Knitting In Public

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Sunday, March 2, I woke up with a bit of a stomach ache. A little higher up than usual, but not a big deal. I figured I was just hungry. We went out to brunch after church, and instead of feeling better, I felt much worse and sent my son to get some 7-Up. I slept fitfully most of the day, trying to get comfortable. By late evening I was taking Tylenol and Advil to relieve the discomfort, and in the wee hours of Monday morning I was checking when Urgent Care would open. In the process, I discovered that if you have “severe abdominal pain” you should not go to Urgent Care, you should go to the ER. So, at about 5 a.m. on Monday, DH drove me to the Emergency Room. (I had last been there 22 years ago - almost exactly - to give birth to DD who was born March 3 at about 6:30 a.m.) I discovered that I was having a gallbladder attack, and that I had a gallstone at the entrance to the gallbladder and that most likely it would have to come out. I had an unexplained elevated white count, too. I was told to see my Dr. in 2 days. I slept most of the two days, went to see the Dr. and discovered that the white count was even higher. He suggested a couple of days in the hospital with IV antibiotics and then likely removal of the gallbladder the following week. By the end of the day Wednesday, the Dr. wanted me in the hospital. Everyone seemed to think I was there to remove the gallbladder, and the sooner the better. After all the consults and the like, it was decided to remove my gallbladder on Friday, March 7 (my first surgery ever). DH came down to stay at the hospital during surgery (with the rest of the crew running the business and house without us). The surgery took a couple of hours and went well - they were able to take it lapriscopically (just barely). However, I had some funky heart rhythms in recovery and they thought I was having a heart attack. I was moved to Cardiac Intensive Care unit for 3 days while they monitored me and determined what was wrong. DH stayed with me for almost the whole time - he took a couple of hours off for showering and changing clothes. Eva H. came to stay with me (and kick DH out) for a few hours. She brought me the fun balloons shown above. I was not aware that she used to be a nurse! We did get to impress her with a medical procedure she had not seen before - to get my heart rate back to normal. I spent an additional night in the ‘regular’ side of the cardiac unit, and was finally discharged on Tuesday, March 11.

Strength and stamina are slowly returning. The surgical recovery seems to be going really well. I now have more daily pills to take, and a bunch of follow-up appointments to see that everything is working well. Chris, Doug and Tonya really held down the fort while DH & I were in the hospital. I received some lovely flowers and the balloons - all of which were appreciated! Being stuck in the hospital is definitely not my idea of fun, and it certainly no place to get any rest! DH said that next time we have a vacation, he gets to choose the place! (As if this was a vacation, or that I had “chosen” it!) I do have to say that the staff was fabulous and the lab techs definitely know their job for drawing blood (always got it on the first try, and the least painful)!

Well over a year ago (!) I was working on a lovely sock pattern with an online KAL for Jeanie Townsend’s Maple Leaf socks. There were lots of questions about how to manage some of the stitches, and Jeanie helped everyone out with countless explanations (sometimes over and over and over). I decided to make mine two-colored, using KnitPicks yarns (bare and Memories in Redwood Forest, a discontinued color), as I thought it looked like autumn leaves. Just for fun, and to break up the plainness of the bare yarn, I put in a little stripe at the toe.

Of course, I then got distracted with lots of other knitting… and time went by. Lots of time. I had already started my knitting notebook - having been caught more than once on something I had not finished, and when trying to complete the item later I could not remember yarn or needle size or something else important. So I have notes on changes I made to the pattern. Even so, I found that my notes were not quite complete enough….

When I decided to finish this pair of socks, I could not immediately find the pattern and notes I had made. My “usual” sock is 64 stitches on a size 1 needle. So, I counted the stitches around the top of the completed sock, and came up with 64 stitches.

