Knit for Brains

Cold, cold, cold.

You can ask the kids. I don't turn up the heat. Their pleas for warmth fall on deaf ears. Just thinking about the heating bills makes me shiver! I wasn't really bothered until I realized that being cold and staying wrapped in a blanket was keeping me from knitting!  I had to find ways to stay warm enough to knit, without turning up the heat.  Mind you, even if I did turn up the heat, our first floor is so badly insulated that it wouldn't do any good anyway. So, here are some of the ways I found to stay warm enough to keep the needles going:

Hot Drinks
I have rediscovered hot tea for purposes other than taste and caffeine. It really does warm me up and keeps the hands toasty, too.  Good for knitting in a chilly living room.

Hot Pads
I got a hot pad with clove and other pumpkin pie spices in it so it smells good. Few minutes in the microwave, put it on my shoulders (it's ever so nicely shaped to sit snugly) and it warms me up.

Long Underwear
This is my next clothing purchase. I love long underwear but have none. Don't know how this happened, but it did. They do keep you very toasty and can be sooo soft. Warm and soft - what could be bad?

Cozy Robe
A number a years ago David got the warmest coziest fleace robe for a holiday present. It's now mine. It has the Hogwarts crest on the back and I love it. Ipulled it out from it's summer home in the basement with the extra blankets and it's doing wonders for my evening knitting.

Wood Stove
We have been planning on getting one of these for a while and I think this is finally the year! Not only will it warm up the one of the coldest rooms in the house, the Living Room, it will have that lovely wood burning smell. I love the smell of a fire in a fireplace - or wood stove.

Now that I have my arsenal of warmth, I can knit myself something toasty to wear!

I'm posting without proof reading so please forgive any typos.

Primates unite!

Ok.  The title is silly, but please check out my friend Susan's blog entry and follow her links.  I think that Bonobos are now my favorite primates, and we all need a favorite, don't we?

So long, Vineyard.

Well, it has arrived.  Our last morning on MV is here and we are all very sad to leave.  Well, the kids and I are very sad, David is kind of fine with it.  He's not so much a beach and hanging out kind of person, although he will miss the endless Frisbee games with Emmett.

I will try to catch up on stuff and then expand with details when I load the pictures.  There is still a little packing to do and Fiona has some shopping plans before we get on the ferry.

I won second place for my Foliage hat that I entered in the Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Society Fair!  And really even cooler is that Fiona won a first and a third for a Malabrigo scarf and a hat that she designed herself.  It had started out as a scarf, ended up a square hat and then when she put it on she thought it looked like it had ears so she embroidered a cat face on it!  My friend Susan won first place for her goats so it was a good year at the fair.

We did get to help Susan and Patrick with the goats one morning which ended up being a real highlight of the trip.  The kids got to ride in the back of Susan's farm cart out to where the goats were pastured which was a fun and bumpy ride.  Each of my kids got to feed three Susan's kids that are still on the bottle and I have to say it was adorable!  They had a drinking race and Sweet William won for the first time ever!  We then helped Susan and Pat move the fence.  At first we tried to keep the goats inside while we moved it, but when we saw that it was hopeless we let all the goats out stopped trying to keep the goats in.  After setting the fence back up and getting most of the goats back in Sweet William, no doubt still high from his milk drinking victory (and really just acting like a goat while Emmett did a fabulous imitation of a very inexperienced herding dog) wouldn't get into the pen.  He is such a little cutie that I figured I would pick him up - and after checking with Susan that it was ok, I did. I really wouldn't mind picking up all my fiber that way, in an adorable little warm bundle.  Sweet William was not really all that happy about this however and showed his disapproval but swinging his little horned head around.  After he connected with my ear, and took to wiggling a lot, and getting his foot caught in the fence, I finally got him back into the pen with his compatriots.  I am blanking on the names of the other two bottle fed babies, but I will make sure they are all correctly identified in the photos.

