Annie Knits

Just Stopping by

As much as anything, I use this blog to record our life events.  When life gets crazy, I tend to get caught up in it rather than sit back, take a deep breath and ponder.  

I'm taking a minute or so this morning to ponder.

The addition is essentially finished.  Dear daughter is home from school and asleep in the dormer on the right.  On the left is the guest room, just about ready for occupancy if any of you are planning a trip to St. Louis any time soon.  Two queen beds and a semi private bathroom -- it's pretty posh.

The great room on the back of the house is just lovely.  Spacious and open and cool in this early summer heat.  As a result of all the trucks and construction traffic, we'll need a new driveway sometime soon, but we knew that going into the project.

From the back yard, you can see that there are still a few things to do.  This week they will pour the patio.

Hopefully they will pour the patio after they get this drain pipe to drain as gravity intended -- that'd be down hill.  Gravity is the law, after all.  Sheesh.

So, we still have one of these in the yard.  Nice.

I have a beautiful new bathroom.  I couldn't make myself document the old one, but suffice to say this is a vast improvement.  The wall paper makes me so happy that I put it in the kitchen as well.

Isn't it rockin'?  I found it on Pinterest and had to order it from England, but it's worth it, don't you think?  Husband kind of shakes his head when I wax lyrical about this paper and its hot greens and gun metal grays.  He's a walls and windows kind of guy.  

And just in case we didn't have enough going on this summer, meet our new fly in the ointment.  

His name is Bacon.  Which I kind of love yelling out the back door.

Oh, all right.  He's not a fly in the ointment.  Mostly, he's cute as can be and pretty darned smart.  He's ostensibly a boxer mix (there's been some debate on that point) that Knit Nite Mindy found on a local pet rescue site when I started talking about Dear Son wanting to adopt a puppy this summer.  She linked me up and I forwarded to DS.

 What you should never do unless you are absolutely ready to adopt a puppy is visit one at a rescue agency.  That is what I have to say about that.  

He's not exactly sleeping through the night...

And he can be a little bit recalcitrant when I want him to come back inside after an outing.  

Today I have to put the final touches on the Seminar I'm teaching at Knitorious this Saturday.  It's a class on reverse engineering a drapey cardigan from a regular cardigan that you already own and that fits you just right.  

Like I did here.  I purchased this oatmeal colored Eileen Fischer sweater and I love how it fits.  I got it into my head that I could make something like it and spent some time planning.  

And then I spent quite a bit of time knitting.

I'll blog this process after I've presented it to the class.

I'm loading the presentation onto these personal zip drives so that the participants can knit instead of take notes.  

Squee.  They are so darned cute!

The other think I'm going to do today is organize the new yarn storage cabinet we had built upstairs in what was essentially a hallway.  I can't wait to show it to you.  But then you'll have to kill me...

Mmphhh!

Help.  I'm buried.  Under spinning, knitting, and rehab stuff.

It's fun and enervating and crazy.  Oh, and it was Holy Week last week, in case you missed it...

First up, one of my favorite details upstairs.  We found a tile treatment on Pinterest and duplicated it in the upstairs bath.  Dark aqua around the perimeter; aqua, putty, and white confetti drifting into all white as we got towards the middle.  It makes 1x1 tile something special.  The tile guy hadn't done it before, and he has photographed and sold the idea to two other customers... ; )  I should get a cut.

Tile and windows are done in the great room, and today there are 4 painters up and down puttying and then painting trim.

Progress continues apace.

There's a cute little shower in there.

These look big to me, but hubster says that when it's all painted to match, it'll look more balanced.

I've been spinning more than I've been knitting.

This yarn is 16 ounces of fingering weight yarn, spun from two different Hello Yarn club colorways:  the July '11 BFL/Silk blend called Night Gathers and the April '11 Targhee top called Sprout.  It is lovely.  The silk gave the yarn just a little sheen here and there and the blue/green/taupe/hot chartreuse color blending makes me pretty darned happy.  It'll be some kind of drape front cardigan... I thought perhaps Dahlia since it'll stripe nicely and that'd be nice in the medallion on the back of that sweater.  Who knows?

Also just off the wheel is this Dyeabolical club color called Sid Fishcious.  Named for her goldfish.  A quick, easy spin that netted me 8 ounces of fingering.  Plenty for socks.

