Twisted Stitcher

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Part Two of the Big Trip

OK, so it wasn't a huge round the world kind of BIG TRIP, but it was a big event for me. When last we left our knitter....
Sunday morning I got to drive up to our family's creekside cabin the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I haven't been there in over 3 years, which is waaaaay to long. Especially since it is the place where I feel the most myself, if that makes any sense. I know you know what I'm talking about, that special place in the world where you feel connected and somehow more real. The place you think of first when someone asks where you would live if you could live anywhere. The place that has tons and tons of special memories. Enough already, let's get to the knitting.
I stopped by this place in Stevens Point on my way. Would have stopped at Schoolhouse Press, but it wasn't really on my way, and I was short of time.Herrschners Catalog Outlet Store, or Mecca, whichever you choose. They of course had tons of stuff I really wanted, but being a good girl (at this point in the trip) I bought only these things...Kroy sock yarn in a great color that now that I'm looking at it is MORE blue and green for me. Gee, I wonder what my favorite color is these days? And Socketta, gray with yes more blue and green, but darker, so I totally needed it.

I stopped at the grocery store on my way to the Creek. Here's what the fridge looked like.

Only the essentials: Cranberry-Raspberry wine from a local company, Wisconsin cheese and salami, Diet Coke, and butter. The bread and fudge were on the counter. The bread was for toasting in the oven (see below). The stove keeps the house nice and warm and makes great toast! And yes, I do know how to cook on the wood stove. My specialties are a killer fried egg, bacon, and toast breakfast, and fried chicken to die for. I made neither of those this trip. No dishes, what else needs to be said?

After I unpacked the car, which took all of two minutes, I headed down to the creek for a nice bath. Oh, did I not mention no shower in the house? The creek was beautiful and peaceful. The colors fantastic, and the forget-me-nots still blooming. The water was cold, so I didn't stay in the creek long.

The weather was warm and cloudy, but the sun came out in the afternoon, so I took a drive to see the fall colors. I really miss seeing red and orange in the fall. Here we get pretty much only gold. I plan on posting lots of pictures later, but here's a peek at some fall color near Trout Lake.

I had a great pizza at the Sayner Pub for dinner, and went back to the Creek for an evening of knitting. Most of the time I worked on the mobieus, because "all" I had to do was stick the beads around the edge and bind off. What a pain in the butt....over 3 hundred stupid little beads that all had to be put on individually. It's finished, but I am sick of looking at it right now so I don't even know if I'll wear it.

I'm going to stick a collage of photos on the photo page for now, and will post more later. I seem to have caught some nasty cold/virus thing that has me cranky and tired.

Stay tuned...

Monday, September 25, 2006

I'm Back

Didja miss me?

I sure missed stitching with my friends these last couple of Saturdays. For those of you who didn't know where I was it was because I couldn't tell you I was going anyplace. So fortunately for you, you missed the whole discussion of which projects to bring, the debate of check the bag or carry it on, etc. With the new restrictions it was a little harder to pack, since I hate checking baggage. No liquids, gels, or aerosols. What a pain.

I managed to bring the following projects: (clockwise from dragonfly socks)blue and green dragonfly socks, a ball of yarn for a helmet liner, the Pi shawl, a green mobieus with beads, some roving and my drop spindle, and in case I got bored, another ball of Trekking for socks. This really sounds excessive since I was only gone for 5 DAYS, but it made perfect sense while I was shoving it all into my bags.

I flew to Chicago on Friday the 15th to surprise my sister Margie for her birthday. My flight left DIA at 6:15AM. Yes, that's really early. Ask Matt if you don't believe me, he was the lucky guy who got to drive me there. Did you know the security folks don't start until 4:30am and if you get there early you have to wait for them? And did you know the coffee and foods shops aren't open that early? Imagine a sleep deprived knitter waiting for her plane with no food or coffee. It wasn't pretty. I did have my new I-Pod with me, and I did download all of the Cast-On podcasts, so I had knitterly company anyway.

After I got to Chicago, I took the L out to a place my sister Karen could more easily pick me up. We drove to her farmhouse in southern Wisconsin in her cool new Z3 with the top down. That was a lot of fun. She has 3 Newfoundland dogs and a Great Pyrenees. Please don't check that spelling, I know it doesn't look right, but I'll fix it later. I'm guessing you could spin dog hair at that house from now until forever, if you wanted to. I did finish sock number two that afternoon, and it fit just fine. Then I did what I swore I wasn't going to do....I ripped out sock one to the start of the heel gusset and re-knit the stupid thing all over again. Now I have a pair of socks that fit and it doesn't take a lot of time and cursing to get them on. I have learned several things with this pair of socks, but I'm way to tired to go over the list. Here's proof, for those who may doubt...socks on my feet this morning before work.