I actually got quite a lot of knitting done while we were here.  I didn't finish anything, but started an awful lot.  I even had a bag of Sheep Shop 2 delivered from the company so i could start a sweater that is in the most recent issue of Knit Scene.  The ladies at the front desk of the inn really got a kick out of it as I asked on a daily basis if my yarn had arrived.  The woman I had spoken to before we came here knew to ask.  I didn't know what address to use to have it shipped because the address on the package changes depending on the carrier and sometimes the post office get a little confused here apparently so I really had that package over-addressed.  It got here though and I can't wait to put pictures up and update my Ravelry queue and all of that.

I can't put off packing any longer as check out is in 35 minutes.  I will have fun putting up all the vacation photos when I finally get them onto the computer.  I will be at the store bright and early tomorrow, but I will try to get the pictures up soon.

So long until next year Martha's Vineyard.

No goats, but yarn!

Ok.  I guess if I sat down and kept track of the things I do each day, and I plan to, really, I would be able to give a chronologically accurate description of what I've been doing.  But, as it stands I will just write it down as it pops into my head and hope for some semblance of order.

I had mentioned that we were going to help Susan with the morning chores for the goats.  After not waking up on time, and taking longer than expected to get the kids through grabbing a breakfast on the run, I actually got service on my cel phone and saw that I had a voice mail.  This in itself was cool because after changing cel phone service a few months ago I didn't realize that I had to set up my voice mail.  I thought it would at least automatically go to that recorded voice.  apparently not.  While in Connecticut, people were trying to get a hold of me and getting weird messages that made it seem as if I didn't have cel phone service at all anymore.  I called AT&T to find out that my voice mail had expired because I hadn't signed on to it in time.  After sorting that our and trying to find a place where I had service to jump through a few hoops, I got my voice mail set up.  Mind you, I got service on a very windy beach so I could only hope that I had heard the computer voice correctly.  So, when I listened to my first voice mail, I thought the vioce said I had 200 messages.  Instead it had said 2 unheard messages. When I thought it was 200 I could only hope that it played the most recent ones first!  Well, to make a long story just a little bit longer, it was Pat of Susan and Patrick fame saying that they had forgotten about needing to be at the West Tisbury Farmers Market so they had to take care of the goats at 5:30 and hadn't thought that we wanted to start our day that early.  I had to agree.  I do draw the line at 4:30 wake ups, even for fiber animals.  So, the kids and I took our breakfasts back to our cottage and watched Animal Planet.

We went to the Farmers Market and I got to buy some of Susan's yarn.  The stuff we had dyed the day before wasn't dry yet, but her colors are so pretty.  I hung out with Susan and Harry while David and the kids did the whole farmers market thing and went to the playground.  the playground is a good old fashion one with one of those spinning rides that have been deemed too dangerous and likely to cause law suits in most other places.  My kids had a bast!  i am so bummed I forgot the camera cord for the computer.  Grr Arggh!

There is much more to say, but the family is waiting.  My BIL and his wife arrived yesterday and we are off to another Farmers Market.  Maybe we will get some food this time!

I promise links to everything when I don't feeling so rushed.

Summer Trips

I really wonder when I am going to learn that summer is never as laid back as I think it will be.  I always seem to look forward to two months of rest and relaxation, or at least a lot less running around.  Every year I wind up at the end of August wondering what happened.  This year was definitely a winner in the crazy summer contest.  With varied and widely separated day camps, camping trips, David heading off for unicycle races in Nova Scotia and, oh right, the store to run, it is amazing I was able to stop long enough to make sure everyone was fed and had clean clothes to wear.

I did manage, after some schedule corrections, to have everyone in camp for their full sessions and take 3 trips.  The first trip was to Maine where we fought off swarms of mosquitoes while having a great time kayaking, watching outdoor brass bands and playing mah johngg.  With two days to catch up on store business and do laundry and repack I headed off to Groton Point, CT with the kids to visit my friend Cricket.  We enjoyed great beaches that are amazingly kid friendly and really yummy ice cream.  Unfortunately we witnessed abusive and violent behavior towards jellies (formerly known as jelly fish, but as they are not actually fish...) unsquelched by inattentive parents who were letting their kids run so wild as to reach Lord of The Flies pitch.

