On the Mission Trail

Whew...we have been covering a lot of ground. We've seen a lot of schools already and we're still not in LA yet!

It turns out g-girl is a Mills alum - Mills is an incredibly beautiful women's college in Oakland. It's more like a park than a school, and there's a lot to be said for all-women's education. Fiona liked it a lot, and said she'd be happy to go there. She also like USF well enough, mainly because it's in the middle of San Francisco, which is great. St. Mary's was acceptable as a lower choice.



Santa Clara was the favorite coming out of SF and surrounding areas, though. And who could blame her? It is the most beautiful campus, with incredible gardens, gorgeous buildings and friendly staff. Check out that wisteria!



This morning we were in Sarah-Hope's neighborhood, UC Santa Cruz. Fiona loved it so much she had to dance through the woods. It's currently in first place, at least until we hit Santa Barbara tomorrow.

And then this afternoon we rolled into San Luis Obispo to take a look at Cal Poly, which is down near the bottom of the pack. It's okay, and it's a good education, but it's so big.



And the best thing about road trips? How else would you see a giant artichoke?

Adventures in Googleland

I'm posting this from my BIL's commuter apartment in sunny Mountain View, CA (home of Google) and where we have been staying since Thursday night. Mountain View is actually a cool place - there's a little downtownish place where there are a couple of blocks of cheek-to-cheek restaurants, most of which have sidewalk tables and all of which stay open into the late evening.

Fiona and I have been looking at schools, so far hitting Sta. Clara, Mills, Berkeley, USF, Stanford, St. Mary's. On Tuesday we leave for Sta. Cruz, San Luis Obispo and points south.

I was totally expecting cooler weather so I packed kind of wrong (Why oh why are my beloved flipflops in La Jolla?) and even optimistically packed some of my knitted warmy things, but it looks like they'll go unused yet again.

Yesterday we were only going to visit USF, so we thought we'd go on a little yarn crawl first. Armed with mapquest directions, we made our way to Uncommon Threads in Los Altos. First of all, Los Altos has a cute little shopping area, much like Girard in my beloved La Jolla, but SO MUCH BETTER. Sigh.




Anyway, Uncommon Threads is a great yarn shop...in my opinion, not as great as Knitting in La Jolla, but it is roomier. I got to see a ribwarmer all knitted up, which I'd never seen before except in photos. And which, PS, I won't be making one of anytime soon, at least for myself. I think it would actually subtract inches from my height and add them to my hips - no thanks.

I also got to touch a bunch of Jamieson's wool, which I've almost bought a boatload full of before sight unseen, and discovered it's scratchy. Even after swatching. Even after washing. Still a little too scratchy for me. So see? Yarn shopping ends up saving me money in the longrun.


Instead I came home with some of my beloved Koigu, which was there in the flesh and you see pictured at the top and below, and some Lana Grossa sockyarn, and some little 4" dpns in size 2 for said sockyarn. Remember, it's vacation yarn!



After Uncommon Threads, we hit the 101 north and headed for ImagiKnits in San Francisco. It turns out that ImagiKnits is smack in the Castro, where, I'll tell you right now, people are having a damn good time on the weekends. In looking for a link for you just now, I found out that I Remember Mama took place in the Castro...it doesn't look like, however, you'll find anyone anyone vaguely resembling Irene Dunne there now.

Fiona tried to get some pictures of the local landmarks from my moving vehicle as we cruised for a parking spot (in vain), but sadly, no photo of Moby Dick. We gave up trying to park and headed for USF (pictured below) instead.



Last night we took in a show at the Eureka Theatre on Jackson, where the 42nd Street Moon puts on lost or obscure Broadway gems from the golden era. We saw Plain and Fancy, a musical about the Amish, I kid you not, from way before Weird Al even had the idea for this. It was actually fabulous!

Despite the parking, San Francisco remains just about my favorite city. It's got the culture and the art scene, it's got nightlife, it's got great food, and it's tolerant. It's tolerant almost to the point of being intolerant, true, but I love it. And everywhere you look, there's something beautiful.

And now, since it's Sunday, your weekly dose of Snoop, weighing himself.



"I gained 8 ounces this week!"

So Little Time, So Little Knitting

I'm sorry to report that there's been no knitting at all so far this week; instead, making and taking pictures of things like these crazy moss balls has kept me occupied.

