Forward Motion

Enough already with March

March.  Has this been an extra long month or is it just me?  Is it because the weather doesn't want to fully commit to spring?  Is it because Easter was early and it seems like we should be halfway through April by now?  Is it just because payday is taking forever to get here? 

I am so grateful that I have a part time job working from home.  I'd have a sad little yarn budget without my job.  And I can eat popcorn and drink Diet Coke in my sweatpants while working.  That is hard to beat.

Last week, I had almost nothing to do.  I checked my email a few times a day, did some shredding & filing, and waited for work.  I was a little concerned for my yarn budget, though. Today, not unlike the way Dorothy's house fell on the wicked witch, I've been slammed with work.  I spent hours this afternoon muttering about project numbers and expense reports and I haven't even begun to start on payroll.  I worked more hours today that I did all of last week.  Stress = high, but future yarn purchases = promising. 

Because, hey!  Yarn Harlot and Knitch this weekend!!  I have no plans for buying anything particular, but I do not intend to leave empty handed.

Even with the dwindling yarn funds, I've still had the mailman bringing me yarn packages.  Through the Wollmeiseholics Anonymous board on Ravelry, some wonderful Wollmeise has been coming and going from my house.  My last order had a lot of darker shades in it.  Here's a photo of the what I bought over the last few weeks.  See, lots of dark blues and blacks.

I needed more balance in the stash, you understand.  Trades are great, you get new yarn for only the cost of shipping a skein that wasn't working in your stash.  I'm so happy with the skeins I've gotten this week - Brombeere, Johannisbeer und Brennessel, and Dani have replaced a Miss May, Spice Market, and Drachenblut.  My Wollmeise drawer is thing of beauty to behold.

Please note I am not mentioning the house.  I do not want to talk about. 

My socks that needed a name?  The inimitable Weezalana offered up an excellent suggestion and the socks shall be named the "Ravalium Socks".  Only you blog readers will know that the name comes from the Valium-like calm they bring me and the way they kind of remind me of a bridge over a ravine.  And it sounds cool, too. 

Just the first sock done for now.  I've done a few inches on the 2nd sock, but mostly there is sweater progress happening.

I tried it on this weekend and I'm so thankful that it is going to fit.  Maybe it could be a bit more fitted, but I think if I'd used the next smaller size, it would have been too tight.  The split V neck is just about right with my modifications and the Dream in Color yarn feels delicious. 

The white yarn is plain cotton waste yarn to hold the sleeve stitches, but I also use it for as a row counter.  There are decreases every 10 rows for side shaping, so I make a slipknot in one of the ends of the waste yarn after every row.  10 slip knots, time for a decrease.  Undo the knots and start again.  It works better for me that tally marks on a sticky note or a row counter that I will lose or one of the kids will come by and play with.

Just so you know, I had to go look up the word "inimitable" in the dictionary so I could be sure I wasn't insulting Weezalana. 

Just holding steady, one skein at a time

I think I may have made some sort of rash statement recently about not buying any more yarn until after we move.  I was clearly deranged when I made that plan.  I suppose the idea was to avoid adding more stuff to the house when we are supposed to be making the place look large and airy and don't you want to live here?  Yarn, however, is not stuff. It is wooly salvation and relief in a skein.  The last few days have made me certain that I cannot possibly survive until Julyish without buying more yarn. 

When I have vacuumed for the 3rd time that day, I need the joy of the mail guy pulling up in my driveway with a package of yarn for me.  When I tell the kids to please, for all that is holy, put the clothes in the hamper, I need the relaxation of browsing through Etsy for the perfect green yarn.  When I wait every day for the phone call telling me that buyers are on the way, I need to try out the new colors of KnitPicks yarn. 

Every morning, I am a slave to these items.  Mr. Clean looks so formidable.  He is ready to unleash his fury if I do not obey him.

The only thing worse than keeping the house spotless every minute is keeping it spotless and having no one come and look at it.  We had one showing last Tuesday, the day the listing went up on the internet and I thought, "Here we go!  The tidal wave of buyers has begun.  We're going to be getting calls every day."  And then that was it.  One call in 9 days.  Ed and I are going to have a talk soon.  I have been determined not to get all stressed out about selling this house, especially here at week 2.  It may be just a skein of Cherry Tree Hill that keeps me from going over the edge.  Is it really worth the risk to find out?

