Knit for Brains

Photo Bonanza

Here are some pictures that I have been planning to post but were in the camera. 

This, I think, is a Peregrine Falcon that fell from the sky at the last Uni Club meeting.  It fell near Fiona and a friend who got a Parks Department worker. The bird was beautiful.  I had never seen one close up before.  I don't know what happened to it in the end, but the Parks Department guy took it over to some police officers who seemed to know what to so.

This is a turtle that wandered into our driveway.  Maeve found it between our cars and was thrilled!  I don't know if it's the one that kept showing up in the road, though it looks the same.  It's kinda cute in reptilian sort of way.

Here is the beginning of the hat that I am sending off to The Dulaan Project.  A picture of the end result will follow.

And here is my Moebius scarf.  It's quite a bit further on than in this  picture.  i think I am going to just keep going until I run out of yarn.  I am liking the colors much better than when I started.  It was looking a bit '70's with the brown and dark green next to each other, but now with the other colors coming in, some yellow, light green, and purple, it is looking really nice.

And here's my youngest model showing of the Elf Hat.  She's put in an order for one in pink.  Good thing they knit up fast.

Knitting by the pool

Today I got to hang out by the pool with the Big Kids.  Maeve was valiantly trying to nap and David wanted off pool duty for once and I wanted of Maeve at the pool duty for once, so it all worked out.  After jumping, swimming sliding and impressing the kids with a back dive off the diving board, I got out and picked up the needles.  I got some very confused looks from the very adolescent group from the local Y, but other than that my poolside activity went unnoticed.  I did make a mental note that needing to  knit something in wool on a really hot and muggy day must be related to  my need for hot tea during a brutal summer in New York City.  (Please note, anyone who hasn't lived through a brutal NYC summer, a dear family friend who spent over a decade in Africa with no air conditioning finds it unthinkable that people spend the summer in the Big Apple without an AC unit.  I was one of those people and I have to admit it was my most miserable summer in my life.  It was worse than when I was in the hospital every week for dehydration at the end of one pregnancy during a particularly hot August.)  But I digress.  I was working on my Moebius scarf that I am knitting in Noro Kureyon.  I am loving it!  I do have pictures but they are in the camera which I have misplaced again.

Last Sunday I got together with my friends in the new local coffee place which I love for their numerous couches and seating areas.  It is wonderful to go and sit and feel like you can have a conversation without another person or group sitting on top of you listening to everything you say.  The coffee is pretty good, too.  What I really go for is their flavored hot chocolate.  They have a Tiramisu Hot Chocolate that is so yummy I wish I could live off of it.  More to the point here, though, is that we got together to knit.  Woo hoo as Maeve says.  It was so much fun and we were there for 3 hours, knitting and yapping.  (Again, there are pictures in the missing camera.)  We are all donating something to the Dulaan Project.  I am almost done with my little Elf Hat from Charmed Knits.  It knits up really fast.  I just hope that it isn't too short about the ears.  If I get a chance before  I have to send it off I am going to knit some ear flaps.  I love the four points that come from sewing the top up.  I think if I make another one to send off I'll knit it longer.  But I figure that a kid will be happy with the flappies.

I am off, now, to tidy up and hopefully find the camera so I can post my pictures.

Summer is here!

Today is the Summer Solstice.  The first day of summer and all that, and what a gorgeous day it is!  Sunny and not too hot.  I decided to find out a little more about this solstice, and in just a few minutes found this, this, this and this.  I still don't know what the time on the calendar means: Summer Solstice 6:06 (GMT), unless it is so obvious I just figured it out while writing this.  6:06 GMT would be...(time math not functioning too quickly here)...1:06 EST, so that is when the Sun is at its highest point - OK, got it.  Duh.  If I had looked a little closer I would have noticed the "GMT" and not assumed that it meant 6:06 everywhere.  See what happens when I get a chance to sit down and give something my attention?  Brain stuff happens.  Quite heartening, that.

I don't know if it the season or listening to Brenda Dane on Cast On almost incessantly (I am on episode 30 and have a lot of catching up to do) but I am raring to go.  I am getting together with some friends on Sunday to knit and I am going to make a hat for the Dulaan Project.  I'm pestering my friends to make hats, too.  We have just enough time to get them in the mail for the July 1 deadline for their reaching Arizona.  Nothing like a looming deadline to get me going.  And I just read about Amelia's challenge to knit hats for a British charity drive involving bottle caps (yes, pun intended).