Next up?  More Hello Yarn, in the new club colorway, a merino/bamboo 50/50 blend called Villain.  I have an older one to blend it with so I'll have enough for another sweater.  Also, this Blood Orange BFL/Firestar somehow followed me home after I yarn-monkeyed for Rachel (that's an Etsy link) yesterday.  Happens to me all the time.

I'm knitting another Vitamin D sweater, although I may change where the drapes hit my hips in the front.  I love the increases the designer used in this sweater.  And this yarn needed to be something sunny.

Don't you agree?  Yes, I'm taking quite a bit of ribbing as I knit this crazy neon thing (thanks to Rachel for dyeing the yarn for me even though she thought I was nuts).  And I have to hurry up and finish it as this color will only be au courant for like the next 15 minutes.  Surprisingly, I can actually wear this neonyyellowgreen close to my face -- I'm pinkish, not yellowish, so it works.  Makes me look tan in fact.  Probably I am tanning when I'm near this sweater.  I should likely wear sunblock.

Behind my sweater is a cute little vest I knit quickly for my neice -- it's a Noro cotton tape.  Forget the name of the yarn or the colorway.  I have a yellow zipper to sew into it and then I'll mail it off -- she can wear it this fall.

Otherwise, it's all paint colors and fabric and tile.  So fun, actually.  I'll try and keep you current in future.

 

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

More rant inside that has got to come out or I'll bust.  Or my friends will stop hanging around with me because they've had to listen to the same thing over and over.  

As to my post earlier this week about my daughter's school, I posted a comment in response to the local blogger's guest post about preserving the 128 year old building on the campus.  In a nutshell, I commented that we have to make sure the school stays open (phase one of the capital campaign) before we can have any kind of conversation about the extent to which we can preserve the campus buildings (phase two of the capital campaign). I'm going to make an addition here because I haven't been clear.  Phase two of this project consists of constructing a fine arts facility, the fine and performing arts being a strength of this school, and renovations of the gymnasium.  I'd like to frame the conversation this way rather than letting someone else frame it as a demolition.  

The guest poster's wife (a neighbor, btw) responded (publicly, in the blog's comments, using her name) thusly:

Perhaps the girls' educational needs would be better served if the millions of dollars necessary for demolishment (yes, demolishing the buildings costs a great deal of money, too, estimated at approximately 8 million dollars) were allocated to endowing scholarships and recruiting qualified teachers. Moreover, that money could be put toward renovating the historic buildings so they better suit the school's needs (yes, this can be done, and it *has* been done at other schools with more enlightened views regarding historic preservation). If the school administrators continue to maintain that they do not want to use the historic structures on their campus, they could easily sublet these buildings for another use, a possibility that they do not seem willing to entertain. 

It's not an either/or proposition. You're setting up a false dichotomy: either preserve the buildings or offer a high-quality education to the girls. This strikes me as disingenuous at best. 

I would be willing to do what I could to help the school, but only provided they take demolition off the table. However, they refuse to do so, which makes the "maybe Phase 2 won't even happen" scenario highly suspect to me. I can understand why they don't want this controversy to detract from their fundraising efforts, but surely you can understand why people who care about historic preservation might not want to donate money to an institution with the knowledge that it might someday go toward destroying the most historic structures in the Tower Grove East neighborhood.

 

I'm going to respond point by point here, on my blog, because doing it on the original one would be a total threadjack and not appropriate.  

I'm doing it here because if I don't, I'll have to keep saying it to everyone I meet (friends, colleagues, knitting students, random barristas)...

1.  "Perhaps the girls' educational needs would be better served if the millions of dollars necessary for demolishment (yes, demolishing the buildings costs a great deal of money, too, estimated at approximately 8 million dollars) were allocated to endowing scholarships and recruiting qualified teachers."          

 I have it on good authority (the VP of a large local contracting firm and the architect to which I'm married) that  the "demolishment" of this building would cost between $320,000 and $470,000 depending on asbestos abatement.  For God's sake, it's not Pruitt-Igoe!  (Thanks, Bridgett.)  

Also, every teacher in that building has a state teaching certificate and many of them are super excellent teachers -- I have some expertise in this field.  This is a particularly nasty swipe as many of them spend long hours and tons of effort and expertise making sure that these girls have a most excellent high school experience.  The current fundraising effort, which you are blackballing, addresses this item exactly.  Pay them a living wage, get more kids in the school.  Check.  We've got that covered.  

