Annie Knits

Ho Hum

That is what you say on your blog when you're too busy to have any interesting thoughts about which to blog.

Ah me.  The house is cleanish.  The Halloween decorations are on the steps ready to go up and replace the Christmas stuff in the closet.  Laundry's mostly put away.  Dinner's in the crock pot.  Hum drum, I tell you. 

I can't find my camera charging cord, so no pictures.  The Hemlock Ring blanket is nearly 600 stitches around and 6 rows from what I am going to call  finished.  Turns out it's recipient has been checking the blog to see how I'm doing, so I shouldn't post pics of it anyway.  Maybe on Ravelry.  I'll link you to it when I get around to it. 

What's in the crockpot, you ask?  The standard pulled pork.  3 pork tenderloins, 1 bottle of Newman's Own Balsamic Dressing.  10 hours on low.   Yum.

I think I'll throw out some controversial statements, in no particular order, and see if I can get you to bite.  Howzat?

• Moon Sand, while a wonderful time filler for sick kids, ought to be put on some recall list.  It's just too messy.  Or it should come with a warning. 
• I hate mice.   In general and specifically the one that has found a place to live under my corner kitchen counter.  I think I will hate even more though a dead mouse on a trap.  Which by the way is a very effective dog catcher -- the sticky thing has caught Monte twice.  He is not the sharpest crayon in the box.  Cutest, but not sharpest. 
• Dressing up like the Jamaican Bobsledders or Tiger Woods or even Al Sharpton for Halloween is not "donning blackface" as my local paper called it no fewer than 9 times in a recent article.  Painting your face black with a white O for lips and singing like a black minstrel is "donning blackface".  The first bit is inflammatory and misleading and simply historically incorrect -- using the term under those circumstances smudges it's sharply and deeply offensive nature.  Which I think might be just the exact opposite effect from the one the esteemed editorial department was expecting.
• Helping people learn to knit is super rewarding.  It's my absolute favorite thing to do.  Except that I do it so much that I've been missing the Wednesday Night Knittsters at Knitorious pretty consistently.  Which is a bummer.  I miss my peeps. 
• Meeting random people who then tell me that they read my blog is disconcerting.  Which is counterintuitive.  I publish this thing so that people will read it right?  Then why do I get a pit in my stomach when unexpected people do?  It actually has had a dampening effect on my writing.  No, silly, not soggy writing, less writing.  And no, I'm not talking about you.
• Spinning is a fascinating, compulsive, time sucking black hole of a hobby.  I've got about 800 yards of fall colored 2-ply yarn and about a 3rd of the roving yet to spin.  What do you think, Deborah, can I get a ribwarmer out of that?  (You should see Deborah's Ribwarmer... simply smashing.)  And some singles of Dyeabolical superwash. Rachel will know the colorway.  To ply or not to ply.
• I'm raw feeding my dogs -- at least partially.  And Big Dog's allergies are disappearing.  Even with no hard freezes yet.  But raw feeding is yucky.  You need one of these and lots of soapy water to mop the floor around the food bowls after each meal.  At least I no longer have a toddler around the house. 
• A funny thing to do is to take the Thanksgiving turkey carcasses and make a stock out of them (I feel so virtuous -- I always say I'm going to do this and never quite get around to it) and store some of it in what is usually the lemonade pitcher.  I didn't quite have the heart to let Dear Son actually pour a glass and take a swig of it, but nearly.   'Cause that would have been hilarious.  I have a dark side.
• I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when the Irish Composer said, during a recent practice, "Next year, when you do this, blah blah blah..."  Next year?  God, don't talk to me again about Irish Gaelic anything until July, 'k?  I didn't even hear what she said after "next year".   Love, love, love this challenging thing I'm doing, but I'm bonkers tired of it right now.  I wake up with "Taw esagawn ina lee, es kuhloo sa wanshayre twee" running around in my head.  Oh, pipe down, that's the phonetic pronunciation.  I don't even have the keys on my keyboard to write what it really looks like...
• 5th grade math is way over my head.  Or at least it's way too fiddly for me -- and I really don't have the patience for it between 4 and 6 in the evening.  All those factors and long division.  Yeeeuuuccckkk!

Well.  That's enough of that.  The paper should be here by now and I'm off to get jerked around by their editorial staff once again.  It'll be fun.  Promise.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood...

So I took pictures of my morning outside with the dogs.  We raked up the leaves from the one of our 21 trees that is about finished dropping her leaves ...

Cue the shower scene music from Psycho... (I wish I could embed the soundtrack  'cause the shower kind of sounds like leaves rustling and the scream... well, it's what I had in my head when I took the picture.)

