The saga of the wheel

It arrived on Friday, just like Jamie and Blas said it would. I dropped Michael off at an appointment and rushed to Urban Fauna, excited as a kid on Christmas morning. Parking is really hard in San Francisco, but the spot right in front of the store was open. Blas had already confirmed that all the pieces were there and had the box waiting at the front of the store. He even carried it out to the car for me!

After getting the wheel, I picked Michael up and went home. I emptied the box, laid out some paper and got to oiling all the parts. It took a few hours to do, and it just happened to be one of the hottest days in San Francisco ever.

Well, I thought it was all of the parts. After the Danish Oil dried overnight, I carried all the parts upstairs from the garage. Michael and I set about assembling the wheel, when I realized that I couldn’t find a part called for in the instructions. I knew right away I must have missed one in the box. How dare it hide from me!

I chose to assemble the whole thing anyway, with the one unfinished part standing out. I’ll get some of my spinning fix, then finish the wheel and let it dry another 24 hours. I tell you, this is torture. I want the wheel to last for a long time, so I need to make sure it is properly finished. I know that the moisture in the air and the temperature changes can permanently warp my wheel, but how much can it do in a week’s time when the wheel lives indoors?

It’s not like I don’t have knitting and crocheting to do. I am only about 1/3 of the way through the baby dress, and I am making steady progress on the Crochet-Along afghan. Plus, I just got 2 video games to work on: I just topped off my collection of The Sims 2 expansions with Apartment Life and started feeding another obsession with Spore. I also have a daily game of Agricola that I play with Michael and whoever else happens to be over that day.

My knitting group has finished the last of the hats for Kristy’s hat project. The monkey in the corner is just adorable. Carisa sent them to Kristy on Thursday. Does anyone know the total number we made?

One more thing – I think I found another avatar to use somewhere – probably here. How perfect is this? It came from a pair of pajamas. It might have come from the kids department at Target. I also might have purchased a matching one for my niece who is coming to visit in a few weeks. I’ll never tell.

I’ve got knitting to do – back off!

On our Wednesday knit night, Kristy came to visit. She wanted to pick up the hats we had made thus far and to meet some of the people helping with her project. She was late to our gathering, but she had a very interesting story to tell. Apparently as she was racing away from work to get to the train in time, a guy driving in front of her just jumped from his still moving car. Many other people had stopped and called for help, so she kept going. I think she was feeling a little guilty about not stopping, but honestly, if too many people stop it creates a bigger back-up and makes things worse. It was a bit of a Weird-Al moment:

Kristy said all she could think was “I’ve got knitting to do – back off!” Don’t worry, you’re not a bad person – quite the opposite.

Kristy has far exceeded her original 300 hat goal. She had knitters from across the country, from foreign countries, and knitters who learned the craft solely so they could donate to her cause. It is truly amazing to me how generous people can be. Our group only committed to 15 hats and we sent her home with 30. Dude.

I tried to finish my 7th – and final – hat for her project while she was here, but I had hostessing duties and I just missed the goal despite furious knitting. Carisa will mail it to her for me, but still, I wanted to finish in time. In any case, here it is in 2 views:

At 11:59pm on Thursday I finished my 4th Ravelympics project.

The Romantic Cardigan, in all it’s imperfect glory. There were a few problems special design features in this one. First of all, the pattern was full of mistakes. There are comments on Amazon about this issue. I couldn’t get the stitch count correct for the main body portion, so I had to count the stitches on every row and fudge the rest. The border for the main body has some instructions that are impossible if you complied with earlier instructions. I had a hard time finding the written errata for this pattern, but I didn’t think to look in time to do anything about it if there was something. Oh well.

I also had something happen with the yarn in this project. The ball bands all claimed that the yarn belonged to the same dye lot. When I got to the actual crochet, I learned that this was a huge LIE! In person it isn’t quite so obvious, but the camera tells no lies. I wonder how this happened. Maybe the ball bands came off and someone just randomly replaced them? Maybe it was a factory error?