2.  "Moreover, that money could be put toward renovating the historic buildings so they better suit the school's needs (yes, this can be done, and it *has* been done at other schools with more enlightened views regarding historic preservation)."

Ouch.  "More enlightened."  Renovation of the historic buildings.  Here are the uses to which this building is currently being put to use:  an older adult day care center (hmm, sponsored by the religious order and serving poor, local, special needs adults); administrative offices; fellowship rooms; art and music rooms; auction headquarters; the Sanguis Christi retreat center (gosh, haven't seen any neighborhood organizations organizing retreats here to support this entity.)  I'd say that they are utilizing the space, but I've been in this building and, as it was built with just a few classrooms on the first floor but primarily as a convent, it's pretty broken up inside.  

Condos would be cost prohibitive as the rooms are about 6 by 12 and, via three large hallways, it's connected directly to the school building.  Who'd want a condo the back of which would face a high school parking lot?  What else you got?

3.  "If the school administrators continue to maintain that they do not want to use the historic structures on their campus, they could easily sublet these buildings for another use, a possibility that they do not seem willing to entertain. "

"Easily sublet."  Buildings that are directly connected to an all girls high school?  To which the community demands entrance be carefully controlled?  Ok.  Give me some options keeping in mind the constraints of the configuration of the building and the surrounding traffic patterns...  I'm waiting.  

4.  "It's not an either/or proposition. You're setting up a false dichotomy: either preserve the buildings or offer a high-quality education to the girls. This strikes me as disingenuous at best."

It is an either/or proposition, but not the one you'd like to discuss.  Keep the school open or close it.  Support the school or don't.  It's easy to be a proponent of an old building.  Of course we love old buildings -- we live in the city, fer pete's sake.  The difficult conversation is the one that concerns an aging religious population and the education of urban students in a modern city.  That conversation is fraught with latent prejudices and confounding numbers.  No dichotomies there, false or no, but many facets and nuances.

As for that last bit, see the title of this post.

5. " I would be willing to do what I could to help the school, but only provided they take demolition off the table. However, they refuse to do so, which makes the "maybe Phase 2 won't even happen" scenario highly suspect to me."

Would you?  Because I go to all the school functions:  basketball games; drama productions; concerts; the auction and trivia nights.  And I've never seen you at a one of them.  And you live one block from the front doors.  

Take demolition off the table?  What table?  The negotiating table?  What negotiating table?  This is private property.  The owners of which have been excellent neighbors and stewards of our city and it's children for 128 years.  And I know these women.  They don't lie.  Phase two won't happen if phase one isn't successful.  How's that for binary?  You shove a spoke in the this fundraising effort, which is for an educational endowment (definition:  lawful entity) which will go to getting low income and middle income students in the door, and the school fails?  You've got 4 acres of empty buildings at the end of your block.  

6.   "I can understand why they don't want this controversy to detract from their fundraising efforts, but surely you can understand why people who care about historic preservation might not want to donate money to an institution with the knowledge that it might someday go toward destroying the most historic structures in the Tower Grove East neighborhood."

I'm not going to do dueling city resident with you.  Well, maybe I am.  We've lived here for 22 years.  We've renovated two homes, one as old as SEA (1897) and one not so old.  We work in the city.  We shop in the city.  When possible, our kids attend schools in the city.  We worship in the city.  We are preservationists.  The disinformation in this last bit makes me quite angry.  Read the proposal.  Endowment.  Lawful entity.  Only for education and renovation.  Not fungible.  

Whew.  I feel better.  Carry on.

Season to Taste

So I had an acquaintance comment to me recently that she's well aware that I think "it's all about me, anyway."  I think it had to do with Twittering and tangentially blogging -- how can one write about oneself and one's interests constantly?  I told this acquaintance that the charming thing about me is that I am at least aware of this deficit in my personality -- Miss Manners is my lord and master.

I blog because I like to write and I follow the old adage that tells writers to write about what they know.  I know myself and my family.  I know knitting and cooking.  I know ranting and general crabbiness about the media and politics.  I know books...  So there.  Yep.  This blog and my tweets (of which I do so few that it's a joke...) are all about me.  Read on at your own risk.

