Annie Knits

Look What Came For Dinner

Happy Halloween, Part 1

Our neighborhood  has a Halloween Party every year complete with hayride, costume parade, and haunted house.  This year was no different (except it's gotten a little too big for the costume parade, and the guy who makes his carriage house into a haunted house's relative was sick so no haunted house this year).  I use it as an excuse to have a big Halloween Party for family and friends.  We feasted on pulled pork, butternut squash soup (doctored by Janet into a much better version than the recipe called for with some maple syrup -- thanks friend!), snacks and pumpkin cookies. 

Then the kids made their Trick-or-Treat bags and finalized their jokes or tricks (see, here the kids all HAVE to recite jokes or do tricks -- even the tiniest tykes can regurgitate a simple knock-knock joke in St. Louis). 

Next up is the obligatory driveway pose:  mine are Ginny Weasley and Darth Vader.  Also in the picture (kind of L to R)are friends Sylvia and Claudia, cousins Stephanie and Kelli Jo, and friends Tony, Big Ben, Patrick, Nate, Sterling, and Evan.  The picture is a little blurry because they are all chomping at the bit to get going -- the candy mele begins at 6 p.m. and runs 'til 8.  Sharp.  And we're serious about that one.  I don't even buy the hayride tickets any more because the 2 hour window of candy collection is too precious to be clotted up with hayrides.  Yep.  Kids after my own heart.

Here's my Ginny up close (and dorky) to prove I finished the scarf:

So, the routine is that the guys take the kids Trick or Treating and the moms sit on the driveway in comfortable chairs, sometimes with a fire pit if it is chilly and or rum drinks, and give out the candy.  Usually upwards of 250 urchins worth.  It is actually a riot. 

The best joke we heard all evening that was not really a joke:  What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?  WHERE IS MY TRACTOR?   You know, the 5 year -old made up jokes?  Love them.

I'll leave you with a puzzler (car-talk guys for something to solve):  Look closely at my kids' costumes.  Now guess:  What character did my husband come back from Trick or Treating dressed as?  (no fair guessing Amanda, Christy, or Janet!) (and yes, I know that "as" is dangling -- but the correct way to say that just sounds stupid)  Pics on that one tomorrow. 

Today, on to Happy Halloween, Part 2:  Trunk or Treat at school. 

Weblog, Schmeblog

Gosh.  Friday since I posted last?  Really?  Hmmm...I'll have to get my priorities straight. 

At least I've been knitting.  First up:  stick a fork in those mittens, 'cause they're done!  They're knitted  in Lamb's Pride Bulky and boy are they ever!  These will be the warmest driving mittens ever.  I wore them around the house yesterday 'cause it's like 40 degrees and there's no husband here (he's in Seattle this week) to build me a fire.  I'm trying to avoid too much furnace action -- it's only October for gosh sake -- usually still in the 70s or 80s here in the Lou.  The bulky mittens pose here with my favorite new Halloween acquisition -- a feather wreath complete with spider. 

Next up: since no one guessed the literary allusion in the post before last  ("Casey at the Bat" for those of you keeping track) I cast on with that Mountain Colors Mohair myself.  I LOVE this stuff!  It's going to be Lacey from this fall's knitty.  Easy lace, fun knit.  My mohair is slightly larger than the mohair they call for --couldn't even find it referenced on the net so I'm guessing from the photo-- but, hey, I'm slightly larger than the model too, so it should work out...

But wait..."Have you finished any of your other projects or do you just have a gajillion things on needles right now? "  To that I answer, "Not exactly..."  But I'm close.  One more repeat on Daughter's Gryffindor scarf -- whew.  That scarf is why I cast on for Lacey!  Round and round and round...But, I have to say, knitting the scarf was way easier and way less time-consuming than finding the rest of the costume!  She is going to be Ginny Weasley in her Hogwarts school uniform.  Which means:  white button down (check);  gray wool skirt (check, but only after 4 stores); Gryffindor colored tie(check, kinda); gray v-neck pullover (check -- men's department at Target!); cloak with Gryffindor coat of arms (Can't find a  cloak, a plain cloak, for a reasonable amount of money, anywhere! So, no check...still looking).

What else?   Super warm, woolly socks out of some kind of merino from my stash with the name Lang in it.  Superwash I think.  I got it on clearance for the LYS -- like $2 a skein, so I bought it all. Knit on 3s, ribbed standby pattern from the shop.  They fit me perfectly and I love them.  Now I need shoes they'll fit into. *edited to add:  They look to be different sizes in the picture -- rest assured it is some kind of digital optical illusion -- they are the same size.   

