Wordless Wednesday

Queen Susan: The Final Leg

Most queens have two legs.  Susan, here, has four final legs ... and I am on the finallest of them.  Less than 50 points to go.  And nothing to do this evening but listen to books and knit. 

Hmm.  Knit, or write a blog post? 

Knit. 

Toodle-oo!

Happy 4th!

This past week has been a curious one, beginning with my Allergic Wednesday. Has anyone ever heard of allergies that hit in full force for one day, and one day only?

Imagine this scenario: Somewhere during the first cuppa tea of the morning, one realizes that what could have been an early morning sniffle has changed into a seriously runny nose, accompanied by sneezing fits and chills. A base camp is established at Knitting Central, stocked with fluids, tissue box, and wastebasket. Wandering away from base camp is certain to trigger a sneezing fit; staying put means the kleenex box has a chance of surviving until mid-afternoon without reinforcements.  (Ignoring the physical realm and putting mind over matter, without changing the day's plans, is likely to result in a triple-digit temperature and a wretched week. Been there, done that.  Benadryl, Allegra, and Claritin are totally useless.)  When bedtime arrives, a peaceful night of sleep is practically guaranteed ... no sniffles whatsoever disturb a peaceful repose.  When morning arrives, the wastebasket is returned to its usual location, the tissue box (the second one, that is ...the first one has achieved wastebasket status) is likewise returned to garrison, and she-who-had-sneezles recuperates with a few good books and possibly an attempt at knitting before an early bedtime.  Zombies don't knit.  The following day, life is back to normal. 

For a few years, I lived life without allergies.  It was lovely.  Drink a pot of tea a day, and the allergies stayed away.  Last year, they decided that tea wasn't sufficient to keep things under control.  It was nice while it lasted!  I read last week that there is a substance in green and black tea, quercetin, that is used for allergy treatment in alternative medicine.  And my favorite enzyme, bromelain (in pineapple) works to boost quercetin's effects.

I transferred photos from my camera to the computer, and discovered some photos from May lurking in the folder.  First, we have my Very Own Homegrown Scoby.  Isn't it cute? 

Then we have an attempt to photograph the Queen Susan, from yesterday afternoon. 

The focus wasn't so great, so I tried another one.  Except that one had a Spot in it. 

Again, Spot. 

And more Spot. 

And then I gave up. 

And now, a photo of my Hap Shawl.This shawl was finished a few years back, but the border didn't have enough stitches in it and so it lived in a corner of the craft room for a year or so until I decided I would frog the entire border, pick up more stitches, and reknit it.  I did this past Christmas (and most of January.  Borders have lots of stitches. especially when one picks up around 400 more stitches than the previous border contained.  What you see here is a pre-border-blocking photo.  The center had been blocked before, but the rest is (cough) fresh off the needles. 

What you do not see are the four holes caused by groups of severed threads.  I discovered them while pinning the critter out.  Alack and alas, they were annoying to mend, and I did a botchy job on some of them.  But they are fixed, the shawl is blocked, and it may see some use this fall!  I used it last Wednesday, when the temperature was at least 80 degrees inside, to try and warm up. 

Queen Susan update - yesterday saw the completion of 21 points, and I rounded the second corner.  A bit less than two sides left.  And it drapes soooo nicely over my lap when I work on it.  We're definitely on the home stretch now.  And I do NOT want to find severed threads in it when I block it.  Dropped stitches are preferable, but I'd rather not find those either. 

So far as reading goes ... Scaramouche has been finished, and I'm now listening to a Henty novel.  They're a very nice standby for light listening.  While recovering from the sneezles, I read a lot of Tamora Pierce.  And Finding Atticus. 

Blah

Alas, another glorious blog post is not going to be written.  Two days ago I came in from cherry picking with two sets of puncture marks right next to my right eye.  The whole area feels vaguely scratch/puffy/annoying still.  And a kleenex box and wastebasket are my best friends today.  Brilliant thinking will have to wait until the gunk in my head is slightly better at conducting thoughts. 

I do know, however, that I have turned the first corner of the shawl's edging.  Three more sides to go.  And Scaramouche is next up on my listening list. 

Now I shall go curl up and feel wretched.  Once I feel wretched AND idle, I will probably knit.  At the present, I think wretched will keep me sufficiently occupied, though.  And maybe a real book.  Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, or Jerusalem? 

A wimpy update

I had plans of writing a glorious update, with photos and bells and whistles. 

But you know, it's almost 7 PM, I haven't had supper yet, the lunch dishes are collecting microbes, and I haven't touched my knitting yet.  So I'm going to shuffle a Beautiful Update to next week on my to-do list, and get the important things done. 

One important thing is knit the 12th repeat of the edging pattern.  And hopefully quite a few more!  I've got 11 done ... 229 to go.