Enough about her, let's talk about me. ; )

Portland is coming along well.  Considering I thought I'd be able to finish this monster of a sweater during the Olympics, I think we can all agree that I'm delusional.  I'd call this about the halfway point.  The two tears in my rotator cuff and the bone spur that digs at one of them when I raise my arm above the height of my elbow not withstanding, I'm happy with the progress.  I'll live to compete in the Knitting Olympics another year.  By the way, I talked about the Olympics at the shop and a customer corrected me (I love it when that happens) asking if I meant the "Ravelympics".  I explained the genesis of said games on the Yarn Harlot's blog 4 years ago ... she's never heard of it.  

  Dear Husband is interested in this knitting and comments on it regularly.   I love working on it in a kind of unreasonable manner.  Really.  It's challenging enough (yes, I have to rip back regularly, especially after knit night) and the yarn is lovely to work with.  More crabbiness from customers concerning the fact that the wool is not very soft resulted in my wool-knitting mantra getting tossed about -- I'm not knitting underpants, I'm knitting outerwear.  What I didn't say with my mouth but with my eyes was this -- And I'm not knitting this for you...

 

While I worked on it during the wait to get into see teachers at Dear Son's teacher conference day, onlookers were fascinated not with the way the yarn makes the cables pop, but with the boozy stitch markers.  They are kind of fascinating.  Click to embiggen, if you're interested that is...  My Mardi Gras swap partner made them from beads she ordered from Oriental Trading.  

 

In other news, Dear Husband's Man Cave is nearing completion.  Carpet goes in this week.  He's filled up the shelves and walls with books and mementos of his work and travels.  Well, mostly.  He kindly donated a portion of the shelf space to me.  Here is one of the shelf units that flank the window.

   

Here is a portion of my knitting book and magazine collection.  Thanks, Honey!

 

In related news (you'll see in a minute) Stirling, the wonder baby, is in the loving bosom of another family these last two weeks.  Thank God.  It just about killed the 16 year old to take care of that thing for 6 days.  It was the 3 hours of sleep at a time part that got her.  As DH took her to return it to school that Monday morning, he asked her what she'd learned from the experience.  She told him that the main thing was that she didn't ever want to take care of a newborn alone... Pass Go, Collect $200!

While she had the baby at home, the Amish family who built our new shelves came to deliver them.  The whole family, including two what looked to be teenage girls, complete with skirts and head gear ( I don't know what they call those white bonnets) carried in the two large units.  When the girls saw my girl in her skinny jeans, nursing a plastic baby while she watched DVR episodes of Numbers, Husband reports there were wide eyes and a good deal of behind-the-hand whispering.  After they left, my girl wondered aloud to her father why Pilgrims were delivering our shelves...  

Speaking of the Amish, although I can't believe they've had anything to do with this stuff... I've got the Blob (aka Amish Friendship Bread starter) growing on my kitchen counter.

 

Kara gave it to me a few weeks ago at knit night and I did bake with it last Thursday.  Bridgett was here with Leo and when I figured out that I didn't have the vanilla pudding mix called for in the recipe (see?  Amish using pudding mix?  I don't know about that -- it flies in the face of what little I know about them.) she said I could use chocolate. Turns out you can substitute chocolate pudding mix and it's pretty darned good.  I'd show you a picture, but my family has finished the whole thing.

Anyway, everyone I've tried to give my new starters to is wise to this stuff.  That you have to feed it and that it just keeps growing... Anyone out there game?  If not, I'll have like 16 of these by the 20th of March unless I can summon the courage to just kill it.  When you kill a yeast starter, does it make a noise?

Historic Shaw Art Fair

I should have taken the camera to the Historic Shaw Art Fair today.  The weather was gorgeous and the people watching was quite good.  Husband and I go every year and we've made purchases the last two years. 

This year we found a hand-dyed silk quilt that's just fabulous.

The artist, Sandi Garris, was just lovely and I had a chat with her about dying and piecing.  This quilt is about 2 feet by 2 feet and the colors seriously just pop.  It's framed and under glass.  I fell in love when I found it.  Husband wondered  what will happen to the house when I'm no longer in my orange phase...

I told him, "Ain't gonna happen."

Earthquake! or Dogs Have Awesome Powers Part 2

In case you live under a rock (an iffy place to be around here yesterday morning...) we had quite a shaker yesterday.  It wasn't the big one, but it was certainly disconcerting.  Since everyone else got out of the blocks on this story sooner than I did, I can do some commentary as well as tell my story.