My Dream in Color sweater is happy, see?

 

I so hope it fits.  I had to go bra shopping this weekend.  I have to wear underwire bras that have the foam cups because for some reason in the last few years, I seem to be constantly advertising that I'm cold.  If you know what I mean.  If I wear a regular bra with the thin, silky cups, DH can't resist notifying me that "my headlights are on." 

Anyway, the weight loss is holding steady at 68 lbs and I noticed the other day that under my t-shirt, there were dents in my bosom.  I'm not filling out the foam anymore.  I've shrunk a cup size. I tried on a halter type swim suit and I had my grandma's cleavage.  It was horrifying.  I used to have such a great rack.  I miss it. 

Since I have a 39 in. bust and size choices were 36 and 40, I went with the 40 and a slightly smaller gauge.  I'm trying be prepared to rip the whole mess out and make a smaller size if it's too big.  I've been cranking out the rows, making good progress so I can get to the underarm separation and try it on.  Ripping and restarting is going to be hard on the mojo, but there's no point in wasting this gorgeous yarn on an ill-fitting sack.

Then there's my Valium sock.  Hey, I was going to say that I needed a name for this pattern, but that could work!

Crappy photo, but there's some seed stitch triangles at the center, framed by some yarn overs, separated by three rows of slipped stitches.  The slipped stitch rows kind of remind me of one of those rope bridges than span a scary ravine.

No freaking way would you catch me trotting across that thing.  Scary Ravine Bridge Socks?  Spanning the Chasm Socks?  I hate trying to come up with names for sock patterns. 

Mr. Clean can be my pallbearer

If it is possible to die of PMS and obsessive Magic Erasering, then y'all are just invited to my funeral right now. 

I have heard of people who say they clean when they are stressed out.   I cannot fathom this.  Cleaning is stressing me out, because you know what?  It's never really clean!  There's always something else to wipe, somewhere else to dust, the floor doesn't stay pristine, the carpet gets walked on....gahhhhh!!!!  It's madness.  DH came home this morning to find me alternately barking orders at the kids and pacing through the house looking for surfaces to attack with the Magic Eraser.  He was frightened.  I may need a 12 step program for Magic Eraser addiction by summer.

Something quite horrible happened yesterday, in terms of selling the house.  Something I don't think I can tell you right now.  Not only because I don't think I can relive it, but God forbid a buyer might be reading this. (Note to potential buyers - it's okay!  No problem!  It's all in the disclosure statement!  You'll love the house!)  Remind me when we are safely living in TX, no longer owners of this house and I will share it with you.  Because I guarantee it will be fresh in my mind for many years.  I will say that professionals have assessed the situation and it is not as apolcalyptic as it originally seemed.  Better yet, it will not cost us a penny and will not adversely affect the selling business.

Oddly enough, once the initial impact of the situation had passed, the first thing I did was sit down and cast on for the Dream in Color sweater.  Why that moment seemed like the perfect time, I can't tell you, but I've got about 7 rows done for now.  I may also have self-medicated with PopTarts.

Last night, I was in that state of exhaustion and stress that makes you so tired you can't sleep.  DH was working for the 2nd night in a row and the house was quiet and and I just wanted to knit a sock.  From about 9:30 to 10:45, I knit with this beautiful, soft yarn from The Knittery.  I tried one twisty stitch pattern and after 6 rows of cussing over split stitches, dropped stitches, and just plain ugly stiches, decided that this yarn was not meant for cables of even the simplest sort.  So I flipped open my Japanese stitch dictionary and tried something else. 

Remember how I said working out of the Japanese stitch dictionary made me feel like a genius?  A flippin' genius, I believe was the term.  Yeah, that woke up the Japanese knitting fates.  At 11:00, I was baffled.  My stitch count was correct.  I was doing what the chart indicated.  But the yarn overs would not go where they belonged.  I stared at the chart so long my eyes quivered in their sockets.  I'm still completely stumped.  I have no idea why I can't make it work, but clearly the Japanese fates are not to be messed with late at night.