Allergies

For many years, I had seasonal allergies.  To be honest, I'm not sure which season they were for, but they weren't connected to any one thing and thus they acquired the name 'seasonal'. During our first years of living in Minnesota, the seasonal spring allergies became so bad that I regularly lost my voice around Easter.  I was just about ready to head in to the doctor if they did it One More Year (because who likes to have no voice for the Easter Hymns several years running?) when Filia had a hospital stay in mid-March and voila - my allergies didn't happen that year.  They did next year, and I made the trek to the doctor, and took Singulair and Advair and kept my voice, but still supported the tissue paper companies. 

I don't like taking medicines on a long-term basis, though, and so never refilled the Rx.  Instead, I drank diluted apple cider vinegar with cayenne pepper and honey, or pushed oodles of fluids, or avoided being outside during the high-pollen hours, or just lived with it.  And somewhere along the line I began drinking lots of tea.  Then somewhere further down the line, I realized that I hadn't had any allergy symptoms all one spring.  Or the next one.  Or the next one.  Until I went on vacation and missed my daily pot of tea for one too many days. 

All of which is curious anecdotal evidence about the multifactorial pain in the nasal cavaties which are my allergies. 

But now - despite drinking tea, and fun beverages which Vir affirms taste like dog pee, my allergies are back.  They're not seasonal, but monthly.  And they come with chills.  Really?  Chills in June, when it's 80 degrees out?  Yes, chills.  (My allergies have come with chills since at least college.  I have no idea why.)  I've learned that if I do NOT bundle up and lay low, but carry on with life, my chills will turn into a fever.  So I bundle up and lay low, and the symptoms pass in a day or two.  So far.  Fortunately, laying low involves knitting and reading - and if needful, naps.  I can spend DAYS in those activities.  The first two will keep me delightfully and productively occupied if I am 'well', and the naps will fill in the blanks if exhaustion hits. 

Anyone ever hear of monthly allergies before? 

And why does Vir know what dog pee tastes like? 

Queen Susan Disclosure:  Slow progress, but still moving ahead.  I'm in round 150 of .... 164.  Getting closer! (closer to only 23% left that is, not finishing the thing.) 

Another pictureless update

This week sees The Queen Susan at 141 rounds completed.  I'm on the last set of charts for EVERYTHING (except the edging, which I haven't even printed out yet) and am happy with my progress.  The surgeon was happy with the progress Abigail's incision made, too, and she can now be up and about for reasonable chunks of time.  That means my self-imposed home-bound status is coming to an end. Alas, I will miss it. 

In our pitiful non-attempt at a garden, the asparagus is being attacked by invisible asparagus beetles.  The beetles leave eggs behind, but I've only seen one actual bug.  I continue to pick asparagus on an almost daily basis.  Our dog shows more enthusiasm for his portion than he does for his morning meal, and if we don't offer him the ends, he mopes.  Poor thing.  I planted 3 kinds of squash (red, hubbard, and patty pan) and at least one of everything is up.  Two years ago, the red pumpkin (Rouge d'Vin Etamps, I believe) was kind of a pasty flesh tone.  I wonder what color it will be this year.

In book-reading, I've finished Redgauntlet and added several more books to my queue.  One of my Kindle Collections is 'Unread Books'.  Redgauntlet, by Sir Walter Scott, looked like it was doomed to sit in the Unread pile forever, because the first half-hour of the book was BOOOOORING.  After reading some reviews of it, however, and how it was wonderful and exciting and possibly his best work, I decided that perhaps I should just slog away.  It got much better.  I haven't picked a next fiction book yet.

I am completely ignoring school-planning for next year.  It's much more fun to tinker with fermentables in the kitchen.  A friend is bringing over some tibicos grains today.  I had no clue there were so many different ways to use them!  Unfortunately, many of the ways are contradictory.  We shall see what happens.

Thought of the day:  The holiness of God, or holy, or sanctification, or any word in that family, is not mentioned in the Bible between the 7th day of creation (Genesis 2:3) and Moses (Exodus 3:5).  That's quite a gap!  It seems like the topic should have come up with Abraham.  Or Isaac.  Or Jacob.  If it did, it didn't make it into the Biblical record.

A new ball of yarn!!!!

The rows go marching on.  Shortly after last week's post, I finished off the first hank of Phoenix and got to start my second one.  As you may well imagine, I'm *still* on the second hank.  I expect to still be on the second hank when I finish the shawl.  But finishing is getting closer with every stitch! 

This week sees me at round 129.  After round 130, I will tape together the final three sheets of chart and have just 34 rounds left of the border.  Thirty-four rounds.  That's only 40 hours of knitting or so!  And then will come the final bit -- the edging. 

