Sunday, July 11, 2010

Saturday!

It's been great having Edward, Spanky's brother, and his daughter Gayle visiting. We've been hanging out a lot. I took Wednesday off to spend it with Edward and Gayle, then went back to work on Thursday to present three books, and then took Friday off to spend with Spanky and Gayle. Gayle's going back home to Florida with Spanky on Monday.

edward and gayle

Wednesday, we went to Ground Zero, and then took the E train up to Washington Square Park to meet Spanky for some lunch. After lunch, Spanky was taking them out to see the farm in Brooklyn, so I went home to practice my drums. I had to go back for my lesson at 6pm, so then after that, we went to Patsy's for pizza. After a cranker-pants dinner (that place was NOT AIR CONDITIONED), we went uptown to Tom's Restaurant for coffee and dessert (the cherry pie is awesome!!!). God, what a long day.

Thursday was just a normal work day. Got three books approved with a minimum of fuss--something to be said for going last, I guess--worked late, and then came home and made dinner for Spanky and Gayle.

empire state bldg visit

Friday, we went to the Empire State building, did some back to school shopping at Old Navy, had lunch, got some manga, did some more shopping on St. Mark's Street where Gayle found me a tooled leather belt with MY NAME on it at a(n overpriced) thrift store. OMG. Of course I bought it. I am wearing it right now. I love it.

chrysler bldg

Today, Spanky blessedly gave me the day off, while she and Gayle went to the American Museum of Natural History. Went there last summer with Isabella and my sister, and I am emphatically NOT A FAN.

central park again

Tomorrow, we're going to a neighborhood festival, and then Spanky and Gayle are going to see Mary Poppins. I'm not going, because I'm going to have to take Isabella and Morgan (her step-sister) in a few weeks when it's their turn to visit and lord knows I can't afford to see it twice (and am not sure I could do so in good humor anyway!).

eh.

I did get some time today to work on my Clementine. It's coming along very well, and I'm digging it. I'm up to the repeat now, and it's so quick to whip through those four rows over and over. I had to bag the baby sweater until our guests are gone, because I need to concentrate more. At least there's progress on something!

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

all in the family

Spanky's brother Edward and her niece Gayle are here visiting! I'll have pictures later. Worked all day, then had to mingle for work, then met them for dinner, then came home (in the 102 degree heat, might I add) and practiced my drums, and now I'm finishing up some work work, and waiting for Gayle to get ready for bed so I can finally turn in. I'm so glad they're here! I took the day off tomorrow, so hopefully we can see some sights!

Monday, July 05, 2010

my new love

One of the reasons that I haven't had as much knitting time lately is that I have a new hobby:
drums

I'm learning how to play the drum set!!! OMG. I love it so much. I've been taking lessons weekly since January. My teacher, David, is awesome. I feel so happy when I practice, and that's unusual for me, because I've never been able to learn an instrument before. I think it was reading music and understanding the tones and pitch and all the other things that you have to do to read music. But with drums, it is much easier. You just have to count, but you don't have different tones. It is either a beat or not. It is just so much fun. I bought a set of Roland electric drums to practice on at home, and it's really helping.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the drums later, but it does take me about an hour every day to practice my 'homework' from the lesson, so my knitting has been relegated to before bed or during lunch at home.

i like this one too

In other news, I ripped out the sweater back I'd started over the weekend, and started a cabled raglan baby sweater instead. The good thing about having that sweater back was that it acted as a giant swatch, so wisely, I took the gauge before ripping it out, and used that to find another pattern on Ravelry, using their advanced search function. I'd always meant to make this pattern sooner or later, so I just figured, well, why not now? I think in the blue color, it won't be too girly. I think I might have a puppy dog button or something, so that might help too. It's coming out ok, although I'm concerned that I might lose track of where I am. There's a lot of counting involved. We'll see!

love this one!

Sunday, July 04, 2010

Happy Independence Day!