Another drop in the bucket of inspiration was the delivery of Charmed Knits (the link doesn't seem to work, let me know) by Alison Hansel.  The only disappointing thing about the book delivery is that Josh the UPS Guy is still on vacation.  The book itself made up for it, mostly.  I am itching for all things Harry Potter, what with the book and the movie coming out soon, soon, soon.  Logistically, though, the book release will cause us a minor difficulty.  We canceled our Amazon order for 2 copies in favor of purchasing one full-price volume at the new local indie bookshop.  The plan was to go to the store at midnight and collect said tome.  Well, it turns out that we have to pick Fiona up from a camping trip by 8am that next morning and she will be about 3 hours away.  Not realizing that pick up would be that early I opted for driving to get her as opposed to arranging for her to fly.  Once we realized the distance and time, I still opted for picking her up because I don't feel like shelling out the bucks for a flight.  All her driving time that day would end up to be almost as long as ours with having to get to one airport, then home from the other.  So, I have made the deal that I would drive there, stopping at every Starbucks we pass for a Venti of anything caffeinated and David would drive back.  I have a feeling that we are not going to be getting much out of Fiona as she will have her nose in the book and I will be  passed out from exhaustion any way.  But I digress.

The other drop in the B of I is Cat Bordhi's A Treasury of Magical Knitting.  I have been wanting to look at this book again for a while but couldn't find it.  Turns out it was right in front of me.  Literally, it was right in front of me in my pile of knitting books but I just kept over looking it.  Well, now that I've found it I took the opportunity of going downstairs to the basement to where my stash has been, well, stashed and bringing up some yarn to audition for a moebius something.  I know I should start out with something basic, like a scarf.  But I don't know if I want a scarf.  I think I may want something more ambitious and fraught with the possibility of great mishap.  But, hey.  I want to be a knitter on the edge.

I was going to take a picture of the stack of boxes holding the yarn for the moebius project and the Dulaan hats, but I can't find the camera.  I don't remember when I last had the camera and I am actually nervous that I left it somewhere.  It is actually Fiona's camera, I may have mentioned, because ours doesn't work at all.  If I have indeed lost Fiona's camera then I am facing a severe preteen guilt trip in the very near future.

Thanks to the Yanks

I had no inclination to watch the Yankee game last night so I took out Fiona's Portofino tank to fix the glitch that I had found.  In trying to find the glitch, I found another glitch.  They were both really easy to fix.  What had happened was that instead of going through the stitch that I was meant to, I went through the intended stitch as well as the stitch below that one.  All I did was clip a stitch marker just below the mistake so that when I dropped the line of stitches down to the mistake I would go past it, then made sure I was dropping the right stitch, and dropped down just past the mistake.  This was the first time that I had dropped so many stitches that I used a crochet hook to pick them up.  I did try to take pictures but they were terrible so I wont subject you to them.  It was dark and the flash made everything look like a big glare.
And then there were the gnats.  Those insane bugs were dive bombing me.  I got used to the constant pelting that my face took.  I did not, however, get to the point where I could ignore the stealth attacks to my eyes and into my ears.  I was happy that I didn't forget to put down the needles when I needed to smack myself about the head and neck.  I did have a couple of big bites from these small green bugs that were whizzing around.  Small but very nasty.
There was a moment of anguish when I did the math to see how many stitches I should have at various points in the decreasing for the arm holes and it seemed as if I had 10 too few stitches.  I had visions of having to frog the entire front that I had just fixed, after ignoring the tank top for months because of the mistakes.  I counted the number of stitches cast on for the back and it was the same.  Ok.  I would not have made that mistake twice - would I?  Turns out, no.  I had bought some Portofino to make myself a tank top and I was looking at my larger pattern.  Phew.  Fiona had just about given up hope of ever getting this top.  So, I have a project for now and as the Yankees are playing a lot, it seems, I will not be distracted by my usual TV line-up.  And Fiona can thank the Yanks.

