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How the Hell Are You

How has your week been? Mine has been very unusual...I'm almost never crabby, cranky, grouchy, testy, bored, surly, or grumpy, but this week I've more than made up for all the times that I wasn't any of those things. I was like Seven Mean Dwarves all in one! I even yelled at a kid at graduate school—dear me. He was sitting there quietly, waiting for the lecture to begin and working a crossword puzzle. He looks up, straight at me, and thoughtfully says "What's a five-letter word for a government organization formed in 1947?" and because I'm very sensitive about being one of the oldest schoolchildren ever, I shout "What the hell do I know about 1947? I wasn't there!! Why are you asking me?" Yes. Really. No. I'm not proud of myself.

It's kind of been like that all week. Until Thursday afternoon, anyway, when I had some lovely mail that made me smile and feel as I might make it to Friday after all. First there was a dear little note from Stephanie, and with it, a sheepy magnet. Cute!

Thanks, Stephanie! And! There was also a package from my SPIII partner! Have a look with Della at my new giant tote with retro cowgirls:

Jack shows off the handles:

Isn't it something? I'm speechless! There are even chewies for the doggies! A close-up? Why certainly!

Thanks, Secret Pal!! I felt so much better that I ordered the Hifa 2 shade cards I needed to get ready for Ginny's Poetry-Along!

Reorganize-along

The brilliant Bonne Marie wrote in her 23 September entry of missing some wool she knew she had, and thus doing a little reorganizing until she found the errant skeins to make "Cinnamon" from the Rowan Summer Tweed Collection. I have a bag of Summer Tweed, and I thought I'd knit along with the Boss of All Knitting. But I couldn't find my yarn, so I decided to reorganize-along with her instead. Whaddayaknow? I found all kinds of stuff that I had forgotten! Here is an enormous heap of Sisik, three bags full plus some extra skeins. What was I thinking?

I must have been thinking of "Inverness" and "Aberlady" from Dalegarn Nr 115. Sweet! It will be fun to cast on either one of those. At the bottom of the Sisik bag, there was half of a purple Elizabeth Zimmermann Pi Shawl, still on the needles and ready to go. It will make nice knitting for waiting.

In the Life-Is-A-Mystery category, I found this:

It's a Lopi circular yoke sweater, worked entirely up to the yoke point, with the sleeves ready to go, and with all of my size 6 and 7 Addi Turbos being used as stitch holders. Unfortunately, there is no corresponding pattern to go along with the sweater parts. Isn't that strange? I cannot fathom why I would abandon this type of sweater after I had arrived at the fun part. Most curious. I seem to remember a willowy woman leaning against rocks and wearing this sweater with a matching hat. Hmmm. Anyone?

And yes! I did find the Summer Tweed!

Pups

Like me, all the furry ones are happy it's Friday with a weekend coming. The days go by fast, but they are long, and so jam-packed with urgent activity that I've felt very stressed this week. Whew! I'm glad we are on the downside of this hectic month.

Della has some tough love for you today.

We wish you a happy Friday and a lovely weekend!

How did I miss this?

Via the always wonderful and well-informed Cynthia, Sock Dogs.

Regular Dogs

Sister's Apple is too fast for my camera lens. In this photo you see Jack being buzzed by a bird? a plane? No! It's Apple, the happy chihauhau! More photos at Laura's blog.

cheers, and happy Wednesday!

La di dah--Short Rows

Now that I understand the knitting beast known as short-row toes, I feel surprised that it was so difficult for me to grasp the concept. Last night I looked at my knitting after racing through a short-rowed toe and heel and thought: Hunh. What was so hard about that?

I don't understand how something so simple could be so difficult to grasp--it was difficult for me, but now I wonder how I ever made socks otherwise :-)

Behold the socks in progress:

This is some of the Outback wool that Elann offered recently, knit on needles four sizes smaller than suggested. The cool thing is that on the straightaway part of the knitting, it's making pink and blue snakes. Snakes Snakes Snakes! If only varigated yarn would do something like this reliably! Think of the possibilities!

And here, for those new members of the knitting blog ring that may have missed it the first time, Le Barf-Glob:

Ewww. We've got a big one here.

What's next? Back to gloves and mittens? The unfinished vest? Nope. Susan of I'm Knitting as Fast as I Can left the link to another short-row-type sock recipe, and I'll have to try it, because I'm just that way.

Pups

The pups are looking forward to some cooler weather; it has been nearly unbearably steamy and hot here the past week. I wish they wouldn't say the "feels-like" temperature on the weather report...the actual numbers are bad enough.

Tuesday. Little Jack says What You Talking About Willis?

Cheers, and happy knitting!

Short Row Satisfaction

Even though Emma very kindly told me to stop, I just had to try a few more times for tidy toes on short-rowed toe-up socks. I bumped both my needle size and wool thickness up so I could easily see exactly what was happening, and now I am satisfied with short rows.

By practicing both Wendy's generic toe-up sock start and the PG-R technique from Simple Socks, Plain and Fancy (ISBN: 0966828941), I gained two new tools for working with short rows, and I feel quite clever in learning something so useful, so well! Toe-up socks seem to knit up faster, I suppose because of the lack of fiddly increases and decreases and gussets. Working toes and heels with short rows creates possibilities for bulls-eyes on heels and toes. I like it.

SockWatch!

Sock excitement! Can you stand it? You'll want to keep an eye on Nanette's wonderful blog over the next week or so. By my count, she's got pairs nine and ten on the needles. I think she is going to make her goal of 12 pairs of beautiful socks in one month!

No-Socks Watch!

Sister and I were wondering if we should ask Nanette to design some toeless socks—like fingerless gloves, but for feet. We found a new and relatively inexpensive nail salon in our neighborhood, and we got nearly matching pedicures as a girly-treat for the hard work we did last week.

Yes! It *is* blue nail polish. The designs on our toenails were each hand-painted in about 30 seconds by a very nice woman who didn't seem bothered at all by the impermanence of her art work. To design and paint something that will be removed in a week or two with nail polish remover is perhaps akin to Tibetan Buddhist sand paintings, or chalk drawings on a sidewalk, or blogging without archives, or creating fine art on an etch-a-sketch. In our context, imagine knitting a pair of lace socks or gloves, to be worn once, and then unravelled. Beauty designed/destined to be discarded——what a concept! I suppose if you trusted without doubt there would always be more supplies, and always more personal creativity, and always more engaging designs, then you wouldn't mind, not even for a moment, that your art was going to disappear under a soaked cotton swab. I like the idea of having the degree of faith necessary to re-create, and I think I'll cultivate it. Frog that project! You know you can knit one equally fine, and that you have plenty of time and creativity to do so. :-)

Pups

Fine and frisky! Everyone furry had a happy weekend chasing squirrels and barking at the dog across the street.

Monday Monday Monday! Chase those metaphorical squirrels! (Please do some warm-up stretches first.)

Cheers, and happy knitting!