Annie Knits

Monday Morning Rumination

So, clicking around inside the blogs listed on my Bloglines this morning, I came across this post:  Roger.

The blog is not one I read regularly.  Instead, finding it is the result of the meandering we all do through our friends' postings.  Usually, I'm a quick clicker, but this post gave me pause.  The juxtaposition of the story about giving McDonald's to a homeless man with the pictures of her cute kids just being kids is a powerful one.  Also powerful is her comparison of his plight to her own.  Super bare soul here, and the piece made me tear up just a little.

God knows, I encounter people at my car window every day.  The freeway exit near my home is a favorite car panhandling spot.  I never give money to these folks, even the man with one arm and the same cruddy Starbucks cup day after day.  I just don't roll down the window.  I could give money and I usually have some on me, but, as Piece of Cake points out in her post, I've had nasty interactions with panhandlers and I just don't engage anymore. 

I do look them in the eyes when I shake my head, but I don't interact verbally.  Maybe in a McDonald's line, I'd behave as Laura did, but probably not.  Her interaction though, and the telling of it, are powerful reminders of the plight of some and the nearness to that plight of many.  Food for thought.

On that note, but on a more international level, for you locals, our church, St. Pius V on South Grand and Utah Place, is hosting a Ploughsharing Crafts Fair Trade sale this Thursday, November 12th, from 3 to 9 p.m.  The founder of Ploughsharing Crafts will give a presentation about the nature of fair trade at 7 p.m. in the church basement, but you can shop anytime.  Actually you can continue shopping after mass on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning as well.  How about doing some of your Christmas/ Hanukkah  shopping where it will do some good?  I'll remind you as Thursday approaches... hope to see you there!

Keep the Caffeine Coming... It's Not Over Yet!

Whew, this was a busy day chez Annie.  Here's the family day by the numbers with pictures where appropriate.

• 9:00 a.m. -- I had to be at choir practice for and then attend our church Mass of Remembrance where I sang with our choir.  Sad and holy, it's a service where we remember members of our church family who have died this year.  
• 9:00 a.m. -- Dear daughter's friend was to arrive at our house so that she and DD could attend her school Powder Puff homecoming football game and parade.  Friend arrived at 9:10 and they missed the parade.  Since I couldn't be in two places at once, Husband was cast as chauffeur, photographer, and head cheerleader. 

• 11:30 a.m. -- I arrived home, ate a quick lunch and went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for my submission to our parish Chili Cook-off... set to take place tonight.
• 12:10 -- Husband droped girls off at the South City Diner with strict orders to be home by 2 for the manicure and pedicure appointments one of the moms has made for them. 
• 1:15 -- I arrive home with groceries as Husband departs to take Son to a soccer game which is set to begin at 2.  Coincidentally, that is the same time Husband's haircut is scheduled to begin.  I stayed out of that, but soccer was played and a haircut was had...
• 1:30 I begin my chili and take seventeen phone-calls concerning everything from Boyscout pizza delivery ("The check's in the milk cooler... leave the pizzas on top.") to stranded friends with car trouble ("Call back if you can't find someone else, I can't leave this chili on the stove alone!") to an update on the soccer game's progress to updates on the girl's difficulties getting the check split up at the restaurant.  The door bell rings twice -- once for Boyscout popcorn and once to deliver the neighbors Boyscout pizza because they aren't home.
• 2:00 -- A parent picks up three of the girls to take them to get their nails done.
• 3:30 -- Husband and Son arrive home HUNGRY.  Sandwiches and chips.
• 3;49 -- Husband and I deliver the chili to church for the cook-off.  I enlisted his help because 2 gallons of chili in a crockpot is danged heavy.
• 4:15 -- Girls are home again and the music is cranked up high... Taylor Swift mostly. 
• 4:50 -- I begin constructing three up-dos.
• 5:30 -- I finish the up-dos and start makeup. 
• 6:03 -- Pictures!  The masks are their tickets into the dance.  No boys for this crowd -- boys get in the way of the dancing and the shrieking apparently.

• 6:15 -- Husband and I arrive at the chili cook-off with Dear Son in tow and meet two of his friends there.  The boys really got into the judging, each trying 13 or 14 offerings and rating them.   There was a baby there ; ) .  Husband voted for my chili -- I think I'll keep him.   (Sorry, bad iphone pictures.)

 

• 7:15 -- Husband left the cook-off to get the girls from the restaurant and take them to the dance.   I dragged three very full boys home to play flashlight tag in the dark until they had to go home.
• 8:15 -- Husband ferried the boys home as one of them has a (get this!) 10:00 p.m. soccer game.

