Needles & Hooks

My mother called me today with the news that my grandfather was admitted to the hospital on Monday morning and isn’t doing well. He’s had alzheimers for several years, somewhat managed by medication and fairly lucid, but slowly declining, but this is heart and lung stuff. He’s 81 and is overweight and not very mobile, so it’s understandable.

I’m considering flying home (Ann Arbor, MI) in a couple of days and driving up to the visit the hospital (northern MI, 8 hours by car). For a variety of reasons not having anything to do with national security, my luggage will be very tight, so I can’t really bring any of the projects I have underway or am planning to start soon. So I have to start something entirely new. And I was thinking about making something for my grandmother, who is having trouble coping. Aside from the issues involved with your husband of 60 years being in this state, my grandfather’s illness causes him to tend toward the beligerent and difficult and she bears the brunt of it.

Anyway, I was thinking of some sort of shawl, and I think I’d have enough down time in flying and driving to finish it. But I don’t know that I’d get a chance to block intricate lace. Anyone got any ideas for me? A pattern that I could get online (free or otherwise) or could find in a book that the local LYS would carry. Thanks.

A few things came up, I had to cancel my trip to Maryland Sheep and Wool. I guess I wasn’t meant to be there after all. I’ll be there with you in spirit.

Today, I slept in for a long time. It’s my first day off in ages, and it’s all about treating myself. I knit for a little bit and caught up on Jon Stewart. Then we went to a friend’s birthday party. And then I finally opened my Project: COLORSWAP box from Lynne.

I opened the box and was greeted with a wealth of orange and yellow packaging:

Digging through it all, I found treats of all sizes:

In the back left, you see an orange tote bag with green and yellow circles and big round wooden handles. Continuing clockwise, there’s a lovely orange basket with a big yellow flower, holding some Platter’s Orange Chocolate Sponge candies (yum!). There’s a length of wired floral ribbon right behind a box of yellow and orange painted eggs (decor, not edible). Some orange nail polish reminding me that I need to get the season’s first pedicure. The book “Compassionate Knitting” which contains a pattern for an adorable astral-themed baby romper. Then a pair of bright little ankle socks and a handful of old-fashioned candy sticks.

Thank you so much Lynne for all my goodies and surprises. And for organizing this whole thing.

Now I just have to decide what to do next with my day. Pedicure or knit…..

Last month, I signed up to participate in Project: COLORSWAP. A swap that is color-themed to match the Project Spectrum colors. My swap partner for the first round (orange and yellow) is Lynne, the organizer of the whole swap. And after I signed up, I got started looking around for goodies for the box and suddenly viewing the world in orange and yellow. Always wondering, “should I put this in the box?”.

I had a long work project that ate up just about all of my free time for the last two weeks. I worked on Easter. I worked through the Patriot’s Day holiday I was supposed to have off. I worked late into the evenings, eating terribly and chained to my desk.

My two moments of break were the visit to help my friend Emma clean (and coincidentally, deliver kittens), and polishing off Lynne’s box and mailing it to her. The good news is that Emma sold her house in about 4 days to the first people who saw it and also had her bid accepted the dream house that she was selling the current one for, and Momma and the kittens are doing well. And Lynne loved her box.

Not that Easter was my influence, but I wanted to make the box full of surprises. The kind you used to get when hunting for Easter baskets. I think I accomplished that. I didn’t take any photos before I sent it off, but Lynne posted many of opening it, so go take a look. I received a box from her in the middle of all the that work hell. And set it aside so that I could really enjoy it when my project was finished. But then I got sent away to San Jose, CA for a week-long meeting.

I’m heading to the airport to go home soon. I get in somewhat late. I plan to sleep a lot. But I’m opening Lynne’s box tomorrow and will savor it all. And I’m already starting to notice a lot of green things thinking about my May colorswap partner Jen!

I went to go help my friend, Emma, clean her house which she’s in the process of selling. She took in a pregnant stray last week, and we knew it might be any day when she gave birth. Well, she went into hard labor about 5 minutes after I walked in the door. 40 minutes later, the first kitten finally popped out. I did a fair amount of helping in the form of petting momma and giving encouraging words. I was a feline doula. A little more than I ever expected to do with my hands.

Five kittens in all, 4 orange and white, one black with a touch of white under his chin. 3 boys, 2 girls. All healthy and squirmy and mew loudly when they get too far from momma.

Here’s 2-hours-old One in my hand for scale:

And Two in my hand:

There are more photos here. Forgive the messy towel, it was protecting the carpet from the birthing activities.

Anyway, if you live in the CT/MA area and are interested in a kitten, these should be available in about 12-14 weeks. And Momma will be available too. She’s one of the nicest cats I’ve ever met. Purred all through labor, let us pet and scratch her. Lets us handle the kittens as long as we don’t take them too far.