I hope everyone got a chance to see some fireworks. They're really the best thing about the holiday, aside from the extra day off! We skipped the trek down to the Hudson this year and just watched the Macy's fireworks on TV along with the soundtrack. I've seen them up close back when they were off the West Side Highway FDR [edited to correct my late night stupidity--geez.], and they are spectacular, but now that they're on the Hudson, there's no reason to go into the city. We could see them here, if we wanted to. Last year was the first year they did the big display on the Hudson, and it was an absolute zoo down by the waterfront. Since we're in the midst of a heat wave right now, the last thing I wanted to do was stand around in a huge crowd for hours waiting, sweating... You get the picture!

Anyway, just as the USA is a work in progress, I've got a new WIP:

baby sweater back

This is the back of a baby sweater. I've been working on it all weekend, when I've had time to knit. AAAnnd I'm about to rip it out. Look at that arm hole! It's HUGE. No, since you asked, I did not check the gauge. I figured that everything would just proportionally work out bigger. But instead, I ended up with an 8" armhole. ARGH. So, into the frog pond it goes! And I'm going to try another pattern--this time, I'm going to do a top-down raglan. The yarn's from the stash--it's leftover KnitPicks Shine Sport from Isabella's skirt. I was going to knit the back in one color, then each front side in a different, and the sleeves in a fourth, but now, I think I'm just going to start in one color, knit until it's gone, then go to the next, and so forth, in fat stripes. Let's hope this works out better than the last time.

I'm also working on the second half of my clementine shawlette, finally. It's been hanging around, half done, for about 5 or 6 months. I love the alpaca silk yarn that it's made from,and I am really enjoying the pattern. I'm not sure why I left it for so long. Anyway, that's now my "at work" knit. On hold is the second of Spanky's toe-up socks. I'm just not looking forward to the cast on. I don't really like the crochet chain provisional cast on. But I'm trying new things. I'm just going to wait on that one until I'm finished with either the baby sweater or the clementine.

And that's it! I think that's enough for now, right? I run a pretty tight rotation of projects or else I end up anxious because nothing gets done.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Fridays are officially out

I was in bed this morning waiting for my mother to call, as she does every Saturday, and it occurred to me that I'd forgotten to post yesterday! And I almost gave up altogether. But you know what? Fridays are hard! Spanky always wants to go out, so I either give in, and then have too many margaritas, or I fend off her pleas to eat out and go home, which means I inevitably end up working late and then scrounging in the fridge for week-old vegetables to make some sort of dinner from. And then it's close to ten pm, and the dog needs walking and so forth. And as I was laying there in the bed, I figured FUCK IT. Fridays are out! I'm giving myself permission to skip Fridays.

So that brings us to today. Which was relatively quiet. Spanky watched Spain advance in the endless World Cup, and I watched the rest of a very charming indie movie called Dakota Skye on Netflix Instant on my computer. It's about a girl in HS that can tell when people lie to her and what they really mean, so she's discounted all human interactions as being inauthentic, and then she meets the one boy who doesn't ever lie to her...or does he? It's a cute movie, and a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon when you can't stand those damn soccer horns anymore.

Anyhow, I thought as a Saturday treat, and since I'm not prepared with photos of partially knitted items, I thought I'd talk about podcasts for a sec. I know if you are a knitter, chances are you listen to at least a few. I like podcasts a lot, because I commute on the train, and although I sometimes listen to music or the occasional audiobook, a lot of times I'll just put on a podcast. They are engaging on one level, and just boring enough that if something happens, and you have to dodge a car or something, you don't feel like you have to rewind because really, mostly they're just people blathering on about their own knitting, right? So if you miss a few minutes of that because you've tuned it out, no harm done. I'm going to go with my top seven, out of the many available:

1. Stash and Burn has got to be my favorite. I love Jenny and Nicole, and I never really get annoyed with them. They play good music, they're honest about what they like and dislike without being too judgmental or mean about it, and they just seem like girls I'd like to be friends with. I also like that it started out as a podcast about working through their stash, and after a year or so of that, they relaxed that into a more realistic view of yarn acquisition. Sometimes I wish they were dealing with it more directly again, but the do bring it up. Also, they have a pretty awesome group on Ravelry.