You may think that the edging, while boring, will fly past.  The rows are, after all, significantly shorter than the border rounds.  And that is quite true.  The stitch count for the edging, is 23% of the total.  That's a not-insignificant number of stitches. 

Still, I can say 'just one more row' and have it be a reasonable thing to say.  I can take a break 'at the end of this repeat' and have it be an achievable goal.  Knitting in blocks of an hour or more is not always reasonable.  Or desirable (especially if one has drunk a lot of tea recently.) 

In other, non-knitting life (of which there is a lot going on), I made mustard today, am half-way through my retooling of Kombucha Scobys, have no pile of work on my desk, am caught up on laundry, have been reading good books, and have a reasonably tidy house.  It's wonderful being home.

So - what good movies are absolute 'must sees' for a family with two teens, one of whom cannot stand violence in movies?  Our upcoming list includes The King and I, Peter Pan, The Sword and the Stone, and  Brigadoon. 

Knitting? What knitting?

Row 118.  That's as far as I got in a whole week at home.  How in the world did that happen?  It's not like I'm spending my time caring for a fretful invalid, or constantly whipping up new creations to tempt her appetite.

I'm just not sitting and knitting. Much.  I did make a toddler hat yesterday.  And if I can get off the computer, and not dive into making Pickled Eggs or something else delightfully chock-full of probiotics, perhaps I will get more lace knit.  Except I really should wind off some sock yarn so I can knit during movies and the like.  We are watching more Mythbusters and classic movies lately.  It helps the time in bed pass a bit faster.  So does popping bubble wrap. 

The week has been pretty quiet.  Apart from the positioning restrictions (do not sit), it's as if the surgery didn't happen.  That makes for a nice recovery.  No pain, no antibiotics, no cast, no PT, almost ' no nothing'.  I'm all caught up with knitting submissions, patterns, test knitting, and laundry.  I really should go knit and listen to the wind roaring by outside.

A blog update after all!

We are back from the hospital (barely), I have triaged my e-mail (and deleted 99.5% of it), and everything is unpacked.  Now it's time to start in on the house, which my teenaged son did a lovely job of keeping in functioning order.  Especially if I don't count the 12 empty soda cans left on my desk.  That's at LEAST half of his yearly soda consumption. 

Queen Susan.  I really thought I would get to start the second ball while at the hospital, but I didn't.  I am on round 115 now - solid progress, certainly, although I thought I'd get more done. I usually think I'll get more done than I actually do on single projects, and think that multiple projects will take forever although I often can wipe out a back-breaking to-do list in 1-2 days. 

I think my next post will have Actual Photos of The Queen Susan.  I took some while at the hospital, but they're still on the camera.  Tune in at this time next week!

More New Charts!

Actual progress happened on the Queen Susan this week, despite also starting and finishing at hat.  I am now on round One Hundred of the border -- which qualifies me to begin the last two pages (of six) for each of the corners. I've only 30 rows left until I get to the last section of border charts.  Oooh, progress!

A chart explanation:  The center and the edging of the Queen Susan are nice, simple, and easily charted on one page.  The border is less simple.  The 160-odd (or even) rows of border have no vertical repeats and a 60-st multiple across the center 'straight' section, and no multiples in the mitered corners.  Rather than squeeze everything onto one page, the thoughtful charters wanted people to actually SEE the charts - so the 'straightaway' of the border is charted three pages wide and four pages tall, and each half of the mitred corner is charted two pages wide and three pages tall.  For any given round, therefore, the knitter is working from 7 pages of charts.  Just 5 in the early stages, really, since the corner section is pretty narrow at the beginning and doesn't take up two pages in width.  There are 24 pages of charts in all, and I am finished with 14 of them, using 7 currently, and have but 3 'fresh' ones to achieve. 

It's lovely. 

Filia is finished with 11 more credits of college classes, and did beautifully (especially once the teacher corrected a computer glitch which was wreaking serious havoc with her class grade).  Filii laptop screen died, and he is looking forward to the arrival of a new computer that will allow him to play Skyrim -- when he's not being the Model Child as a thank-you for our contribution to that new computer, that is.  My Kombucha is misbehaving, so I am culturing a Master Race of Bacteria.  At least, that's what the trouble-shooting website says I am now doing.  In reality, I'm leaving some jars of vinegary stuff on top of the fridge for 6 weeks.  And we're prepping for a hospital stay next week.  KNITTING TIME!  (And, quite likely, no blog update.  Sorry.)

Merry May, everyone!  What are you reading, knitting, and doing these days?

New Charts!

Despite finishing round 80 as projected last Wednesday, and feeling like I've knit more on it this week than usual of late, I am in the middle of round 86.  Knitting submissions and miscellaneous computer stuff are keeping me busier than I think, apparently.  And the editing season is about to begin.  I will persevere.  (Remember, my goal for this year is To Be Determined.)

