10/25/2005
Comcast is performing “upgrades.” I got a pre-recorded message about it about ten days ago. Our cable Internet through them has been quite sporadic during the day and it seems to get worse with each day. This is not good for someone who gets their livelihood (and yarn and fiber money) from teaching class on-line. It also is not good for quality blogging either.
I called to try find out when these upgrades were slated to be complete and they couldn’t tell me. They just said that it should be back up and running every day by 6pm. Well, I don’t know about you, but I would prefer to be working during the work day and spending time with friends and family in the evenings. As it was, I was unable to make it to SnB last night because I instead had to work.
So, posting here for what I’m guessing to be the remainder of the week and could be even longer, will be sporadic and probably sans-pictures unless they had already been uploaded to my Flickr account or my web site prior to yesterday.
If today is in the pattern of yesterday I have about another 45 minutes before I loose my connection until 6pm, so I’m going to try get a better post out there, but I also have to take care of my on-line classes and any sock pattern orders in that time…
10/21/2005
10. Clear your plate of responsibilities as early in the day as possible, this includes exercise and demanding work related “to-dos.” - Okay, not so good, but it doubles the pleasure of the rest of them because you don’t have guilt sitting on your shoulder…
9. Spend quality time with any fur kids or kids of the 2-legged variety. Play games, give lots of hugs, feed them etc.
8. Drink a mocha from your favorite mug (feel free to substitute any favorite hot beverage).
7. Queue up an upbeat album on your stereo or Nano and dance around. Sounds silly, but it gets the endorphins going and it’s nice to dance when on one is watching :-)
6. Take hot bath or shower with your “special” bath products that you save for special occasions.
5. Knit with some great yarn that feels great passing through your fingers as you make each stitch.
4. Spin with some great fiber that feels great passing through your fingers as you make yard after yard of new yarn.
3. Wear something you made. Especially effective is something that is brightly colored and contains at least one of your favorite colors.
2. Take some time to talk with someone you love who is far away.
1. Work on some hand knit or hand spun (or both) goodness for a wonderful friend!
If you are in need of any suggestions for #4 & #5, just give a holler! :-)
10/20/2005
I’m getting a bit frustrated with BlogLines lately. They are popular, but this popularity seems to have taken a big toll on their system. My own posts don’t appear until nearly 12 hours later and it seems for whatever reason it will suddenly stop updating certain blog feeds. I’m at the point that I’m not sure if I know what everyone is up to or not. I can’t keep straight whose blog does play well with BlogLines and whose doesn’t and if one suddenly stops playing well it can take me a week or so to realize I haven’t seen a post from that blog so I’m afraid I’m not being a good blog friend and always reading everyone’s blogs.
So, anyone use a more reliable and faster reacting blog reading/subscription program? Does it allow you to categorize your subscription into different subjects/folders like BlogLines? I’m in need of a more prompt and reliable system!
10/19/2005
I put my money and my products where my mouth is and joinded in on the Give A Little Project that Margene and Susan put together. They drew a name for the hand bound knitting journal that I donated towards the cause last week, but it was after my normal mail day. So, this afternoon the above journal will be winging it’s way to Tina N. It doesn’t appear that she has a blog so I hope she likes green and knits socks! :-)
The inside has 10 pockets for hold ball bands and little notes jotted on napkins at the lcal pub and pages of quadrille paper for drawing sketches of garments and items. There is also a final section in the book that contains reference information such as yardage estimates for common knit items like sweaters, socks, hats etc. and common abbreviations found in patterns and a couple tables for keeping track of needles and pattern books. There is an elastic strap to hold the book closed once you’ve tacked in swatches or yarn samples and ball bands etc. but it also works as a great book mark as well. There is a fun textured green/gold end papers that tie in with the handpainted paper at the spine of the covers.
There will be another little goodie in there to make up for having to wait almost a week for it to get in the mail, Tina! Thanks so much for giving a little!
10/18/2005
It is once again Tuesday. Seeing as how I’ve been on more of spinning kick than a knitting kick lately I’ve got a fair bit to share today. Above is the completed yarn from this past week. On the left is some gorgeous (if I do say so myself, though the SnB gals backed me up on that assessment last night) silk/merino (70/30) blend fiber from Lambspun. It’s somewhere between fingering and sport weight and totals ~175 yds. I think it will become a skinny lace scarf of some variety to dress up my habit of wearing all brown or all black in the cold season. Plus, the color makes my somewhat changeable eyes tend more towards the blue spectrum than the dull grey they usually are.
The other picture is about 110 yds of a thick thin single from two batts Amanda, Snow, and I created way back when. I have to say we did a crap job on those. When I went to split the batt I noticed it wasn’t at all uniform and that there were quite a bit of neps in it as well. So, I decided to not fight it and hence went with the thick thin and somewhat slubby yarn. I actually like it quite a lot. But I wasn’t a fan of the electric purple. The original locks were bright purple and a nearly electric blue. So, after blocking I sprinkled a pack of cherry and a pack of black cherry kook aid on it randomly and wrapped it in saran and did the microwave process just before bed (three runs of 2 minutes on and 2 minutes off) and then let it sit overnight. This was the result. I could have gone for more of the kool-aid. But, I think I’ll probably knit this up into a hat for charity for a child so it’ll probably be just perfect. Snow will have to refresh my memory on what type of wool this was. I’m thinking Lincoln, but I’m not positive. This is the first that I’ve purposfully set out to create a singles yarn since I really *learned* to spin properly. It was amazing to compare it preblock and post block! What a difference washing and setting the twist makes!
And, despite my worries of putting off the spinning of the dark red alpaca roving, I got on that this week as well and this one was much, much cleaner than the light package. I just got it plied this morning…
That is both colors (the lighter I spoke of last week) pre-blocking and blocking. The dark is actually less than the stated 2 oz and is only about 75 yds, whereas the light was 2.5 oz and ~102 yds. The yarns match pretty well though. In the blocking picture you can see I hang my yarn by the fireplace :-) We have all those nails in the mantlepiece that we inherited when we bought the house so it seemed like as good a spot as any (especially since people in this house are known to turn on the shower without being awake and thus forget to remove items that are drying over the tub and they get wet and the process has to start all over again, LOL). The only problem was the small diameter of the nail didn’t seem like it could be good for the yarn, so I slip a PVC pipe connector over the nails in order to be gentler on the yarn. I try to rotate it around every couple of hours as well, otherwise the yarn stays kind of wet at the top and bottom where the pressure is.
Now, to design a two color hat. I’ve contemplated the two color brioche stitch but I could also do a diagonal stripe on it or perhaps a simple fair isle design? I’m open to suggestions if anyone has any. I really need to turn my attention to other holiday knitting/felting instead seeing as how this hat and the mohair scarf can easily be pushed off to late January without penalty or guilt.