Oh, alright.  A little perspective.

This is a 90 lb. dog and a 12' by 24' tarp.  When I gathered the ends to drag it down to the street, I couldn't move it more than a few inches.  Even without the dog riding along.  I'll have to wait for the kids to get home to get it dumped in the gutter.  I just hope it doesn't rain before then... that'll at least double the weight of these leaves. 

Without something more constructive to do, I walked around and photographed our fall time yard. 

There are plenty of liriope and holly berries for the birds to eat this winter.  If we ever have one.

There was plenty of talk around town earlier this fall about the dry,  hot summer eliminating any fall color we might get ... Wrong again.  Sheesh.  There were even news features on TV and in the paper about the lack of fall color -- it seems as if they are assiduously avoiding talking about anything that has any gravitas or international importance lately.  Local murder rate and leaves... ggrreeaatt.

Here is the dogwood in my front yard.  Colorful enough for you?  (Well, I did do a color adjust, but on my monitor this is how this tree looks in the yard.  I'm all about full disclosure.)

To me, these Sugar Maples at the end of the driveway look a lot like the roving I'm spinning.  Both make me happy.

And this Maple (Sugar too?) across the street from my back door?  Absolutely singing!

I really do love fall leaves and their colors... the colors in this palette are often my colors of choice for knitting.  I just wish they'd stay on the trees.  Or that they'd blow into the neighbor's yarn...  ***Edited:  YARD!  I meant yard... Thanks Frida.  Yes, it's probably something subliminal.  Snork.

Ahem. Where Were We?

Oh.  Right.  Rabelry... which I shall now un-renounce.  Due primarily to a lovely forum for spinners which has redeemed the place for me entirely. 

I went on and asked about my Louet S90, which came to me as you will remember used and without documention.  And for a song, come to find out.  No complaining here.  One gal even sent me a PDF of the original documentation for the thing.  I can now fold her up, (in theory, 'cause she gets too much use to be folded up, but if I were to want to take her somewheres, I could now with ease) oil her and manipulate the tension better... you know.  All the tricks.  And I can do this.

That there is some plyed up yarn.  Yee haw!  Oh.  Ahem.  Sorry.  I know it's early in the morning -- well, actually, it shouldn't be that early.  Except we mess with the time and it takes the dogs and I and the kids like a week to get back on schedule and someone has to get sick in the process and we all are crabby for a week. 

The swift measures 4 feet per revolution -- that's about a  150 yards there and more on the bobbin.  And I have this cake of 180 yards.

Yep.  It even knits up kinda nice.  I'm thinking of using it for the yoke of a sweater (it's very soft) with the body of the sweater being this (5th color down on the right -- a deep, bright orange).  I'm getting like 5 1/2 stitches to the inch on US5s.  And while this first plying attempt isn't particularly perfect looking in the cake, it is perfectly lovely and smooth knit up.  And I guess that's what matters, right?

Did I ever show you the roving?  It's a mohair/wool blend from Buckwheat Bridge Angoras and it's carded (or combed?) into layers:  green, chocolate, barn red, and bright orange.  The green and the orange are duller and stickier (must be the wool) and the brown and red are shiney and can really be pulled out as you spin.  I've been trying to get stretches of just green and just orange separated by sections that mix in the brown and red barber-pole style.   It's kind of working.  And it keeps me endlessly amused, and isn't that the whole point of the thing, anyway?

Yes -- it's An Unoriginal Hat.  She's right -- took one evening.  This one's out of some "The New Periwinkle" colored yarn, and how I came about having this yarn only Rabbitch knows for sure...  I've got to blog about that tomorrow.  Daughter walked by the screen as I was looking at the pattern, newly posted, and she said, "Oh, that's cute.  Can it be in blue?"  Well, you all know what happens when progeny actually wants hand-knitted items.  A stash-diving we went and everything else was dropped.  She's worn it and gotten compliments already...

There is another one on the needles -- Malabrigo chunky.  Oh yeah.  And next to that we have "Mistress of Dance" sock yarn.  The story goes that Rachel was dying this yarn in a colorway inspired by me and one of my trek sock bags, when she noticed that it was a perfect Mardi Gras color combination and then she remembered that Deborah had lamented that dyers always added one extra color and mucked up the gold purple green Mardi Gras colorways in yarn.  So Rachel stopped.  And my yarn was Deborah's.  At least I got a skein before they were all snapped up... ***grin***

Are you wondering about the polar bear book and the Moon Sand in the background of many of these pictures?  Dear Son's been down with a fluish snotty thing for 3 days -- we've pulled out all the toys and activities.  Because Cheetos and Mythbusters can only get you so far when you're stuck in the house for 3 days.