Coursera's CS101 is going well.  Filius didn't wait until Monday to do this week's lessons.  He finished them up on Sunday afternoon, and watches over my shoulder with Helpful Comments while I work on my lessons throughout the week.  My inner computer scientist is rearing its head and I am wondering how, precisely, I can manage to acquire the skills I need to build and operate the perfect database. 

Thousands of other things are happening, but I should be doing rather than blogging.  Tata!

Nothing to see here ...

Queen Susan crept along to round 80.  After I finish this round (tonight), I will be halfway through the charts for the center of the border ... 6 pages done, 6 pages to go!

The end of the school year is speeding up.  Filia finished one of her classes on Monday, which surprised me greatly since finals aren't until the week of May 7th.  Has college gotten easier in the last century?  Filius has his End of the School Year Plan, and is doing his best to wipe out one subject per day.  For his history class, he took the tests for the last 1/5th of the course without reading the accompanying workbooks, and passed with flying colors.  He knows his WWII history and geography, thank you very much. I've assigned him a research paper to work on over the summer.  Actually, I was going to assign him one -but he came across an assignment in one workbook and asked if he could do a Really Good Job on it - and since I was going to ask him to do that very thing anyways (without having seen the workbook assignment), this works out nicely.  (Hmm, Carolyn -- use parenthetical expressions and dashes much?)

The website coursera.org came up on my favorite homeschooling list, and my inner "Must Learn Everything" immediately popped out and said that Filius absolutely must take some classes there.  Recognizing the discrepancy between ME wanting to learn everything and HIM having to take classes, I asked if he would be interested.  No.  Drat.  After consulting my inner student and deciding that, despite having more than enough to do (while not working on Queen Susan), I wanted to take the class myself anyways, and indeed WOULD take the class, the question became "Does he have to take it too?'  I decided the answer was yes.  We are now happily enrolled in Computer Science 101.  Free!  Once Filius realized it was not like Scholars Online, and he didn't have to talk to people in the class, he was a happy clam. Until he realized that only the first week of lectures were up.  He is anxious for next Monday to come now.

The knitting evaluations are thick on the ground around here.  Literally.  There are two boxes at my feet, and two more to come before next week.  I ran out of white paper :( but will get more tomorrow so I can start sending the boxes back to their owners.  Asparagus is thick on the ground too, as are dill plants.  If anyone wants dill, come take a shovelful!

Today's plan is to make sympathetic noises about having to write a summary of The Importance of Being Earnest (no, not a fifty word summary.  Three hundred word minimum, please), work on a knitting evaluation until the house empties, then study chapter 2 of Revelation for my Precept class, and then KNIT.  Supper will fit in there somewhere (probably an asparagus/mushroom omelette), and probably an audiobook or two. 

Blogger has rearranged their interface.  Silly changes.

Yet another not-much-progress update

Queen Susan is now on round 73. That means I only managed about 10,000 stitches this week, or somewhere between 6-8 hours of knitting. Poky, poky, poky.

But, I did manage to move forwards. The stack of 'work before play' is much smaller, and I hope to see some real and actual progress this week. Of course, this is also the week to be cultured, and being cultured takes away from knitting time. (We will be cultured at a figure skating show and The Tempest.)

Snippets of my week:

• A new water heater!
• A new hole in the bathroom wall (best way to get the basement door unlocked)
• Green Tea Kombucha is yummy.
  
• Asparagus is leaping out of the ground. Anyone local want a half-pound or two?
• One very short knitting eval and one very long one were completed
• Taxes are done, paid, and FINISHED.
  
• I downloaded 9 free books for my Kindle ... homeschooling catalogs with fun literature selections can be dangerous.
  

And with that, I think I should go knit. And watch a statistics lecture.

The Creeping Susan

This week finds me looking at Round 67. My pace may have picked up since last week - but not by much. It's been a busy week at Lake Moobegone.

• Asparagus can get nipped by frost, just like Bleeding Heart. Mushy Asparagus, straight from the garden ... anyone?
  
• One knitting article was sent off, complete with patterns, photos, and more mittens to photo, comfortably ahead of a deadline
• Test knitting is chugging along nicely. I've figured out how I can best manage 3 strands of yarn, but still wonder why people felt a need to improve on Fair Isle's two.
  
• The enrollment of my Precept study on Revelation, Part I, exploded. We're now at 8!
• Easter was a whirl of kitchen prep, two services with and Easter breakfast sandwiched in between, and a wonderful afternoon at my mom's.
• Our hot water heater decided that 180+ was a much better temperature than 120.
• I learned how to reset a water heater so we can avoid cold showers and baths before the repairman comes. One reset a day is keeping us supplied with lukewarm to WAY TOO HOT water. (When the water heater is misbehaving, look for steam clouds before even thinking of sticking a finger in to check the temperature)
• I made ginger Kombucha. Mmmm.
  
