Thursday, April 28, 2005

Today's blog will be guest blogged to you by Son Number One. Today is take your son/daughter to work day, and Dad Number One was already taken by Brother Number One. So I will be shopping, doing laundry, and knitting until 5:00 P.M. And in return for all of my hard work I get to go out to lunch, and miss my Social Studies Test.

Hooray!

I will occasionally read this blog and read the comments, and I have noticed that readers tend not to like her entries as much when there is nothing about knitting in them.

Well....  This is another one of those days.

Today is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, there is a nice, gentle breeze, and by 4:30 there is probably going to by a foot of snow because......

IT'S MICHIGAN!

Thankfully we haven't scheduled any outdoor activities for the day.

Our schedule looks like this:

1. print out a bajillion class notes

2. go shopping for things that we don't need but really want

3. go out to a nice restaurant. (My favorite part of the day)

4. go grocery shopping. (maybe I'll finally be able to get some man's food in this house for a change!)

5. do laundry and sort clothes. Yesss!  (this is a fine example of sarcasm for those who like to do laundry)

I guess I should thank my mom for letting me go to work with her today, seeing as right now I would be in Science class learning about the universe. I also got to sleep until 7:30.

Yes, 7:30 is late for me. I usually have to get up at 6:00 just to barely make the bus.

My mom has been bugging me to put a picture in this because readers really love pictures.

So here:

This is a picture of what I want to do all day.

However, this is not what I will be doing all day. (my mom will see to that)

Gotta go eat my breakfast.

Son Number One

Monday, April 25, 2005

Yesterday:

Today:

I will NEVER get used to Michigan weather.

When I started this blog, I would have entire entries formed in my head every day before I even sat down at the computer.  As a matter of fact, that's WHY I sat down at the computer.

Lately, not so much.

Cree is sewn together, except for a few last ends to weave in (from the seams).  I'll finish that up tomorrow, and then I'll wash it and keep my fingers crossed that the black chenille doesn't worm until after it's delivered to its owner.  As this sweater has crawled to completion, I've realized something about myself that explains a lot about the piles of everything around the house. 

I have trouble following through to the end of a project.

Despite my finishing frenzy of a couple of weeks ago, I still have a pile of knitting projects that will each take an hour or less to finish.  This doesn't just refer to knitting, either.  Have I mentioned that my elementary school son's cross stitch birth sampler isn't even halfway done?  I have piles of papers sorted and ready to put away -- and they've been ready to put away for months.  Some of them have been ready for years.  I have e-mails to answer, that I know the answers to but haven't answered yet.  I have pictures to put back on the walls after the painting that was completed in February.  I could go on, but it's too depressing.

I owe you an Intarsia discussion, which will explain why I had ten ends to weave in for each two color motif.  It's coming, but prepare to be disappointed.

I owe you pictures of a completed Cree, but it's not quite there yet.

I owe you an explanation of why I started two new projects this weekend, neither of which is St. Brigid (I'm sorry!).

But you'll just have to wait until I'm ready.

Sarah

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

We'll have a brief Intarsia lesson in the next post.  In the meantime, whilst I'm busy with a neckband and some seaming, take a look at some of my students' work from our classes together:

Joan finished her Philosopher's Wool sweater, using a non-traditional color combination, which worked out incredibly well.  What a striking sweater!

Colleen has been going to town with the skills she learned in my Sweater Design class.  Her latest interpretation is a dress for her little daughter:

I photographed it at an angle, so it looks a little lopsided.  It isn't.

Last Thursday was "steek day" in my Introduction to Fair Isle class.

Nancy cut her delicate Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4 ply (I think) without any steek preparation whatsoever (brave woman!):

The color is a little too yellowy, but I took this just before my camera battery died.  The following photos are courtesy of Nancy's digital camera (thanks, Nancy!):

Tamsyn worked some very firm crochet before cutting through her acrylic yarn:

Tamsyn picked out her colors to match a quilt she made earlier.  I've asked her to bring the quilt to class this week so we can see them together.