When I'm not hot-gluing moss I'm busily trying to get things in order so I can go out of town for a few days, which means I've been chained to my computer getting a graphics job mostly done and trying to keep up with things like, you know, laundry, so we'll have clean clothes on our trip.

Fiona and I will be driving north to Ellay and however much further we can go in 9 days to look at colleges. Yes, it's hard to believe that youthful moi could possibly have a child that old, but what can I say? I'll just tell people I had her at 10.

So far, Fiona has been so excited to go look at schools that she has barely managed to sleep until noon, and I think she's only playing WoW 6 hours a day! To be fair, she works pretty hard during at school, so I suppose I can be grateful she isn't spending spring break starring in a Girls Gone Wild video.

When will the knitting content return, you ask? Dear reader, soon, one can only hope.



PS Your weekly gratuitous photo of Snoop, in his cave (aka the cpu cubby in my desk!).

Busy, Busy, Busy

Don't you hate it when your tasks interfere with your knitting? Among other things, I've been working on a lot of invitations/newsletters/what have you. And I'm plugging away on my Tuscany shawl, although I haven't been able to touch it in days!

Ready to Block

Sometimes the days just get away from me - it's been an entire week since I've posted, but to tell the truth I haven't gotten a lot of knitting in. The world intrudes.

My shawl, despite a few setbacks, is finally done. There it sits in all its unblocked glory. As you know, I ran out of yarn about five rows from the end. When the new shipment of Kersti came I decided there was enough to add those five rows plus an entire pattern repeat. I know, I know... despite dedicating an entire post to never learning, ever the optimist am I. There was enough for the extra pattern repeat, but not for the five rows of garter + bind-off. Tink. Tink. tinktinktinktinktink.



I finally ended up with two rows of garter and bound off using the Russian bind-off you see above. It's accomplished like this: *p2tog, slip the st back onto the left needle, repeat from * to end.



In other knitterly happenings, I was over at Knitting in La Jolla picking up some Cascade superwash for a little somethin-somethin for Snoop, and got distracted by a couple of books - Lace Style, which I promptly added to my "Style" library, and No Sheep for You Actually, Suzanne showed me No Sheep because it has a sweater pattern that is basically the World's Biggest Shedir -



yes, even bigger than my own gigantic one - that has three pages of charts and looks like it might take my natural lifetime to knit!.

Anyway, I've been paging through them all week for inspiration, and yesterday I cast on six stitches: the start of the Tuscany shawl (scroll down for a photo) from No Sheep.

Mary's playhouse continues to progress, but the weird fog we've had (See? La Jolla has weather problems too. And I was going to link to a picture of the fog, but the first hit on google images that really showed it also linked to a naked guy holding some kind of crustacean at Black's Beach, which frankly sounds like a bad idea and wasn't very attractive to view, either. So no photo for you.) has not been conducive to painting. And - horrors - rain is predicted on Wednesday. Maybe later in the week I'll get a shot of the playhouse if the sun cooperates.

And - looky here! Snoop's ears have stood up, making him look like a cross between a fruit bat and a holstein.

Guilt is a Powerful Motivator

Some time ago, a friend gave us her children's old playhouse because her house was about to be remodeled and it was in the way. John went down and disassembled it, hauled it up here, planted the pieces in our side yard and we all went about our business, ignoring Mary's little comments: "I wonder when my playhouse will be finished....I wonder if I'll be able to play in it someday....I wonder if I'll be grown up, out of college, and working on an MBA when it's done...."

Okay, maybe it didn't go that far, but at this point my friend's remodel is done and the playhouse is still in pieces.

Since Snoop's arrival the playhouse has started to bug me.



Snoop goes potty on a little plot of grass that, if you stand there with him, makes it darn near impossible not to notice something like a disassembled playhouse.

So here we are this weekend, the weather's nice, there are myriad heinous tasks pressing in (laundry, taxes, work) but we've gotta get that playhouse built while Mary can still fit through the door. We're hoping to put the roof on tonight and maybe I'll be able to start painting next week.

Which leads me to other guilt sources: the taxes!! are probably the hugest thing hanging over my head and making me crazy, but there's also some KAG (knitting-associated guilt):




This is the cabled shawl with pockets from Knitpicks, more than half done and going nowhere.



This is half a shedir, strewn amidst the left over balls from other projects.




This is the shawl I needed the extra ball of Kersti for, which I thought would be done by now.

And then there are those as-yet-unstarted mittens to go with the little cabled hats.