As for the kittens -

Cute as ever. I got the orange guy’s tongue by accident. He begs for his food by holding my leg and meowing while I am busy scooping it onto the plates. Tiki was having a “cute session” – she was sleepy and lying in bed, lazily posing for me. The picture of Sunshine yawning was actually part of the same picture of Tiki yawning.

We are keeping (for foster) the 3 kittens that I acquired this weekend. We do not yet have a name for the mostly white kitten – any suggestions for the comments? We’re calling the black and white girl Panda. The orange fellow is Puddles. That boy just tinkles anywhere, even right in front of his food. He’s just learning, so I’ll give him a break. The others have already caught on to the whole litter box thing. The only time they miss is when they have diarrhea.

Which brings me to the next challenge. The boys and Panda have the vomit virus that the Constellations caught months ago. It is accompanied by diarrhea. You know, it almost looks like food poisoning, except that all of the kittens eat from the same plates, so they would all have it. The sick ones are on antibiotics and fluids for the moment. I knew that continuing health was too good to be true. Puddles feels so bony – almost like Moonlight did when I got her.

Sunshine made weight yesterday. She is adoptable now, but she won’t pass behavior at the shelter. I am going to have to advertise her on Craigslist or something like that and make appointments for her adopters. She is a total sweetheart – if she is in the kitten room. If she is in an open space, she freaks out and runs for a hiding space. Michael and I are trying to give her intense snuggling while we watch TV, but she is trying to resist rehabilitation. She’ll need a home with patient parents and no small or particularly loud children. Sunshine will need to be confined and only gradually allowed access to the rest of her new home so she can gain confidence. This process may take a lot of time. By the way, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and want to adopt her, please leave a comment. I’ll follow up in email.

Moonlight, on the other hand, is a total snuggle fiend. She hides if left to her own devices, but if I stick her in my lap she forgets everything else and starts rubbing herself all over me. She loves to be scratched under her chin and kissed. Moonlight purrs constantly when she’s held. When she makes weight I think her behavior will have dramatically improved given her progress thus far. She’ll also need a quiet home (maybe with Sunshine?) but maybe she won’t need as much time to get comfortable.

Anyway, I’ve got knitting to do if I am going to finish the Ravelympics with the gold medal. All I have to do is finish Jen’s sock. I feel a little torn about Donald’s kilt sock. My goal was to have a sock made that I could take to another fitting. I did that, and it still needed to be altered. Is my goal met? Do I have to make it fit before I can call that one complete? I didn’t plan on making the entire pair, but am I cheating if I call this one complete when it still isn’t quite right?

Lots of Yarn

This is the first wheel that I got to borrow from my spinning teacher. It’s really pretty, but after practicing treadling, I think I want one with a double treadle (two foot pedals). I also need either a cat-free room to keep it in or a cover. Serra loves the wheel. She keeps visiting it and trying to make nice to the drive (the string that connects the big wheel to the bobbin and another part that I cannot recall the name for). I can’t wait to start making yarn!

Despite not being able to spin yet, I managed to acquire quite a bit of yarn this week.

It started out a a legitimate need. A month or so ago, Linnea had the brilliant idea to actually use her Knitting Guild membership and take a few of their correspondence courses. She wants to do the Masters Course, but she started with the Basics, Basics, Basics course just to warm up.

I thought Linnea’s idea was fantastic! I do not belong to the Knitting Guild, but I am a member of the Crochet Guild of America. Since the Crochet Guild has similar courses, I figured it would be cool to get a masters cerificate. I sent off my application (and the fee, of course) and waited a few days. On Monday I got this in the mail:

Woo-hoo! I read the course like a recipe to see what ingredients I had and which ones I needed. I had all but one of the hooks I would need, but I had none of the yarn. You need a light colored, smooth yarn for the swatches. I had light colored and fancy, I had dark colored and smooth, and a few things that were both light colored and smooth, but not in sufficient quantities. Not a big deal – I do love to go yarn shopping.

