It's a bird, it's a plane, no...

It's a FINISHED OBJECT! One present down for Christmas this year. These socks are a surprise for my sister, whom I tricked into picking the yarn while helping me decide on the colors for the Momsocks, and I cleverly got her to give me her foot measurements without her suspecting a thing. In trying to do something interesting between the two socks I knit one from the inside of the skein and the other from the outside, resulting in not quite matching socks. No pattern to speak of, just your standard 2x2 ribbed socks on #1 needles.
My next project is a pair of Knucks for my FIL (I'm pretty much grounded from any personal knitting for a while, at least until I have a more significant lead on Christmas). And I would have a pretty decent start on these stupid gloves if I didn't so completely suck at casting on. How is it that in 25 years of knitting I still haven't learned a way that really is stretchy and attractive? But that is a gripe for another post. Off to pack* some more.

*By "pack" I mean tape together another box, then stand in my kitchen looking at it and curse quietly.

Oddly compelling

Lest you think I've been wasting all my packing time by creating quilted breakfast food for the monkey...



The chocolate cake is really the coolest thing I've done so far.

Fluff

Instead of getting any meaningful packing done or even posting anything with substance, the monkey and I have been playing kitchen and sewing together. He loves to sit on my lap while I'm at the machine and only touches when it's not moving. Better than actually feeding my family: quilted breakfast.

Weeeee!!!!!!

So what did you do this weekend?

Oww.

Because I don't have enough going on in my life right now, today the universe conspired with a 16 year old driver and I got hit by a car while riding my bike to the gym.
Stupid freaking cages.*
I ended up on her hood (then flying back onto the ground) while my poor bike ended up under her tire. We (the bike and I) were lucky; I so far only have some scratching and bruises, and the bike is looking pretty awesome with her new bad-ass black front tire (the front tire frame was taco'd) and a tune up since everything was out of wack from being hit.
I declined a trip to the hospital; we were up there with the Monkey last week and I'm sure they are getting tired of me. I'll re-evaluate the knee tomorrow.

*Be the first to name that literary reference and I've got a prize for you, no jokes.

Knit Sock Kit Swap

I received the best package in the mail from Jenny, my Knit Sock Kit Swapper the other day! I am hugely spoiled. She sent me a great embroidered polka dot bag that already contains my sock-in-progress (retiring my crappy ziplock bag), a matching needle holder containing an addi turbo needle (my first!), stitch markers, stitch holders, a cute measuring tape so I can be cool like the girls at the SnB, delicious candy that you can see from the picture has already been sampled significantly, and a booklet about Magic Loop. And best of all, she sent me two skeins of Regia Stretch in the extremely awesome Camouflage color. Holy smokes, it is even cooler than everyone says it is. Browns, greens and blacks; my favorite colors all wrapped up in one fantastic elastic yarn. Thank you so much Jenny!
One more dyeing of the sock yarn for my secret partner and my box will be ready to mail. I hope she loves it as much as I adore my present.

Adultery

I am slowly staggering along on the Project That Would Not End, and I admit that I am beginning to have feelings of...infidelity. I'm tired of knitting away on a project that does not change in any easily perceived way. The socks I'm working on are getting a lot more attention than the shawl, absolutely due to the actual progress the sock makes. Meanwhile, the shawl hangs there, looking not unlike the string bags I carry my groceries home in. It's impossible to really even show someone who is interested, I usually end with "it's hard to tell, but someday it will be really beautiful!"
Yeah.
So my cheating heart is looking around seeing all these beautiful shawls (I obviously really want to work on a lace shawl, I just want one that will someday be finished. And isn't such a mindbender trying to figure how one pattern transitions into the next when you finish a row) and I admit to having feelings for a number of other patterns. Mims Adamas shawl pattern is right here, literally hanging on the wall in front of my desk. It is especially tempting because I recently bought a giant cone of Zephyr in white, and it whispers so seductively.
"I'm such a dream to knit with. You could dye me any color-you have dozens of packs of Kool-aid. You could knit right off the cone. Over 5000 yards, I'm anything you want me to be!"
Please just let me finish this thing. It has been a long time in the works.