I had a day and a half to get ready between the two days in Connecticut and the two weeks in Martha's Vineyard.  It's usually a push to get everything done, but this year I had to get the store ready to be closed for two weeks and the house to get ready for the house sitter and the bags to be packed for five people being away for a while.  The biggest plans had to be what knitting I was bringing on the trip.
I got a little manic in the shop on the last afternoon between the ramped up caffeine and the nerves about leaving for the trip with enough knitting choices.  I ended up packing 2 sweaters (one is a saga unto itself), a lace scarf, two hats (well, one hat and the pattern for a second because I am getting yarn from my friend here who owns Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm), and two sock projects.  I'll have names and links soon but I am where the computer can connect to the internet and the projects are in our cottage.  I need to do some pre-planning before blogging here.

I spent today with Susan of MVFF fame dyeing yarn for her table in the fiber booth of the Martha's Vineyard County Fair.  It was so much fun.  I got to see her goat that has been under the weather and is living with her until it gets better and can rejoin the herd.  Soooo cute!  Tomorrow we are all going to help out with her morning chores with part of her herd.  David is not looking forward to coming because it is early but the kids are excited to see the sheep and goats and help out.

Pictures will have to come later because among other things that I forgot was the cord to attach the camera to the computer.

Knitting at Yaz

About a month ago David surprised me with tickets to see Yaz.  They are one of my favorite groups and I never thought that I would ever get to see them because, well, they had broken up.  They had gotten back together for a tour.  I took Fiona into Manhattan for the concert.  I wasn't sure she'd like it.  It's not like most of the music she listens to, but she ended up dancing with the rest of us.  It was also a lot of fun showing her that "old" people could still be cool!

And then there was the knitting.  The concert started late and I was getting a little bored, so what's a knitter to do.  There I sat, with the music blasting, knitting away on Collinette silk and mohair yarns.  I really never thought that I would ever be knitting at a rock concert.  The concert was such a blast.  Ever since I got a new ipod that wont talk to my computer, I haven't really listened to much of my music and didn't get a chance to listen to any Yaz before the concert.  They played my favorites and the crowd was a lot of fun.

There will be news and pictures of knitting soon.  Summer seems to be much more hectic than expected.  This is usually the case, but I really convince myself every year that I can slow down in the summer.  Ah, well.

Way hot!

So, the trip to Vassar was great, except for the heat.  It was crazy hot!  I am not one who enjoys hot and muggy, but we did have a lot of fun.  I only got a few pictures as I was too busy trying to stay hydrated (always a challenge).  As usual the kids had a great time running around the campus and David and I got to see friends we haven't seen since  the last reunion.  It's nice to go to reunions a year apart at the same school so we get to see friends from two different years!  We went on a talk about foraging edible food from the wild.  That was so much fun!  Maeve and Emmett loved getting to pick plants and eat them.

Here are my pictures from the Shakespeare Garden.  It is absolutely beautiful and I wish I could do it justice with my photos.

(Actually the pictures are still in the camera, but I'll download them soon and put them here.)

With a little help from my friend!

Well, I will make an admission.  I was about to officially call it quits on the whole personal blog thing because the store is keeping me so wonkingly busy.  But then, I got tagged by Susan, an amazing friend of mine who owns and runs the Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm.  So, I am determined to get back in the blogging saddle and get back here regularly and often (or at least more often, which, and let's be honest here, would not be difficult.)  So I am here to say that I am back and will be posting  pictures of some actual knitting!  Lots of projects have been started - lots of projects started, not so many finished, but some habits are really too hard to break.