To top it all off, we, and by this I mean probably most of you reading this, too - all woke up minus an hour this morning. Stupid spring forward.

Little Cabled Hats

Alright, things are settling down around here with the new puppy and everything. I'm ashamed to say that I bought him a sweater yesterday. Yes, I bought a knitted item. But - it was half off, and I haven't had time to knit him anything quite yet! I have to be able to put him down in order to knit, and he's imprinted on me like a baby duck...I'm sure he'll be more independent soon.



I did finish the two little hats based on the Green Cables pattern. They're the same pattern and stitch count and everything, but I made them on smaller needles with worsted weight yarn. The gauge is 4sts/inch on the pink and 3.5sts/inch in the blue over stockinette, and I think they're about toddler/small child size (they're stretchy). Now I'm thinking about what to pair with them. Seems like booties would be for a younger baby, so maybe some little cabled mittens would be good.



The pink yarn is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran that also saw this use as well as being the flower on this scarf, and the blue is Knitpicks Andean Silk in bluebell left over from this capelet. Isn't stash wonderful?

Impulse, Shmimpulse

Warning: there is so little knitting content in this post it barely qualifies for a knitting blog. But if you like puppies and kitties (and who doesn't?), read on.

Another crazy weekend at chez Windansea. Fencing tournament, fundraiser for a school none of my children attend, two (two!!) projects involving a posterboard and/or construction of a miniature stage and puppets, a sleepover, and I'm not sure what else because I think I've only been home for 10 minutes in the last three days.

Here's what's really crazy: in the midst of all this, I had a major impulse-control problem leading to the acquisition of a puppy.

Yes indeedy, internet friends - meet Snoop. Snoop's a rat terrier; we knew absolutely nothing about the breed before we met him, but once we found out that blue eyes are an undesirable genetic trait in the breed we knew he was for us. (Mutant dog? Absolutely, where do we sign? I blame John.)

And guess what? Despite the fact that I swore I'd never put clothes on a dog, something about his size made me have to go into gay dog overdrive. I bought a rainbow collar, a pink Kate Spade-looking doggy purse (me!), a leash with a daisy on it and a t-shirt that says "Security" so he can be just a little thuggish sometimes. John made me put back the tanktop with rhinestones that spelled out "Rock Star" but the Petco is an easy 10 minutes by freeway.




Today is day two and Patty is adjusting pretty well; she still says "All your dog toys are belong to us!" but the feisty fight-picker does have a tender place for her new buddy.



Spot's still not so sure...he's trying to decide whether it's something to eat or just another ill-mannered dog to put up with.

PS Gratuitous Knitting Content: Now I can knit those doggy sweaters I keep seeing patterns for. Although maybe not this one - don't want people thinking my dog's been in the big house!

All Quiet on the Knitting Front

Usually you know when I start posting pictures of scenery there isn't a whole lot of finishing going on.

But this time you'd be wrong: I've finished the Green Cables hat in red worsted (to fit a toddler) and pink (for a school auction) and am working on a blue (also for an auction).



I wound the Kersti that will finish my shawl, hopefully tomorrow. (I'll be suffering the affliction, familiar to all parents of children participating in a sport, known as bleacher butt; I'm resigned to developing a corner in my ass but luckily will get lots of knitting time in to make up for it.)



So maybe Sunday you will see the pink hat, the blue hat, the shawl on blocking wires, and more, but for today, the pink and the blue of a La Jolla sky at sunset.

Oh Happy Day!

My shipment from kyarns came today! Oh, Koigu Kersti #621, you complete me.



And of course you brought friends...Koigu #622, you beautiful pink thing!



And KPPM #433, with your turquoisey complexion and lavender highlights, you sing your siren song to me.



Koigu Kersti and KPPM, there will always be room for you at my table.

Anna of Green Cables

Get it? Anna of Green Cables? Anne of Green...okay, it's lame, I know.

Because St. Patrick's Day is coming up and there's a green hat KAL and all, a green cabled hat made from one hank of Knitpicks Sierra.

It fits my 23" head, but since it's cablicious it also fits Mary's head with the brim folded up and Anna, whose head is a bit larger than mine (She actually said it was snug, although I don't see her eyes popping out or anything. Instead, that same sort of amused expression she always gets in one of my hats...the look that says "Other moms go to work, or drive a soccer van, or drink a bottle of white wine in the afternoon....my mom has a knitting blog."). I was going to show you how well it fits me, but the day I took this picture I was wearing my Old Navy camo pants and a black hoodie, and when I put the hat on all that was missing was some of these.