Rain, plus more jam

It rained again last night and now everything is so fresh and cool; a beautiful 68°. Apparently the ideal temperature for me. It has been a busy week in my little world, in preparation for moving I had to clean out the bedrooms in the inlaw's house that we are moving in to. The only kid living at home with them for two years has been our drummer Sean, who behaves like a gas and expands to fit the space provided. Since there are two free bedrooms and three bathrooms available for his use, he has expanded to use all of this space to one degree or another. Between his crap and the ginormous collection of polo shirts acquired at trade shows, the closets were no small task. I feel honest fear about the time when I will claim one of the bathrooms as ours and clean it out. But I was then able to bring in a few big rubbermaid boxes, filled with Christmas decorations and baby clothes, giving me a warm glow of accomplishment that I so don't deserve. Yep, three boxes, I'm practically moved already.
Due to the overwhelming popularity of the Cherry Nectarine jam, and it's subsequent disappearance, the Monkey and I made another batch yesterday. Soooooo delicious! I maintained a little more creative control during the blender portion of thejamss construction, so it is a little more chunky this time (the Monkey prefers to blend everything into oblivion). Hopefully I will have the good sense to stash these jars instead of handing them out to family again

Hiking

This weekend we took the Monkey hiking in Alta. He does better and better while we are out, but still does a considerable amount of sniveling while being forced to walk uphill. I think he's so happy to have Marc around all the time that he wants to constantly be carried by him. We saw hummingbirds and squirrels and a pica that a clueless youth group was absolutely delighted to see, as they all thought it was a beaver. No moose on our trip, the Cecret lake trail is waaaaaay to crowded for them. Too crowded for me too, but it still is a beautiful area so I'll put up with the crowds once a year or so. The Project that Would Not End came too, and enjoyed the amazing wildflowers that still blanket the mountains.

Hurray!

We are finally home and back to normal after the Bar exam, which took us to Boise for 5 days. I'm really glad to be back home, and the monkey is too, based on his much improved behavior. Still broke, still unemployed, still have to move by the end of August, but I'm focusing on the fun stuff that we get to do while we have a lot of free time together. I'm even getting some knitting done! Still clicking away on The Project That Will Never End (aka Shetland tea shawl), working on a sock for Christmas, and finished a Sophie bag a week or so ago.

Pattern: Sophie from MagKnits
Yarn: Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Winter Night
Alterations: I cast on 50 stitches instead of 39, because I carry around a lot of stuff for the Monkey. I followed the pattern for decrease rows, but knit an extra 8 or 9 rows after the last decrease. I made the handle longer too.
In retrospect I probably didn't need to make the bag bigger since it has become a project bag for The Project That Will Never End. I will definitely re-block and maybe further felt the bag in order to make is a little more tapered towards the top.

I crave the normal

I will start updating this again with some frequency in a little less than a week, when my life returns to as normal and predictable as it ever is. But for now, it is going to remain a little erratic.
For those interested in my band, we are playing tonight at a club called The Circuit (7711 South 700 West). We'll be up at around 9:00pm. If you are interested in going, I've scanned in a sheet of discount passes that will get you in the door for just $5. Just print them out and please be sure to write Lucky Dragon - Erin on the back of the pass. Streetlight Silhouette, Blame the Sea and 4 Saken 1 will be playing too, so it should be a really good show. This is the first all-ages show we will have played (read: non-bar) so it will be interesting to see how it goes. I hope to see you there!

Dry those eyes!

I just finished reading Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears. My goodness she is a hoot. I will probably not use any of her sweater patterns anytime soon--I fear no seams and think set-in sleeves look best, but her overall knitting advice is very sound and practical. And again, she is hilarious. Best quote:

Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.

Lazy Sunday

Another lazy lazy weekend here, due more than a little to the unbelievable heat outside. Last night at 1am it was 84 F outside, too ridiculously hot to sleep. Thank goodness for air conditioning; wo/man's greatest triumph over nature!
Continuing on my efforts to feed my little family, yesterday I made more jam. Just in case we decide to eat nothing but peanut butter sandwiches between now and whenever we move in August. Three big jars of Cherry-Nectarine, yum! They look a lot like the jars from Thursday's post, only red. I've come to the conclusion that I'll pack these carefully in the boxes that will not be opened until we are wherever the Air Force sends us, probably in December. That way we will have something delicious and homemade, wherever we end up.
Marc's last day at his job was Friday, blah. But to see it with a positive light, now he can spend the next week cramming for the Bar exam. As it is only the most important test he'll probably ever take, we are going to call this a good thing. I'm not really concerned about him passing, he is a very smart guy and great at taking tests. But there still is that abstract fear in the back of your mind any time something this big is coming up. Just one and a half weeks though, and the anticipation is over!