It'll be my job to retrieve the girls from the dance at 10:00 and stay up until their parents come to get them (scheduled for between 11:00 and 11:30, but we all know how schedules can go awry...

No knitting yet today, but there's still time.

p.s. to Ruth -- I was not in the top three but I received favorable reviews when I shamelessly pumped other chili eaters for compliments.  Father John's sister won the judge's first prize, and his friend placed in the top three aaannnddd his mom won the 50/50 raffle (hmm, Divine intervention or the fix is in... you choose **grin**).  The people's choice award went to just the chili of which Dear Son had just purchased an extra pint to take home (a local judge and chili aficionado apparently).

Ahhhh, Wham Bam, Thank You Ma'am!

That title, by the way, needs to have a little bit of Bowie 1970's glam rock behind it... Suffragette City, baby!

And seriously people, the fact that I started this sweater Tuesday night and it's finished this morning requires a bit of head banging, don't you think?  And it is perfectly happy to be knit on in the wee hours of the morning... Another plus!

 

While I'm not really a big needle, big yarn kind of girl, this thing is kind of cute on... in a middle of winter/Eskimo kind of way.  The big yarn adds like 4 inches at my bust and that's not a bad thing.   Nobody is more surprised than I am.  And don't forget ... it took less time to knit than a dk weight hat.  Woot!

Specs:

• Very Cherry shell from Knitty issue 3, size large, but I decreased more at the waist as my gauge is just a hair larger than the author got with the original yarn.
•  Handspun Rambouillet  from Hello Yarn originally ordered as part of this shawl kit which is a very thick to very thin novelty yarn ... the dimples it creates in the finished product disappear (mostly) in the wearing.  The color is just about right in the picture.  I'd call it Chocolate Cherry Vanilla Sundae if someone asked me to name the yarn.
• Size 13 needles (damned telephone poles... my hands ached or the sweater'd have been finished last night).
• Knit in three days flat.

Yes indeed, a nice little midnight snack of a sweater. 

Whatever.

Stockport is finished and seamed.  She's still a little damp, but I've tried her on and she's fine.  I wish I could figure out how long to make sweaters so I liked their length...   This one's schematic showed what seemed like a long enough sweater (according to measurements of sweaters I like) and the sweater matches the schematic.  So then why do I want it to be 2 inches longer?  I dunno.  It's a thicker sweater, very thick in fact.  Not that I don't love the weight of the thing.  Maybe with wearing it'll grow.  Whatever.

I couldn't get a good picture of it on me either... too much flash in the mirror, not enough flash in the dark hallway where the mirror is located. Plus, I'm not wearing my favorite jeans and my red patent leather boots which will be perfect with this sweater, but instead a long-sleeved  polo son doesn't like for school and sweats.  Whatever.

Specs?

• Stockport  (Raveled here)  from Rowan Magazine number 46, size large.
• Nashua Creative Focus Chunky, Carmine colorway.
• Size 10 needles.
• Time?  Oh, about two weeks... with lots of ripping back.

I have to say that for a relatively easy pattern this one kicked my hiney.  I must have ripped each piece back several times, including the SECOND sleeve!  Gawd, I'm distracted.  Or cocky.  Whatever.

Next up?  The Aran Wrap Cardigan  (Raveled again -- sorry if you can't get to it)  if I can get hold of the pattern (it's in Vogue Fall 2008 -- can you find yours, Kim?).  I've got the yarn and the inclination.  Baby knitting, though, is still on board and sister hopes the birthday is imminent.  I hope the baby is a girl like everybody says ... 

While I'm waiting for the cardigan pattern, I've worked my way most of the way through this little snack of a sweater.  I'm knitting using the yarn from a Hello Yarn Shawl kit  (mine is gray, blue, brown, and cranberry) I got a couple of years ago which is of a similar gauge to the Colinette Point 5 used in the first piece.  It's a super chunky sweater.  Maybe not great for my chunky self, but maybe just fine.  I'm on the hip increases after only 3 and a half hours of knitting, though, so you know... Whatever.

Halloween in Pictures and Numbers

 

Every year our neighborhood full of old houses closes it's streets, hires a few horses and wagons for a hay ride, and throws a giant Halloween party.  It's always the Saturday before October 31st.  Most neighbors sit outside or throw parties of their own.  One gentleman makes a very scary haunted house out of his carriage house.  Generally, it's an opportunity to dress up and acquire a bag full of pretty good candy.

 

Chez Annie this year we had:  three babies,

spaghetti monsters for for 31 people (and FYI, 82 meatballs is plenty for 31 people ... 4 lbs of pasta however is not -- there were scant bits stuck to the bottom of the pasta pan when everyone was finished),

seven kinds of vampire (various YA series represented thankyouverymuch, not just Twilight -- "Gawd Mother, there are other vampires in this world, you know."  Whatever.),

and generally really cute kids.