I let the dogs out as usual Thursday night, about 10 or so, and went to bed.  Monte could not settle in.  He had me up at 12, 1, 2 and 3.  He was barking at the windows and doors, whining, and generally making a fat nuisance out of himself.  I was ready to strangle him by 3 a.m. I tell you.  I let him out each time, thinking he may have eaten something bad for him while he was outside earlier in the evening, but to no avail.  He'd sniff around and come right back and jump at the back door.  What was Sophie, the big dog, doing during all this hullabaloo?  She went out the first time, but no more.  She even quit getting out of her chair.  She was not agitated at all -- so I knew there were no bad guys involved.  After the 3 a.m. shuffle, I huffed and puffed at Monte and put in my ear plugs. 

Next thing I know, someone is shaking my bed, waking me up.  Which I did actually do.  Wake up that is.  I can't hear anything though, 'cause I've got in earplugs.  I pull them out, and  daughter is at my bedroom door asking me if I've been in her room shaking her bed.  Huh?  I told her no, I had not been shaking her bed... had she been shaking mine?  It dawned on me then that we were having an earthquake.  But it seemed to be over.  Daughter told me she was going back to sleep, but if we had another earthquake to wake her up... I went back to sleep too (instead of getting up, checking the house, getting my kids the hell out of that death trap!  Um, right... great Mom I am.)

Of course, by 6 a.m. our little quake was all over the news.  The city inspectors were going around checking the safety of roads and bridges.  They, of course, found that my shortcut to Son's school is now unsafe, chunks of concrete having fallen from the underside of the bridge, but that is really the only lasting effect for me.   Oh, and the fact that now, every time Monte whines or cringes (which is like hourly) I've got EARTHQUAKE! in the back of my mind.   It's one of the burdens of owning an Earthquake dog I guess. 

Here's Monte practicing earthquake preparedness -- he's gotten under the heaviest piece of furniture in the room.  Good dog.  Now, go find all of the centipedes in the house.

There is knitting in the house. 

It's Filey from Alice Starmore's Fishermen's Sweaters.  It's out of the Rowan Denim I bought when we were in England.  The pattern repeat is very simple -- memorized after the first few rows -- so it's certainly carry around knitting at this point.  The sticky Starmore Gauge Question?  I'm achieving  her gauge by dropping only two needles sizes down, so it's all good.  I'm doing ribbing on US2s and the body on US3s.  I assume this will be my summer knitting. 

You'll remember that I really don't love knitting with cotton.  And, you'll think, well hoo boy this is cotton.  Twine-ish almost.  And in response, I'll tell you that I carry around a little swatch of this stuff that's been machine washed and dried and boyohboy is it yummy.  All the motivation I need to knit through the pain.

The baby cable jacket is in the seaming process, and will be ready to be gifted soon.  But in another babyish development, I ran into Daughter's beloved basketball coach's newish wife and, well not to be indelicate, but she is as big as a house!  Due in a month.  And sure it's a girl.  So, I'll have to knit some of these, don't you think?

I've seen a lot of bootie patterns in my time, but these are among the cutest.   I've read through them (straight forward directions and lots of pictures)  and I have the yarn.  So.  I'll get right on this.

And for friends and family?  The renovations are all but complete.  Yay, me!

The hallway is the first picture, and yes, that wall is orange.  The rest of that space is beige.  The dining area in the second picture has walls the same color as the fireplace area in the third -- just a bad picture.  The family room adjacent to these rooms is a leaf green that doesn't photograph well today...  Area rugs, drapes, and furniture to come in a few weeks.  Again, yay me.   

And a Good Spring(ish) Morning to You, Too!

This morning, it is a beautiful, clear 44 degrees.  Cold, yes, but the birds are singing and and the jonquils have begun to bloom and it'll warm up enough to open windows today I think. 

We had a lovely Easter.  Kids in Easter togs hunting eggs in a snow squall...  Oh, it was like 35 degrees so nothing stuck, but it snowed to beat the band several times during the day.

We all attended the Easter Vigil at our church this year.  I go every year as I sing, but this year both kiddos served the mass and husband read one of the many readings.  It was an absolutely gorgeous service.  Seven readings, progressing through the Bible, proclaimed in complete darkness.   Dear Son was afraid he'd fall asleep during this part (he'd been told horror stories by his loving sister) but he was chosen by Father John to be the one to bring him the book between each reading -- Father says something after each piece -- so there was little chance of snoozing.  Son did count the other server (not his sister!) picking his nose 4 times.  Lovely.  Glad it was dark. 

