A bizarre yet happy surprise

My postman brought me a huge box the other day, something my parents had been hinting at giddily. This is what was inside:

So that's 5 pounds of roving, ready to spin, as well as a small fleece in the white plastic bag. Ann, my parents' neighbor , was recently in New Zealand, visited a farm, and came back with this. When my mom swooned over it and told Ann how crazy I would go for something like this, she said, "Oh, let's send it to her!"

Obviously I owe this wonderful lady something handknit. Here's another shot, with newly-pedicured feet for scale:


I'm not going to process the fleece myself... there are only so many hours in the day. Does anyone have a suggestion as to where I could send it to have it made into roving? I really love the chocolate color.

I promise many lovely finished object shots in the future... I've been hoarding a lot of big stuff, new designs and such. Here is my little knits competition scarf, 9 feet of grey lace with a little yellow trim, waiting for my blocking wires to arrive from KnitPicks to finish it off and send it out. I'll give an update when pictures are up at the little knits site!

Poor, dear Mulva.

It is clear that Mulva, our dear vintage Volvo, has become a collision magnet. Last week Tuesday, the president of the company for which I work backed into parked Mulva on his way out from work. It was about 10 pm, and Chris had stopped by to bring me dinner to break up my 14-hour day, and, well, the whole front end was kind of accordian-crumpled as a result. I found this exceptionally amusing, but I had worked 14 hours and was more than a little slap-happy.

The company's insurance man came and appraised Mulva yesterday and will cover all of the damage. However, last night we took Mulva to the gym and were the victims of a hit-and-run sideswipe that left one headlight shattered and scattered on the pavement about 10 yards from the car and copious red paint along the newly-impacted left side. Chris is on the warpath to find and photograph the offending full-size red truck with yellow lettering on the side that was parked next to us when we arrived, a truck which often parks in our gym lot. It's been a bad month for Mulva.

For the next two months I have decided that, in addition to my Grellow knitting commitment, I am going to knit with Project Spectrum in the greens and browns. I hope that this is an effective way to cull the stash; we shall see. I have swatched for a sweater that I've been promising Chris for nearly a year:

I'm also working on some socks in Yarntini Sport Weight in Chololatini, basic 1 by 3 rib on #3 needles:

AND, in the background, bonus libation recipe!

Have you gotten your 5 servings of fruit and veggies for the day? No? Is this perhaps because the fruit you have is past its prime, a bit grainy, or just not really in season? Do you have a juicer? If so:

VICTIM CAR VODKA SMOOTHIE

Juice your second-tier fruit (in this case it was 2 pears and about 10 stawberries)

Pour the juice into a cocktail shaker

Add as much vodka as you like (I do about 1 part vodka to 1 part juice, but I really like vodka)

Add some ice

Shake and strain and enjoy

There. You've eaten your fruit and can relax a bit after all the car trauma. Good night!

The Hat So Nice I Made It Twice (so far).

In need of some subway knitting (the Trenna long scarf is getting too long to carry around, and my other project is a nearly-finished jacket knit in one piece... pattern to come), I started Felicity. You can get the pattern for free on Wanett's site... just look to the right sidebar. The first one took one day, and is made with one skein of Sylvan Spirit from Green Mountain Spinnery. I LOVE the sheen of this yarn! And the color is "Moonshadow." Like the Cat Stevens song that makes me cry when I hear it... not many things make me cry, but Cat Stevens, yep, he does, as does anything about Lincoln's assasination and the movie Gladiator. Even advertisements for shows about Lincoln.

Then I started a Grellow one out of alpaca sport weight leftovers. It's almost done and already fantastic.

Also of note:

I bench pressed 95 lbs. the other day.

Donut and Donuts opened in my subway station yesterday, and today their watery coffee ruined my morning. It was as if I had NO coffee. I tripped over the same box near my desk three times in ten minutes. I spilled on my desk. I was short with my coworkers. Boo! BOOOOOOO!

Thanks, Ravelry!

You can now easily download the Nouveau Sack Hat pattern through Ravelry... go ahead and click on the sidebar, that will lead right to the PDF. I'm so happy to be able to offer links like this without leaving good old free blogger. Anyway, the hat pattern is $6, has a complete chart, seriously, it's a no-brainer, and the perfect way to learn 2-color stranded knitting or use up dk to worsted weight leftovers!



On the Grellow front, I found these for $29.99 on my way home from work yesterday. The last pair in the store, size 8 1/2.

Vote Weaverknits

Alert! Free Pattern for Absolutely Fierce Armwarmers is HERE!

I may or may not be wearing them today, to, you know, test them before I send them to Beth The Otherweaver. If I were, I would tell you all about how they stay up, and are so soft and super warm, allowing me to wear a lovely short-sleeved tunic in Cold New Job today.

I've decided to take part in a contest. Recall that I am a beginning lace knitter. My first impulse, before holding my skein of Trenna in my hand, was to make a hat or cardigan or something other than a shawl with the yarn, something unexpected and profoundly chic in its unexpectedness. Then I got the yarn, which is laceweight if ever there was laceweight. So I decided to do the shawl/scarf thing, but set myself parameters:

1. Must be wearable by many for many occasions. This, to me, meant not making a huge-ass shawl. I decided on a wide scarf. Mine will be very long, hopefully about 9 feet, but it can easily be made shorter by working fewer pattern repeats.

2. Must be easy and fast. So easy and fast that much progress can be made while watching TV. Even good TV. Like the new show Ax Men on the History Channel. Or DVDs of The Wire.

3. Must somehow make use of traditional patterns or design, rathern than simply representing a selection from a stitch dictionary.
Well, I'm just posting a tease picture here, but rest assured that I've succeeded. If my pattern is a finalist, it will be up on the little knits site for your votes! If it wins, it will be available through little knits. If not, I'm going to make it available as a PDF for a nominal price. I am working to make lace FIERCE! And EASY! WHAT COULD BE BETTER?

Since my color choice in Trenna was grey, I'm adding a little you-know-what as a finishing touch. My new friend stinkyfromage on Ravelry sent me this adorable little package containing just enough leftovers from one of her projects to give this scarf that Grellow Magic.

Yay!

Oh, I have a blog. Right.

YES, I've been knitting, including these absolutely fierce armwarmers that Other Weaverknits Beth and I conceived during our weekend of fabulousness in Chicago.

Okay, so only one is done, but I've decided to write up the pattern and post it for free on Ravelry. Look for it over the next few days! Above you see the thumb hole option.

Or you can push them up and disregard the thumb hole option. We're LOVING the grey and yellow combination seen on the runways for fall 08 and will be rocking them all year. Plan on much, much more action in these colors here at Weaverknits. If you don't like it, you've been warned.

P.S. Can anyone explain these weird virus software warnings I've been getting in my comments section? Anyone? I use a Mac and don't run Windows, so they're totally irrelevant to me. I'll send you a prize if you can explain. Really!

Not only better, but FABULOUS.

So I got better and flew to Chicago to see my sister and friend Hannah. Let's start the blog post off with a photo of something my sister Beth is knitting. Beth: The Other Weaverknits. The one who only knits scarves and shawls, but has perhaps the best visual sense of anyone I know. This is one of her scarves. I have extracted a promise from her that together we will write out the pattern.
And the shopping. Oh, the shopping. The shoe department in the Chicago Nordstrom was better than Saks and Neimans in Boston combined. On the yarn front, we went to Nina, which I highly recommend. It's a beautiful space with a fantastic selection, a staff who were helpful but not intrusive, and reasonable prices. In this photo Hannah and I sit on what we called the "pods" in the front of the store. I came home with one ball of Be Sweet tiny boucle, the softest boucle I have ever felt (come on, don't you often feel like recoiling when you touch boucle and feel that nylon stiffness?) and a bunch of alpaca for some long, long armwarmers for Beth.

What have I been knitting? Some socks for my Grandma, among other things. She recently made a few passive-aggressive mentions of the fact that she only has one pair that she has not worn to shreds. While I could do without the passive-aggressive, hey, it's Grandma, and she gets what she wants. I hope she can wait until Mother's Day; I've got a lot going on!