• I've reviewed 3 knitting submissions this past week, with one new arrival on the docket for this afternoon and tomorrow
• I read Tamora Pierce's Mastiff in one sitting, but managed not to read the two earlier books in the series in the same sitting. I still like Keladry better.
  

The week held other things, but that's the bulk of them. Filia is back in school now after Easter break, Filius continues to work independently, and I am looking forward to a quiet evening so I can sit back and retrench. Not that I really need re-trenching, but after the past week, I want to take a deep breath and make sure I'm not missing something.

If anyone has some spare Spring, my asparagus wouldn't mind borrowing it.

Queen Susan - Creeping Along

Queen Susan had an interesting week. First, she got worked on in a small window of opportunity between 'mittens finished' and 'awaiting pattern clarification' on another project. This resulted in about 3 rounds getting done. Ooooh, 3 whole rounds!

Then the dog curled up next to her and used her for a pillow. 30 stitches were safely picked back up onto the needles.

Then a cup of tea got spilled in her immediate vicinity, and she caught some splash. Fortunately, it was late in the day and at least 4 pots of tea had been brewed from the tablespoon of leaves, so the tea was very light in color. I used a towel to absorb the possible 1/2t that landed on her, and will see if that was a bad idea when I wash and block her.

Queen Susan saw a tire repair shop, a dentist's office, and choir practice this week. She's becoming quite well-travelled.

In other news

• My 3rd and 4th batches of Kombucha are still brewing. Tomorrow is tasting day
• I ordered a 2.5 gallon crock for MORE Kombucha brewing. The natives are restless on their short rations and look forward to a less limited supply.
• The entire first batch of sauerkraut disappeared (into tummies) and a second batch will be ready tomorrow.
• We picked a dozen spears of asparagus yesterday and will pick at least that much today.
• No one rear-ended us this week.
  
• Tomorrow should be shoe-shopping for Filia.
• I really have no excuse not to start some sourdough starter. I have rye berries, I have water, I have a 2 qt ceramic pot...
  

Queen Susan Update

There will be no Queen Susan photo this week. The flowers are so much more photogenic, for one, and for another, not much has happened on her. I am now on Round 59 of the border - about 8 rounds done in one week. Pitiful, unless you consider that represents about 9 hours of knitting AND I've knit 4 Basic Mittens and have just the top decreases and thumb left on my proto-Advanced Mitten (due next month) . I also received two full bags of yarn for a sweater I'll be test-knitting (due in May) , and also some Master Knitter work to evaluate (due today, and more due Monday).

Queen Susan will probably be taking a nice vacation in my knitting stand. She'll get done, never fear. I figure two solid weeks of knitting will take care of the aforementioned projects, and then I can dive back into Round 59. Trust me, it's marked in highlighter tape. I won't forget where I am. Or where it is.

Other updates:

• By the end of the day, my 3rd and 4th batches of Kombucha will be happily fermenting. It's yummy stuff!
  
• There are 15 spears of asparagus growing in my garden. And it's March.
  
• My husband mowed the yard yesterday.
• My daughter and I (me driving) were rear-ended yesterday, too.
• Homemade sauerkraut (with carrots, so it's not real sauerkraut, which is slimy and icky and totally awful ... or at least, it was that way the last time I tried it four decades ago) is for lunch
• Filia has a new carbon fiber AFO. Once the other arrives, let the shoe-shopping begin!
  

For an understanding of the latter, you can go to this orthotics site and look at the Plastic Solid Ankle AFO, then the leftmost Prefabricated Carbon Fiber AFO. Consider which would be easier to get into a shoe. And which would work with anything other than sneakers. Then imagine you're a teen girl who has been wearing sneakers for the past 15 years.

Back to the knitting submission...

Spring is Springing

A good picture

Our Manchurian Bush Apricots (which, when we bought them, were supposed to mature to a height of 4-6 ft) are among the earliest bloomers in the spring. After the Grecian Windflowers, before the daffodils, and a week or so before the plums, we can count on at least a few minutes of gorgeous white flowers.

If it's a typical Minnesota spring, a few minutes later the gentle 40-mph breeze will denude the bushes of their petals while attempting to make a mock blizzard. There are a LOT of petals on our two bushes. While the breeze was absent, I decided to get a picture while the petals were still on the trees.

More Queen Susan

I am definitely out of my Queen Susan groove, so was surprised to see I've managed a whole 14 rows this week. Little odds and ends do add up, I suppose! And I'm beginning to think of this as travelling knitting. Scary, that.

The First Day of Spring!

On the last day of March in the Snowy Year of Our Lord, 2011, I took a photo of mountain of snow generated by our neigbor's driveway clearing. We wondered if it would melt by Easter, or by June, or perhaps even ever.