Two skeins left...more mittens?  Gloves?  A headband?  Who knows...

Oh, yeah...I organized and sorted my stash this last week.  Bought the new XL and XXL Glad Bags with handles?  Love them! They are like 2 feet by 2 1/2 or 3 feet, with a ziploc on the top and a gusset on the bottom so they'll sit flat.  Anyway, it's all pretty, sorted by color and type of yarn...Perhaps some of you see where I'm going with this.  Yikes!  I can't even (won't is more like) get it all in one picture.  Suffice to say, I need to start selling on e-bay or paying little old ladies to knit in my attic and use up my yarn.  In my defense, I have bought a lot of it to teach my knitting classes at the gift shop.  I like my student's to have choices...lots of choices.  So.  A Yarn Diet it is.  So, I only bought this last week:  the Gryffindor yarn from Sunshine yarns and...erm...a few books.  HEY!  Books aren't yarn!  And all the cute patterns in them will help me use up my stash...Sheesh.  Tough crowd.

Enough About Me

Good Morning.  I took the camera to work yesterday to see what everyone there is working on.

Hannah is working on a poncho inspired by one she saw on a morning news show and in a department store advertisement.  This will become this.  She's using all kinds of yarn from her stash.  It is yummy.

Marlea is making the Shawl Collar Wrap from Hipknits.  She's using a felted, space dyed yarn called, I think, Ikat.  Which, it turns out is the name for a complex dying method so I can't find it on the internet to reference.   edited to add:  It's Unikat.  Not Ikat.   I'm fired.

Cathy is working on a crocheted vest  out of one of our new cottons, King Tut.  Not new to the business, surely, but new to us.  It is lovely and shiny.

And last, but not least, the new yarn this fall at the  shop is a line by Louisa Harding.  Man is it beautiful.  I particularly must have the Kimono Ribbon and the Fauve.  One of the hazards of working at a yarn shop, particularly  one like ours which constantly gets new and high-end yarns in, is that you don't actually make any money.  You are just working for yarn.  And  worse, if you put away yarn last spring because you had to have it and it was on sale? It is now obsolete and you love something new more and it languishes in your stash until you give it away on your blog.*  Such is my life.  At least there is the discount.

*I wasn't kidding about literary allusion day -- just ask La.

There's No Joy in Mudville

The Cardinals lost.  Were out-hit more like.  Harrumph.  I've watched more baseball in the last week than I have all season.  I'm a post-season fan, I'll admit it. 

All that game-watching makes little room for blogging.  But I have been knitting.  This has been ripped back and has become this.

My Gryffindor scarf was just too wide and thick.  I followed the directions and got about halfway through -- but it was going to absolutely swallow Dear Daughter.   So...I ripped it out, cast on 50 instead of 90 stitches, still knit in the round, and watched about 4 baseball games.  Voila.  We like it much better this size.  Others are doing it with DK weight yarn, I think.  Worsted makes it just too bulky.  And do I have to say that it is about half the knitting?  Which is a good thing because this is part of a Halloween costume, remember?  10 days to big Halloween Party and counting.

And...I was one of a very few to get the Gryffindor sock yarn from Dani yesterday.  Whoo hoo!  You know, the stuff that stripes to form maroon and gold stripes?  See it on Alison's blog.  Harry Potter geek that I am, I sat on that Etsy website and refreshed while I knit, waiting for the promised Wed. a.m. update.  She says the Gryffindor yarn went in under a minute.  I guess I wasn't the only one, but man, am I fixated or what...is there a 12 step program for acquiring yarn?

I've also been working on these. The Lamb's Pride Bulky is from my stash  and the pattern is loosely based on the Ann Norling Basic Mittens pattern #8.  I added the large cable on the back because I love large cables in bulky yarn.  And I love single ply  yarn for the fact that it shows stitch work so well.  Sometimes a curse though...this is the third incarnation of this particular mitten.  The first was too small, the second one's thumb was wonky (follow the pattern, stupid!) and now the 3rd is just right.   I think I got the yarn last year on clearance because it matched my winter coat exactly.  So, now I have bulky, soft, will-felt-slightly-with-wear, snugly driving mittens.  My hands are at their coldest when I am driving kids to school in the morning.  So there. 

I'm doing them now, while it is 83  degrees here in St. Louis because I am teaching a "Knitting in the Round"  class at a gift shop on these and socks this weekend and I had to remember how to do them.   Always good for the teacher to know how to follow the pattern.

    *shhh -- there is another literary allusion in this post...prize, anyone?  I've got some Mountain Colors mohair burning a hole in my pocket.