Thanks for everyone who has been patient with my non-blogging, and welcome to those who are just finding me here.  I am excited to be back!  Tomorrow is David's 20th college reunion so we will be heading across the river to Vassar.  I already have my knitting planned and I am charging the camera so I wont run out of batteries.  Very soon I will inundate my blog with pictures of knitting and my alma mater.  My 20th reunion is next year and the way I think about it is this: I have 52 weeks to get into shape.  I need to figure out if I can safely knit while on the treadmill while listening to audio books.  Really, I can't just do one thing at a time anymore.  It's either multi task or never sleep.  And I like to sleep.

Been Gone Soooo Long

Well, I think that this is the longest I have gone without a post.  I have been busy at the store basically trying to figure out this whole business thing.  I have been getting some knitting done, tho' not as much as I would like.  I just need to get more organized so the paper work takes less time and the knitting can take up more time!

The best part of the store is all the people I've gotten to meet and talk to.  Not to mention I LOVE all the yarn!  I really just can't get enough.  Also, I have finally learned to knit continental!  I still really don't like purling this way, but it is really efficient.

I still have to have a bunch of projects on the go at any one time.  My new rule for myself is that I can't ball up any yarn until I ready to knit.  One of these days I will get everything up on Ravelry and try to organize myself.

Sorry no pictures, but I want to post this now as opposed to keeping it as a draft for who knows how long!  Maybe I'll get them up soon.  Fingers crossed.

I have been taking advantage of the local library and expanding my audio book collection.  I love listening and knitting.  I am actually catching up on my reading list!

2008 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year everyone!  I actually have a day off and I wanted to stop by here and say hello.  I have s few knitting things to talk about so I figured that while I had the chance, and since I couldn't get Doctor Who on the computer for the kids, I would blog.

Knitting Thing 1: More Knitting P*rn
I had gotten the idea for listening to audio books while knitting from another blog which I can't recall right now, and the audio book that was recommended at the time was The Golden Compass.  Well, I got it from iTunes and loved it.  I bought the second and third audio books as well.  I really liked the whole series and was really looking forward to the movie.  I enjoyed the movie, but not as much as the book.  What I loved was the knitting.  The knitted costumes were amazing.  This was Grade A Knitting P*rn.  I want Lyra's knitted red coat and her hat.  There were more knitted costumes that are amazing and i can not wait to buy the DVD so I can knit it all!  Poor David was stuck between Fiona and me, both punching him and saying "We have to make that!

Knitting Thing 2: Stuck Without My Knitting
A few weeks ago the roads in the area were rather icy.  Unfortunately, Icy is not as obvious as Snowy so I didn't think to check about school delays until we were driving.  We had just started down the road and didn't have a phone signal to call the hotline so we kept going.  We got through and found out about a 2 hour delay when we were at the top of a small hill on our road.  I tried to turn around in our neighbor's driveway but it was too icy.  I decided to drive to the end of the road and turn there.  Well, after almost sliding into the main road down another little dip in our road we turned around and headed back up our road.  We got to the spot where I tried to turn around the first time and couldn't get up the hill.  Even in drive with the accelerator down, we were slipping backwards toward the lakes that our road goes over (mind you the road is very thin there and can be very scary driving at times, like when you are going backwards).  The only way I felt like I wouldn't end up plopping into the lake was with the emergency brake and the foot brake both engaged.  I sent Fiona up to the house to get David to see if he could help.  In the end, I got up the kill after using a lot of traction sand and David pushing the car every which way.  The thing that was the most upsetting was that I spent an hour in the car with  NO KNITTING!  I had actually picked up the knitting and put it down thinking that I was taking a 20 minute drive, and doing all the driving.  What would I do with my knitting?  The moral of the story is: Your Knitting - Don't leave home without it.

Knitting Thing 3: Fiona The Knitter
Fiona is officially a knitter.  She just Rocks.  She makes things up as she goes and she is so productive.  How happy am I!

Gotta run.  There is a line for the computer.

Here's to a wonderful 2008 for everyone, filled with yarn and joy (and The Doctor).