We had a great time Saturday. My nephew Cody made me wonderful scrambled eggs for breakfast. I had fun surprising not only my sister but also my Mom on Saturday. I picked her up from the nursing home to take her to dinner. She was glad to see me, but more glad I think to be "sprung" from the place.

We all had a lot of fun at the Gale Street Inn on Diamond Lake road, and my sister was totally shocked to see me. Lots of good food, yummy drinks, and the very best part of all, time spent with family. You just can't beat that.

I'll post more of the trip notes later. I'll update links, correct spelling, and add pictures. I promise, but I've had a real Monday here, so I'm going to bed.

*updated 10-10-06

Thursday, September 14, 2006

A quick update

No exciting news to share. The dratted socks are still kicking butt (mine). The finished sock was tried on at knit group Saturday. It took quite a while to get it on, please don't anybody say anything about binding off too tightly. I know. And I still did it. At least it was good for a laugh. Lisa took pictures. If you must see, drop on over, her link is on the side.

I had to unbind the sock and use a yarn over bind off from the Knitting Answers book that I will put up a link for later when I have time to do tricky stuff. And, yes I know it's not that tricky, but I am under a little time issue here. The new bind off is much better.

The second sock is NOT done, even though I really wanted it to be, but I'll have scads of time tomorrow to finish it. I will be computer-less until Wednesday, but expect a long post either next Wednesday or Thursday night. Probably late, you know how I am.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Happy Birthday, Margie!

Here's a picture of my sister, the Birthday Girl a "few" years ago, and a picture of her at her daughters wedding last November. Not only is she beautiful, but she is fun, loyal, extremely kind-hearted, sweet, patient, hard-working, brave, smart, talented, believes the best about everyone, is a wonderful Mother, a daughter who takes incredible care of our Mom, and almost never made fun of me when I was growing up. There was that "Shamu, the killer whale" comment, but that's about it. She is also the only person on Earth that knows I am telling the truth about flying like Mary Poppins with my umbrella to school one day a long time ago when I was much, much lighter.

She was the person who knew me best while we were growing up and always was encouraging and supportive. We shared a room, sometimes co-operatively, sometimes not. She likes to sleep with the window cracked open even in winter, even if it meant I had to take a blow dryer to it early in the morning to close it because it froze open. She never used to match her socks, and hated her hair in high school. She never had homework and got good grades, which at the time was very annoying. She has a made a home that is warm and inviting, and always makes a person feel welcomed and valued. She is 364 days older than me and I always loved being the same age as her for one day per year. She reads the last chapter of a book first, which makes me crazy, but suits her just fine. I miss being able to share birthday cake with her. If you are ever blessed to know a person this special remember to tell them how much you love them.

So Margie, I love and appreciate you very much. I can't imagine how my life would have been without you, but I know it would not have been as rich and wonderful. I am so glad to be your sister. I wish for you always all of the very best life has to offer.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Negative Progress, and then Positive Progress

I can't believe it's September 5th already. Where did the time go? Oh yeah, it's been sucked up by the sock. When last we left our story, the sock was seeming "a little loose". It turned out to be a lot loose and took another trip to the frog pond. I restarted the darn thing and finally got the size around my foot to be OK. For anyone counting this would be the second trip to the pond. The first trip was ripping two socks that were done up to the heel.

I was making great progress up the foot and around the short row heel. Looks good, right? And remember that this year was the year to try socks all different ways, toe up, cuff down, lots of kinds of toes and heels. You know, try to find the way I like to knit socks best...Well, apparently I can scratch off "short row heels" as a good way to make socks for me because the darn things did not fit! My feet are too, as Ann said on Monday at the bonus knit, "fat". The short row heel just does not have enough material to go around my heel angling up toward my instep. So it's now three trips to the pond, but this time only a short dip back down below the heel. Good thing I had my new best friend Charlene's book with me. I stuck in a heel gusset, and I've worked one full pattern repeat up past the heel. I have tried it on, and it fits OK. It's a little tighter than I would like, but I'm going to go with it and not rip out any more. This is not because I do not have the willpower to rip again, or that my self-imposed deadline is upon us, but because in a fit of full-blown, heavy-duty denial: I believe that the sock will fit well, once I lose enough weight. Try hard not to fall out of your chairs laughing and be grateful that you have a friend that wants to make sure your life is lightened by this moment of craziness enough to actually write that bit of insanity down for all to read.