Susan tells us that she didn't plan for her pillow cover to be so yellow, but that the yarn told her it wanted to be that way.  I know just what she means -- yarn talks to me, too, and can be downright bossy.  Here she is steaming the curl out of her cut piece:

Janeen added some skiers and pine trees to hers:

Janeen wasn't quite ready to open her steek, but if you remember, she's also taking my Introduction to Entrelac class and my Beginning Finishing class, so I didn't mind that she was a little behind on her knitting (she was completely caught up in the other two classes, and had even added a Fair Isle border to her Beginning Finishing sweater!).

And this is Laura's second attempt, because her first attempt taught us that it's best not to use wildly variegated yarn as your background color.

The solids are much more effective.  I still want to try one with a variegated background color and a variegated foreground color.  For example, blues, greens and purples in the background, and reds, oranges, and yellows in the foreground.  Laura's first version used a solid blue/gray for the foreground (or pattern) color, and a blue/red/gray variegated yarn for the background -- it was too busy, and the pattern was overwhelmed.  And the solid was probably a little too similar to the gray in the variegated yarn.

If she had used black for the background, and the blue/red/gray for the foreground, I think that would have worked just fine.

Live and learn.  Right?

Don't my students do beautiful work? 

I love my job!

Sarah

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

This took a lot longer than I thought it would.

As of 8:00 this morning:

125 black motifs, each with 10 tails to weave in.

120 white motifs, each with 2 tails to weave in.

Allowing for the extra tails from the black chenille that kept breaking, that adds up to at least 1500 tails that were woven in for this sweater.

ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED. 

Done.

Sarah

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

You want more childhood stories?  You get more childhood stories.

First, you get to see the scary naugahyde couch that has been in my parents' living room since forever . . .

I've always suspected that there should be a fourth cushion on the back, but I've never asked about it.  I used to take naps on that couch, and my most vivid memory is finding Woof Woof, who I didn't even know was missing, stuck between the cushions during one of my naps.  Woof Woof was the name of my stuffed terry cloth mouse (don't ask), which I think was given to me by my Aunt Jean, although I have no idea why I think that.  There's a black and white photo somewhere (Am I older than color photography?) of me holding a brand new Woof Woof, possibly at Christmas time.  He became my constant companion.  In later years, before he disappeared, Woof Woof had a VERY long neck -- about the size of my sweaty little fist.  I must have clenched him around the neck during my naps, and his head distanced itself from his body bit by bit . . .

Later in my late teen/early adult years, I found a stuffed terry cloth elephant in a store that reminded me of Woof Woof -- it may have been from the same company -- and I think I still have it here around the house somewhere. 

I always suspected that my mom had stuffed Woof Woof between the couch cushions to get him away from me.  Eventually, she made Woof Woof "disappear" permanently. 

I'm keeping a list of things I'll never forgive people for.  That's one of them.  Another is the little red hammer my father gave to me when I was teeny tiny, which my husband disposed of after we were married.   

Here's another view of my parents' living room:

I LOVE my mom's desk.  It holds wedding pictures of my sisters and I (I'm in the middle -- I made my veil and it makes me look like a cat, unfortunately).  To the right is a photograph of the three of us in classic seventies garb -- and then brushed with clear something or other to make it look like an oil painting.  It's horrible.  I'm wearing glasses without lenses, because there was so much glare from my real glasses.  Gah.

Okay.  I promised knitting content, but I don't actually have any.  I'm still weaving ends in on Cree, although I did get one mitten done (except for a thumb) on my Pittsburgh trip.

Here's something very exciting, though (at least to me):

I visited my friendly neighborhood hardware store yesterday and purchased a 37" length of 1" PVC pipe, along with two 1" caps.  Total cost:  $2.75.  The result:

A case for my blocking wires!  Thank you to whichever of my students suggested this -- it works great! 

