yarntherapy

have a happy and a merry!

Well, I hope everyone had a fab Christmas. I celebrated by spinning my silk hankie and watching the first three Harry Potter films. Woo!

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging in the next few weeks - my computer is hanging on by a thread, and when I went down to Tekserve to buy a new iBook for myself as a Christmas present, the nice sales guy advised that I wait a couple of weeks until the new models are released after the MacWorld expo. So, I am taking advantage of this moment when my computer seems to be cooperating to back up some files and post this quickie update.

I will definitely be back once I'm up and running, with lots of projects and photos!

Happy New Year, everyone!

bizarroworld

Hell has clearly frozen over.

First of all, the transit workers actually did it - they walked. No buses, no subways. It's crazy, but surprisingly less difficult than I thought it would be - I conquered my fear of walking across the bridge I hate and I got to work pretty easily via Metro-North. I decided to share a cab home which turned out to be a bit of a costly mistake - taxis are operating on a zone system and charge a flat fee per person, so the concept of sharing a cab to split the cost doesn't exist. In general, I'll be paying through the nose to travel - even Metro North at $4 each way is more than double what I pay normally. It was nice not to have to walk home in the cold, though.

Now, I am feeling fairly positive about this, you'll notice. Check back in a couple of days - this is going to grow old very fast.

And I just got home to discover that something even more crazy and unlikely just happened - the Yankees signed Johnny freakin' Damon to play centerfield.

I think I need to go lie down now.

well, hello again

Man, Typepad really did a number on us, huh? I seem to have escaped unscathed - it looks like all my content is intact. In fact, that last post was one I thought had gotten eaten by the web - I had no success posting it last Thursday, but I guess Typepad hung on to it and added it once they got things straightened out. So, thanks, I guess.

Let's see if I can get some pictures up now.....

Well, lookie there - it's a Glampyre Cabled Cardi! And yes, it is the sweater that's bulky, not me. I love it, though I think I'm going to tweak the center front a bit by adding some grosgrain to stabilize it. It doesn't like to stay buttoned and I don't want the front edges to get all stretched out.

This is the yarn I bought for Tubey - Austermann Mayfair from Elann. The dark blue in front will be the main color and the stripes will be the various brighter colors in back. I need to play with stripe placement - some things just don't need accentuating, you know?

Well, I need to get back to finishing my brother's stocking, gift wrapping, packing up, and shipping everything to Seattle. Then I need to pray to the transportation gods that there isn't a strike tonight - yes, it's a bit of deja vu. They extended the deadline to tonight at midnight but it still doesn't look good. Argh.

I'm on strike

Feh. Well, I seem to have a case of the blogging blues, a syndrome which seemed to hit a few bloggers over the summer. Nothing seems to be interesting or worth writing about, and the big post I had a couple of days ago got eaten up when Firefox froze on me. I am the most boring knitter in the world.

So here I am at 1:34 in the morning glued to NY1, watching the reporters get tongue-tied from exhaustion, hoping against hope that there won't be transit strike tomorrow (well, later today, actually.) My transportation situation will be pretty grim if they do strike - right now, I don't have a day off until Christmas day, and I'm filling in for two other people and I'm kind of the only person who really knows either job - not going to work is not so much an option. Unless the taxi fairy blesses me (at $25 each way), I'll be walking 20 minutes to the MetroNorth Station at 225th St, and taking that to Grand Central, then walking another 15-20 minutes to work. Then doing it in reverse to get home. At midnight. In December.

Awesome.

I know it could be worse - at least I don't have to be at work at 9am - right now we still don't know what will happen - the deadline was midnight, but they're still meeting - and it's conceivable that you could wake up to a nasty surprise. At least I travel at off-peak hours. At least I live sort of near a MetroNorth station (though it's across this bridge that scares the shit out of me - I've actually never walked across it, I get panic attacks whenever I try.)

Have I mentioned that it's December? And it's sleeting outside?

Anyway.

The knitting, she is not going so well either. The cardigan for my niece? My gauge was so horribly off that even if I had just decided to make it bigger I would have run out of yarn. Frogged.