Where have I been anyway?

Today I got up and actually got things done from my list, amazingly enough. I haven't been sick for a couple of days, but it really took me a while to get back on my feet. It feels like I've been laying around for weeks, getting nothing done. And while nothing is a bit of an exaggeration, it only just barely falls into exaggeration territory. I've been staying afloat and nothing more. But today has seen the bathroom and kitchen cleaned, the house vacuumed, and jam made, and it's only half past noon. Behold the beauty of the jam!
Apricot-Pineapple! Apricots from the trees in my in-laws backyard, and pineapple from... Indonesia, according to the label on the can. Global economy at its most delicious! It does seem a little silly to be making jam though, as our move out of our deluxe apartment in the sky looms close in my mind (still a month and a half away, but I'm really dreading the thought). Since the Air Force has not yet decided to send Marc to Japan, we have to make other plans. Currently that means moving in the with in-laws at the end of August, and staying there until mid-October when Marc goes to Maxwell AFB and I float to California. I love Marc's family but still feeling apprehensive and sad about the move. It feels like one more useless step between us and whatever the future holds.
Wow, I had no intention of unloading like this today, I really meant this to be a positive post. I guess what is really there is oozing through my cracks more than I thought.

Ouch

Ok, I apologize for the omission from today's earlier post. I am on pain meds because I have one awful aching oozing case of strep throat, and it has caused an abscess on my tonsil. Needless to say, I feel like shit. I can barely even knit.

FIRE BABY!

Yesterday some pretty cool thunder and lightning blew in for the 4th of July, bringing with it delightful cool temperatures. So we opened up the windows and turned off the AC (it was smelling weird anyway, like something blew into the big water tower outside). Fast forward to this afternoon. Remember the weird smell in the AC last night? This afternoon I turned on the AC and looked down the hall, and there were FLAMES in the air intake. Little flames, but flames non the less. So I calmly unscrewed the thing, popped out the filter and patted out the fire. Go me! Maintenance is up here now replacing a fuse (the part that was on fire). Way to go original fuse! I thought your job was to prevent this kind of fun. It was probably the pain meds that kept me calm, otherwise I might have been more concerned about being very sick and having a naked toddler (he's potty training himself) while my apartment went up in smoke.

Ooo, pretty

So, somebody somewhere is doing some sort of posting involving pictures of the sky, which I could very easily look up but I'm making ice cream and it is almost done. Anyway, the sky is so beautiful right now I wanted to share. Have a wonderful evening.

Yipee!

Thanks to all the creative energy flying around the room at the SnB last night I actually figured out what my problem was and fixed it. Mim and Shelley were especially nice as I sat there and stared at my pattern for easily 30 minutes, knitting and then tinking the same 14 stitches over and over. It seems I missed a YO on one side of the pattern and picked up some random loop on the other side, making my overall count ok but still nothing was fitting.
Now if I stare at everything else for long enough, maybe my next move will become clear...

Arg.

Overall, the knitting on my Shetland Tea Shawl has gone extremely smoothly. Until tonight. I'm not really sure what the problem is, in fact, yesterday I finally figured out what the heck they are talking about when they talk about moving the stitch markers, and why I should do that. But I either have a missing stitch or my markers are just scattered helter skelter through my stitches or something. At least I've isolated the problem; it is definitely somewhere within the lace.

Strangest thing I've knit

I was kind of burned out for a few days from working on nothing but the big-ass shawl, so last night I started Nautie from Knitty. Very weird and cool, plus a good use of the crappy Red Heart I have floating around since before I started knitting with decent yarn a few years ago. The green of the shell is Wool-ease, and not bad to work with at all. The cream is the tiniest fraction of a giant skein of Red Heart, and is nearly impossible to touch with knitting needles. I've been knitting for 24 years, how did it take me so long to pick up decent wool? Anyway, since I started this I am full of ideas of who I know that needs such a strange knitted object. My mom is a science teacher, of course she needs one! Brother in law and his wife just had a baby-and what better toy could an infant have than the weirdest thing in the ocean? My cousin is pregnant, hurray! A pink one for her baby-in-waiting. Tomorrow I'll pick up some googly eyes for the wacky little guy.