For a course like this, I decided it was best to use inexpensive but decent quality yarns. I think wool-ease is a good standard yarn to work with. You can get plenty of it, it isn’t expensive, and it comes in several colors.

I chose this for my main color.

This one is my contrast color (this one is allowed to be bright).

This one is my sport-weight yarn.

And this one is the crochet cotton.

I’ve made a few swatches already. I won’t post them all here just because I am not really sure what the guild does and does not want posted on the internet. However, it doesn’t hurt to give all the crocheters some sort of teaser!

I apparently picked a great time to start my crochet masters course. The craft store was having a big sale this week (you have to go to the brick-and-mortar store – the online store is different) on a lot of yarn that I already like. I have received a lot of requests for dishcloths (from family, mostly), so I bought a bunch of Lily Sugar and Cream. As a side note, if you are in a bind at Christmas and need to get a gift out fast, make dishcloths. When you give them to the recipient, the first thing you get is a mildly disappointed look. She (or he, but for grammar’s sake I’ll say she) has no idea at this point what she is getting. A few weeks later the recipient will just try the stupid dishcloth, and she will see that it is so much better than any other dishcloth she has ever owned. In fact, she may even be inspired to call you and tell you how wonderful that thing is. In a few months she’ll be asking for more because the ones you made will wear out and she will discover that she can’t go back to store-bought. This is an opportunity for you. You can either: A) teach this person to knit her own, or B) make the (quick and easy) dishcloths as gifts for the rest of this person’s life. Either way, you win.

Clearance is a great way to enhance your stash as well. There was some Vanna’s Choice yarn on clearance (probably last season’s colors or something) and I decided to give it a try. I mean, for $0.97/skein, you can’t go wrong. It’s acrylic, but it feels relatively soft and it comes in good colors.

I got a few other random sale yarns as well, and one of them I will use for a Kristy hat. Speaking of which, I finished a sixth hat at the Stitch-and-Pitch game in San Francisco. Carisa gave me the yarn for this one to use for the Kristy hats. It is another colorway of some yarn we got for free at the Knit and Crochet Show when it was in Oakland. My friend Melinda thinks that her mother would like the yarn, so I gave her the leftovers.

Our knitting group has finished quite a few hats for Kristy. We have more than the 15 I was sure we could do, and we’re still going. This is a great way to use up stash yarn.

I’ll leave you with some shots of the Tuesday night Stitch-and-Pitch game.

This is the first time I’ve seen string quartet play the National Anthem at a baseball game.

Our seats were decent. We got to see the Giants hit 3 homeruns!

One of the big reasons I like to go to the ballpark is the food. The garlic fries are always exciting. Sometimes they are so garlicky that you taste it for weeks, and sometimes they are milder. We got milder fries this time.

I got to see Melinda for the first time in forever. She moved to Oakland not long ago. Melinda brought along a crochet monkey – this is his face.

It was a good night to be out with fellow stitchers!

Trying not to

I’m not going to lie – I am avoiding finishing Blaze. To finish it means that I may have to deal with a huge failure. It means I put tons of time into something that wouldn’t come out well (just like jury duty). I am in denial. I do know that if I just finish the stupid thing I can block it and maybe get somewhere. It can be good. I Just have that feeling in the pit of my stomach that it will not be OK. Ugh.

I’ve been doing everything else in the meantime. I’ve finished all 5 hats I wanted to make for Kristy:

Plus a washcloth for myself (at least that was something I worked on before I began avoiding Blaze).

And I am thinking about casting on some dishcloths for my sister in law. Maybe a few more hats for Kristy. Maybe I am going to cast on Clapotis…if I can figure out what yarn to use…

Things that I would rather do today than find out Blaze was failure:

1. Clean the bathroom
2. Sterilize the kitten room in phaze 1 of Operation: Obliterate the Ringworm
3. Organize my entire office (wow, that’s a big one…)
4. Step in a fresh (or heck, let’s go with cold and gooey) pile of cat vomit

I think you get the idea. You know what – I’m going out there right now to face my fear. I’ll graft the arms, wash the shirt, and pray. At least it will be over with.