Next:  The dining room!

Sarah

Sunday, April 10, 2005

We spent the last few days in Pennsylvania visiting my parents, neither of whom were in the hospital at the time (hooray for relatively healthy relatives!).

My mom and dad have made the difficult but wise decision to move from the four bedroom, three story house they've lived in since 1965 to a two bedroom apartment in a retirement community.  An interesting side effect of this move will be the divvying up of some of their possessions between their three daughters.  I'm so tickled that this will be happening while they're still around to help with the decisions. 

I wandered around their house this weekend, taking photographs, trying to preserve some memories.

This is a portion of an old map from National Geographic that has been hanging in my parents' family room for longer than I can remember.  Most of my family is very well traveled, and each of us has a particular color of map pin that indicates where we've been, although the pins don't appear to have been updated recently.  I'm the least-traveled member of the family.  My color appears to be pink.  I see pink pins in Michigan (where I live), Pennsylvania (where I grew up), North Carolina (vacation), Florida (vacation and visiting relatives), and California (visiting Sister Number One).  Other photos of other sections of the map remind me that I've been in Chile and Venezuela (visiting Sister Number Two) and in the Caribbean (on a cruise). 

There should also be pins in Minnesota (where I was born and lived the first four years of my life, although I remember none of it), Illinois (vacation and visiting relatives), Ohio (vacation), Colorado (visiting Sister Number One), Ontario and Quebec (vacations), Mexico and Louisiana (another cruise, this time around the Gulf of Mexico), Wisconsin (knitting camp!), Indiana (vacation and visiting Sister Number Two), Kentucky (work), New Jersey (visiting Sister Number Two) . . .

I'm sure I've visited family in Connecticut, and I must have been in Virginia once or twice.  And I know we went to Niagara Falls a long, long time ago, so that means New York, right?  Oh!  I've definitely been to New York City a couple of times (vacation). 

Sounds like I've been a lot of places, but that's nothing compared to my dad, who traveled extensively for work (South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the Yukon), Sister Number One, who has moved from coast to coast and then inland, and Sister Number Two, who moved from the U.S. to South America to the U.S. to Asia to the U.S.  Both sisters have been to zillions of other places on vacations and work-related travels.  I'm quite a homebody in comparison.

Speaking of my sisters, here we are, frozen in time a million years ago:

From top to bottom, that's Sister Number One, Sister Number Two, and me.  I must've been about four or five years old, because I had short hair when I started first grade.  I think that ponytail is in an envelope in my mom's desk -- unless I have it here somewhere.  I think I may remember having these silhouettes done, but I probably made it up, like I seem to have made up most of my memories from back then.  Sisters One and Two, do you remember when/how/where these were done?

I took my husband and kids to fabulous North Park, which is a short bike ride from my parents' house.  I spent most of my summers biking around the lake, and wanted my kids to see what I'd been trying to describe to them -- especially the hills I had to ride up and down to get there and back.  I'll have to go back with my camera and take photos of the lake, the swimming pool, the ice rink, the tennis courts . . .

While the kids were playing frisbee and I was trying to re-create my childhood by walking my dog around part of the lake (I didn't have a dog back then, but I didn't have a bike with me now, so it was the best I could do), I was chased down by a car with two strangers and a Shiba Inu that looked exactly like Keiko.  They ended up spending the afternoon with us, trading Shiba stories and introducing us to the dog park, where Keiko was overwhelmed but very well behaved.

Here's the beautiful Jessica, flanked by Nala (on your left) and Keiko (on your right):

The only way we could tell them apart (Nala and Keiko, I mean) was if they were side by side -- Nala is smaller, since she's still a puppy, and she has a little dark patch at the end of her tail. 

I'm afraid I may have bored my kids to tears with stories of my childhood:  "That's where my bus stop was -- OUT OF SIGHT of the house!"  "That's where I pushed your Grandma down the hill and broke her ankle!"  "That's where your Grandpa taught me to drive in the ice and snow!"  "I went to this same museum when I was your age, and saw the same dinosaurs!"  (Husband Number One's response:  "They didn't have dinosaurs back then, did they?")