At 11:30, I stuffed my poor, abused, barely begun sock away.  Aggravated, I grabbed the Cherry Tree Hill Supersock that I bought from The Loopy Ewe a week or two ago and made me a toe.  I like this yarn.  I want more.  I started working on a pattern that I'd sketched out last month, but wasn't sure what yarn to use.  This was definitely the yarn.  It was like knitting a Valium right through the needles, into my hands, up to my brain.  I did one pattern repeat and went to bed. 

F is For....

....Forgot.  As in, I forgot to post for the letter E.

Ah, well.  On to G.

I Know You....

....I walked with you once upon a dream.

I know you....

....the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.

Or maybe that's the burning of your retinas from the hot pink of these socks.

The Once Upon a Dream Socks

Yarn - Wollmeise sock yarn, 80/20 twin, colorway Dornroschen (Sleeping Beauty)

Needles - KnitPicks circulars, size 0, 2.00 mm

Pattern - Adapted from a stitch in a Japanese stitch dictionary.  The pattern will be written up and available for free.

Method - toe-up, heel flap, Magic Loop, two at a time for the foot, one at a time for the heel and cuff for no particular reason other than I was tired of working across both socks at once.

I am enamored of the Disney movie, Sleeping Beauty.  The fairies!  So plump and loyal.  I love it when one of them petulantly tells Maleficent, "You weren't wanted!".   The whole "Make it pink!  Make it blue!" debate?  Fantastic. 

The animation is also remarkable for that time period.  I read that this was being made at the time that Walt Disney was building Disneyland and as artists waited for his approval on the artwork, they'd spend time filling in more details and refining their drawings.  The forest scenes are so detailed, down to every little line of bark on the trees.

This yarn was in the first batch that I bought directly from the Wollmeise shop in Germany.  As soon as I saw it in person, I knew that it needed leaves and lace and maybe some twisted stitches.  I adore my Japanese stitch dictionary, but there's no English instructions and I feel like a flippin' genius anytime I'm able to interpret one of the charts into a real piece of knitting.

 

The Wollmeise yarn makes anything look wonderful with the fabulous colors, but I'll tell you.  It's a special kind of splitty.  I wouldn't say that it splits easily, but when it does....oh brother.  The plies are as fine as hairs and you can have almost the whole stitch but for one little threadlike strand that just won't cooperate.  It definitely took me a while to learn to cope with this and not fight the tiny plies.  I haven't knit with the 100% superwash yet, so I don't know if this is particular to the 80/20 twin type of yarn.  That's my only complaint about the yarn, because it really is astonishing to see.

And hopefully, the mail guy will bring me one last package tomorrow and then I'll have all my skeins.  My lovely, lovely skeins.  And I'll get to lay them all out on the bed and roll around in them in a paroxysm of Wollmeise euphoria eat the Gummy Bears that Claudia sends along with the yarn.

Nice castle, babe.

Don't Pinch Me

I'm not Irish.  I don't like beer - green or not.  St. Patrick wasn't even Irish.  I always hated March 17th when I'd forget to wear green to school and would get pinched all day.  Sticking a leaf in your hair does not count, apparently.

This is all my greenish yarn I could find.  Oops, I forgot to add this one to the pile.

I think in honor of St. Patrick' Day, I should buy a skein of green yarn.

Have I got a bargain for you

I believe this makes it official.

My house has never been so clean.  I hate it.

As previously mentioned, I'll be giving away a skein of Wollmeise when we sell the house.  And if a knitter buys the house, I'll give them one too, as a house warming gift.  I mean, 4 bdrms, 2 baths, one acre, and a skein of gorgeous German yarn for $158,000?  What a deal!  If you've read a certain thread on Ravelry for the last two or three days (which was fabulous entertainment during the drudgery of house cleaning), you know that this is not a completely off the wall offer.

KAL - Knitting Ambivalency Lingers

I still have not cast on for the Dream in Color Classy sweater.  I don't know why.  I was so excited to get the yarn and the swatch turned out lovely.  I have the pattern, the yarn, and the needles in my bag, but no sweater begun.  Maybe it's because I'm enjoying the OUAD socks too much.  Maybe it's because casting on and placing markers just seems a little too complicated right now.  Most likely, it's because this sweater is supposed to be knit for The Loopy Ewe Dream in Color KAL and the minute I join a KAL, I lose all motivation to knit the thing.  The KAL ends on June 1st, so maybe I just need to waste more time to give me the adrenaline/panic incentive to finish by then.