2. Cast On is also really always worth it. Brenda Dayne has probably the most professional sounding podcast, with actual segments and musical breaks, and so forth. I do find parts tedious, like the songs, which are usually all the same type, and rather boring, I think. But they're easy enough to fast forward through, and I appreciate her story-telling ability, her intelligence, and the fact that she's a sister. Oh, also the fact that she's not a twenty-something woman. I like having varied perspectives on knitting. Not everyone is into the same thing, and sometimes it's cool to hear from people who know more than you about something.

3. Sticks and String, which I'm sure you all listen to as well. David Reidy is an Australian guy who knits, and he's got pretty entertaining stories as well. Plus, it's interesting having been to Australia, to hear him talk about places I visited in Sydney. Also, I like the way he organizes the podcast. He's got general chit chat, an essay, ONE song, and then more chit chat. And the music he picks is instrumental most of the time, and sort of new-agey, but in a non-annoying way. Most of the time, I find that I'm half way through the song before I realize that the music is playing, so it's very soothing.

4. The Savvy Girls Podcast is a relatively new one for me. I didn't think I would like this one, but I really, really do. I think it's pretty underrated. The podcast is put together by two sisters, one of whom lives in South America (but apparently travels a lot for work), and the other is a classically trained opera singer living in NYC. They must work really hard on the podcast, because it is well-done, and they have really smart segments as well. Plus, the most hilarious singing gerbils. You'll just have to listen to see what I mean, but the first time I heard them, I was laughing out loud walking down the street on my way to work. SO FUNNY.

5. Knit Science is a great podcast put together by Miriam Quinn, a Puerto Rican lawyer living in Arizona. She's awesome, and she does manage to put together a "Knitting Scientific" section each podcast. I like that she's a working woman, with a family, but obviously also with a really professional job that demands a lot of her time, and she still manages not only to knit, but to podcast about knitting! Plus, her little son comes on at the end to tell these great little stories. He's so cute and earnest!

6. Knitcents is a podcast about knitting on a budget. Roue, the girl who hosts the podcast, has green tips and does manage to talk about what she's knitting and things she's been up to in her life. This is a pretty new find for me, so I'm not all the way caught up yet, but so far, I'm really digging it. She's much less polished than any of these other top five, but she's so earnest and honest about what she does to save money that you can't help but like her.

7. The Doubleknit Podcast is also a relatively new find for me, and I'm not totally caught up yet. I REALLY LOVE how they talk about books and movies/tv because again, they sound like people I could hang out with and be really comfortable around for the most part. They seem really smart.

Just this past Tuesday, coming back from my drums lesson, I got to the episode where Jessica, one of the hosts, has this pissy little rant about "coldsheeping" (like going "cold turkey" only with the wool--just completely stopping buying yarn for a distinct amount of time) and how people get so nuts about it, and how those people should just get over themselves and relax and buy yarn if they want to. I remember how this blew up a little bit on the Stash and Burn fans group board on Ravelry, and how I was a little confused (not having listened to the Doubleknit podcast yet) and thinking that it couldn't be that bad, but I feel like both sides kind of misunderstood each other now that I've listened to the actual rant. I went back and forth about this and whether or not I was just taking it personally, but I think that yarn buying and whether to stop or stockpile is a very personal decision, and I think the 'coldsheeping' thread on the Stash & Burn board is about many people with similar goals coming together to support each other in paring down and using some of the yarn they've bought before buying more in a more mindful fashion. My motivation for cutting back my yarn buying was to actually use some of the yarn I have. I live in a 1 bdrm apartment, which is literally two rooms, a closet, and a bathroom. I have all Spanky's shit in here, plus my library of books, plus bins and bins of yarn that I bought to use on projects that I've since forgotten. It's good yarn, and I intended to use it when I bought it, but because I work at a full time job and have other interests, my knitting time is limited. I need to reclaim some of that space.

