Long time, no blog

I've had some knitting and travelling fun since I last blogged but haven't gotten around to this. We'll see if this is something I'll keep up or not.

So here's the latest.

This is a picture of a sock I was working on when I visited the Getty Museum in LA this summer. It is in Panda Cotton, a simple rib knit sock. They are finished now and very comfy to wear. I resisted knitting socks for eons. Then I started and became terribly addicted. I thought "Why would I knit something to be hidden in shoes?" Answer: Buy Mary Janes to show off socks.

This is a scarf I made for a very good friend's birthday in August. It is silk with the bead prestrung on the yarn. I did a simple feather and fan. I really loved working with the fiber and enjoyed the pattern.
This is yarn that I bought at Knot Another Hat in Hood River, Oregon, while we were visiting there with a friend from Florida. The shop is absolutely worth a visit if you are ever there and it has the best views I've ever seen in a yarn shop. It was a lovely day. I haven't done anything with the yarn yet but stashed it. It will be socks eventually.
These are some things I picked up at a yarn store in Salem, Oregon at a shop whose name now eludes me. It was a lovely little shop. I spent the day hiking with friends at Silver Falls State Park and then bought yarn. Not much can be betterI had wanted a color wheel for a while. I still can't figure out how to use it. The pink silk I knitted into a feather and fan. .
By far the best yarn store/yarn experience I had all year was visiting Quarter Stitch in New Orleans. I hadn't been to NO since college and obviously, it has changed significantly. The French Quarter is largely unscathed and this lovely yarn store was between my hotel and the Cafe du Monde where we walked for breakfast every day. Though we only had one free day, I managed to spend a fair amount of it in this shop. Another knitter was travelling with me and she loved this shop as much as I did. I didn't even photograph my purchases (they wrap everything up like presents) but suffice it to say that the yarns, the shopkeepers and the setting were superlative in every way. The following pictures give you just a little taste.


These are the aforementioned panda cotton socks completed and on my happy feet.
This is a "mancho" that I made for my husband. We laughed about it when we saw the pattern but then he said, "It DOES look pretty cozy" and, as he is always cold in winter, the mancho was born. He never wears it out of the house and does enjoy it. This is actually crocheted. Bulky wool and a lot of it.

My knitting resolutions are to knit a mile of yarn between January 5th and February 5th (this is part of a web challenge), to decrease my stash and to finish Timothy's cardigan that I cast on a year and a half ago. It is completely done except for the joining and finishing. I also want to complete at least one lace project.

Maybe I'll blog too. Maybe not. If I do, I promise I'll work on layout and links.

Dallas, the yarn harlot and zero FOs

Blogging may not turn out to be for me...I have missed almost a month already.

I visited a WONDERFUL yarn shop when I was in Dallas. The Shabby Sheep couldn't be any cuter or better stocked and Ronda and Sue are absolutely as friendly as they could be. I needed to call for directions and they were very inviting (and gave good directions...an important detail!) and were even nicer once I go to the store. Incidentally, he store had some great fibers too. If you are even in Dallas, this store is a must see.

You can see the lovely sock yarns I found. I had never seen the Life Style sock yarns before and I can't wait to see these knitted up (in both colorways!). As soon as I have a spare moment, I will be working on these. I also thought the Luna Park bright colors were great. The scarf pin was a special treat for myself. I've wanted one for a long time and really liked this one a lot. And the blue Monte Carlo: it shall be a scarf. I just realized I bought yarn from France, Italy and Germany in Dallas. It was a more cosmopolitan trip than I realized.

On a more local level, I purchased several skeins of alpaca/silk from a local spinner at a local farmer's market. With no project in mind for this wonderful softness, I am afraid it may linger in the stash for a while. My cat finds it irresistible and promptly carried it away as I was photographing it. He is, apparently, an enemy to alpaca everywhere.

Finally, in the same "so much for knitting from the stash" vein, I purchased some nice cotton and bamboo yarn at Close Knit in Portland. These will be my next cast on socks. I thought they would be fun for summer travels.






On Friday, I went to hear Stephanie Pearl-McPhee speak at Powell's bookstore in Portland. A friend came from Seattle to hear her and we had a lovely evening. She was hilarious, her sweater really was green and there was such an amazing sense of community sitting with knitters and crocheters and laughing together in a way that only people who truly understand can do. She has an amazing message about the way we downplay our art too. She links to many bloggers on her posting about the site who can do the evening more justice than I can. I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures of the event.