Making things for other people

This job I have is tough. I’ve been talking for the last week about sending the big kittens on to be adopted. I’ve been looking forward to ridding my house of the dreaded ringworm. I even got new kittens to overlap my last few days with the last of the big kittens.

Still, it was hard to let them go. They all look good. Nebby really changed into a sleek, handsome young gentleman. His daddy adopted him today, and he is going home as soon as he can get neutered. Cream Puff came back from near death to fulfill her mission to get adopted. And would you look at Merry – he is gorgeous! He was so awful when I got him the foster coordinator thought he might not make it. Ah, the memories. I did feel guilty that I had to leave the kittens in a cage, but honestly, they will be adopted. They are too pretty to be ignored. Just like with knitting, you’ve gotta finish your project sometime so that the person for whom the project was made can enjoy it.

I’m a bit on-call tomorrow, so it should take my mind off of being big kitten-less. This morning a litter of 6 2-3 week old kittens came into the shelter without their mom. By the time I got in, someone had managed to trap their mother, and they did not need to go home with me after all. The catch is that the mother had not started feeding the babies by the time we all left the shelter today. She is feral, so she was pretty scared and sat curled up in her litter box. I am hoping that she relaxes a bit overnight and starts taking care of her kids. I love the tiny ones, but they are A LOT of work. If she doesn’t feed them, I will be called in to do the job.

As for my other finished projects, I’ve finished yet another hat for Kristy. This one is made of the yarns I mentioned in my last post. I used a pattern I found on Ravelry and crocheted away. I am going to work on the next hat in my queue, the Unoriginal Hat by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. I do have an ugly yarn for that one, but I think that it seriously won’t look ugly to someone else. You’ll see.

Trouble in paradise

Meet Lani and Kai. Their names mean sky and sea, respectively, in Hawaiian. We thought it would be nice to make the “plain black kittens” seem more exciting by giving them exotic names. These two kittens are undersocialized, so they are going to need behavior modification work. I am concerned that they will also contract ringworm given that I still have 3 from the previous litter in the house (but in a separate room). They’ve got at least a month with me anyway given their current state of affairs.

Lani has lice. The nice thing about those bugs is that they are feline specific – people can’t catch them. I do have to keep her away from my cats until the Advantage has killed them all off or I will have a bigger infestation on my hands. I pretreated my cats just in case. She’s made progress since I picked her up on Tuesday. I’ve given her a spoonful of baby food once a day, and now she is ok eating and roaming around the room when I am in there.

Kai doesn’t have lice, or at least has too few for me to notice. He has really shiny, incredibly black fur. Lani is a little brown in comparison. Kai is more undersocialized than Lani as well. He hisses when I look at him. It’s really cute when a kitten that size hisses at you – he is so tiny, yet he thinks he’s fierce! I cannot resist kissing him when he gives me that angry hiss. He was very quick to warm up to baby food, so I am betting that by next week he’s going to think I’m not so bad.

At knit night, I cast on and finished a hat. I think it will fit a five-year-old kid. I just grabbed 2 partial balls of yarn from my stash, cast on 36 stitches onto size 10 3/4 dpns, and knit away. Carisa has a goal of knitting 5 of them – I think I can do that. Shoot, with big needles I can knit a ton of them. I am just going to knit hats until Carisa mails them off. Wow, what a great excuse for casting on tons of new projects! I love it when the world steps in to validate my addictions.

Charity knitting is a great way of getting rid of yarn in your stash that you just hate. Poor Linnea was given a gift of yarn several years ago. I never would have known that could be a bad thing until I saw this pile-o-nastiness. No one who has seen that yarn has liked it yet. And wouldn’t you know it, Linnea acquired this yarn in a big garbage bag. She loaned it to our friend Melinda who made a blanket from this yarn, but still there is a mountain of it left. I think the picture represents 1/4 to 1/3 of the leftovers. The nice thing about this project is that kids tend to like brightly colored things that adults consider hideous. She can make many, many hats and be rid of at least some of it. Maybe some of the others of us in the group should make some hats from that yarn too, just to relieve Linnea of the burden…

In any case, not all of the hats I will make will be ugly by my definition. I actually like my first hat, and I intend to crochet a hat from my favorite cheap yarn of all time. Currently I am planning to pair it with yarn I have leftover from a skirt I made last year before my anniversary cruise to Hawaii. That should make it nice and fast warm.