The only criticism I have of the service really is a new addition.  We baptized the new members of the church as we always do at this service.   This year, someone got a kind of pool, you know, black plastic like in yard Koi ponds?  And surrounded it with cement bricks and flowers and filled it with water and  had the new members actually get in and Father poured water over them.  All well and good.  But then they had to go change clothes.  Like for 20 minutes.  Which I totally get -- I mean we've been blessing these folks and building this up so much that of course they wanted to look nice for the rest of the evening.  Which takes awhile, what with hair and maybe makeup and all... So we had an intermission.  Lost all momentum for me.  I believe this is kind of a movement in the Catholic Church, though -- the immersion during baptism.  I've been in several newer churches that have large pools with steps built into them for exactly this purpose.  And I guess it's pretty biblical, if you really think about it.    I think I'm just old school.  And it was 11:30 p.m.

There has been some knitting on the baby cardigan.  We have a front and we have a pocket.  So cute.

See how the cable splits for the pocket?  Love these details.

Construction wise, we've got more color on the walls and a new front door.  I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

Monte matches the new color scheme.  I guess he can stay.

Flooding wise, thanks for all of your inquiries.  We are far, far away from any trouble.  There's a "Heights" in the name of my neighborhood for a reason -- we are up hill from nearly everything in St. Louis.  The folks who are suffering though?  They are suffering greatly.  Personally?  I wish cities wouldn't allow building in flood plains.  And this spring water has topped most of the 100 year flood plains anyway -- so.   Tough going all over. 

Finally, I do have a rant brewing.  It has to do with the Senator Obama race speech thing from last week.  It's along the lines of a previous rant wherein I wonder why it is that some of us can't be in the same room with folks with which we disagree.  This time, there's consternation over the Senator's continuing association with his  preacher.  Who said some pretty ugly things.  Well.  That's on him.  Gosh, if I had to be held to everything anyone's every said in my earshot... well, I guess I couldn't be President either.  Sheesh, people!  You know?  We can love people and disagree with them.   We can respect people and not take to heart every word they utter.  We can have opinions that don't necessarily jive with every opinion of everyone else in the room.  We can HEAR words and then take positions concerning them drawn from our own experiences, our own faith, and our own consciences!  Dangit!  If we don't do this, I'd put forth that therein lies the wrong doing!  If we surround ourselves with yes men and only those with whom we absolutely and totally agree?  WE END UP IN A WAR STARTED BECAUSE OF FALSEHOOD AND INNUENDO! 

Ahem.  Whew.  Well.  Rant over, I guess.

Progress

Knitting, spinning, and otherwise.

Knitting first. 

The astute among you will remember the Baby Surprise Jacket I was knitting.  For the baby born in January.  Um, right.  Well, I couldn't have given him anything but the flu in February.  And I didn't do much work on it anyway... Early this week, like when I couldn't sleep at night over the construction of our new mantel (pics to follow), I decided something.  With which many of you will likely disagree.  I think the BSJ is kind of knitterly.  As in knitters like it and like the idea of it and like the genius of it.  Knitters like how it shows off yarn.  We like the little decrease lines.  We like folding it and sewing it together.  Non-knitters?  Not so much.  They see a garter stitch jacket without much shaping.   Period.    Plus -- my stitch count is off somehow and I can't figure it out!   So, I'll work on that  and wait for a knitter to have a wee one.

Plan B.  Begun at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. 

It's the King Cole cabled baby jacket I made for my nephew a year and a half ago.  The yarn is Dream in Color Classy Worsted in the Strange Forest colorway.  Weird color for a baby?  I guess -- but this jacket is a size 2 (which is apparently the next size up from a 2T... whatever).  Perfect color for a little boy digging in the rocks at the playground, I think.  And it's superwash.  Cha ching!   Hopefully he'll be able to get a few season's wear out of it too.  Roll it up when you're one and perfect when you're two.  I'm crossing my fingers.

Spinning?

