January 2007 Archives

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Originally uploaded by kerner.

Wow! Taking pictures during daylight hours makes such a difference!

Here's a dachshund's eye view of my progress on the Lizard Ridge afghan.  I've got 16 squares done so far (8 to go), but I might do a couple extras to get some prettier color schemes.

I've also managed to get Tammy hooked on the pattern - here's her very first square! 

Also per Tammy's request, Six Wierd Things about me!  

1.  I like lima beans.  Ummmm... yum.  (Really!)

2.  I hardly ever watch movies, but when I do, I really like ones that follow a particular formula - a bunch of different people and all these different stories and they all come together somehow in the end.   

3.  I was named after a prize-winning dairy cow.  (According to my dad, that is.  My mom vehemently denies this!)

4.   I've always lived in Missouri, except for that one year, when I lived in Spain. 

5.  I have a phobia of eyes.  I couldn't put contacts in my eyes until I was 22 (trying since 8th grade!) and I can't think of anything that creeps me out more than when people flip their eyelids inside out.  

6.  Sometimes, when I'm laughing at something, I start laughing really, really, really hard and can't stop for a looong time.  I think this first happened on a long car trip to Colorado with my family when I was about 12, and we started calling it "the jollies."  Usually this happens with really random things that just strike me as funny.  It happened at work once, which was a little embarrassing.  

It seems like everyone has already done this meme, but if anyone wants to.... go for it! 

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Originally uploaded by kerner.

The STASH has arrived.  (Dachshund for scale.)

For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, this big room is traveling to knitters all around the country as part of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Stash, organized by Annie from Annie Knits.  If you're interested in seeing where the STASH has been, it has its very own blog right here.

The STASH arrived on my doorstep two Fridays ago, just as the first wave of freezing rain was starting to fall across the northern Missouri Ozarks.  Little did I know, as I eagerly ripped into the box, spread its contents across my living room floor, sort all its contents into little piles, and start to decide what I wanted to keep, that in only a couple of hours my power would go out from the ice storm and not come on again for over a week.  

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Originally uploaded by kerner.

But enough about the friggin' storm already!  Luckily, before the lights went out I managed to snap a photo of the box before I started tearing into it.

Yep, that thing is chock-full of good stuff, for all different types of knitting projects.  It's not just yarn, either.  There's books, needles, patterns for more. 

I really wanted to keep that pink Lopi on top, but I couldn't figure out what to do with 6 skeins - too much for a scarf, not enough for a sweater.  I guess it would be good for a child's sweater, but I doubt Lucy (my dachshund) would appreciate it.  =)

There was so much of the box that I considered keeping, but...

Here's what you're really wondering.  What did I take from the STASH?

I know it's not much compared to the massive STASH box, but I'm really happy with what I got:

-3 skeins of Some Assembly Required sock yarn (the two pink and green skeins will become knee socks someday!)

-pink Opal self-striping sock yarn

- green Arucania Nature Wools worsted weight

- green Cascade 220 (for seaming and edging the Lizard Ridge afghan)

- red & green sportweight skeins (for my very first (successful) colorwork?!)(I hope.)

- a sock pattern, darning needles, and Size 5 DPNs 

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Originally uploaded by kerner.

In consideration for the above-stated chattels, said stashee shall provide and convey the following: (oh wait, I'm not at work.  Here's what I put in.)

- Some random novelty yarns

- one skein yellow handpaintedyarn.com bulky

- KnitPicks Woold of the Andes - one green and two orange skeins 

- two hand-dyed superwash skeins of sock yarn - multi-toned pink and neon green 

- three skeins Cascade Fixation

- gray Opal self-striping sock yarn

- 4 skeins of Rowan baby soft, hand-dyed green by me

- two samples of Euclan woolwash & 4 blank notecards

- handknit scabled scarf from a misguided attempt to sell my knitting (note - people do not want to pay what it's worth!)

- Several skeins of burgandy OnLine Linie Cup (wool/acrylic)   

Whew!  That's the STASH rundown!  Who will get it next??? 

(FYI - this post might be really boring, but it's more of a reminder for me than for you lovely readers.)

Stuff to update on since the ice storm:

- More Lizard Ridge afghan squares (how many do I have now?  No more yarn left, so this project might be on hold for a while)

- Sorta Custom-fit Raglan Sweater (almost done with the body of the sweater... what kind of edging around the bottom edge and neck?   Write down tweaks/notes on pattern.)

- Silk Shrug seaming... it's all done, but it doesn't look good at all.  Turns out my plan to save time by slipping the edge stitches isn't working out.  This yarn was pretty expensive, so I'm going to have to redo it.  But the good news is that it fits and most of the work is done. 

- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Stash box arrived just before the ice storm hit.  I've finally had a chance to sort through it, so I'll post photos of my "finds" and what I'm contributing to the MegaStash. 

- Start running again and blogging about it every Friday.  I'm getting so lazy! 

Please stay tuned for your regularly scheduled knit-blogging. 

It came on sometime very early this morning.  Yippee!  And just in time for Heroes, too.  =)

Still no power this morning.  I finally broke down and faced facts.  All the food in the fridge and freezer are, to put it nicely, not good eats.  I've actually known this for a while, since we've had an unidentified purple liquid oozing out of our freezer for the past couple of days.  I was just too scared to open the door and find out what it was, especially after work, in the dark, trying to find my way through the house with a flashlight and shivering all the while. 

Anyway, fast forward to this morning.  It's daylight, and I need to clean out the fridge.  Sum total of what could be saved?  A bag of walnuts and a box of wine.  (Yes, I'm that classy.  But it was one of the FANCY box wines!)   Cleaning up the purple puddle (defrosted frozen berries, I think) turned out to be pretty difficult, but I managed to only splash the stuff all over myself a couple times while sopping it up with paper towels.  (As if not having power wasn't annoying enough.)

City Utilities is now saying it will be next Friday or Saturday before everyone's power is restored.  I really hope the temperatures stay warm enough that my pipes don't freeze. 

I realized this morning that while this whole thing has been incredibly annoying, I do feel like someone's been looking out for me.  On Thursday afternoon, the relative that my husband and I had been staying with called me to say "This isn't working out."  Basically, my dog was bothering his wife so we were getting kicked out. 

I called my uncle Randy, who as far as I knew still didn't have power or water (everyone on wells lost their water when the power went out).  Amazingly, his power had just been restored about an hour before I called.  His family had been staying at his in-law's house in Nixa, where there was power but no actual in-laws, because they left for Texas just before the storm hit.  Since Randy was moving back into his own house, he offered to let us stay at the empty house in Nixa.  This is the best possible situation when you are displaced from your house, because you always feel like you're imposing on the person you're staying with and sometimes you just need your own space.  As I mentioned before, our utility company is predicting it could be sometime next weekend when all the power is restored.  Miracle of miracles, the residents of the house where we are staying are not scheduled to return until then, either.  I think that calls for an Amen.

My friend Greg wrote a great narrative about his experience with the ice storm here. 

Thanks for all the encouragement you guys!  The whole "no electricity for a week" thing really sucks, especially with super-cold temps, but I really appreciate all the nice comments you've been leaving, even though I haven't responded to any of them since I don't have power for my home computer. 

This IS supposed to be a knitting blog though, not a whining blog, so.... My custom-fit raglan sweater is coming along nicely, although I've already got a list of things I would tweak when it comes to sizing the pattern.  Also, I had almost finished knitting the body, but I decided to rip out the waist increases because I wasn't doing them right and was getting a little hole above every decrease. 

Turns out that when you're doing an increase by picking up the running yarn in between two stiches, you have to knit into the back of that stitch to avoid a hole.  Actually, yesterday I saw on some blog a description of how to make a right- and left-leaning increase depending on how you pick up the running yarn (front-to-back or back-to-front) and whether you knit into the front or back.  I can't remember the details, but essentially you're twisting the picked up stitch to avoid the hole, so if you twist it in the opposite direction it looks like it's "leaning" in the other direction.  Pretty nifty! 

So, I took a few steps backward on finishing the sweater, but I learned something new!  That's fine by me.  Hopefully by this weekend I'll have power, and I'll be able to curl up on MY OWN couch and knit to my heart's content.  I'll always remember this as the Ice Storm sweater, for better or worse!

and it is really starting to annoy me.  Luckily we've got a warm place to stay, but I'm worried about the pipes freezing, and it's really inconvenient not to be in your own house, and now they're saying on the news that thieves are breaking into the darkened homes, so I'm worried about that too. 

AND to add insult to injury, the forecasters are saying we're goint o get 3-6 inches of snow this weekend.  

Sorry for the gripe-fest, but I need to vent and everyone around here is sick of hearing it. 

Still no power at my house - but I have found a place to stay that has power (for now).  The power crews are supposed to start working today, but the 15 mph winds they're predicting for today can't bode well for all those icy limbs, even if the freezing rain has stopped.  Please send warm thoughts!

Tammy's got some great pictures of the ice posted on her blog here and here.