I’ve avoided talking about this for the whole post, but there is a reason I entitled this one “Trouble in paradise.” Blaze looks awful! I got pretty far on it after I finished untangling all of its yarn. I got to the neckline, used a smaller needle than the one I used for the rest of the body, reduced nigh on 100 stitches, and yet somehow when I cast off I discovered that the neckline is bigger than the rest of the sweater. I am going to graft the armpits closed, set up my explanation of what I found wrong with the pattern, then try to shrink that bugger. I am hoping this is an issue of blocking. Seriously hoping. My husband suggested I stop trying to knit sweaters for myself from patterns. This is my second attempt that went way awry. My first sweater was a pink cashmere/merino thing that was too big for me, but fortunately fit my aunt who happens to love pink. It’s still in the family. The odd thing is that when I design a sweater myself, it tends to fit the recipient well. I cannot believe that I can do a better job than people who have published their patterns. Maybe I really am just that hard to fit.

It’s a good thing that I view failure as a challenge. My next step is going to be to find a yarn that I fall madly in love with and knit it into a sweater of my own design for myself. That one will fit. Period.

Almost there

If all goes well, my jury duty will end tomorrow. We’ve heard all the evidence, and we are just waiting for the closing arguements and we can go into deliberations. Woo hoo!

I’ve finished up a lot of last little bits of my knitting projects while we’ve been on our breaks. I need to untangle more of the yarn to finish Blaze, but then I have maybe 2 more inches and the last few rows of the neckline to go. Then I can graft the underarm seam and show you the pattern problem. So close!

I have finished the first sock of the two separate pairs I’m working on – the kilt hose and Jen’s socks swatch. I cast on a sock for Jen since the swatch came out ok. I am waiting to start the next kilt sock until I am sure the custom sizing is correct. I’ll know of Thursday if the recipient shows up to dance class.

 

I think it’s time again that I list the many projects on my hooks and needles, just to keep myself in line.

1. The kilt hose (1 of 2)
2. Jen’s socks swatch (1 of 2)
3. Blaine’s blanket (for Christmas, unpictured thus far)
4. Blaze (almost finished!)
5. Tunisian crochet cat bed
6. Romantic Cardigan
7. Carisa’s afghan
8. Cat Afghan

Wow, down to 8. If I discipline myself I can knock out a project or 2 before casting something else on. Oh, but here I go again – I want to knit hats for this person. (By the way, if you want to help, she needs the hats by September 5th) My sister-in-law Alicia asked me to make her some washcloths as well – some for her and some for a gift. All of these temptations are ruining me. At least I am at a low since I started keeping track. You know, I can totally finish that cat bed tomorrow at knit night…

Several of the kittens have made weight now. Gigantor(aka Milkshake) is nearly 3 pounds, but still flourescing a bit under the blacklight. Nebula just made 2 pounds and his daddy is checking in on him. I am going to check if he still glows tomorrow. I hope not – I want his daddy to get him soon and maybe take a friend. Cupcake made weight as well. That little purr machine (and pants climber, but let’s focus on her sweet side) would make a great partner for Nebby. Plus, she has no ringworm spots. She never got any fur loss, in fact, despite a few glowing flecks near her nose. I’m keeping my fingers crossed here.

Merry and  Scotti are getting close, but not quite yet ready. Cream Puff is lagging behind. She’s eating, so I’m not sure what the problem is - maybe she isn’t in a hurry. When they move on I am sticking to bottle-feeders so I can leave the kitten room empty for a month or two while I sterilize that room and the kitchen. I know it’s been an epidemic this year and I want to get rid of it!