I admit it...It's all my fault

I was talking to my sister Saturday night. She's been battling a cold for quite a while, like weeks. With a certain degree of big-sister smuggness I said, "I had a flu shot and haven't been sick yet this year." Half way through the sentence she tried to cut me off and warn me to not go any further, but being the smarty-pants that I am, I didn't shut up. Apparently I was too brash and boastful about my good health. God heard me, and WHAMMO, I started sniffling during church the next morning. By the time we got home I felt like crap. So I popped a couple Zicam and crawled into bed.

It's now four days later and I'm a chapped, drippy mess. Today, my boss actually said to me, "You're so, so...red," as he made gestures around his nose. I admit that with a touch of white face paint, I could easily pass as Bozo, but what a way to make a girl feel pretty! I've not been able to breathe properly for 4 days, which is making me light-headed due to oxygen-deprivation. My voice sounds like I'm talking into a coffee can. There is not a tissue that can contain my sneezes. My tastebuds are completely gone and everything tastes somewhat like cardboard. Each time I inhale, I hear a faint whistle--I think it's D minor. I'm perpetually soggy. Colds suck.

When will I learn to keep my big mouth shut? It's time for another dose of Sudafed with a dark chocolate chaser.






But, Dear Readers (yes, plural--because I think there are two of you now) there is a silver lining...Zack has complained that the dog is rather gassy this evening. I haven't noticed.

What's a Wordle?

It's what I learned today!


The text from my blog was used by www.wordle.net to create this graphic. Click on the graphic and it will launch the site. Hours of fun await!

This is addicting!
Zack's One Row Hat:

You Can Teach an Old Dog

I’m not a big resolution person. That may be rather obvious since it’s nearly March and I’m just now mentioning resolutions. Here’s the deal. There’s all the stress about figuring out what to change in your life and then the bigger stress when you realize you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Just as you are about to throw in the towel on the resolutions, along comes Lent. So now it’s time to give something up. Ok, that's easy--I’ll give up the resolution that I never made. A complete win/win in my opinion. I guess that’s really not in the spirit of either commitment, but that’s how I feel…today, anyways.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m not goal-oriented. I just prefer to do it on my time. Today, one of the senior managers in my office mentioned his goal is to learn something new every day. I like that. We probably do learn something new every day, but we don’t really think about it after the fact. I’m trying to remember what I learned yesterday that I didn’t know the day before. I’m sure there is something, I just can’t recollect what it could be. Hell, I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday. So my Lenten Resolution is to learn something new every day and be conscious of what I have learned. I’m not saying that every day I need to learn how to rotate the tires on my car or learn the finer points of atomic energy. Just something simple….like a better way to graft the toe of a sock, a stretchier cast-on, the Portuguese method of knitting, how to eradicate those #$*&#^!(@ pesky moths.

Today I learned how to use Microsoft Communicator and Powerpoint to give a presentation over to coworkers who reside in different office locations. Whee! I agree, that it shouldn't really count because it has nothing to do with knitting is not terribly sexy, but I it was something I've never done before. The possibilities for tomorrow are endless!

Yarn Makeover

Several months ago, my sister received a gift of cashmere yarn. Pink cashmere. As in bazooka-bubble-gum-pink cashmere. It is a lovely fiber, but an unfortunate color for a 40-something woman who's name isn't Barbie. I told Karen to look past the color. Color can be changed. So she sent it to me.


I asked my sister what color she wanted me to dye the cashmere. I kept the e-mail: "Yesterday I thought that shades of brown, a little pink and burnt orange would be cool. This morning I was thinking burgundyish and burnt orange would be nice. I trust your taste so I'll leave it up to you." I had visions of that decorating show "Trading Spaces" where friends redecorate each other's house. No pressure.


And she also sent me this. An alpaca blend in gray. Very soft but very gray. It, too, begged for a trip to the dye pot. The instructions were as follows: "The gray needs to become a somewhat subdued vibrant green. Can something be subdued and vibrant without becoming pastel??" Seriously? Subdued and vibrant? Here's the weird thing (it's that DNA thing again), I understood what she was talking about.



To be honest, I was a bit nervous and couldn't afford to screw up the cashmere, so I didn't dye the yarn right away. I had to live with the yarn for a while. Touching it. Petting it. Squishing it. I waited for the yarn to speak to me. The gray went first.


I soaked the yarn while I mixed the dye, just like always. Then I put about a third of the alpaca in the water in my dye kettle and then poured in the dye over the yarn. (Sometimes I put the yarn in the dye, sometimes I pour it over the yarn...depends on my mood.)


I poured and nothing happened. Normally, the dye strikes pretty quickly. Not in this case. The yarn was still gray. No color change. Oh crap! I pulled the yarn out of the kettle and resoaked the yarn, this time with a tiny bit of Dawn dish soap. There must have been some sizing on the yarn because the water turned a bit cloudy. A few minutes later, and it was back to the dye pot.


This is the gray alpaca:


And this is the cashmere


Ta da! A successful Yarn MakeOver! Hey, that sounds like a new reality show.