This year is an entirely different kettle of fish. It appears I have a parsley plant, perhaps two, in the garden which survived over the winter. My oregano is showing new growth, as is the sage. The thyme isn't doing anything yet, nor is the rosemary -- but they are slower growers. I planted Swiss Chard in the garden and have some hopes of seeing wee little sprouts in a week or so. And on Sunday - which happened to be March 18th, 2012, I took some photographs.For our first exhibit, we have the absence of a mountain of snow.

Then we have the lovely willow tree, quite eager to begin leafing out.

And then we have tulips and, to the best of my knowledge, Grecian Windflowers. The latter have been volunteers in our yard over the past 16 years and have always been the first flowers of spring. (Or the last flowers of winter, if you go by their appearance this year) The sedum is up, the mint is plotting its assault upon the yard, and I've got some clippings from the plum tree in the window with the hopes that they will bloom later this week.

Whatever does the summer hold for us?

More Queen Susan ... with WORDS!

I fear that progress is about to come to a screeching halt. Who in their right mind volunteers to write an article and three mitten patterns, plus design and knit up two pairs of mittens, while working on a shawl of this gorgeousness? Yes, me.

And then who accepts a test-knitting job at the same time? Yes, me.

So, progress will likely slow down pretty seriously for a while. It was slowing down anyways ... switching from the center (where a good day was 20 rows), to the border (where a good day was 4 rounds) was a serious mental shift. I made it, however, and am enjoying the border very much -- switching from the 15-st repeat at the beginning to the 60-st repeat which will continue to the end actually made things seem to go faster. I could just sit and knit on this thing all day. But other work will be calling, once some yarn arrives.

I have surprised myself by deciding to purl all the even rounds, rather than fiddle around with techniques for garter-in-the-round-while-avoiding-purls. My purls rounds are wee bit looser than my knits, and the purl verision of a sk2p is not exactly thrilling, but I'm not finding the rounds frustrating. I just do them. And listen to my audiobooks.

Juggling 7 page of charts is a lot easier than I thought it would be. It's also comforting to realize that, out of the 24 pages of charts for the border, I finished the first 7 on Sunday and am on to the next 7!

More Queen Susan

Queen Susan, Week 4

What? Quilts????

Warning: This Blog Post Does Not Contain Any Knitting Content.


The second Saturday of each month finds me at church with a few other ladies, running a sewing machine or rotary cutter. We make quilts to donate to a women's shelter in town. Quilts go together a LOT faster than some other things I could mention (but won't, since I've already warned you that such things won't be mentioned in this blog post). I think quilts look gorgeous in person, and even more gorgeous in photographs. During Filia's spring break, I hope to get the almost-completed one tied.







Our next quilt is based on a Charm Quilt pattern, but we're doing it in a simple scrap method. Each woman (or girl) picks out some fabrics from the stash, cuts enough squares to make one 16-patch, and then the sewing machine fairy sews them together. (Well, there's some chopping into triangles, arranging, and ironing in there as well) Lookie what got sewn together yesterday!

Queen Susan, Week 3

Queen Susan

A Happy Project for Destashing

Although my main knitting project these days weeks months is the Queen Susan, I will be keeping another project in the wings for those times which don't lend themselves to dainty lace. Times like watching Mythbusters with my son, or riding in the car (with someone else driving, of COURSE), or when the light isn't the best.

Since I finished up my sock projects, and don't have the yarn for the mitten projects, I pulled out the Watch Cap pattern I found last month and decided to destash. The hat is in ribbing (which is not a bad thing, but stockinette goes faster), and used up a whopping NINE BALLS of yarn. There aren't your standard 50g balls - they're my standard 'stash balls'. Remember, my stash is almost entirely leftovers. The hat used up leftovers from some slippers, from more slippers, from my daughter's Level 1 hat, from a future Level 1 project, and from an unidentified place or two as well. Nine balls!

I was given some Wollmeise recently, and that will no doubt become a traveling project in the next month or so. Socks, of course, as tall as the yarn will allow for. In the meantime - I think I'll scrounge around for another watch cap and see how many more partials I can finish off.

The shawl is coming along beautifully. Haven't hit the doldrums yet - and I'm 5% of the way done! If I keep on at 5% per 10 days, that means I'll finish in ... only 200 days!

A quick knit? I think not. But I am definitely going to enjoy every minute of it. Except the minutes I spend tinking or repairing mistakes. Or wrestling with sticky needles and fingers. I've got wax paper in my project bag to recondition the needles, and probably should stick some talcum powder in as well to 'recondition' my fingers as needed.

Queen Susan (and other knitting)

Queen Susan Swatches

Queen Susan Wednesday #2

Start time: 1:25

End time: 2:00

Bread Bowls, Soot, and Obligatory Knitting Content

For Christmas, I received a Bread Bowl.