Works in Progress

It seems like that is all I have...things that are not finished.  Understandable with the Mystery Shawl 2 because we've only gotten 2 clues.  Out of 5 or 6 I guess?  The yarn is gorgeous.  I love Judy's single ply, and I think of myself as a single ply kind of gal -- I just like the way it shows stitches -- but I'm also loving this two ply.  It is really soft, a little heavier than the single ply and the color is beautiful.  This photo is a pretty good representation of the colors on my monitor -- she calls it Daffodils.  It's pooling slightly, as you can see, but the monochromatic thing is making me happy.  I had to rip the whole thing once, so I'm hanging on lifelines, baby.  Yep, one every inch or so.  I took it out for the photo, but 'fessed up anyway.  Now it is just right.

Next is the Leaf Lace Shawl.  Not a lot of progress lately -- couldn't take it on the airplane as it is on metal needles and I didn't want to lose 3 weeks of work to some airport security guy's wife.  The pic is here just to show the color changes.  Which I don't think I like.  How many things are these 5 skeins of Koigu going to have to become for me to like them?  (Umm, let's see:  half a Charlotte's Web, half a Clapotis, now half a Leaf Lace Shawl.)  See, it's not symmetrical -- the bands of color become smaller as the shawl gets larger.  Keep in mind that I'm about 3/4 of the way through the 3rd ball.   I just haven't decided to love it yet.  And it is heavy.  And only halfway done.  So...what to do?  It's languishing in the knitting bag for now.

Prisoner of Azkaban Scarf
This is part of daughter's Halloween costume (she's being Ginny) but I'm only through 6 of the 14 repeats.  Man.  I've got to get on the stick.  Not long 'til the big day.  It's kind of a boring knit.  But I've got to make myself work on it...

And Finally...

This came at the shop today.  Reynolds Odyssey in Browns Mix (which by the way is a lot more olive than brown, but olive is OK too).  It is for the sweater Husband requested from Men in Knits .  This cardigan.  Simple.  Elegant.  Boring to knit except for the cable.  So I had to get exciting yarn.  A girl's gotta live a little.  Now all I have to do is finish it by Christmas.  Cross everything.

Whew! Picture Heavy Post!

Wow!  Did we do Niagara Falls Canada!  DH does work for several clients up there so we went to see his stuff.  And did we EVER!

When we got there it was raining, so we went to see the large format movie (IMAX) that tells the history of the area and the falls first.  Of course, a client.  Then we went to another client's arcade for the evening on Friday.  Think Dave and Buster's on steroids.  Son was on cloud nine and since it was a client, I wasn't spending my money for the hundreds of tokens he blew through (with help from Sister, who was the big winner of the night with nearly a thousand tickets).  We didn't take pictures there because they would have blown your eyeballs.  Really.

Next day was Falls day.  We did the Maid of the Mist.  You get wet.  Really wet.  And it was 8 degrees Celsius, whatever that means (cold).  Loved it!  Then on to the Falls proper, with lunch at the restaurant over the Falls at Table Rock.  Lovely.  Then the walk along the rapids beneath the falls.  That water is moving so fast,  no one is allowed to navigate it.  Class 6 rapids.  Again, whatever that is -- the guide said the scale goes from 1 to 6 -- some of the waves reach 20 feet when you count the troughs created beneath them.  And the water is like 75 feet deep here.  It was loud.

That evening, we went to a client's house for dinner (thanks Murray and Sue!!).  Lovely as it was their Thanksgiving weekend.  The kids played in the hot tub.  (Remember how I said it was cold?)

Sunday morning we went to Marine World.  We petted(you heard me)Orcas and Belugas. 
We fed bears (see the one with his hand up?  He's done this before.) 
Son was attacked by a herd of hungry deer.  I have to say this about Canadian animal laws -- very different from here in the States.  We lined up, put on anti-bacterial scrub, and petted and fed the marine mamals.   I would think they could get a whole host of viruses, rashes, you name it.  And the bears!  We threw them kid's sugar cereal and marshmallows.  I kid you not.  And we certainly weren't the only ones.  Man.

Sunday afternoon was technology time.  First we went for a ride on the Jet Boat that takes you up the river toward the falls.  We took the weenie boat (the one that stays dry) because, oh...did I say...It was Cold!  Class 5 rapids here.  The boat was totally submerged at one point.  We also did 360s in the middle of the Whirlpool (famous because everything that goes over the falls, including bodies -- they said about 1 a month, yuck, gets sucked to the bottom in seconds due to the current and only comes up when the whirlpool changes direction in the winter due to low water -- again, I say, yuck).  The guide (that's him in the back) laughingly said if you fall out here, even with 15 life vests, you get sucked to the bottom and they'll see you in November.  I wondered why we bothered with the vests.