I knit the ribbing, and in the interim attempted to find the pattern I had printed off. No such luck. I stopped for a bit and knit on something else. I went back to this sock, determined to finish. I finally printed off another copy of the sock pattern, and noticed this:

Ooops. So I ripped out the ribbing and started over. I knit the ribbing, following my handwritten notes that I had only knit 18 rows of ribbing. I noted that in the pattern itself, I added an extra plain row between maple leaf patterns. I followed the instructions all the way down to the heel flap. Then as I started the heel flap, I doubled checked against the completed sock, to be sure I hadn’t made an adjustment in the width of the heel. Hmmm. These numbers weren’t coming out right….

Do you see a difference? One sock has 64 stitches (left), and the other has 72 stitches! In the interim of looking for the pattern, I had completely forgotten that I had counted the stitches on the other sock (not just presumed that it was 64 since that is my usual sock size)! So I went back to the KAL emails, and discovered that there were emails from several participants who complained about not being able to use a pattern that called for 72 stitches, so Jeanie rewrote the pattern several times over, for both a 56 stitch and 64 stitch sock! So, I printed the instructions for the 64 stitch sock, ripped back the second sock to the beginning again, and reknit - again - the ribbing, etc.  I’m now just a few rows from starting the heel flap again.

So, let this be a lesson. Take notes on every stinking minute detail, and start that second sock sooner!

Oh - and coming soon, news on this:

I missed out on natural daylight today to photograph some FO’s for my Ravelry notebook. I hope to get some taken tomorrow.

In my regular rounds of various blogs, I came across the Lime ‘n’ Violet “Chore Wars.” Why am I such a joiner? Apparently the site was started for folks actually doing household chores, and using this game-like site to encourage family members to compete and get the chores done while having some fun. Lime ‘n’ Violet have set up a group within the Chore Wars that has “adventures” for knitters, crocheters, and spinners. Some adventures apply to just one sub-group, and others apply to everyone. You receive experience points and gold and things like that for each completed adventure, which in this sub-group are fiber related tasks only - no household chores!

I joined on Thursday, which was a good choice as I had lots of points awarded for my activities that day, which included knitting with a group, knitting in public, knitting for an hour, etc. I started at #1208, and after Thursday’s activities, I had already moved up the ranks to #928. Today, I added some more activities, and am now #894! This is all for fun, although they suggested you could do with it as you will - for example, one of them is using the gold awarded for various knitting activities and ‘exchanging’ them one-for-one for real dollars used for yarn purchases (a way to control her yarn spending, as she has to do some knitting to earn the gold in the game). Of course, you can’t exchange points for real dollars from anyone or anywhere - this is just a little way for her to use the game with herself.

I’ve signed up for another lace KAL, MysticLight. This is designed and run by Anna, who did the MysticWaters KAL. While I have not finished that shawl, I do love how the pattern worked out and am anxious to try another KAL with Anna. I will finish the Mystic Waters, but of course it’s now on the back burner as I work on other things that have caught my eye. There’s still time to sign up for the KAL, it doesn’t start until March 26. This shawl will be knit with fingering weight yarn. Anna has plans to do a shawl KAL for each of the elements. She’s done water, of course, and has explained that MysticLight is really fire, so there’s been quite the quest to find the “perfect” yarn. I immediately thought of a variety of sock yarns I could use that were flame colored, including several that were multi-colored. Then two things occurred to me: often multicolored yarn pools and does funny stuff and I think it often distracts you from the pattern (I sure don’t want to spend time knitting lace to have the pattern disappear into the yarn coloring), and that while I find many of those colorways very attractive, I would not be likely to wear them. I asked AJ (since she works in a yarn store and is far more familiar with many yarns than I am) if she knew of a yarn that wouldn’t pool. She made the suggestion of Dream In Color’s Smooshy. Supposedly dyed so that it will not pool or stripe. In the group discussions for MysticLight, several people are going off in different interpretations of “light” - and one suggested Aurora Borealis. This appealed to me as the colors are more my ’style.’ The Smooshy yarns have a color they call “Dusky Aurora” — so that is what I’ve decided to use for the KAL. Here’s a photo of my two skeins:

It really is a lot darker than it looks here. Their website showed a little bit of other colors in there, but I don’t see them in my skeins. I’m still happy with the color and I’m sure I’ll wear the shawl.