The Swarm

For the past two nights i felt like I was living in a horror movie in which a family, out in the country, is descended upon by swarms of bugs.  It's outrageous!  The windows were literally crawling, covered almost completely, by these by these long, skinny, black bugs.  Last week David came in late one warm night, blithely opened the door, not in any rush, completely unaware of what came in with him.  When I came down from putting the kids to bed I look up at the kitchen ceiling and it was moving.  The skinny black bugs had swarmed in when David had come in and had deposited themselves on the ceiling.  I pointed this out to David and wondered what to do.  He said we should suck the up and I remembered vacuuming the not-ladybug-ladybugs up last fall so I went to get the vacuum.  When I got back with the vacuum, David had taken this little bug-vac and was trying to get the bugs off the ceiling.  He got two.  I had my Bosch.  The bugs didn't stand a chance.  We were vacuuming for about 15-20 minutes, turning one light/fan off, vacuuming until the bugs had moved, then switching lights and targets.  We didn't get all of the bugs, but we did pretty well.  We came to the conclusion that unless we want another invasion, we have to turn all the lights off long enough before anyone wants to come in so the bugs wont be trying to get in, too.

Then there are the gnats.  These little guys get in through the screens so the only way to keep more of them out is to shut the windows tight and never open them once the sun goes down.  I don't really want to live in a very large oven, so I will have to live with the gnats.

As for knitting, I am casting around for a project, as opposed to casting on (ha ha ha - it's that kind of evening).  I took some alpaca yarn with me to Manhattan last weekend, and all I managed was a swatch for a project that doesn't exist.   I still haven't woven in the ends of Clapoteeny.  I just haven't been inspired by anything, although I have wanted something to knit.  My fingers have been getting itchy, but I just haven't felt like I could take the time to pull out the stash and find a project.  It really does get annoying when daily life conspires against knitting.

Sheep, Chickens, and Finished

I went on a field trip with Maeve's school to a farm yesterday.  It was so much fun and those kids were just too cute running around the farm, looking at the animals and eating straight out of the gardens.  Talk about getting your fresh veggies!

Here are some of the many pictures I took:

The sheep would not oblige by posing, or even glancing in my direction, but could I pass a small flock, or even one, without taking a photo?  (This was actually one of three, but in the other two it was even less obvious that the fuzzy things were sheep.)

And I just loved the chickens!  This was one of a flock of teenagers who were a bit cranky because their breakfast hadn't been delivered.  No, seriously, the feed delivery truck was really late and the chickens were going nuts.  Low blood sugar attacks in poultry are not a pretty site.  There were other cool poules, but the computer is slow and I am impatient, so I will probably show some more later.

And Clapoteeny is FINISHED!  Sorry no pictures yet.  I am still pulling down dropped stitches and have a couple of ends to weave in, so it's a bit messy at the moment.  So, technically not completely done with, but close enough for me to call it Clapo-finit!  Yeah, it's late and I am a bit loopy.  Uh, oh.  Now the unintentional puns are starting.  I will spare you all and end now.  Bye.

A Little Help From My Friends?

I have stumbled on an opportunity I don't want to pass up and I would love everyone's help.  There is a new bookstore in the 'hood and I might be able to be the person in charge of the craft section.  I know my favorites, but I would love to hear yours, too.  Please leave them in the comments and if you want, why you like them.  The books can be any craft, any level.  Please tell your friends to put their two cents in as well.  I would love to get books written by bloggers, first time authors, even if they aren't out yet, and books that maybe aren't getting the notice they deserve.  The bookstore is a small independent store, and the owner's second.  We did our best to support it with a rather large book buying trip.  It looks like it will be a great addition and much needed as New Paltz's only other indie bookstore closed after dogs years when the owner decided to retire.  I love that we have a store I can go into and ask about a book and be confident that someone in the shop has actually read it.  So, any suggestions would be great.  It will be great to help build a craft section that is well rounded with quality books.

Another request for assistance.
I was given a lovely gift of fleece from a sheep and an alpaca.  An entire sheep and an entire alpaca fleece.  I have no idea what to do with them.  So, here's my proposition.  If someone is willing to come help me clean and do whatever else is needed to get this stuff into spinning condition, I will feed you well and split the fleece 50/50.