knitche

So I started a cardigan for myself - “Sandy Cardigan” from Big Girl Knits (because, you know, I’m a big girl now). Anyway…I’m using my accidental purchase from eBay - Noro Kureyon, which I’m loving working with. However….I’m having a problem with gauge, or I think I am. The cardigan works up with four panels made of the Kureyon, knit diagonally. I’m dead on gauge both row and stitch wise and the panel is dead on in width. Length? Well that’s another story. I’m not through yet, but I figure it will finish up about 25″ at best — the pattern says it should be 27″.

After knitting the panel, you pick up along the long edges (with a different yarn - Lamb’s Pride is what’s in the pattern) and knit 2″. Now, if I do the math - the 105 picked up stitches worked to the gauge will be exactly 27″. The Kureyon panel is kinda stretchy….but 2″?

Don’t even ask about the math I’ve done with triangles and the Pythagorean theorem trying to figure where the length should end! Who said you’d never use this stuff after high school….

Anyway, my plan is to forge on, finish the panel and knit the 2″ along the side…and then see where I am.

I’m playing hooky today (at my mother’s urging no less!) and heading to the US for a day of yarn store finding and gambling. She tells me there’s a new shop in Lynden….I think she’s just saying that to get me to the casino.

I’ll report my findings (and losses…and purchases?) later.

Can you imagine the let down one would feel after going to Tim’s in the middle of the day to get a tall black coffee only to find upon returning to one’s office that it is a tall coffee with cream and sugar?

I don’t have to imagine.

I drove over to Chilliwack today to the first meeting of the Upper Fraser Valley Knitting Club (that name is subject to change). Marlene has done a lot of work organizing the group and it was fun to be in a room with a lot of other knitters. I may have been the only one from out of town — I’m pretty sure I was the only one who got lost on the way. I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops.

In other knitting news (oh look! I finished something!), I finished off a pair of socks for my Mom. She picked the yarn out a year ago while we were in Las Vegas — I’m pretty sure she said something about wanting a pair of socks that were a little less “vibrant”. Uhm….oops?

I used a pattern from Charlotte Schurch’s “Sensational Knitted Socks”. It’s a basketweave rib - but the yarn itself drowns that out to a great deal, I think. Overall though, I love the book and and very pleased with the results. And most importantly, Mom likes them.

I have cast on another pair of socks - this time for my husband. I’ll either do a 3X1 rib or just a ribbed cuff and plain leg/foot. I’ll follow one of Charlotte’s patterns generally, but for the most part I think I’ll wing it on these.

I love tv…always have. So a tv meme seems just perfectly tailored for me! I found it at Emily’s blog.

Empire Magazine has revealed its list of the “50 Greatest TV Shows” ever. Below is the list and here be the rules:

1. Bold the shows you’ve watched every episode of
2. Italic the shows you’ve seen at least one episode of
3. Post your answers

50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48. Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
46. Sex & The City

45. Farscape
44. Cracker
43. Star Trek
42. Only Fools and Horses
41. Band of Brothers

40. Life on Mars
39. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. Star Trek: The Next Generation
36. Father Ted

35. Alias
34. Frasier
33. CSI: Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood

30. Dexter
29. ER
28. Fawlty Towers
27. Six Feet Under
26. Red Dwarf

25. Futurama
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office UK
22. The Shield
21. Angel

20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park
16. Doctor Who

15. Heroes
14. Firefly
13. Battlestar Galactica
12. Family Guy
11. Seinfeld

10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends
06. 24

05. Lost
04. The West Wing
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
01. The Simpsons

I keep meaning to write a post. I remind myself daily, “Don’t forget today!”. And then another week passes. It’s not even that things are that busy. It is active, but not so much that I don’t have lots of time at the end of the day to play WoW or even to pluck away at some knitting. But I never seem to get to the actual writing of a post.

What I am finding is that, despite the completely manageable schedule I’m keeping, I’m feeling more stressed than I have in several years. Back in 2001/2002, I started to have anxiety attacks (or at least that’s what I call them). It was a combination of a number of things - my father passing, then my mother-in-law a few months later, a work place that was developing into somewhere I just didn’t want to be, and kids who were testing every last nerve I had. I made some changes, including a move to another province and a new job, and for the longest time things were much better.

But recently, the anxiety has started to return. I know that 95% of it is work related. I’m not inclined to change jobs, so perhaps I need to start finding a better method to deal with that (the hold it in and press it down until it turns into a bitter hard ball in the pit of my stomach method I favour doesn’t seem to be doing the trick any longer).

Maybe I just need to knit more.

The greater share of my yarn stash has come from other sources. it is a combination of my own, plus my mother’s, my grandmother’s and my mother-in-laws. By some standards, it’s not even a lot. And a lot of it is bargain store acrylics — but most of it is quite nice, and certainly it’s worth using on something. But what? That has been the question dogging me for a few years, and will likely continue to dog me.

However, I have a plan. Clearly tackling the whole works is just too monuemental a task — so I’ve decided to break it down into more reasonable sizes, specifically the Rubbermaid bins its packed in. Over the next 12 months, I plan to knit up the contents of one bin. There’s not enough of any one thing to do anything large, or even sized much larger than for a small child - so it will likely be a series of hats and baby sweaters. But that’s just fine with me — I like things that complete quickly (that being a relative term of course).

So then, here is the first. It’s a Baby Suprise Jacket - by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I can’t think of many things that are easier to knit than this. I have no idea what the yarn is (the bin I picked seems to be mostly devoid of labels), but it’s nice and soft and should wash like a dream. I think there will be enough to add either a hood or a matching hat. This will most definitely be a pattern that I’ll knit again.

I should also point out, this in no way limits me from buying new yarn or working on other projects as the mood strikes. That would just be crazy talk.