There are a few positive things going on around here - it's not all doom and gloom:

1.  The Sisterhood of the Traveling Stash box showed up at my house on Friday - yay! 

2.   I've been working on a new sweater for myself out of the remains of Cutaway.  Great yarn, great pattern, but poor finishing techniques doomed that sweater to never be worn.  So, I ripped it during a New Year's cleaning frenzy (with help from ym new ball winder!) and started a top-down raglan.  I'm well past the armholes at this point.  If I'm stuck out of my house for the rest of the week (with nothing to do and nothing else to knit) I'll probably finish the body of the sweater in no time at all!

We lost power this Friday night about 8:30pm.  We tried to go stay in my husband's office at the church, since it still had power & couches to sleep on, but we had to leave because the church was running a shelter and they brought people from the Family Violence Center over, so they had to clear & lock down the building.  Last night we went over to a friend's house that still had power, but trees were breaking left and right in their backyard.  One fell really close to the power line, so he was trying to cut it with a chainsaw and accidentally hit the powerline.  Somehow he didn't get electrocuted, but the power was cut to their house.  We went home adn slept with lots of blankets, and the dog snuggled with us.  This morning we tried to go buy some batteries and/or candles, but Wal-Mart was all sold out.  Now we're up at my office, which amazingly has both power & internet (but nowhere to sleep). 

There's supposed to be  "third wave" of storms coming through this afternoon, but we decided we'd rather brave icy roads later today than be stuck with no power in the house all day.  So far we haven't had too much damage to our trees and none to our house, but LOTS of tree limps are down all over town and they're saying 90% of Springfield and the surrounding areas are without power.  It probably won't be restored until sometime next week (Tuesday at the earliest).

Silk shrug, where are you? Last time we saw you, you were blocking on Zarah's laundry room floor. Has she been paying attention to you? Maybe giving you a sleeve? Or just ignoring you?

This was one of my many knitting cliff-hangers that I left you guys with, oh... quite a while ago now.  I have good news and bad news about the shrug.  First, the bad news of course.  I have not been taking pictures of this thing as it goes along.  Bad blogger!  The goods news?  Well, the shrug is progressing nicely!  I finished the second sleeve last weekend while transitioning back into the real world from vacationland.  I seamed up one sleeve last night, despite my husband's constant interruptions about how cool the iPhone is and making me watch Steve Jobs' keynote speech.  =)

Hopefully I'll be able to get the other sleeve done tonight or tomorrow and start working on the collar.  I made the body quite a bit shorter than the pattern calls for (on Connie's advice), but now I'm starting to get worried that the whole thing will be too small.  I guess the only way to know for sure is to get that other sleeve seamed and try it on. 

I think I've got the comments fixed now, sorry for any problems you might have had! 

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Originally uploaded by kerner.

I love vacations.  I love travelling.  I love time off work.  However, I don't get many vacation days, so I have to make the most of them.  I started 2007 off right by taking a ski trip to Copper Mountain, Colorado with my husband and friends Amanda and Greg.  We rented a ski-in, ski-out condo for the time we were there and skiied all three days. 

I have only skiied on real mountains one other time in my life - three years ago - so the first day was quite a rude awakening.  We went on a green slope, although the rest of the group, who were far more experienced skiers than me, failed to mention that (a) this was not the bunny slope and (b) we had to cross a little bit of blue slope before we got onto the green slope.  

I managed to get down with relatively few falls, but lots of swearing.  Lets just say that it does not feel good to snowplow all the way down the mountain!  I consider myself to be in relatively good shape, but WOW my legs were so sore I was practically in tears.   

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Originally uploaded by kerner.

By the second day, I had moved on from swearing to talking myself through every movement down the slopes and intentionally falling whenever I felt like I was going too fast.  (This was the day I got lots of bruises!)  Still, I could tell I was making progress.  I stuck to the easiest green slope and practiced my turns a lot. 

By the third day, I was ready to go on the rest of the green slopes.  Matt was getting bored so he traded in his skis and signed up for a snowboard lesson.  The helmet seemed like overkill in a beginner's class but it turned out to be a good thing - all the students were lined up on their boards, and apparently one person fell, knocking everyone else down in the process.  He said his head smacked right into the edge of someone else's board, but he didn't feel too much thanks to the helmet.  (That's a good thing!)

I think I would like to go skiing again, but I'll probably take a lesson next time. 

In blog news, you'll notice that I've reworked my sidebar a bit, and signed up for a few new projects.  I've got Project Spectrum, of course, and I've also been wanting to try a fair isle project, so I signed up for the Colorwork Challenge.  In more of a New Year's Resolution vein, I signed up for the 100 mile Runagogo Challenge.

As far as formal New Year's Resolutions, I don't normally make any, but I really want to eat healthier (which I've already been trying to do) and keep my house cleaner, even if it means cutting into my knitting time.  (Boo!)