Next, we went on a helicopter ride.  My first. (The kids' too, but they don't realize what an experience it was I don't think.  I bet they are the only ones at their school who have flown in a helicopter over Niagara Falls.  All due their Daddy, the super Architect.  With very generous clients.  Very.)  Over the falls. 
The rapids.  The whirlpool. Way cool.

You ask if I knit while we were there?  No time.  But my lovely Flower Basket shawl went almost everywhere I did -- under my jacket -- did I say it was cold?  More tomorrow. 

We Got an Owl!

Well, kind of.  Look who was sitting in our Silver Maple this morning when we went out to wait for our car pool ride. She (I think it's a she) is looking intently at a hosta garden in which we capture and release many frogs.  Dear Son spotted her as she swooped in from atop a nearby house.  We sat and wondered if she was delivering a letter.  DS hoped it was his Hogwarts letter, but Dear Daughter disabused him of this possibility poste haste.  One, it's not his birthday.  Two, it is not July.  These, she stressed, are the only times muggles get letters by owl unless there is a wizard in the family. 

"She's a barn owl," DS insisted (how does he know that and is he right?) and so she could be a Hogwarts owl.  Not a Snowy from Harry, or a Pygmy from Ron, or an Eagle from Malfoy....on it went.  Well, she did not, in fact, give us a letter.  She left with a mouth full of frog, however.  Yuck.

Speaking of frogs...we have a gazillion these last few years and we postulate that since West Nile killed ALL of our crows (and I mean ALL -- we used to have perhaps a hundred that would roost and caw in our 21 or so trees and now we have not a one) the frog population has boomed.  We see hawks hunting them too.  Red Tails roost on downtown buildings and we are 1.2 miles from downtown. 

Well.  Enough nature for the day.  I am a city girl after all, and the 16 mosquito bites I got taking that picture has been enough fauna for me, thankyouverymuch.

Dullsville

I got nothing , cause it's all lace all the time here baby!  Well nothing new and fascinating anyway.

Leaf lace Shawl is coming along.  I'm through with the second color.  The pattern is second nature now -- no markers, no counting to speak of.  I know where things should be and where they shouldn't.  Whew.  But I won't get it done for Canada.  Let's just admit that to ourselves right now.

Mysterious

The first clue of the Mystery Shawl 2 came out Friday.  I had it done in like an hour.  And now I have to wait a really long time to work on clue 2 because we won't be back in town until Monday night -- clues come out on Fridays in this knit-along.  It's not a top-down shawl.  At least I don't think it is.  I bet we continue this motif up the sides and start the V of a new pattern next time.  You can't see it in the picture, but the decreases are making kind of a flame thing -- ridges and valleys.  Really nice -- not just a bunch of yarn overs, but depth of design.  And the yarn...well, you know how I feel about that.

Around the house

And for your viewing pleasure (and to jump on the sky photo bandwagon) -- the St. Louis sky on October 1.   And this practically fell on my head as I took the last picture.  Birkenstock only for scale. My black walnut tree is lousy with these nuts -- they thump on the house all day and night, they are huge and heavy, and the squirrels love them.  Drives the dog CRAZY. 

L a Festa

Took the kids to the school festival this afternoon.  The shawl went over big -- up to $75 at auction before I left at 4 p.m.  with two hours left.  AND the Red Heart baby blanket?   The little old ladies of the Country Store sold it  before I even got there.  Hmmm. 

DS and his friends worked a con on all the other little kids for the afternoon.  They used a few of their dollars to buy plastic Easter eggs at the church basement flea market.  Then they used the rest of their money and won penny candy and little prizes at the games.  THEN, they stuffed the candy and prizes into the eggs and sold them around the festival to their other little unsuspecting friends...yes...adorable little grifters entrepreneurs. 

We let them play the egg con all afternoon and here is why:  1.  No money left the festival -- all was reinvested in the con (the profit piece of the business plan didn't really develop); 2.  It kept them occupied with minimal outlay on our parts -- we just had to feed them; and 3.  Well, I don't have a 3 -- I'm ok with just 2.  I'm raising a lovely little boy.  Just you wait.  Really.

Daughter earned confirmation points by volunteering all day. First running some game, then pouring lemonade and tea at the spaghetti dinner (complete with, you guessed it, hand made meatballs!).  It's her thing -- I think she'd volunteer even if she didn't have to.  It's an endearing quality.

Night and day, these kids.