As for current works in project, I am working on a large crocheted (I know, "Knitterchatter," but I do both when the need arises) afghan for a friend who will be moving into a new home at the end of the month. Luckily it has been cool and rainy here so it isn't bad working on this. I am watching funny movies as I work on it to build in as much happy mojo as possible. It is an easy pattern so it doesn't require a lot of focus. After that it will be a pink scarf for a past colleague recently diagnosed with breast cancer and then on to the socks.

I have a bit of vacation coming up and besides sleep, knitting is my number one objective. Can't wait.

Scarf on! and a magnficent gift

I'm headed out of town tomorrow for a conference and I hope to visit a yarn store during my off hours but it is about 45 minutes from the conference hotel so it may blow my yarn budget to go.

I've just finished the first of a pair of socks and a scarf. When in doubt, when stressed, when bored or when I need a mindless project I always revert to scarves. Scarf on! has the interest for me that Fish on! has for a sportsman or woman. Something about scarves pleases me. I gave nine away to office staffers this year as I convert much of my stash throughout the year into scarves. This particular one looks like fun fur but is a much softer Plymouth 100% nylon version whose name I forget. It is incredibly soft; much more so that its fun fur brethren. The sock, whose mate is going to be made at least in part on this trip to Dallas, is made of Patons Kroy with the pattern that came with the yarn. Nothing too exciting here at the moment.



The magnificent gift of the title is photographed below. My wonderful friend Michelle made me these beautiful fingerless gloves. They are of an otherworldly soft silk in the most beautiful cornflower blue which is not done justice by the photo. My only claim on these is that I reintroduced Michelle to knitting on a trip to Santa Fe a few years ago. These are amazing and I am humbled by her skill and very very grateful because I know how much work goes into something as wonderful as this.



Off I go. To learn and hopefully catch a few knits and purls along the way.

I haven't had a lot of time to knit in the last week or so but I do have several finished objects to report. Below are two baby hats (I had three to make this month and all were for boys) which are gifts for coworkers from the book "Knit Baby: Head and Toes!" edited by Gwen Steege. This pattern is "Simply Chenille" and I made one in chenille that I didn't love and the other one in cotton turned out better, I thought. The flip flops (I know that we no longer call them thongs...) were also for a coworker who saw an embellished pair at the yarn shop last weekend. She thought they were darling and they are so easy that I made her a pair Sunday night. I had fun fur that I bought for a dollar at an after Christmas sale and I used that double stranded and just did a single crochet, chain one around the strap.



I visited a yarn store last weekend when I was in Spokane, Washington. "A Grand Yarn" was an absolutely lovely store. They had many many class samples which would absolutely have enticed me to classes if I lived closer. The proprietor (I assume she was the proprietor; I did not ask) was very helpful but not at all cloying. I found a couple little things. The card has a tiny bit of knitting (on toothpicks!) and says "Got Yarn?" The white is Blue Sky Alpaca (www.blueskyalpacas.com) brushed suri (67% baby suri, 22% merino and 1% bamboo). It is subtitled "A halo of irresistible indulgence" and the second I put my hand on it I knew it had to be mine. The lavender/blue skein (NOT normally my colors but I was drawn to it) is Kaalund Yarns (www.kaalundyarns.com.au). It is a lace weight mohair in the color Jacaranda. Jacaranda, Google tells me, is a flowering plant from South and Central America.




Sorry about the continued lack of links. The average four year old could figure that out and I can't. This weekend, that is on my to do list.

Off to knit.

A few finished objects and a yarn store visit

Ocean and knit shop visit

I spent last weekend with a trio of co-workers on the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state where one of my coworkers owns a home and was kind enough to invite us all. It was a lovely weekend. By lovely I mean good company, good food and good laughs, NOT lovely weather. The weather was quite bad. I did a little knitting on the sock and started and restarted and restarted a lace scarf. Obviously, the amount of talking we did was not conducive to working on a complex pattern which I had not yet memorized.

I also visited a very darling yarn shop in Ocean Park called Tapestry Rose (http://www.tapestryrose.com/) which had a nice looking cafe in the front room and a surprisingly large yarn store in the back. It was somewhat crowded (both in number of people in the store and inventory) so I didn't linger for too long. It seemed to have a wide variety of yarns including the largest box of qiviut I have ever seen in one place. I didn't even look at the price. I was good in the extreme and only bought tapestry needles to use to put a safety line into my lace scarf. I discovered when I attempted to do this that the scarf already had yet another fatal flaw. If something's worth doing once, is it really worth doing twenty times? I shall return to knit lace another, quieter day.

