Cuteness

One finished bit of cuteness. I can definitely see myself making another. Sock yarn, garter stitch, my favorite size needles ... what's not to love? Garter stitch jackets do take relatively forever ... but it's a BABY size, so I got over it. (Cute model, too, but she needs to grow into the jacket a bit.)

I am now projectless. The yarn for Filius' gansey and the twined hat are in the mail. The test knit is awaiting further input. So it's off to Molly's Fault I go. While dreaming of The Queen Susan Shawl. And Molly said I couldn't blame her for that one. I really can't ... her e-mail just prompted me to check Fleegle's Blog a little earlier in the day than I otherwise would have.

Swoon.

And that really blows the idea of having an All Baltic Year right out of the water. For the Shetlands are, by no stretch of the tsunami, located in or adjacent to the Baltic Sea. If I sail on over to the North Sea, then there goes Haapsalu Sall right off the stern. For Estonia is not in the North Sea.

Maybe I should collect the labels from all the skeins I finish off and take a year-end picture of them? Or keep actual tabs on yardage knit? But that involves paperwork, and I'd rather knit that play with a calculator.

So. On to Molly's Fault. And if the test knit stalls for long enough, perhaps some spinning tomorrow. After delivering more Boy Scout Popcorn. It takes a while to deliver 68 orders.

Knit From Your Shelf - A Success!

I'd like to declare that the 2009 Knit From Your Shelf campaign was a success. A small one, 'tis true - not many knitters (in fact, only one that I know of) are brave strange enough to attempt to work from their current pattern stash in such a fashion. But in the face of overwhelming opposition, I aimed high and have finished using my last book. (I'm not counting the booklet I received last week, nor the Haapsalu Sall. Books in foreign languages and items received after October 1st don't count.)

To celebrate, I cast on for a pair of mittens, using patterns from a Lithuanian mitten book. The next day, I finished the pair.

And then I cast on for Lilleput. 250 grams of sock yarn worked in garter stitch will take a while, but it's so CUUUUUTE! Filius is desirous of having a new gansey that fits him (barring that, he'd accept the Sandwater Jumper. It fits him nicely.) And I've a test knit in the works, and a twined hat, and ...

Speaking of niceties, our corn stove is still delighting us daily. Here's a photo of our grain delivery. The auger (the long white thing, for those of you not savvy with mechanized agriculture) is swinging into position. Not to pour the corn into our house (though that would be a neat trick. Insulation AND fuel!) but rather heading another 120 degrees or so counterclockwise over the house (from which the photo is taken) and garage (lower right corner) to our storage bin. Our first fill-up (and we figure on only one or two a year) was quite the event. Neighbors came out to watch. It's more fun than watching paint dry.

But paint dries really fast when you put it in front of a corn stove. So do socks, mittens, and stoles. It's a blocking tool!

We're halfway through the second term of school. SOS Spanish I is a great improvement over SOS Secondary Spanish. One tenth the mistakes, ten times the teaching, and there are a few games to practice spelling and vocabulary. Although one could wish that capitalization and punctuation didn't count in the spelling. It's tricky to remember that 'hoy es' is supposed to be 'Hoy es..' Filius is greatly enjoying the SOS Civil War elective, and wants to get all their history courses. SOS makes for an interesting change from the AO Year 8 Lite reading list!

Youth Group is starting the Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. Yay! I love it when my children are reading good books outside of school. And I just happen to have this as an audiobook.

I had several pictures of me in the sweater ... but something went terribly wrong between the model and the digitized version.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

ps - I'm accepting ideas for next year's theme. What should 2010 be the year of?

Can it be November?

It can't be November. For one thing, the house is too warm. We frugally keep our thermostat around 65 in the cooler months (and 50 in the warmer months) and it's closer to 70 in here. So it can't be November.

Unless, perhaps, we have a new heating system that isn't connected to a thermostat?

It's true! Finally, the corn is getting harvested (a month late, thanks to a wet and damp fall) and yesterday saw a truck pull into our driveway to deliver 100 bushes of corn. After 5 false starts and an hour or two of wondering if the pile of kernels being dropped in by the augur were going to extinguish the burning kernels (like happened the first 5 times), we got the corn happily burning yesterday evening and it's been burning ever since. Not all of the corn, of course ... just the kernels in the firepot. If you have 100 bushes of corn burning at once, it's called a problem, not a stove. Today wasn't that cold, but the stove has the ENTIRE house at a comfortable temperature on the lowest possible setting. Ah, it's just too much fun.

We're in our second term of school now and are hitting the doldrums. Tomorrow is a very partial day because of grocery shopping (a truck from Michigan is pulling up to our front door with almost 500 pounds of groceries on it at 10:30 AM) and volunteering with Operation Christmas Child at 11:00 in a town 25 miles from our front door. We shall SCAMPER! The next day is non-existent as far as school goes because of a doctor's appointment way up yonder. But it's been ages since we were at a used bookstore, so that almost counts as school -- does it not? Next week has Thanksgiving, so it's another partial week. Partial weeks give me a scattered feeling. However, we are making progress, reading a lot, writing a bit, and many opportunities are being laid out for growing in knowledge.

Knitting is booming. Really and truly booming. I'm not sure if I like it. No, pick your collective jaws up off the floor. I know I like knitting. I'm just not sure if I like it becoming a cottage industry in this household, at this time. Especially a cottage industry that takes up a score or two of hours a week, a few weeks a month.

So, what have I been up to in knitting? Sandwater is growing nicely - I have one partial sleeve and a bit of neck left to do. The gauge is decent enough that, when I tried it on with one sleeve and two steeks, I decided it's for me. I have a bag of yarn for a test knit tucked under my knitting chair. Several squares have been added to my sock yarn blanket. I've got a Watch Cap on the needles, using a chart from a Lithuanian mitten book that called my name Very Loudly from Vilnius. (Oh, and the Dale of Norway Commemorative Collection 8501 booklet has gone OOP. Somehow, I found two of them.) I just sent off a design and a design proposal, and Filius has a long list of items he would find very handy in his life. Lengthened sweaters, socks, dickeys, and mittenssockssweatershats for various friends of his.

Blogger is not being photo-friendly today. Otherwise, you'd have PICTURES!