 

Seventeen kids in all. 

The best joke I heard all evening?  (Imagine a  lovely, self possessed  10 year-old girl clown (or Raggedy Ann) with a red yarn wig and a dead pan delivery.)  "Why did the man cross the road? -- cock your hip and put your hand on it, elbow akimbo -- Who knows why men do anything?!"

For those of you not from St. Louis, it's a tradition here that kids tell jokes or do tricks for candy.  Even the tiniest sprite will rattle off some nonsensical knock knock joke for you if you'll give her some candy.   Listening to joke after joke is my favorite part of the evening.

One group of teens this year did a trick.  In unison, they said, "OK!  Ttrrriiiccckkk..." at which point each stood on one foot and in unison they drew their other legs straight up their bodies, gymnast style, until their knees were at their ears and their toes were pointed above their heads.  Then all three lunged gracefully forward, bags outstretched and called out, "Or treat!"  That one got applause.

To one group of teens who didn't have a joke I asked, "Well, can you name any linking verbs, then?"  They could rattle them off... better than a joke actually, in my opinion.  I gave each a handful of candy.

And for the first time this year, I had a refusal.  One guy, maybe 10 or so, came to me and said, "Trick or treat!"  I asked him if he had a joke for me, and he threw up his hands, stomped, harumphed and stalked away.  I guess he'd been asked to perform one too many times at that point... When kids don't have jokes for me, I usually tell them one and let them use it at the next house, but he didn't give me the chance.  Sorry, guy!

My joke this year?  One which I shamelessly lifted off a 6 year-old I might add.  Why do gorillas have such big nostrils?  Inch your finger toward your nose.  Because they have such big fingers!

Never Let the Knitting See You Sweat

It's a simple red vest, right?  A few cables, big yarn, big needles.  No big deal.

Unless I'm the knitter, apparently.

Reading the pattern helped with the width problem, I guess.  And I got through the cable panel on the back of the piece last night and liked it.  But there was something bothering me.  Some little voice nagging at me.  Something was just not right.

Like any good knitter, I examined the photo of the piece provided in the magazine.  (At which point in this entry you're supposed to snort your coffee and yell at your monitor, "Read the dang pattern, Annie!)

Hmm, I thought to myself.  The cables don't look right.  They cross closer together in the photo than in my vest. 

Oh, criminy.

Because not only have I pulled this sweater back due to mistakenly thinking the bottom of the thing was too wide when it probably wasn't which resulted in my trying to fix said width by dropping two needle sizes in the middle of the piece and knitting a repeat (to which accusation of insanity I plead 4:00 a.m. knitting), but I also have already dropped each cable down 12 rows to fix the cables I thought were to cross after 8 rows but I had been crossing every 6.  Which is what I was supposed to be doing in the first place when I was distracted by the width problem.  I am ashamed to admit that this lapse in judgment also occurred at approximately 4:30 a.m. 

Two days in a row resulting in epic knitting fails had me reading a novel at 4:30 a.m. this morning rather than knitting on Stockport.  You don't have to hit me in the head.

I waited until the first gray light  of dawn to rip the damn thing back to the first cable cross. 

In Which Early Morning Knitting is Periodically Problematic

 

So, the Stockport vest from Rowan Magazine Number 46, right?  Big yarn, big needles, quick knit, right?

Yeesh. 

Of course one must account for user error, mustn't one.

I'm knitting the large (the second set of numbers from the right... see if you can spot my problem.  Because, hoo boy, I learned the swatch lesson on the last sweater, and consequently, I swatched the crap out of this yarn.  Perfect 3.5 stitches to the inch all over that sucker.  And in what I've knit so far I might add.

"So why the heck do I have a 26 OR SO inch piece of knitting here when I'm supposed to have a 24 inch piece?" I asked myself at approximately 4:30 this morning.  In my defense, it was still very dark, but I had had two full mugs of coffee so I should have been coherent.  

At which point I did what any self respecting knitter would do.  I switched needles, dropping two needle sizes, and knit a repeat of the pattern.  Yeah, I know.  You read it right.  And the darned thing was still too big.  Well, just freaking craptacular.

Here we come to to the part of the story in which I learn a second knitting lesson.  READ THE PATTERN.   (I did just that at about 5:30 a.m.)

And then do knitting math.  (I did that too at about 5:40 a.m.)

Decreases happen every 13 rows until the BUST measures (according to the formula: stitches per inch x number of stitches on the needles) 24 inches across.  Not the bottom of the sweater.  Which punches in at a little over  27 inches stretched out.  Hey, 54 inch hips I have not yet accomplished!  Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but I'd like the thing to fit. 