On to more positive things. I did go to Greeley to take Megan her stuff including her pet, Hypnotic. Here's a picture of the little thing. Why yes, it is a rat. It shared my biscuit on the ride up. Megan likes her a lot, and I think she's OK, but I'm glad she is out of my house. The rat, not Megan.

I was going to stop and visit Cathy, but when I got there the girls had a list of stores that needed visiting, and a literal car load of stuff that needed buying. And please remember, I have a full size Bronco, it was stuffed full. I didn't leave there until after 4 in the afternoon. I was exhausted, but took the scenic road home through Loveland and Big Thompson Canyon. In Loveland I stopped at Woolen Treasures and picked up some books and patterns I have been looking for. The drive through the canyon was peaceful but rainy, so I did not stop to take pictures until I was past Estes Park. This picture really doesn't do justice to the view.And here is a close up of one of the plants in my new garden. I am really liking the way it looks. It's so nice and cheerful, much better than the bunch of weeds we had before.I have also made progress on the photo project. I have all of the scanning I wanted to get done finished. Now it's a matter of organizing the files. This is what the room looks like now, nice and empty of boxes and albums. The pictures are in nicely labeled boxes, sorted by date, and in albums that are more or less in order, and placed neatly in the closet. I took the picture at 1:30 in the morning and didn't feel much like folding up the ironing board, so ignore that, would ya?In the little basket on the floor, under the green pillows is where I am stashing my fiber to be spun. I think it's a manageable size. I might need more soon.

At knit group on Saturday, it was so obviously a hand-knit sock day, both Lisa and I had to take a picture. The people at the coffee shop think we are nuts.Too bad for them, we have a lot of fun. That's one of my trekking socks on the left, Ann's socks in the middle, and Lisa's jay walking trekkers on the right. It's funny that her blue trekking and mine are both jaywalkers. OK, maybe not hilariously funny, but amusing to me. Notice the "fat" feet in my sock and the graceful skinny feet on my friends. I am not jealous at all, no, not me. That green sweater Darci's knitting, her own design. Talent there ladies and gentlemen.

On the trip to Greeley, one of the stops the girls and I made was at Wal-Mart. They picked up plenty of stuff, including some dish towels that are hot pink, orange, lemon yellow and lime green. They did not pick up any dish rags, or warshrags, whatever you call them. I don't know why, it seemed strange to me also. But the next store we went to was Hobby Lobby, so you all know what I got there. Yep, 5 balls of Sugar'n Cream cotton in the above mentioned 4 colors, plus a variegated pink, orange, and yellow. So I have been knitting on those at work and at my son's football game, which was Saturday after knit group. He did quite well, and the Palmer Terrors beat Chatfield 29-19. You will be getting updates on the season as it goes along, because I am a mom. Ignore it if you wish.

Here is how much dish rag I can knit during a game:Several people were giving me odd looks, but really, there is a lot of time not much is going on at a football game. I am not a bad mother because I need something to occupy my hands while watching a game. I'm glad it was a day game, because I can see that night games might be a little more challenging for me.

Here's a picture of the dish rag I finished at work, lounging in the traveling studio with the other yarn and the rag in progress. It sounds odd to think I'm knitting a "rag". But that's what we call them at our house, we have dish towels and dish rags.This is really a long post, but I found a couple of things I thought were interesting, and since it's my blog, I decided to throw it in. Someone once asked how long I've been knitting, and I thought since I was about 10 or so. I know Barbie has a couple of stunning knitted tube-shaped evening gowns I made. Here though is proof I knitted more than I thought. For Christmas in 1981, I knit 3 sweaters, one for each of my sisters, and one for my niece Melissa. Remember it was the 80's, so be nice about the pictures. I also did some remarkable knitted yoked sweatshirts in 1987, and my daughters Christening gown in 1988. I might post a picture of that later. OK, the pictures will be on the finished object page, since I'm having technical difficulties getting them from the files.

that catches me up for now. Talk to you later!