I ordered the skeins from Simply Socks, and while they practically broke the sound barrier getting the yarn to me, I think it has a fairly strong perfumy/mothbally smell. Not pleasant. Most fiber folks are so careful to keep yarns for sale out of environments that pick up questionable/objectionable smells (pets, smoking) that I was surprised this smells so bad. Apparently, I’m the only one that thinks it stinks, however. Others have given the skeins a sniff at my request (I know, it’s weird) and while they can smell something, they don’t think it’s so bad. Oh well. I have the skeins “airing” now, and since the KAL doesn’t start until  next month, the yarn will hopefully lose that scent by then.

Wedding plans progress - I have several contracts to sign and return. Still lots of details to take care of, but the major decisions and major players have been determined. This is a great, albeit temporary, relief!

I wet and ‘blocked’ the surgical repair (see entry below), and it was all ready to be picked up on Monday.

Due to illness (not mine) the pickup didn’t happen.

I started to fold it up to have it delivered by my DH who was headed that way, when I discovered that the bound off edge that I had repaired was 3″-4″ shorter than the other end! There was not enough elasticity or drape in the bound off edge. This means that it would never fold correctly - a condition which I could not allow to continue!

I decided to unravel the repair and reknit it with a stretchier bind off. Since I was unraveling anyway, I wet the yarn and attempted to straighten it, so it would knit more consistently. Arg - acrylics! The yarn was still wavy, although it was way better than my first attempt. The garter edge still looks a little wonky because it won’t lie flat like the rest of the blanket, but I used a different bind off which resulted in an edge that would stretch and drape much like the other side of the blanket!

It was delivered today.  I am glad it is done, and done as well as I can - and that Sam (who I found out turns 4 on Sunday) will have his favorite blanket back tonight.

We had a small knitting ’emergency.’

Remember these two little guys that went home together?

Well, boys will be boys and puppies will be puppies. The end result was this:

Ooops.

So I was asked if I could rescue this, since it is Sam’s favorite blanket. At the very least, could I keep it from unraveling more than it already has?

Yesterday, I spent my afternoon assessing the damage, determining what the pattern was, and how far down the damage went. I carefully unpicked the edge (wouldn’t you know it would be the cast on edge that was damaged), and determined the best approach. I unraveled back to the lowest point of damage. This resulted in 3 separate strands of yarn of varying lengths. There was definitely a measure of yarn that was entirely missing.

I admit I should have washed the unraveled strands so that they would knit up better, but I didn’t really think about it as I was knitting. I was rather entranced with how to put it back together, and how noticeable it might be.

This is the result:

What do you think?

The pattern ended with 10 rows of garter stitch. The blanket is worn enough and washed enough that the knitting is very even, and the garter stitch “bumps” aren’t really bumps but just horizontal lines. So far, I’ve been unable to make the garter bumps lie flat, there are thicker parts where the ends are for each of the 3 sections of yarn, and it’s a little uneven because I didn’t wash and relax the yarn pieces before re-knitting. But I think I got 8 or 9 rows of garter stitch out of it, and the width of the ends only differ by about 1/4 inch.

There were several snags in the body of the blanket. I smoothed those places out as well, so those areas look ’just like new.’ 

Overall, a pretty good surgery. I think the patient will survive with just a few scars.

What do you do the day after Christmas? Go shopping for a wedding dress!

Doesn’t she look irritated thrilled to be in such a girly dress?