The Blu jeans for Al's new baby? I was sure the Den-M-Nit had the same yardage as the Rowan Denim, but apparently not. I started the first leg to find that it was obvious I would run out of yarn - when the sizes are this teeny, a 3-yard difference is a huge deal. I frogged and will try knitting the smaller size - it's all about the cute factor, anyway.

I can't even seem to craft properly - I need to remake my brother's Christmas stocking (um, soon!) and I brought it to work today to copy - unfortunately I forgot to bring the new fabric with me. I guess I'll crank it out tomorrow so I can get it in the mail ASAP - in case a transit strike screws up traffic enough to affect UPS. It's no joke that the city will be paralyzed.

Well, I tried to post a couple of photos of some new yarn and the Glampyre cardi, but Typepad refuses to cooperate. It's a plot, I tell you.

I'm on strike.

I am Knitty's bitch

Seriously. It is such a happy day when a new Knitty is out, and this one just rocks. So many patterns! So many good articles! Such.... good vibes, you know? Happy happy.

So, yeah, I'm on the Tubey bandwagon along with the rest of blogdom, and not just because it has the same name as the mascot of my other favorite website. It's a rocking sweater - I love the faux-shrug-square-neckline thing. I've already ordered yarn for it - not the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran - too $pendy right now and I didn't really like it when I used it for Tempting. I found it too.....fluffy, I guess, and it started to pill really quickly. I ordered a bunch of Austermann Mayfair from Elann - I had a sample skein, swatched this morning and for once I got gauge with the first attempt. Now, that's a sign. It's way cheap - $2.48 for a 131 yd ball. I'm not totally feeling the horizontal stripes, so I got a dark navy as the base color (enough to make it a solid color if I choose) and a ball or two of a bunch of other colors so I can experiment. I want to get some color variation in there, but I need to be careful where I place the stripes, you know? Some areas don't need accentuating.

Then, there's Blu. I mean, seriously - how cute is this pattern? I have a friend who is adopting a baby boy this week, so this will be a perfect gift - I can even personalize the label since they already picked out a name. I ordered the Den-M-Nit from Elann - $3.25 a ball, so the whole deal will cost less than thirteen bucks. Sweet.

Lots of other good stuff - as you know, I am a huge fan of Jenna Adorno's stuff, and Tempting II is another hit. Chaos might be fun exercise, and I am going to make a Knecklace or two out of all the leftover bits I have in the closet.

And to top off all the Knitty goodness, there is this article, which gives detailed instructions on how to spin silk hankies! Now I get it - I wasn't sure what you were supposed to do but now it makes perfect sense, and I can't wait to finish up with my wool so I can free up the spindle.

Woo! Enough gushing, time to knit!

self portrait tuesday...

Well, sort of - I'm not "officially" participating in Self Portrait Tuesday, but I've been wanting to play with some photography exercises and this month's SPT theme is "reflective surfaces". So here I am, reflected in my very dusty Toshiba television screen. I would love to really play with this photo when I have the time - I do kind of love the glow of the two lamps in the background. This is pretty mundane - check out the SPT blog and participants for some truly amazing pictures.

This is also the prelude to a finished object photo - I put buttons on the cabled cardi and I'm wearing it here, but I'll post a better picture tomorrow!

spinny spin spin!

Gayle and I had a little spinning party between shows last week..... so. fun. I don't think I'm really doing anything right, but I have a spindleful of something that vaguely resembles actual yarn, so I guess that's good.

I'm using the spindle & fiber I bought ages ago on eBay. It's an OK spindle, but I think I will go try some out in person, maybe at the Yarn Tree, and get another one. Gayle's is a top whorl, and I want to feel what the difference is. Hers sure is pretty - check it out:

OK,  bad picture of the pretty spindle, but check out the yummy merino-silk she's spinning with. Soft as a cloud, I tell you. I can't wait to tackle some of the stuff my back-tack pal sent me - there is a merino tencel that is so soft and silky and slinky, and the silk hanky is a mystery waiting to be solved. My goal with this batch of spinning is to get more confident with what I'm doing before I plunge into my back-tack stuff. I don't have the hang of drafting at all, but I found that pre-drafting helps immensely and I was getting really consistent results by the end of the day.

Hey, look, Noel Coward wants to spin, too!

Dude, you might want to put the cigarette down before you pick up the fiber. Just a thought.