You can add length to the hat easily by adding more ribbing at the bottom. I personally don't like anything folded up on my ears, hence all the beanie-style hats I like to make.

Yarn: Knitpicks Sierra, 1 Hank.
Needles: 1 16"circular & a set of dpns in size 7, or whatever size gives you gauge (I knit big, so knit a swatch! The needle size on the ballband said 9-11)
Gauge: 3sts/inch in stockinette (To see this hat in a smaller size & gauge, check here.)

Begin

Please note: if you downloaded this pattern before 12/5/07, there was a missing purl stitch after the p2tog in the 2nd round of the Third Cable. This has been fixed.

CO 72 sts on the circular needle (switch to the dpns during the decreases) and join for working in the round, being careful not to twist. Place marker to indicate beginning of round.


Ribbing

Knit 10 rounds of K2P2 ribbing.


First Cable

Round 1: *Slip next 2 sts to cable needle and hold to back, K2 from left needle, K2 from cable needle, p4. Repeat from * to end.

Rounds 2 through 5: *K4, P4. Repeat from * to end.


Second Cable

Repeat Rounds 1 - 5 as in First Cable.


Third Cable - In which you start the decreases.

Work row 1 as in First Cable.

Round 2: *K4, P1, P2tog, P1. Repeat from * to end. You have 63 sts now.

Rounds 3 & 4: *k4, p3. Repeat from * to end.

Round 5: *K4, P2tog, P1. Repeat from * to end. 54 sts remain.


Fourth Cable

Round 1: *Slip next 2 sts to cable needle and hold to back, K2, K2 from cable needle, P2. Repeat from * to end.

Round 2: *K4, P2tog. Repeat from * to end. 45 sts remain.

Round 3 & 4: *K4, P1. Repeat from * to end.

Round 5: *K2tog, SSK, P1. Repeat from * to end. 27 sts remain.


Fifth Cable

Round 1: *Slip next st to cable needle and hold to back, K1, K1 from cable needle, P1. Repeat from * to end.

Rounds 2, 3 & 4: *K2, P1. Repeat from * to end.

No round 5 on this cable!



Sixth Cable

Round 1: *Slip next st to cable needle and hold to back, K1, K1 from cable needle, P1. Repeat from * to end.

Round 2: *K1, K2tog. Repeat from * to end. 18 sts remain.

Round 3: *k2tog. Repeat from * to end. 9 sts remain.

Break yarn and thread tail through remaining sts, pulling tight to cinch closed. Pull tail through to wrong side and weave in ends.



Copyright 2007 Lydia McNeil - You may not use this pattern for profit or reproduce it for profit; you may use it to knit hats for yourself, for others, or most certainly for charity, but not to sell.

Fake Isle

I was inspired by g-girl's recent blog posts about what's on her needles (although - yo, where are the pictures? You'll have to be satisfied with her travelling vines scarf, I guess!) to turn the frogged scarf of underestimation & shame into a Fake Isle Hat). It's a great pattern, although again - my gigantic knitting probably warranted sharper decreases at the top. Hmmmm...what to do with the rest of the Noro, though...perhaps some Fake Isle mittens.



I do have another FO to post about, a cable knit hat of my own design, but I have to wait for the girls to get home later so I can stick it on someone's had and snap a photo. I haven't figured out how to take a picture of my own head very well yet, a skill a lot of other knitters have mastered.

In a completely different vein (that has absolutely nothing to do with knitting) I saw this article that appealed to my love of all "when worlds collide"-type tales about Jose the Beaver (I kid you not, his name's Jose, despite the fact that, estoy pretty segura, he's not Hispanic! El coyote, si, Hispanic. The beaver, not so much.) in New York. He's the first beaver to appear in NYC in 200 years! I like how the biologist says he's sure people will see more and more beavers now....I guess Jose's texting them.



I wonder why Anna always looks so amused in one of my hats?

When Will I Learn?

Above, the before picture.

Below, the after.



This isn't the natural order of things, but it's been that kind of day.

I ran out of this Kureyon about two-thirds of the way through this scarf, which wasn't even very fun to knit. Said scarf then sat in a drawer for six months next to finished objects, where I'm sure it was teased mercilessly. Yarn can be cruel.

Now look at this:



I ran out of Kersti 7 rows too soon - can you believe that? This is the purly bump side of the Falling Leaves shawl from Lavish Lace. It will block flat in a diamond pattern, just as soon as I get more Koigu.