It’s amazing how much variety there is in wedding dresses - what is essentially a white gown. Lots of lace, beads, all kinds of options. Many styles, lengths. Most of you know that Molly is not a “girly-girl” - the kind to want a ‘princess’ gown. The rest of us (Fran, Jenny, Anne, Tonya and I) tried to encourage her to find a dress that worked for her. There was one dress that seemed to be one she might want. Of course, it is a discontinued style and they would only hold the dress until the end of the day. We went home and Molly spent the afternoon looking at different bridal places online - to find that nothing similar was available anywhere that she looked. So we called the store to hold it overnight, and we picked it up yesterday, so the wedding dress is purchased! It makes the wedding seem so much closer. Still much to do, but it’s nice to have this on the “done” list.

(No, this is *not* the dress she chose — I can’t ruin the surprise!)

Yes - after the hustle and bustle of airport runs, house cleaning (thanks, Molly!), carpet cleaning, cookie baking, etc. - we had a wonderful Christmas with family in attendance. Next year big changes are in store as we will have to share Molly with her new in-laws.

Jenny brought two sets of fun cardboard “glasses” reminiscent of the 3-D glasses of the 50’s and 60’s, but when you looked through them at the mini lights on the Christmas tree, this is what you saw:

Santa’s face in the lights! (The other one made sort of stars of the lights - the photo I have is not as clearly cool as this.)

We spent Christmas Day hanging out with Anne & Carl, and Fran, Dale & Jerry came over for a visit as well. We’ll go to see Eleanor this weekend.

My Hanami didn’t get done. :(  I’ll continue to plug away on it, and then hopefully the Secret of Chrysopolis stole - but I have several new KAL’s that start in January. I may end up on the sidelines on those. I have some FO’s to show from quite awhile ago, but haven’t taken any photos yet. I’ll be heading off to scrap with the gang in two weeks - very excited to do that. I’ll have to take my FO photos by then! There’s also another thing to occupy my time: wedding planning. I’ll be helping Molly as much as she needs or wants. Molly would like to make her own wedding invitations, so we may spend our scrap weekend doing those instead.

I just thought I’d make a quick post so everyone would know I’m still alive and kickin’ (although a nasty cold has taken up residence). Hope you all had a fabulous Christmas!

Guess what?!

There are jingle wedding bells in my future!

Remember this very intelligent, good-looking guy?

An engagement was announced on November 17th. They are planning for a summer ‘08 wedding! A jam-packed summer for my kiddo - graduation on June 6th, being part of the wedding party for her roommate on July 5, her own wedding sometime late July or early August (still working on the venue), and starting law school towards the end of August. If anyone can do it, she can!

So, do ya wanna see a better photo of that bling? (yeah, I thought so!)

It is oh. so. pretty! (Good choice, Chris!)

We’re thrilled, of course!

So - as for knitting. Hmm. Taking a back seat to finding a venue and getting a date. Many summer dates are already full. Once the date is set, most of my work is done - but trying to find a venue long-distance doesn’t work, so I’ve been her eyes and ears for the search.

I’m still trying to make some progress on Christmas knitting, but I really could use another two or three weeks’ time - anyone know how to work that sticky time/space continuum?

I have joined so many lace KAL’s (see sidebar - I finally learned how to add buttons to my blog!), I must be nuts. On top of the incredible work schedule I have lately (keeping me from doing much knitting), lace is something that is not very portable, nor is it group-friendly.  These patterns have really been giving me a hard time. I haven’t frogged this much for as long as I can remember.  I do have some progress to show, even though I am far behind in the KAL’s:

Mystic Waters KAL. This is a triangle shaped shawl. The group is currently on clue 3, this is slightly more than half of clue 1. I’m using KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud in Tidepool Heather, with size 2 (3.0 mm) KnitPicks fixed circular needles.

Here’s a close up of the yarn - it seems kind of greenish when you look at it in the skein and wound into a cake, but when you look at the actual stitches, it is really several different colors blotched together. This seems such an appropriate color for a shawl named “Mystic Waters” and I’m loving it! The pattern is very pretty (I get to see the finished clues of others who are current in the KAL). Seeing the clues inspires me to work on it, but this will end up being for me so I’m afraid it’s going to go to the back burner for now.