Well, lookie here…knitting content!

I’m somewhat exasperated with my daughters (both adults). They complain that I never knit them anything, so I knit them something (shrugs) and they nearly whiplashed themselves turning up their noses. So I decided fine..no knitting for you! Which lasted a little while and then I decided to give it another go. I sent them links to websites (Knitty in particular) to have them pick out a sweater they might like me to knit for them. The younger daughter eventually picked one, which I will now knit out of spite even though the entire damned thing is seed stitch. The older daughter? Nothing.

So I took a third approach. As I find a pattern that interests me, I’ll send it to them and see if anyone bites. Thus we get the Koolhaus Hat.

This was a really fun knit. I used less than a skein of “The Real Worsted” and size 8 (5mm needles) from my Denise Interchangeable set. The finishing was a bit of fun since I couldn’t find any dp’s of the right size at home; I ended up using two Denise cables and switching the ends back and forth. That sounds worse than it is…it was only 10 rounds, so not a huge ordeal.

Anyway, I’ll pack off the hat to her, and then start looking at that seed stitch sweater.

I’m quite convinced that I’ll never win big on a lottery. Why? Because I use up my luck in small increments - like parking spots. I almost always score a great parking spot. No matter the day, no matter the hour, no matter the season, no matter the venue - if you ride with me, it’s almost a guarantee that it’ll be a short hike to the front door. Not that I couldn’t stand a longer hike - a lot of longer hikes judging from the view in the mirror - but that’s a different issue.

My luck has also recently extended to dinners at nice restaurants.

For New Year’s, my husband and I went to Victoria and stayed at a lovely inn on the inner harbour. We tooled around town for a couple of days, and generally had a relaxing time. Our first night in town, we ate at restaurant downtown and, naturally, scored a parking spot right outside the door. The second night, however, it appeared my luck had abandoned us — we drove around (and around and around) and could find no place to park at any of the restaurants that interested us. Finally we gave up and decided to have dinner at our hotel. The restaurant there was small and intimate, and a little on the pricey side; but no matter - they found us a table and we ordered our meal. Service was slow, and it seemed a little disorganized, but the food was good. We charged the meal to our room and trundled off to ring in the New Year (read: we went up to bed and struggled to stay awake until midnight).

Checking out the next day, I reviewed our account and noted that the dinner bill was missing. I pointed this out to the desk clerk and she began to click away at the computer. After a few minutes, she shrugged and said “Well, I guess dinner’s on us. Happy New Year.”

Score one $150 dinner.

But the luck didn’t end there. For Christmas, my older brother had me pick up a gift card for my mother from her favourite restaurant. I bought the card for the amount he said ($60) and put it under the tree. Mom was delighted to receive it, and a couple of weeks ago she took my husband and me out to dinner - the gift card would pay the first $60 and we’d pay the rest. So off we went, had a great meal and when the time came to pay the bill, plunked down the gift card and the Visa to pay the balance.

The waitress returned a few minutes later, and said she was a little confused. She didn’t know what to use the Visa for since the bill was $90 and the gift card had a balance of $110 on it. There was a collective “$110?” from the three of us. Right or not, the waitress assured us, that’s the card balance. So…the whole bill went on the gift card.

Score one $50 dinner gift card.

I can’t help but think that my brother owes me $50.

I just flew in from Reno and boy are my arms tired.

Har har.

But seriously, I just got back from Reno. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of the Moody Blues, so when I found out they were playing Reno this past weekend, I scored myself some tickets, a cheap flight and nice hotel, grabbed the husband and off we went. It was our first trip to Reno, and certainly won’t be our last. Neither will it be our last Moody Blues concert.

First, Reno. We got a great price - we flew from Bellingham, which is just across the border in Washington state. For the two of us, return airfare plus 3 nights accomodation the total bill was only $411. We stayed at the El Dorado — and I’d certainly stay there again. I would call it average plus on my hotel rating scale — it could use some upgrades to the rooms (seriously, who installs a shower head at the 5′ mark?), but overall it’s just fine.

The city itself was very nice — and I was struck by how clean it is. I’m told that this hasn’t always been the case, and certainly some of the buildings were on the shabby side — but clean shabby. It was also far less crowded than Vegas and has a much friendlier and relaxed pace to it.

I had limited myself to inflicting one yarn store on my husband, so I opted for Jimmy Bean’s. I’ve browsed the website previously, so I wanted to check out a “live shop”. And it was lovely. They had a wonderful selection of fibres, patterns and other knitting paraphernalia. The staff was helpful without being intrusive. I limited myself to a few skeins of Lorna’s Laces for some socks, but I was sorely tempted to buy a Jordanna Paige bag. I did resist, but I now also know that if I eventually succumb, the bags are as lovely as they appear on the web.

And second, though never second in my eyes, the Moody Blues. Our seats were okay - but not great (we were 6th row, but way off to one side), and I was initially disappointed by the room itself. It wasn’t a theatre but a huge (and I do mean HUGE - as in being able to seat 2000+ people plus a stage) banquet room and the chairs were typical banquet room chairs. However, as the band started the second song (”Tuesday Afternoon” for those keeping score), I noticed the people from a row or two behind us moving forward to center seats. I jumped up, saw there was room for us, grabbed my purse and hollered at my husband, “Come on, there’s two seats left.” and raced off, not even bothering to see if he was following (he was). So, we ended up with 2nd row centre seats. Total score.

The concert itself - magic. When a band gets a standing ovation for walking on stage, you know it’s going to be a great night. And the standing ovations continued for every song. Usually I’m more reserved and, being on the tall side, I try to restrain myself for the sake of those sitting behind me. But this time, too damned bad. It was the Moody Blues and I had second row seats!