To season it, I followed the directions which came with it. Coat thickly with olive oil or other food grade oil, let stand 3-4 hours, wash, dry, and enjoy your seasoned bowl. (That's a loose paraphrase, by the way.) Except the next day, the wood looked a bit dry. So I coated it again, and again, and again ... and two cups of olive oil later, it still looks a bit dry to me.

Then I had to figure out how to use it. I looked online, and saw that at least one person made her bread in it from start to almost-finish. She mixes up the dough for 3 loaves in there, kneads it, lets it rise ... and bakes it elsewhere. I gave it a shot, mixing up one loaf's worth of dough and making a mess all over the counter. The bowl isn't that deep. And kneading in it was tough - I banged my wrists on the narrow sides and got bruises on my legs from the bowl spinning on the table when I tried to rotate the dough. Hmmm. I must be missing something. It's a gorgeous bowl and I want to use it ... any ideas how one can safely use it? I've got the bit about putting the dough in, letting it rise, and then shaping it and doing a final rise elsewhere. I can't do a final rise in the bowl since the dough sticks (despite generous flouring of the bowl, or additional oiling of the bowl).

On another topic ... here are my gorgeous pink gloves AFTER being scrubbed with soap and water. Soot is a pernicious, dirty thing. My fingers are still soot-streaked, a day after cleaning our stove WITH the gloves on. This does not bode well for Queen Susan. I'll have to schedule my cleaning for days that I don't have much knitting time. (I did discover that a baking soda scrub, followed by dish soap, can work wonders for getting soot out/off of things. It's not perfect, but it's better than anything else I've tried)


Speaking of knitting time, I've been hard-pressed to come up with 'traveling knitting' projects to work on lately. I fell back on hats. Two watch caps, Jali, and now a Fish Hat, to be precise.


Today's a home day. I need to brave the elements and walk over to the post office to mail some packages, but apart from that - hot soup, a cuppa tea, and some sewing are on the agenda before I sit back to knit.

Queen Susan Wednesdays

I love Fridays!

Fridays this semester will be FUN!

Yesterday I finished my shawl (for the second time - the first time was in 2010).

I knit a swatch with the double-knitting technique to test a pattern.

And I got a good start on lengthening Filius's Christmas gansey.

All in ONE sitting. With no snacking. Or distractions. Or anything else of that ilk -- although the head of campus security did stop by to see if there were any spots on campus that Filia could think of which could be tweaked for better accessibility. (They're working on next year's plans, and he wanted her input. The college gets top marks for wanting to be accessible! There was one minor question we had, about getting in a locked-but-oh-so-convenient external door - and within 10 minutes, she had the right hardware to open it.)

Yes, Fridays are the day that I drive Filia to college and then wait until her classes are done to drive her home. I can do shopping in town then, but a minor surgery done just before class made me want to stick around 'just in case' since the last minor surgery of that sort had a wee complication before the day was over. No complications this time, which meant more knitting.

I'm also listening to Little Dorrit on my Kindle, and some Psalms on my iPod - but not at the same time. I just LOVE blank space in my day that cannot be gobbled up by stray dust bunnies, search engines, or random weeds.

How about you? If you had to sit somewhere comfortable for 5 hours or so once a week, what would you do? Go beserk? Bring jogging gear and shun the chair? Nap?

Odds and Ends

Today is the last day of vacation. Filia starts an 11-credit load at Bethany Lutheran University on Monday, and Filius and I will dive back into his books. That makes today a perfect day to continue tidying, straightening, decluttering, and preparing for a new year.
One thing that needed doing was the Emptying of The Yarn Labels Bag. Over the course of 2011, I tried to keep all the yarn labels from my various projects. The final count is 77 labels. They will now go live in the recycling bin until Thursday, at which point they will join the ranks of post-consumer content. Maybe in some yarn?


One of my lesser-favorite things to do around the house is to clean the corn stove. I should probably call it a pellet stove, since we're burning wood pellets this year instead of corn ... but old names die hard. Wood generates a lot more soot than corn. Corn generates more ash than wood, at least on the (in)sides of the stove. Corn produces a 'clinker' - a nice solid chunk of spent fuel that can be pryed out of the firebox and popped into an ash can. Wood produces a bunch of ash which has to be scooped out. Both make my hands very dirty during the weekly deep cleaning. And since I have some heirloom-quality LIGHT colored knitting to do this year, I splurged and got myself a pair of gloves. Here, they are pictured in their original, clean state. They will never look like this again.

Any of my stove-owning friends know how to get soot off of hands and cloth? How about glass? (Ammonia, water, sudsy ammonia, elbow grease, magic eraser aren't working around the edges.) And is there any good way to clean the inside of a stove without producing airborne particles that make me think about wearing a face mask while cleaning?