This is the Secret of Chrysopolis:

I’m using KnitPicks Shadow in Vineyard color (deep purple), with size 2 (2.75 mm) KnitPicks fixed circular needles. This pattern was going so slowly. I have ripped more rows than I have knit. Finally, I have finished clue 1! (The KAL is officially over, clue 8 was posted last Friday.) The edging was the worst for frogging, but I also ended up changing the needle size as this was so big. I intend to give it to Jenny for Christmas, but it seems pretty likely it would be Christmas ‘08. (We only have 36 knitting days left for this year.)

I also decided to add beads to this pattern (although the designer did not include any):

The beads are darker, but they are not as obvious as they are in this photo. I also ended up changing from a round, ‘grape’ colored bead to these which are hex beads and are longer than the size 8 rounds. I changed because I lost the tube of grape beads! I had put in the first row of beads so I had to frog back and insert these other beads in order to keep going.

Last, but not least, is the Hanami stole for Anne. I decided to use the size 3 (3.25 mm) Addi Lace turbos, as it will result in a stole closer to the size of the original design which I think will be a better size for her. I’m adding more beads than called for in the original pattern, adding one to the center of each of the solid diamond shapes. In addition, I’ll add some random beads in the blossom section as well, following Angela’s bead placement.

This is about 1.5 repeats of the basketweave section, which calls for a total of 7 repeats. This will be the last I’ll show of this project until after Christmas….I don’t want to ruin the “surprise” of the gift!

Despite not having a lot of time to knit, I have actually managed to finish a few (non-lace) objects, but I’ll save them for another post. I’ll leave you with this teaser though, and see how many of you will know what it is! (Mary, Sue & Jean, this should be a no-brainer for you!)

Last weekend I managed to escape daily life and head off to a ‘quilting’ retreat. No, I don’t really quilt (although I have some material that is headed in that direction, one day). The retreat center is set up for quilting: lots of lights, tables to set up your sewing machine, irons & ironing boards, etc. But that doesn’t mean you have to quilt:

This is Shelley & Jody (oops - hope her name isn’t spelled Jodi….) I have been on this kind of retreat with Shelley before, but this time I had a chance to meet her daughter.

Jody was painting Christmas figurines. Shelley did some quilting (the only one who did!) but also did some knitting.

Diane & Courtney did some scrapbooking. Diane was putting photos in albums, and we convinced her she should consider getting into scrapbooking! Courtney shared her supplies and gave Diane some quick pointers. I’ve been on these retreats with both Courtney and Diane as well (Diane was the one who invited me). We have a lot of fun, chat, and snack half the night.

Courtney has a new reason to scrapbook:

Her new baby, Addison. What a cutie! Addison was able to visit us for a few hours. Such a happy baby!

This retreat center was a new place for us. We all decided this was much nicer than the place we’ve been to before - better beds, quieter, cleaner, nicer setup. It is a bit more expensive, but was worth it. We had the place to ourselves, but we’re not sure if it would be as nice if we had to share with another group.

Diane and I were up until 2:30 a.m. Reminds me of the ‘old days’ - except that I can’t recover from those late nights as easily as I used to! Despite that, I didn’t get as much knitting done as I’d like. Perhaps I’m just a slooow knitter. 

I’ll post progress photos tomorrow, but here’s a teaser: the swatches I made for the Hanami stole that will (hopefully) be a Christmas gift for my sister.

Jaggerspun Zephyr wool-silk, Curry color. Top swatch is size 3 needles, bottom is size 4. The bottom swatch I used the beaded cast on and did most of the ruffle edging called for on the other end of the stole. Totally unimpressed. I think I’m going to use some kind of beaded cast off instead.

Beaded edge close-up. Still not entirely convinced I like these beads with this yarn. I go back and forth on it. They match up pretty well, depending on the angle at which you view them. I know I’m a matchy-matchy kind of person - either it should be the same color, or it should be wildly different. This was the best match for the yarn, though. Perhaps I will like it better in the completed stole.