Tough noogies.  They'll hear all those stories many more times, you can be sure.

Here's a photo taken by Son Number One of my dad and I coming out of a liquor store.  Pennsylvania used to only sell alcoholic beverages in separate stores (beer distributors), and you had to apply for an LCB (Liquor Control Board) card when you turned 21 so you could buy alcohol.  I turned 21 in Michigan, so that was a rite of passage I never experienced.  Pennsylvania's laws have changed now, so I don't think you need an LCB card anymore, and they're starting to allow the sale of liquor in grocery stores. 

This is the first time I had ever been in a Pennsylvania liquor store.  On the way in, there was a sign by the door saying something like "If you appear to be intoxicated, you will not be served alcohol in this establishment."  I stood there looking at that sign for a minute, waiting for the door to open, until I finally realized that it was NOT an automatic door, and I burst out laughing, opened the door, and walked in, giggling.  A very serious woman standing behind a table full of wine bottles asked me if I would like to try a wine tasting, and I could barely stop laughing long enough to say "No, thank you", when what I really wanted to say was "Yes, please!", but my family was in the car waiting and I was supposed to be checking to see whether my dad had found what he was looking for.

I'm surprised that my inability to figure out how to work the door together with my inability to stop giggling like an idiot didn't stop Serious Woman from asking me if I would like to try out their wines.

My local (Michigan) grocery store (which HAS an automatic door) once refused to sell a six pack of beer to my husband and I because we were laughing when we walked in the door, so they assumed we were drunk.  I tried to explain that a) my husband doesn't drink, and b) I would be asleep after the first beer, if they would only sell it to me, but they didn't seem to care.  Very serious, these people who sell liquor.  No fun and games allowed.

Unless you live in Pennsylvania, apparently.  Which I don't.  But I used to.  Did I ever tell you about the time I . . .

(next entry:  KNITTING!)

Sarah

Wednesday, April 6, 2005

Shh -- listen!  Can you hear it?

It's the sound of peace and quiet.  Son Number Two just went to a friend's house, and Husband and Son Number One are on the golf course.

Shhhhhhh!

I wonder how long it'll last?

--------------------

I'm less than two inches away from the end of the second sleeve of Cree. 

Did you hear that?  I'll repeat it.

I'm less than two inches away from the end of the second sleeve of Cree. 

The knitting will be finished a little later this evening.  What a relief! 

Of course, I still have to weave in an end or two (billion). 

(you're only seeing half of the ends -- for every tail on the front side, there's a matching tail on the back side)

There are four different colors of yarn in this sweater (gray, white, two blacks).  We're leaving for Pittsburgh tomorrow (Thursday), and will return on Sunday.  That's a four day trip.  My goal is to weave in one color's worth of yarn each day, so I'll be ready to wash, block and assemble when we get back.

And then Cree will be done.

And then I get to start St. Brigid.

My sister is going to faint dead away when she reads that. 

--------------------

I'm also taking enough yarn for two pairs of mittens.  I can't just weave ends in all weekend long, can I?  I mean, without going completely bonkers.  So I figure two pairs of mittens is four mittens total (I used to be a math major).  I'm going on a four day trip.  My goal is to weave in one color's worth of yarn on Cree each day, and to knit one mitten each day.

Ambitious?  Sure.  You wouldn't want me to run out of things to do, though, would you?

Sarah

* This is a PRETEND award.  I will NOT be giving prizes to the student who takes on the most classes at one time.  Even if they bring me muffins every week.  Which Janeen does.  So if I DID give out awards, she'd be a shoe-in.  But I DON'T.  So don't all start kissing up and bringing me muffins.  Or chocolate.  Because there's no award.  And besides, if there was, Janeen would already have won.

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