2012 Knitting Goals ... but not really

2012 will not be the year of the sock. It will not be the year of 12 shawls, or 12 sweaters, or even 12 pairs of mittens. (Those of you who know me a bit will not be surprised if I knit that many pairs of mittens without aiming to, however. And I did misplace my favorite pair of mittens in mid-December, so I probably should knit myself another nice toasty pair. Despite our current lack of real wintry weather.)

I thought about making it be the year of the Baby Items. Or another stash-busting year. But I’ll work from my stash anyways – yarn acquisition is not something I have a problem with. The only influxes come via either destashing friends or my own leftovers. So why make a goal of it? And Baby Items are generally too tiny to really make a nice goal. Now, 52 baby items might be a nice target … but I don’t know 52 babies, and have other things to knit, so that’s not going to make it on my list. I reserve the right to add it should a grandchild visit my future.

Which leaves me with no glorious knitting goals.

However, at the end of 2012, I hope to have a completed Queen Susan Shawl. Out of Phoenix yarn, in silver. Unless someone talks me into Pixie Dust – a gorgeous color, but not quite the thing I envision for my bespectacled self.

I think a Queen Susan in one year is a respectable goal. Not glorious – one shawl in a year? Good grief – but respectable.

Miscellany:

I have some 120/2 silk which I’d love to use in a project, but nothing has called my name quite yet. I don’t have a shawl’s worth of any one color, and there’s nothing worse than knitting up 1200 yards of thread and finding out you don’t have enough.

I could make the completion of Molly’s Fault a goal, but it’s gotten used to it’s perpetual position on the back burner. I did get another 15-21 squares done over Christmas (the period, not the day), so it is growing.

I didn’t get any spinning done in 2011.

If I finish the Queen Susan by late July, which shawl do I enter in the state fair? It, or Unst? Unst needs to be under a Christmas tree come December. Could be a tough call. Do you think I could get away with calling 20/2 merino wool ‘medium-weight’? That would put it in another category …

Twenty Twelve

Wait a second ... weren't we just talking about whether it was "Two thousand and one" or "two thousand one"? Where did the past decade and a bit go?

But that's beside the point. More to the point, this is my blog and I've not been here all that much. Why? Oodles of good reasons.

1. I'm trying to scale back the time I sit in front of a computer screen.
2. My right hands gets ice cold when I type or use the mouse more than a few minutes.
3. Blathering on about items of next-to-no value is a thing to avoid.
4. I'm trying to spend more time knitting doing things of lasting value.
   
5. Two mornings a week I've been sitting in a college library rather than at my computer.
6. I haven't been up to anything bloggable?

Fact is, I'm also not schooling two all that much lately. My eldest, a high school junior, began taking classes at Bethany Lutheran College this fall and did a wonderful job with a 4-credit load (plus Math, Chemistry, Fine Arts, and English at home). This semester she's taking 11 credits, and I think that's enough to call a full load. If one semester of a college class equals one year of a high school class, then taking 6 college classes in one year should equal a full year of high school, no? Especially if we tuck in a second year of Fine Arts (finishing Master Hand Knitting Level 2), a year of Chemistry, and a summer spent brushing up on math skills. Plus a semester of English!

Point six above isn't exactly true. I have been up to all sorts of things, but nothing has demanded it be made into a blog post. I DO like to have things all nice and tidy, though. Since I didn't make my end-of-the-year wrap-up post, it's time for a post-mortem of 2011 here.

Let's look at the goals from my side bar. Test Knit - I did that four months of the year, taking most of the opportunities that came my way. I may be looking for more test knitting this year, but maybe not. There is The Queen Susan calling my name! Knit One Stash Project Per Month - yup, did that. A bit skimpy in some months, a bit overkill in others. Knit In Cycles - sorta. Nothing particularly called my name. I still like the idea.

Ravlery tells me I started and finished 58 projects in 2011. Perhaps even 60, since sometimes I don't start a new project if I'm making multiples of the same things. And right now, I'm finishing a project I started in 2010 -- the hap shawl I was never quite 'hap'py with. I frogged the entire edging and border and am working them over with a LOT more stitches.

My desk is tidy. There's fresh bread in the kitchen. I'm staying healthy (my joints aren't always happy with me, but all my knitting joints work so I'm okay with that.)

And there's a puzzle on the kitchen table that I really should put a few pieces into before I sit down and knit some more. Maybe I'll even finish Hannah Coulter!

Next up - plotting and planning for 2012!

How did your 2011 go? And what direction will you be going (or at least planning to go) in 2012?

Set, anyone?

This deal happened at the beginning of the game, from a shuffled deck. The cards got rearranged -- the original deal wasn't QUITE this tidy, but still ...