• Stash in the Attic
• Rate My Skein
• Trading Skeins
• Guess Who's Coming to Dye
• The Yarn Whisperer
• It's Me or the Yarn

I'd watch!

Pictures of the Day

I'm working on a flyer for a knitting event we're having at church. I thought I'd post a few of the photos I took this evening.

A Good Bit of Knitting

It started at the ski shop around 4:30pm Friday. As Zack and I were waiting on his rental equipment for his ski trip the next morning, we looked around the shop. Zack spotted and fell in love with a Burton black, white and gray "hand knit" ear flap hat. Acrylic? $30? No. I explained as calmly as I could that no son of mine is going to wear a $30 acrylic, store bought, mass produced hat. So what if it was a Burton. Let the argument begin. I was not going to back down.

I could already hear the whispering. The poor child. You know his mother knits. He was forced to buy a hat. Have you seen her yarn stash?

My parting argument was a disgusted "I could knit that in a night" under my breath. He one-upped me with his parting comment, "would you?"

"Um....Ok. Sure! But we'll have to go to the yarn shop." (No black in my stash. Besides spinning yarn and knitting a hat in one night would be showing off. Ha!)

It was probably the quickest amount of time I've ever spent in a yarn shop. Three skiens of Lamb's Pride Bulky in black, gray and cream. One skein of Malabrigo in an acid yellow color (in my rush to wind into a center-pull ball, I lost the label.) I probably had the white and gray in my stash, but I didn't have the time to dig. What if I couldn't find it and the yarn shop was no longer open? You understand.

Side note...and a very important side note. Because I'm sure some of you (who I knit with on Wednesdays) are harking back to my comment about not buying any yarn until Stitches South. Let me be perfectly clear that this is the FIRST time my 14 year old son, my one and only child to whom I gave birth and nursed, the nearly 6-footer I now have to look up to in order to hug, has EVER asked me to knit something for him.

I didn't have a pattern. No need. I would wing it. Ear flaps and all.

A quick swatch with the yarn doubled on size 13 needles yielded a gauge of about 2.5 stitches per inch. Zack's head is 23". That works to roughly 57 stitches. I made a quick chart for the zig-zag color work and started the ear flaps.

Here's the pattern. It's not terribly detailed because I was making it up as I went along. If you have knit hats before this should make sense.

Zack's One Night Hat
Double the Lamb's Pride through out, triple the malabrigo.
Ear flaps - make two. Cast on 4 stitches on circular needle. Row 1 - purl. Row 2 - k1 make one (m1), k2, k1 m1. Row 3- p1 m1 p4 p1 m1. Row 4 - k1 m1 k6 k1 m1 (10 stitches). Rows 5, 7 - purl. Rows 6, 8 - knit. Row 9 - k1 m1 k8 k1 m1. Row 10 - p1 m1 p10 p1 m1 (14 stitches). Cut the yarn, slide the flap over and make the 2nd flap.

Cast on 10 stitches between the ear flaps for the back of the hat and 18 for the front of the hat. Join, being careful to not twist the stitches. Knit in the round until the hat is long enough, about 6 inches or so. I try it on periodically. The pattern is a simple 8 stitch, 4 row zig zag. Decrease is simple, k7, k2tog for the first round. k6, k2tog for second round, and so on until there are 8 stitches remaining. Cut the yarn and thread it through the remaining stitches. Single crochet around the hat but don't double the yarn. Attach yarn to flaps and braid or twist to create the dangly things. Voila!

I started the calculations for the design at 6:30pm and finished with a light blocking at 1:30am.

The best part? He wore it all weekend, and his friend, Henry, wants one too!

Cold Enough For Mohair

I am a southerner by transplant. I grew up in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Places where wool sweaters are not just nice to have, they are necessary. When I moved from the shores of Lake Superior to middle Tennessee I refused to give up or alter my passion for sweaters. Big heavy wool sweaters. I love them and I always have. Sweaters are comforting, warm, beautiful. So much beauty coupled with function. Wool sweaters are the perfect garment...but not necessarily in Tennessee.

About 10 years ago, when I started knitting again, I decided to take a class on how to knit a sweater. I had knit a few sweaters in college, but I had little time for those pesky details--gauge, yarn type, drape, fit. It was time to learn how to knit a sweater well. So I signed up for the class. I poured through the knitting booklets at the yarn shop, selected a lovely cabled pullover and then picked out the yarn. Smokey gray mohair. The class was wonderful but I didn't finish the sweater by the end of the class. It took about a year and a panicked call to the yarn manufacturer in the UK before I completed it. But I did finish it. It's gorgeous! Soft, textured, well finished. Mohair.

I'm wearing the sweater, and I'm warm, and I'm happy. It's been two years since it's been COLD ENOUGH for me to wear this stinkin' sweater. I've worn the sweater maybe 5 times. Not only is a mohair sweater like a personal oven, this sweater is heavily cabled, which makes it even thicker. Cripes! What was I thinking? My head must have been up my butt still in Michigan when I picked out the yarn.

I was looking through knitting patterns today. There's this lovely Dale of Norway fair isle cardigan...in blue and green?...maybe an alpaca blend? I really don't need to be looking at sweater patterns when it's 6 degrees outside.