   

I plied singles spun from roving from Hello Yarn's Roving of the Month club (January, I think) with singles from roving from Sakeena via The Loopy Ewe.  About 4 oz. each I think.   I got heavy worsted yarn that shades through light and dark greens, yellow green,  salmon, and pink.   As you can see, when the yellow green and the salmon get plied together, the yarn reads orange.  Kinda crazy, kinda fun.  I love it.  Of course, the scarf is the ubiquitous Irish Hiking Scarf -- Hello Yarn again.    And it is soft and heavy and warm.  Yum.

Otherwise?

The construction continues.  We are in the home stretch... begun January 14th, supposed to end by the 30th of March.  I'll be surprised if they make that deadline, but we can all hope, can't we?  What kept me up?  The mantle that you see bears only passing resemblance to the carpenter's first try at it...  which I thought looked more like a prop.  Here, you look:

 

Hmm.  Well, here in the pictures there isn't a ton of difference.  In person?  The legs on the first one (on the right) were spindly and it didn't sit far enough off of the wall.  So I had them re build it.  Which was a hard thing for me -- I'm not big on confrontation. 

But I'm much happier now.

My favorite things about this project so far?

The slate in the fireplace and at the front door, the new wood floors, and the fact that we closed up an opening leading to our room (much quieter back there now).
 

Auntie McRanty Pants Rides Again!

I'd show you pictures of the merino/yak mix I plied yesterday, but I'd have to wade through electricians and carpenters and plastic sheeting to get to daughter's camera since mine is on the fritz.  Suffice to say that it's soooffffttt.   Looks crunchy, in that rustic Lopi kind of way, but it's super, close-to-the-skin soft.

Plus, I have rants to get out of my system, and that's more productive. 

First, why can't I get that shhhhing in my headphones to stop so I can write and listen to music with no words and drown out the country music and commercials coming from the electrician's radio in the other room?  It's enough to put me over the edge.

Second, for what possible reason would my local paper publish a picture of a black man in KKK garb taunting our mayor on its front page above the fold in the city edition, but put just a cropped version of that picture, sans KKK guy, on the front page of the suburban edition.  Are they trying to foment racial anger?  Did the editors make a conscious decision to inflame city dwellers with that picture and think that maybe suburbanites wouldn't really care about downtown goings on?  On my list of things to do is contact the ombudsman of our esteemed media outlet and ask these exact questions.  Out of towners might wonder why there was a picture of a black man wearing KKK garb on the front page of our paper.  Um.  Yeah.  There was a kerfuffle downtown where a bunch of protesters taunted and shouted down and disrupted the MLK event at which our white mayor was a speaker.  The protesters, mostly black, think our mayor has behaved badly toward a black former fire chief.  Maybe there are grounds for the protest (I haven't kept up with that story), but I do think  that the rude nature of the shouting and the downright offensive nature of the guy evoking the KKK and their lynchings and violence was not exactly in the spirit of Dr. King's message or his legacy.  That said, I guess it's news, but how come it's only news here in the urban part of our metro area?  Just sayin'.

Third, Dear Daughter wants to go to the Jonas Brothers concert here next month.  Questionable taste notwithstanding (**grin**), we got online at precisely the moment the tickets were to go on sale and my Metrotix account was perfectly up to date, but when we clicked on the tickets at the appointed time, we were blocked.  Next click, the tickets were sold out.  Within the minute that they were to go on sale.  But, to my astonishment, there were tickets available within 5 minutes on a ticket scalping site, TicketsNow, for -- get this -- 10 times the face value, sometimes more!  That quickly those slimebags had snagged all of the tickets and were scalping them, legally I guess, to us.  Lovely.  Well, I'm not paying that markup.  I know that the artists or the venue aren't getting that money.  Why should scalpers?  If you are one of the parents out there who are supporting this horrible practice so that your kids can get these tickets, shame on you.  Really. You're probably the ones  who pulled up with your 7-year-old to High School Musical at the Fox last month in a stretch Hummer Limousine. What are you going to do for her wedding?  Or you're the lady I sat next to at the Hannah Montana concert with a 4-year-old in a Hannah wig in your lap sucking her thumb and sleeping because it was after 9 when the second set started!   And if you have that much disposable income, really, I know of  several places that could really use a hand up.   (BTW, we got tickets to both of those shows because we are subscribers or season ticket holders and got a heads up ahead of time... otherwise, I'd have experienced this scam much earlier.)  I'm composing a letter to my city and state representatives concerning this topic. 