I went ahead and ordered a skein of DC Smooshy in the same colorway.  If I ever get the sweater knit, I'll want matching socks.  My inner 7 yr. old likes the matchy-matchy.

I'm cleaning off the bookshelf a bit today.  All the prices include media mail shipping in the US.  Email me at the link to the left if you're interested.

Heirloom Knits $16 (front corner of the dustcover is a tiny bit banged up, but the book itself is fine)

The Knitting Experience Book 3: Color $13

The Knitter’s Companion $8 Spiral-bound

Weekend Knitting $16

More house news?  Of course.  The bug man came today and happily, we have no wood infesting bugs.  That was something I'd forgotten to worry about.  The carpet cleaning people come Wednesday afternoon.  Thursday is my day to go nuts with the last minute cleaning because Ed the Realtor will be here on Friday to stick the sign in the front yard.  In our interview, Ed asked us if we'd be upset if he found a buyer the first week the house was on the market.  We looked at him as if he was high.  Apparently some people want to feel like their realtor has to really earned his commission and selling in the first week makes them feel ripped off.  We assured Ed if he sold our home the first week, he need not worry about us being upset.

I bought some of these today:

Special K Bliss Chocolate & Raspberry Bars.  Ick.  I'll stick with the Fiber One Chewy Bars, even though they have 50 more calories.  Have you tried these?  Once I got past the whole Fiber One image of old people needing fiber, oh my.  These are awesome. 

Very funny, Mother Nature.

I really had no intention of getting out of bed before 8 this morning.  I had a ton of things to do and wanted to indulge in a delicious little bit of laying about before the madness began.  DH awoke to make an early run to the mothership Home Depot, looked out the window and exclamed,

"It's snowing!"

Our trees have begun to blossom their pretty white flowers and I really assumed that perhaps they were just blowing off the trees.  But we don't have that many blossoms!  It snowed for a good 3 hours, sometimes quite vigorously.  Since it was 75 degrees just a few days ago, the flakes didn't stick at all.  The kids went outside and tossed tiny wads of slush at each other.  Finally, they made proper use of the hand knits.

I didn't knit Grace's hat.  Or their gloves.  Alex had been wearing canvas Vans shoes and came in after a few minutes announcing, "I need real shoes."  The dark gray thing around his neck is a cowl (Sorry, a neck over.  Cowl isn't manly.) I made for DH to wear in the field.  He doesn't have to spend cold nights out there anymore so Alex took possession.  That green scarf the boy wearing is the very first bit of knitting I made as an adult.  With a few reminders from a knitting for kids library book, I just cast on what seemed like a scarf-y amount of stitches and knit row after row.  It's about a foot wide.  Right there, that's what started it all.  Who knew that green scarf would only 2 1/2 years later lead to socks, sweaters, mittens, and a glorious stash.

Around 10, the sun suddenly blasted out from behind the clouds, blinding me as I tried to wash the windows, and that was it for our blizzard.  I cleaned the oven today.  Mostly.  I walked through the house and made a very detailed list of every little thing that needed to be done in each room.  It's like 4 pages long, but at least I feel like I have a plan.  I also - pause for drama - have two rooms that are done!  The classroom and the kids' bathroom are ready to go.  Only....ummm...8...no, 9 more rooms to go.

My kids are big into Runescape lately and our library has a Runescape Day.  The kids gather in a computer lab and do quests and missions and whatever and by the time I pick them up two hours later they are babbling in a completely different vocabulary.  Me, I go upstairs and sit in one of the comfy armchairs with my iPod and my knitting. 

In addition to adding a few more rows to the OUAD socks, today I worked an inch or two on Grace's Top Down Sweater Experiment.  I had her try it on last night and I think I've made a pretty decent bodice.  The armholes might possibly be a little big, but we were aiming for more a sweatshirt type fit anyway.  Also, Barbara Walker's 1/3 of the top stitches for the neck opening doesn't produce a wide enough neck for my likes.  That's why this is an Experiment.  Next time I'll know to use about 1/2 and to adjust the armhole size.  BW is right though, you do feel rather clever by the time you join it all in the round and realize "what a wonder you have wrought: a three-dimensional piece of knitting, a garment, two shoulder pieces and a body tube, all put together without any sewing whatever." 