Which it will, because it's a swingy vest and the bust will be fine in a bulky yarn.  And how do I know this?

1. I'm getting gauge on the needles I started with.
2. The schematic, while a little misleading, says I will along with my knitting math.
3. Faith.  Pure and simple faith. 

Flying Cables Recap

So, even though Cindy offered to come over and seam (Thanks Cindy!), I had my own seaming party early this morning.  Those of you who have heard my sleeping woes stories, well, ... second verse, same as the first. 

4 a.m. saw me putting this puppy together and listening to one of the urchins coughing his head off in his room.  He's got the creeping crud which is the other reason I didn't have a seaming party today.  No reason to spread the  happiness I guess.

I was done with seaming the sweater together and weaving in the ends by 7 or so. 

Which turned out to be just in time to wear it to church where the temperature inside the building was colder than it was outside and that's saying something. 

 

It fits and the neckline is flattering.  It's warm, but the holes are really holes so the air gets in... I wore a scarf around my neck and was warm enough.  The color is awesome. 

The down and dirty?

• Pattern:  Flying Cables by Spunky Eclectic.
• Yarn:  Spunky Eclectic Big Ball Chunky, Lettuce colorway.  It comes with the sweater pattern in a kit or separately.  It's an aran weight wool.
• Needles:  size 9 US throughout.  Addi Natura, but I've buggered up the tip of one of them and the burr caught on every stitch of the collar so they're in the trash right now.
• Mods:  I bound off the collar differently than the pattern asked for (Knit the purls, purl the knits while binding off in pattern -- it seems to give me a more uniform edge than a simple bind off and the collar's edge is a prominent piece of the design), but other than that, I knit the large size as called for.  

I love this sweater.  It's warm.  It's wool.  It's green.  And I made it.

The only sad thing about this sweater is that I didn't wear it to Rhinebeck.  Boo hoo.

And you all know my penchant for knitting another of the same sweater... Like right after I finish the first?    Rachel, what do you think?

 

Before the Strange Folk festival, I played yarn monkey for Rachel (you know, monkey work -- winding and binding up yarn while she did things what require a brain) and she paid me in yarn.  Lots of aran weight orange wool.  Hmmm.

I did actually cast on for the Stockport (linked to Ravelry) vest out of the new Rowan magazine.  I'm using  cayenne pepper colored Nashua Creative Focus Chunky.  I figure it'll be a quick knit.  Pictures later.

And finally, for dessert, my husband passed over the brownies and toasted himself a bagel.  He topped it with cream cheese and rhubarb jelly from the CSA.  Good choice, honey.

 

(Another thing to add to his "I think I'll keep him" column is that he doesn't seem to mind too much when I take macro pictures of his food as he's eating it . )

Saturday Sky

Well, I went outside with my camera early this morning with a Saturday Sky post in mind, anyway.

 

And here we have a lovely picture of the early morning sun washing the yellow leaves, brightening them and kissing them yellow.  Meh.  It's fine. 

And then I turned around to find the mums and pumpkins I placed near the front door earlier this week.

 

Oooo.  Better.  Pioneer Woman's blog has a tutorial for artfully manipulating such images this week, so I tried that.  It involves layering textures over a picture to age it and then enhancing hue and saturation... blah, blah.  Greek to me, I guess,  but hopped up on three cups of coffee I was able to accomplish the following:

 

Hmm.  Interesting.  I probably like the original since the colors are so vibrant, but playing around with the layers was really fun.  Go look to see what what others have done with the technique... the photos are absolutely stunning.  Have a great fall weekend!

Time for a Seaming Party!

No, I'm serious.  St. Louis people.  Seaming Party, my house, this weekend.  When are you free?

 

Flying Cables is done, thanks in no small part to Dear Husband's inclination to watch a 2 hour long Gettysburg "movie" last night.   (The air quotes are due to the fact that while this piece was ostensibly based on the very interesting book about the battle, Fallen Angels, this movie was decidedly not.  Interesting that is.)  She is blocking on the breezeway table under a ceiling fan after a nice long soak in a cool bath.  She grew.  Which is a good thing. 

Dudes, three words.  Wash.  Your.  Swatch.

I exercised a great deal of faith in those words as I knit this sweater that, unwashed, showed all the signs of turning out to be two sizes too small.  Now?  It fits the schematic perfectly.  PERFECTLY.  Life is pretty good.

 

The party nature of my title results from the fact that I now have two sweaters in need of seaming.  Filey's been waiting patiently, washed and dried along with seaming yarn, folded on my dresser.  The temperature is dropping, and I could have two new sweaters to wear in an afternoon if I'd just buckle down, dagnabit.  

 
Yum.