Anyway, I felt like she was scoffing at someone's decision to stop buying yarn without really trying to understand why someone might want to do that, and I don't think Erin really tried to defend the other side to make it a more even argument, even though I've seen her post on the S&B page and I think she could have articulated the argument of those people had she been able to get a word in edge-wise until the end. I know there is room for disagreement around the issue, but there are legitimate reasons for wanting to take a break from consumption, and I just felt like they ended up too far over to the other side of the issue. Harsh, man. And ever since that episode, I have just noticed that sometimes Jessica can come across as dismissive of other opinions in other situations on the podcast too, which is disappointing, because I think it has impacted what I think of the podcast as a whole. But 98% of it is wonderful, and I like how focused they are on sweaters. I also like that they finish so much stuff, despite having kids and other interests. I aspire to knit like that. Plus, they read and watch the same sorts of stuff I do. I hope that cold-sheeping thing was just someone having a bad day and that if everyone met up to have an actual conversation, that we'd all learn from one another. So far, restraining myself from buying yarn has really made me question what is important to me and when I'm tempted, why I want to buy whatever it is. It's an interesting experiment, and I can't wait to see what else I'll learn on the road to paring down the stash.

Whew, got a little off-topic there at the end, but the one thing you can gather from the ones I've picked, is that I really don't enjoy those podcasts that go on and on about what's available online, or what great yarn they've just bought, or talking at length about roving or colorways or how gorgeous such and such yarn is. The only time I like hearing about that stuff is when it is in relation to a project that someone is actually working on. For example, if they're working on a sweater in a particular yarn, I appreciate hearing what they think of working with it, but I don't care about yarn for yarn's sake anymore. Or maybe I never did. I love a great color or a great texture as much as the next person, but I don't want my stash to be a collection of art pieces. I want it to be a rotating store of tools that I can use to do particular jobs.

I also like it when podcasters talk about their lives outside of their knitting. I like hearing about peoples' jobs or their families, or other interests they have. It makes them more easy to relate to, and I like that peek at someone else's life, especially if it is different from mine.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

you thought i'd forget!

ha ha. I almost did! Already! The first of the month. Boy, I suck. But here I am, in Spanky's elephant t-shirt, tucked up in our bed, about to finish my book, and I have time to tap out a quick entry before collapsing. I have so many topics for this month! I'm excited to tell you about all of them. But a little at a time, or I'll never make it. Tonight, I have:

FO #10:Travelling Woman

travelling woman shawl

This was so much fun to knit. Seriously, y'all. I was done in like four days. The pattern is easy, but there's enough going on that it's not boring. I love the lace part:

shawl detail again

And I love the shape and the size, and basically everything about it. I decided to block it without the points. It curls up a bit, but that's fine. Mine turned out to be about 44" across and 17" down the spine, which is a few inches smaller than the pattern suggests is possible, but it's perfect for warding off the chill of the a/c in the office.

travelling woman shawl

Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot sock yarn. It's a really squishy merino/mohair/nylon blend. I got the Copper colorway from The Lamb Shoppe, the same Denver yarn store where I got the Done Roving from last night's post. I'm sure it's pretty obvious that the colors all go together to scream "autumn". Except that it turns out that copper is good anytime, not just in the fall. I am not sure I would ever use this yarn for socks. It seems like socks made out of a mohair blend yarn would be too hot. But it's super-soft and seems perfect for shawls and scarves, and other pieces that show off the handpainted colors and the glossiness of the yarn.

new specs

Wow. In this picture, you can really see how HUGE my new glasses are. Geez. But I really love them anyway. Nerd-tastic. Anyway, eyes back to the shawl. It's perfect. It's exactly what I wanted, although I should have tried to do three repeats of the main chart instead of chickening out at 2. I only had the one skein, and I was scared of running out, but I should have just put in a life line after the second repeat of the first chart and then tried to finish another one before doing the edge, because now I have a handball-sized ball of yarn (I know that might be hard to imagine, but it's bigger than a golf ball yet smaller than a tennis ball, but its right about the size of one of those rubber balls that they play handball with, I think.) Anyway, it's a lot of yarn to have left, and I think I might try to make some sort of lace cowl with the rest of the ball.

Needle: Some random Susan Bates 29" size 5 circ. Why do I have this? I have no idea anymore. I can't recall why I have most of the needles that I do. But obviously I do use them occasionally. I actually prefer to use the one-off needles when I can rather than the interchangeables, just because the joins are usually better.

One last look:

shawl detail

Ahhh. All better.