We’ll return to knitting soon.

I’ve been thinking about going to Maryland Sheep and Wool. I twitch about it from time to time, curious about the big to-do. Not sure whether I really want to make the trek at this point. Not sure whether my financial advisor would approve. Not sure I really want to get so close to all that pressure to learn how to spin. So I read everyone’s posts about planning their trips. And remember seeing all the goodies people got last year. And I just twitch a little.

And then today I found out about this. I’ve been a Thomas Dolby fan for a long time. Most people only know “She Blinded Me With Science”. I know the rest. Catchy fun beats. Some soulfoul ballads. But most importantly, amazing lyrics. He stopped making pop songs in the early 1990s and I never thought I’d see him perform. So I find out he’s touring by seeing a list of Ticketmaster dates. And there’s a date in Alexandria, VA on 5/8. Hmm, Monday after MS&W. I could do that. And realize it’s been a while since I’ve been to his official website.

And it turns out he’s playing in Annapolis both nights of MS&W.

Somebody wants me both places. So right after I finish this huge pile of work that’s due this week, I’m looking into flights.

I came down with some sort of ear/throat cold this weekend and spent a good chunk of time on the couch trying to recover. Here’s some of what I did…

My 6-inch Weavette arrived on Saturday morning. The Spinning Wheel Yarn Shop was super speedy and included a very cute sheepy thank you card. Not to mention, they also had free shipping. If you want a Weavette, order from them.

Anyway, I first made a square with it:

And I learned that winding tension is extremely important. Emy had said in comments that it looked like making the squares was pretty time-consuming. It wasn’t with the small squares (except for the ones where I was experimenting with fancy things). This one was, because the tension of the cross strands made it very difficult to push the needle through. And the resulting square is very stiff. I’ll be trying again much more loosely.

Next, I started a mystery project. Here’s the first part, can you guess what it is? (If you’ve been in my office and have inside knowledge, you aren’t allowed to guess):

I also made some good progress on Mermaid. I’ve made it past the halfway point on the body. I also charted out the sleeves. So if you’ve been using the spreadsheet from me and didn’t get an update dated 2/26, send me an e-mail.

Finally, I finished the prototype for my new Whirligig Hat:

It’s blocking right now. I wrote up the pattern and will be test knitting it shortly before I unleash it on all of you.

The pattern for my Whirlygig Scarf is ready. Enjoy!

My Mermaid kit arrived yesterday. Only 12 balls of yarn, will it ever be enough? And such a fine gauge as well. The pattern specifies 3mm needles and wouldn’t you know, my size 2 Addis are with a friend. And I thought I had some size 3s somewhere, but can’t find them. That’s all moot anyway, as I also don’t have appropriate DPNs. So I’m not casting on tonight.

In fact, I’ve decided that I have to finish up a couple of other things before I’m allowed to do much more than swatch. I’m finishing up the little scarf I’m working on for my niece. A night or two more on that, probably. And I decided that it’s time to finish Zig Zag.

I pulled it out over the weekend and took a look. I’ve got 3-4 inches done on the sleeves, shouldn’t take too much effort to knock it out. Really. Just in case you forgot, this is what it looked like last time I took photos…

Body:

Sleeves (sorry it’s so washed out):

Now let’s see how long my will power endures…

I had a hard time with that question this year. Asked a bunch of random people, didn’t get much of anywhere. In the end, I remembered that Diana Gabaldon had a new Jamie and Claire book out in the fall and that while I was at the bookstore when it opened the day it came out, my mom might not have been. So I got her a gift certificate for that (or something else if she’d already read it), but I needed a little more.

I was sifting through my cross-stitch box to collect materials for this year’s holiday ornament (post will be coming soon) and I found a kit from Dimensions that I’d picked up with her in mind because it features a dragonfly.

The kit was stitched on perforated plastic instead of perforated paper. My first time using that as a stitching medium. For things that require a bit of structure, I like it quite a bit. It was resilient enough while stitching that it took a bit of abuse and didn’t deteriorate like perforated paper can. It was also surprisingly easy to cut.

Here’s the design when it’s stitched, but before cutting:

Here are the pieces after backstitching and cutting:

And here is the final piece. The little tag at the bottom says “Explore”. The hard part was anchoring the wire hangers. I bent some angles in them which I stitched down to the backstitching before glueing a felt backing on. I hope it will hold up.

The other thing I wanted to show you was one of the balls of yarn I got last week. This one was purely SEX. It called to me, I have no idea what I will do with it, but I had to buy two balls. It’s soft, 100% wool, and I love the colors. It’s called Stripe 7934 by Martifil. Couldn’t find it with Google. Don’t know where you might find it. There were a few other colorways. This one shows up really well under my Ott Lite. Mmmmm….pretty yarn….