I listened to an episode and a half of Cast On before reluctantly packing up my things to go fetch the kids.  After pulling out my headphones, I kept hearing this odd noise.  I checked to make sure the iPod was off, made sure my phone wasn't doing something weird, but it wasn't me.  The man sitting at the study carrel near me, his head supported by his hands as he appeared to be intently studying the pile of materials on the desk, was softly snoring.  And here I'd been concerned that the steady clickity-click of my Options needles might have disturbed him.

The Mystery of the Blinder

So you want to know what was in the box marked "Blinder"?  Do you mean what was originally in it?  Or what was in it after sitting in the laundry room for 3.5 years?  Originally, there was some kitchen stuff, including, of all things, a blender.  I looked at the box for the longest time trying to imagine what the hell a blinder was, when my DH, who maybe is not so fussy with proper spelling, immediately said, "I bet it's the blender." 

The blinder/blender came out of the box in the initial unpacking and I guess we just used that last box for putting random junk in that we didn't want to throw away, but didn't have time to find a proper place for.  In it were two excellent pairs of gloves.  Could have used those a few weeks ago.  The newspaper from the day that Alex was born.  I showed it to him and asked if this would be something he would want to keep.  He looked it over and agreed with me that nothing very interesting had happened on Jan. 17, 1996.  There was all my non-official military papers, memorabilia type crap.  DH and I have a bit of a feud over this stuff.  I want to trash it all because it's boring and unimportant and DH wants me to keep every last scrap.

Yesterday, DH painted our bedroom and that's it for the painting.  No more paint fumes!  Sadly, it was also the demise of my knitting table.  DH didn't mind the table, but I had to be honest and admit there was no way I would keep it clean and tidy.  So now I have a small armchair and my projects in various bags. 

Finally, I feel like there's a possibility that we might actually have the house ready by the 14th.  But I just want one room that I can say is DONE.  I thought that we had the kids' bathroom done until this morning Alex calls out, "The cold water handle just fell off!".  Item number 277 to add to the to-do list.  I'm halfway giving up on the kid's rooms.  I'm going to hope that the people who view the house will realize that these are the rooms of real children - not robotic cleaning machine prototype children (although, where can I get one of those?) - and cut us a little slack.

DH had brilliant idea - pay the kids 50 cents per lb. for stuff removed from their rooms.  Whether it was trash or donations to Goodwill, as long as it didn't come to TX with us, they'll get paid.  I think Grace has already filled a bag with about $8.50 worth, owing mostly to a big encyclopedia of Barbie (from a yard sale) that weighs about 4 lbs.  I'm just glad they are dealing with it, because I do NOT want to know what horrible things they've been stuffing in the toy boxes.

Even though my knitting spot has been disrupted, I've still managed to get a little done.  The Once Upon a Dream socks are now past one heel.

I'm not entirely sure that the pattern is working out like I had it planned in my mind, but I like it anyway.  The color cheers me each time I work with it.  I feel like if I'm going to make pink socks, they ought to be PINK.  I might also have ordered more Wollmeise last weekend.  I was thinking, if I'm going to stop ordering yarn before we move, wouldn't it make sense to have one big huge order to really close things out?  You understand my reasoning, right?  So okay, 10 skeins of Wollmeise, whatever.  They aren't all for me; Angela is going to buy at least one of them.  Wollmeise is just yarn crack.  Once you get a skein, you want more.  There's no fighting the addiction.

I had made some progress on Alex's socks.

See the little stick figure dudes?  Had to frog them when we couldn't get the cuff over Alex's feet.  I went up a needle size for that part, but I've only worked as far as their knees right now.

I'd like to promise you that every blog post is not going to be about moving and selling the house and the many details of our move to Texas.  It probably won't be every post, but that's kinda the main thing going on here, so it's the blog fodder for now.  I told DH as soon as we get a contract on the house, my knitting table goes back up.  So send good, profitable real estate vibes our direction.  It can't hurt.  Also, when we sell the house, I'll have a contest and give away a skein of Wollmeise.  Deal?