I do have other things burning a hole in my panties.  They are school and traffic related, though, so they can wait for another day.  Plus... you've heard them before.  **grin again**

Did You Ever Just Want To...

• Kick your children right out into the cold?  Because they know that, every school day of their lives, they get up at 6:30 a.m. and we all leave for school at 7:15 a.m.  This time frame does not waver.  It does not change.  It is the same every day.  So why do then, dear readers, do children act perplexed and personally affronted when you start to bellow around 7:20 a.m.?  Why do they whine, "I thought you were waiting for me!"  or  "I didn't know we were ready to leave!" or "Could you just wait a minute, Mom?  I'm busy!"  or "Did someone pack me a lunch?"  Yes, right out to the street, I say.  Right out to the curb.  Growl.
• Spin.  'Cause it's all I ever want to do.  Witness.  (Ignore the time stamps on these pictures -- we inserted a new battery and voila!  Wrong times on everything and no way to fix it.  No way that we want to take the time to learn that is...)This is Adrian's soy silk and wool blend.  You saw it in a bag last time I posted.  I've got about 270 yards of this soft and yummy stuff.  I'm thinking a neck warmer.    Here are singles of my Christmas yak and merino blend and of Rachel's Dance Mistress BFL.  I'm having a blast exploring how different fibers and blends spin up.  Now.  Would someone please post all of this to the NaSpMoMo group on Ravelry.  'Cause I'm definitely spinning my fingers off this month, and loving it.  But I really have not been making time to post new stuff to Ravelry.  The Flicker learning curve is kicking my hiney.
• Knit like the wind!  We are having a knitalong at the shop for the Kauni Cardigan.  Sandy has ordered tons of the Effektgarn (and sold out of tons too) and round about 20 of us are knitting versions of this stranded cardigan.  We're meeting Friday nights to work out the kinks.  See mine hanging in the shop?   It's alongside of Fiona's Icarus.  Gorgeous.  (Rachel took this picture and posted it.  Rachel is a way better blogger than I am.)  Here is my Kauni Cardigan Version 2.0:  Modifications?  Well, colorways for starters.  I'm using colors EV and EM instead of the rainbow.  Um, who needs two of those?  That's not to say that you do not need one.  Also, I've taken 4 stitch tall peeries from the Traditional Fair Isle  Knitting book by Sheila McGregor and I'm dropping them in instead of using the square pattern throughout.  I'm thinking kind of controlled random here -- she's got two entire pages of these little guys and I'll just pick and choose according to my mood.  Maybe, gasp, the sleeves won't even match.  Who knows.  What I kept were the 6 rows of straight knitting between each pattern.  Whew.  I was worried that the colors would read Christmas but they don't so far.  Even if they do... I like Christmas.  Also, I did two inches of 2x2 corrugated ribbing, rather than 1.5 inches of 1x1.  Me likey.
• Knit some more!    I made quite a bit of progress on this twirley scarf out of my handspun while getting 3RD PLACE!! at a trivia night on Saturday.  This is our team's personal best, and we could've won if Bridgett's little one hadn't had a fever.  We tanked on the Pope round and she would have known them all.  Darn kid fevers!  (M is fine now -- I'm not that cold hearted.  She danced down the aisle for kid's liturgy on Sunday... cutest thing ever.  Really.)  I bet Lucia would have been good too.  Darn her living in Connecticut  Massachusetts!
• Move into a hotel where you have a chance at clean and peace and quiet?     This is the current state of my living/dining room.  Yesterday, Mark and the guys (as I am fond of calling them) used a saw and a jack hammer to dig out that channel you see running across the room.  Hmm.  "Dig" is a pleasant sounding word which implies gardening and bucolic, satisfying scraping sounds.  "Dig" is the wrong word for what happened inside my house yesterday.  "Pummel" is wrong too.  "Blast" is a little too quick for yesterday's 3 hour marathon metallic banging, stone-smashing, saw-blade screeching, foundation shaking event.  It was at the very least unpleasant.  The dogs are full of dust as this is an area that is hard to block off as it has the bedrooms and the bathrooms in it.  End date?  March 31st.  But it will be lovely.  Patience.
• Believe in the supernatural.  'Cause here is the picture I took not two seconds before the one above:  Haven't you seen all those Discovery Channel and Sci Fi Channel shows where they prove places are haunted using pictures with orbs just like these?!