The Hardships of Winter

Dateline La Jolla, CA: Severe weather rocks San Diego County!

That's right folks...while you might be trapped on a plane for 11 hours where you live, here in Windanseaville these oranges have been on the ground for at least 8 hours while their owners wonder when the drizzle will stop long enough to go outside without getting their hair all frizzy.

And lookie here - the umbrella!



Okay, John says I have to stop before I jinx us. Wouldn't want to do that - I liked getting to go to the beach over the weekend - Mary even swam yesterday.

Anyway, I'm knitting away on another Shedir and also a shawl from Lavish Lace using Koigu Kersti, which I'm truly enjoying.

In other knitting news, my sister finished her first circular-knit hat, which turned out pretty cute. She's knitting a PICC cozy right now.

Speaking of which, Tami T in CT asked for a PICC cozy pattern. There's one at Knitpicks, but I'm working on a few possibilities that I'll post pretty soon. The first one I made was super simple:

1" of K2P2 rib over 32 sts in the round on dpns.
Switch to stockinette, inc to 36 sts, knit for 6".
1" of K2P2rib, and bind off.

See it here on Fiona's arm? Truly, her arm doesn't usually look like Mary-Kate Olsen's - this is just bad photography.



Basically, if you know your gauge and the measurement of the arm above and below the elbow, you're knitting a sleeve with two cuffs. If you don't know the measurements, it should just fit an adult arm. Also, I used washable yarn, because I was thinking that might be useful. And it shouldn't be scratchy - cancer patients have enough to make them uncomfortable, no?

Anyway, like I said, I'm thinking about other designs and will post them as soon as I have anything.

Here's something else: Sarah-Hope, designer of the much-admired Santa Cruz Hat on Magknits, made my Horseshoe Hat for a very handsome friend! I love seeing people's pictures of patterns I've made up - the yarn they choose, the alterations they make - it's cool. One of these days I'll make a list of links because I know you're out there, my friends, but not today. Today's perfect for just knitting.

Britney So Totally Copied...

Holy cow, it's been almost a week since my last post! Lest you think I haven't been knitting, I most certainly have. It's just that I don't have anything newly finished to show, so I had to drag the salmon-colored scarf out just for this post. If you're curious, it's the ostrich plume lace pattern flanked by some garter stitch on either side.

When I first posted a picture of this scarf being blocked, Harriet asked for an ultra easy lace pattern to get over lacephobia. I think I'd have to recommend a feather and fan pattern - that was my first lace; I made Misty Garden out of Scarf Style but any feather and fan will teach the yarn over, K2tog type of rhythm that makes up a lot of lace patterns. Also, Branching Out - a lot of people knit it as their first project. Here's mine from last year some time.



Let's see, what else is new.....Okay, here's something. Wednesday night I shaved my niece's head, because something happened that we weren't expecting, being new to the whole cancer thing: her hair actually hurt when it started falling out. You know the feeling of having a really tight pony tail all day, and then when you take the elastic out your hair kind of hurts? That's what it felt like. It bugged big-time, so she elected just to get it shaved off.

I used the clippers John trims his beard with set to the shallowest setting, and while my sisters drank wine I took my niece on a hair tour of the 80s & 90s, going from Flock of Seagulls to Bow Wow Wow to GI Jane. And in a turn of events that I guess isn't all that shocking considering the source, we now find that Britney's been totally scamming her personal style. Although to my knowledge my niece has no tatoos and also wears panties.

Then Thursday we went up to the Cancer Center and had her PICC line inserted - and guess what? The nurses were super impressed with the PICC cozy. So, all you knitters out there - knit a PICC cozy and donate it to your nearest oncology ward. They'll appreciate the heck out of it.

Friday was round two of chemo, which for me translates to a lot of knitting time. Not only that, but I got to teach someone else a new skill - my sister, who, like me, learned how to knit the way all my Spanish relatives knit, with a long needle tucked under her right arm, wanted to learn how to knit in the round so she could make a PICC cozy too.

I set her up with a baby hat to start with - easier on a 16" round than a bunch of double pointed needles, I think. Today she had about 4" of hat done, and she'll be ready to switch to the dpns tomorrow. And once she learns that, the knitting world will be her oyster.



Today we knit on the beach...what a glorious day it was, warm and sunny. And Fiona got her hair cut - very chic, don't you think?