors of yarn (Isager 2, alpaca/merino) formed streams of fire until I wound them into more submissive balls.  Had to laugh at myself when I put my next sock yarn project next to them (farther right in the picture).  It is Woolen Rabbit merino/nylon in the Boysenberry colorway.  I do not think I am quite myself these knitting days.  Nothing is blue.

StashKnitRepeat Amy's pattern Bryony called my name.  A telephone and internet hunt for the yarn took some time.  I found the lush raspberry color, and swatched.

Yes, I am weak.  I swatched.  Good thing.  I have to go up a needle size.  That needle, however, was firmly engaged in my FeatherDuster WIP.  I slogged through more lace rows.  Then I did what any red-blooded knitter would do.  Did I finish FeatherDuster in a blazing haze of monogamy? 

No.  I bought more needle tips at Knitpicks in the size I needed.  Reswatching is proceeding.  The first swatch is pictured here.

Some old WIPs will be aired out and recommenced soon.  One can always hope and plan.  A certain extremely stalled Penny Straker vest needs to be finished.  Grant Park pullover will see light once more.  I have some sockly FOs to put up soon. 

Has anyone knit Pamuya?  I am loving looking at Pamuyas on Rav.  I have some yarn that, shockingly, contains blue.  It also has the yardage, and the hand for the knit. 

I've given myself reward-based goals.  If I finish Feather Duster, I can cast on Pamuya.  And if I finish the Straker vest, I can order Starmore's beautiful stranded hats, pack of three.  I think that is more than fair.

 

 

Ten Ways to Simplify Your Life

1.  Clean your spaces.  That means the kitchen, the cupboards, the files, the fiberspaces.  Everything needs to be accessible and findable.

2.  Throw things out.  I just heaved years worth of dead spices.  I opened each one and sniffed.  They smelled nothing like what their labels promised.  Out out out!

3.  Organize the filing system.  If you can't find it, you might as well not have it.

4.  Don't buy things that need to be dusted. 

5.  Figure out systems to keep track of what you have.  Databases, rubbermaids, whatever works.

6.  Stop postponing any of #1, #2, #3 and #5.  If the pile is bigger and bigger, it is easier and easier to postpone dealing with it, and then to start ignoring it.  (Do not ask me how I know this.)

7.  Plan your events before the last minute:  the dinner menu, shopping for it, packing for the next trip, even THINKING about what to pack for the next trip.

8.  Take care of things you depend on:  cars, your health, your body, your appliances, the furnace.  Having them go kerflooey at inconvenient times is the antithesis of simplification.

9.  Stop buying so much damn yarn.  (Forget this one.  It does not appear to have any chance of happening.  At least for me.)

10. Do not participate in NaBloPoMo.  Self-explanatory.

Brooks Farm at Rhinebeck, Acero on left, Trio (tight twist merino/alpaca/silk) on the right: