Fun, interrupted

As many of you know (unless this is the first time you've ever looked at a knitting blog) this weekend was Stitches West. For the first time in many years I had decided to take a couple classes and really do a full-on knitting weekend. I had a class on Thursday afternoon, I was going to go to the Ravelry meet up, have dinner with friends, go to the Market preview, go again to the Market after work on Friday afternoon with Punkin, and class all day on Saturday, with more Market during breaks from class.

Everything started well. My Thursday class was good (Pattern Writing with Edie Eckman), and the Ravelry meetup was fun - I saw some old friends and make some new.

However, the rest of the plan did not work out so well. On my way to dinner I got a call from the Italian. He and the kids had been in a car accident (everybody is fine) and he needed me to come to the spot on the highway off ramp and get the kids. Which I did.

Friday morning was spent on the phone with the insurance company and the car rental agency. I went to work where they were sealing the floors in the lobby (the building is being renovated) and the stink was so bad I had to go to a different building for part of the day.

The Italian brought Punkin to me after work, when he informed me that the best guess of the body shop guy is that the car is totaled. I went to the Market with Punkin, who started right away with "I'm tired". At first I thought she was just worn out from the drama of the accident and we soldiered on. But when I sat down with her to take a break I realized she was feverish, so we headed home (making only a couple of stops to peek in booths along the way).

Saturday went relatively smoothly. The Italian stayed home with the kids and I took off for my class, Estonian Lace with Nancy Bush. The class was good - Nancy is clearly knowledgeable about the topic and I learned some stuff. Unfortunately, Nancy was also very under the weather, and the handouts she had revised before our class were full of errors, which made the whole thing a little less impressive.

I got some very restrained shopping done (knowing that you're probably going to have to buy a new car you can't afford certainly changes one's outlook on buying expensive yarn) and came home.

Today brought continued fever in Punkin and fever in Buddy, which we dealt with by taking the kids car shopping. Two test drives later we headed home to nap/rest the kids. I lay down with Punkin for a while and woke up when the phone rang. The Italian was on the phone for a few minutes, then was busy dealing with Buddy, who had soaked through his diaper during his long nap. Once he had taken care of that the Italian informed me that the phone call was from Buddy's day care provider (he goes to a home daycare) who is in the hospital and either has to have cervical fusion surgery or has a brain tumor.

Oh. My. Gods. On a good day I feel like I manage my life reasonably well. On a bad day I feel like I can barely keep things together (and I just have to ignore the giant pile of laundry).

Tonight I feel like if I don't keep both hands firmly pressed to the sides of my head it will just explode. So please excuse me while I go sit somewhere and hold my head.

New man in my life

I have a new man in my life. Not so new, actually he's been around since last fall, but I just recently discovered that my new man has an interesting fetish. A fetish I'm not particularly thrilled about.

Meet Pete:

(yes, he's sitting in the doorway. Cool trick, that.)

Pete is a part Maine coon cat who came to live with us last September, joining our household of two adults, two children, one bird and one cat. Pete was about 5 months old when we got him, so he's getting close to one year old now. He's a lot of fun, very affectionate, and great with the kids.

We used to have two cats, a part Burmese named Maddy and a part Maine coon named Max. We adopted them at the same time over ten years ago (pre children). Maddy is temperamental and cranky, Max was patient and an absolute love.
Here's Maddy, napping/grooming on top of a tub of laundry:

Here's a not so great photo of Max, who was really a stuning cat:


About a year and a half ago Max was hit by a car and killed. We were crushed, and Punkin was especially devastated. She quite literally cried herself to sleep for a number of days, and still misses her boy.

After living with just one cat for about a year, we decided to find another cat. Maddy is part of our family, but she's very touchy and not affectionate, especially with the children. I wanted the kids to experience having a pet that was friendly, one they could interact with, not just try to avoid. So we let our wonderful pet-sitter, who also works with a cat adoption agency, know that we were looking for another part Maine coon, and within a few weeks we got the call.

Pete's great. He's friendly, fairly tolerant of lots of kid attention, and he's incredibly soft. He's also big, loud, and a bit of a whiner when he wants something, all of which I can live with.

He also has, unfortunately, a wool fetish. This is not a good thing, and today he took it to a new level.

Pete's been going after my yarn since early on. I would find skeins of yarn on the living room floor, and one time he even jumped up and stole a skein of yarn out of my lap while I was dozing.

But today he's gone too far. I had a few minutes this morning and I did some hand washing, washing some things of Punkin's and a pair of hand knit Koigu socks. I took everything outside to the back yard, since it was dry and sunny out, and put things on the drying rack, including hanging the socks on the side with clothes pins. We went out to do some errands and came home several hours later to find this:


Yes, those are my socks, on the yard next to the house. Damn cat stole my socks off the drying rack and did who knows what with them before leaving them on the grass. I washed them again and then hung them up inside, out of his reach (I hope).

Damn cat, I wonder what he's going to get into next. Any guesses?

Finishing things

I continue to be on a tear (relatively speaking) to finish projects.


These are socks made for (and modeled by) the Italian.
Cherry Tree Hill Supersock is the yarn. The pattern is Wendy's toe up sock pattern with a stitch pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks. The pattern was a slip stitch pattern so it contracted both lengthwise and crosswise. The socks required extra rows in the foot, are shorter in length and snug around, but the Italian says the fit is great and he loves them.

And here is the main reason that I love toe-up socks


This is all that remains of the skein of yarn. Very little waste, no?

I have started another pair of socks (of course):


This is another pair for my mother. Socks that Rock lightweight is the yarn, Jewel of the Nile is the colorway. I haven't worked with this yarn before and have always kind of wondered what all the fuss was about. It's a very nice yarn. It's very firm, almost cord like. The colors are just great - there's a lot of different colors which eliminates a lot of the pooling and flashing you sometimes get with hand dyed yarn, but the end result somehow avoids being muddy. I've actually knit a lot more since I took this photo - one sock is almost done and I've done the toe on the second sock already.

My Wrapped in Tradition is basically done, after some amount of futzing with it.
The first time I finished it I didn't like the way it flared up at the neck:


I ripped back about two inches and switched from size 6 needles to 5s, then after an inch switched to 4s. When I tried it on after binding off again it was too tight at the neck, so I picked out the bind off and used 5s to bind off. Then it took some fiddling to get the crochet picot edging right. The first time I picked out the bind off it was slow, the second time it was fussy, and picking out some of the picot trim required a pin to separate stitches. If you're going to knit with lace weight mohair, you'd better get it right the first time!

At this point it's pretty much done, although I don't have any finished photos. The only thing left to do is to mark the back. There is a very slight amount of front neck shaping, although it's hard to tell. I was thinking out loud about how to mark the back (sewing on a label?) and the Italian suggested sewing a bead at the back of the neck - brilliant! So that's all that is left to do on that. Photos when I can (good weather, decent hair, no kids underfoot and a husband who is available to take my picture? I leave you to figure out how often those elements come together.)

I've picked up Serrano again, but am having issues. More on that once I decide what to do.