Below is the sock, nearly complete, at the Pacific Ocean. The weather was beginning to break as we were leaving (and I took this shot). The large bumps you see in the background are vehicles, hence the tire tracks in the sand in the foreground. In Washington State, in many places, it is legal to drive on the beach. I don't know how common this is but I've always found it a bit strange and disconcerting even though I have lived here most of my life and it should be the accepted norm of beach behavior in my mind.



I have quite a bad case of SSS at this point but do plan to cast on for the second sock this weekend when I am traveling to Spokane Washington for a class. I will get the second sock done, I will get the second sock done, I will get...

So you are going to start a knitting blog...

I don't know what has possessed me. Perhaps I am just procrastinating as I have a huge paper due in ten days for my graduate program. Perhaps I am not getting enough knitter contact locally. Perhaps I really have lost my mind to think I can have a blog on top of all of my other commitments. Or, maybe this is a wonderful idea.

I've been lurking about reading other people's blogs for some time and it seemed only appropriate that I should join the ranks. It seemed somehow necessary for me to have a web presence (a ubiquitous phrase that I actually abhor) NOW (again, the sense of urgency probably goes back to the need to avoid my homework).

When I think about what I do, I realize the thing that is "cool" about me is that I have what I consider to be some fairly interesting knitting tales. A friend once said that there are two types of jobs in the world; when you are introduced to someone new and you tell them what you do they either say "Oh." or "Oh, wow." I have an "Oh." job. That doesn't mean it isn't interesting (albeit to a fairly narrow group of people: even more narrow than the number of people who are interested in a knitting blog) or challenging or rewarding. It is just "Oh." to others.

I do, however, manage to have a lot of interesting knitting experiences. Interesting knitting experiences is enough of an oxymoron to send many heading for cover, I am sure, but those who have read this far know exactly what I mean.

I live in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area and we do have TONS of wonderful yarn shops. I haven't even been to them all and I do go adventuring to visit them fairly often. In the last year I've been to countless yarn shops (I probably could count but I think that would be a bad idea somehow), the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival, met Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Vickie Howell, and have had a lot of good knitting times.

I also like to travel and can frequently combine my love of knitting/fiber (I may as well be honest: I love shopping for, purchasing and owning fiber at least as much as I love knitting with it. Maybe more.) with that pursuit.

My most recent journey took me to Palm Springs, California for a little fun in the sun. We stayed at the Orbit In which was a great hotel and I am sorry my photo doesn't do it justice. It is very 50s and very mod with the hills looming over it. The last morning we were there, I woke up long before dawn (fear of missing the plane syndrome) and got out my lighted knitting needles and sat on our private patio and listened to the desert come to life and watched the slow changes of the light. It was perfect.

I did get a number of pictures of my travelling sock (nod to the Yarn Harlot) as I journeyed around the area.



This shot is at Indian Canyon. The scenery there was spectacular though with this shot, I seem to have chosen something rather unimpressive. It looks more like a construction excavation site than anything really scenic.



This one is a bit better. It is taken from the top of the tram about 8,400 feet above the valley floor. Amazing views and cool, fresh air. We hiked until we found a quiet spot where there was still a little snow and I just sat and knitted and enjoyed. Note my tail waving in the wind. I had a death grip on my poor sock as I didn't want to lose it to nature, however lovely.

I also visited a yarn shop while in the area. The Yarn Company of Palm Desert (Yarn Co) was a delightful experience. The people working in the store struck the perfect balance between being helpful and letting me wander on my own. They had a surprising amount of wool and when I asked about wool in the desert they said that the felting craze had caught on there. I am knitting from the stash this year but did decide that I could buy things when I am on vacation so here are a few little things I picked up.




This is a Tilly Thomas pattern, bag form and yarn that I fell in love with. Not my usual style but I thought that the yarn (silk) was so lovely that I couldn't resist this bag set.



These are just a couple of balls of yarn destined to be scarves. The colors called to me. I also bought a ball of the silk for a friend who always makes herself a spring scarf.



Finally, I bought this ball of Southwest Trading Company Melody to make a shawl that they had a sample of in the store. Unfortunately I have no recollection of what it looked like so this will be a bit of a surprise pattern for me. Looks simple enough but the pattern doesn't have any picture so this one will be an adventure.

So that's it...I haven't made any promises to myself about how often I will blog or anything else. I don't know all of the blogging rules so I am hoping that if I put a link to someone else's blog, it won't upset the blog host. I know that I need to put "putting links into text" and "better pictures" on my to do list.