Excuses, excuses: a month with little knitting...

... but, as some of you know, I'm going to start knitting for a little one! Yup, that's the new little knitter-geocacher there, to be arriving around September 9! So part of my blog-absence has been due (in addition to laziness) to first-trimester exhaustion... I've just been wanting to flop on the couch when I get home from work, and it hasn't been unusual for me to sleep til noon on the weekends. But I'm 15 weeks pregnant now, and some of that is easing. Hopefully the "golden trimester" will really begin in earnest soon!

In my not-doing-much-knitting news, I had every intention of re-positioning the eyelets on my vest tonight (in hopes of having a truly FO to present here) while watching a TiVo'd episode Top Chef. And then I couldn't find the eyelets! So, after turning my knitting shelves upside down and complaining mightily, I sat down to write this entry anyway... and just now noticed the eyelets sitting on the end table right behind the empty yogurt cup from my before-dinner-snack (I'm eating a lot of string cheese and yogurt these days... mmmm, dairy). Ack. A prime example of "pregnancy brain", I guess...

Well, I certainly should be able to finish the vest tomorrow, so I hope to have a FO post soon. I'll just leave you with a video of what the cats get up to on those lazy weekend mornings.


Catfight on Saturday Morning from Alison on Vimeo.

Randomness and gloves

Wow, has it been half a month (more!) since my last blog update. Alas, I don't have any FOs to report. I seamed up my vest and got the hooks, but not the eyelets, attached. Dang those eyelets - I'm so close! Maybe after this post I'll be inspired to find the thread and finish it! Or, considering how long it usually takes to post with all the other distractions of the internet available, I will just go to bed.

I have started on a pair of fingerless gloves for myself for the office - Serpentine Mitts in some lovely spring-colored Blue Moon Fiber Arts "Seduction", which is half wool and half tencel, and very soft. I'm magic-looping them and enjoying the cables, which I haven't done since my tank top last summer. I'm partway through the first of them, and am figuring how to make the second symmetric - they're identical except for the thumbs, but I want them to mirror. Oh, and I also want to add partial fingers - have to figure out how to do that. It is too cold sometimes in the morning at work not to at least cover up to the knuckles :)

Here's a pic on the sticks - the colors are not true to life, it's more vibrant in person. All ribbed and tiny looking:















And a pic on my hand (gosh, I love how easy magic loop makes it to try things on). Here they're stretched out and show the cables much better. Love those cables!














Now, as to the randomness part of my post, KT tagged me a while back with the 7 random things meme (here's as good a definition of a meme (technically blog meme) that I could find, Mom!). So without further ado, here are 7 random things about me!

1. I have all of my wisdom teeth, but am missing 4 other teeth. 3 are adjacent and date back to me falling off my bike when I was about 8 (?). I have a denture on those, so it's not too noticeable, and the denture is more comfy than you'd think. The worst part about this is that one of them is a front tooth and that means I can't eat apples out of hand or really crusty sandwiches any more. But corn-on-the-cob is actually better cut into a bowl and mixed with butter. mmm!

2. Every night, Sasha (our portly brown tabby) jumps onto my pillow as I'm getting to sleep and kneads the back of my neck while purring in my ear for several minutes. As long as her claws are kept clipped (and believe me, I know when they need clipping), this is actually kind of soothing. Kind of like a mini-massage. She's been doing it as long as we've had her, so 9 years or so now!

3. Every weekday morning I go into work, put on a gore-tex "bunny suit", and head into the cleanroom. It's kind of like this, but less eyeshadow and implied angst. Oh, and we wear simple face hoods, not helmets.

4. Sometime in middle school, my best friend and I memorized the "McDonald's menu song" (Wikipedia link, I've spared you the YouTube, though you can find it if you really want to hear it), and it's still taking up valuable neuron space. ...fillet'o'fish a hamburger a cheeseburger a happy meal...

5. Apparently I start running out of steam about 5/7 of the way through a meme :)

6. I can't raise one eyebrow or wiggle my ears. I can curl my tongue and cross my eyes, but these are pretty boring, relatively.

7. Of course I love the Decemberists, but lately I've been on a Saw Doctors kick. Authentic Irish classic rock! I just ordered 3 more albums (I love half.com and Amazon marketplace) and I can't wait for them to arrive.

7.5 I was right in my second guess, above. It's now bedtime. And a workday tomorrow; the 3-day weekend is over, alas. Good night all!

PS - to pass on this "7 random things" meme, I'll tag Andy (who hasn't blogged in almost a year - techie things about you count, dear), and SIL Falathwen, when she has time.

By request....

Here you go, KT! Sorry it's a bit late, we had to dig up the drumsticks and clean off the table. And of course, we had to improvise a drum, since we don't have any real ones in the house :).

Drumroll for KT from Alison on Vimeo.

I haven't done too much knitting in the last two weeks - finished the vest pieces, but it's still waiting to be seamed up. That's probably a project for tonight. I shall report back once it's finished, I promise!

Scooba and misc

Whew, it's been a while since my last post. How did it get to be mid-January already? I have one FO to present, which I actually finished about an hour after my last blog post (I was gunning to get it done in 2007, and succeeded by about 3 hours :)

But first, I have to share how we cleaned our kitchen floor this afternoon (beware, video is loud!):

Scooba's first run from Alison on Vimeo.

And also test out this embedding video thing, in case we ever take any other ones that are interesting. I did watch a Youtube video of a vintage sock making machine the other night (thank you, Ravelry!).

Anyway, I gave Andy a Scooba (robotic floor washer; goes with our Roomba) for Christmas. It was pretty funny, since he gave me a Dyson handheld vac to replace our ailing dustbuster, and we opened them at the same time. Most unromantic gifts ever! The Scooba went out on its first "mission" today - simple kitchen floor cleaning - and did an admirable job. All told, probably about the same amount of effort as mopping, but higher amusement value. It tends to get stuck in a couple of corners and on the vent grate, so we'll have to either block those or not run it unattended. But not a bad little robot!

On to the knitting - Andy had requested a pair of fingerless gloves for his office, which is often cold in the winter. He wanted longish individual fingers up to about the second knuckle, leaving fingertips free for coding. So I took the Knucks pattern from Knitty, removed the knuckle "tattoos", lengthened the fingers, and added a simple diagonal rib to the backs for interest. Oh, and my gauge was off, so I modified the stitch count a teeny bit. I guess I'm getting bolder about pattern modification (after almost exactly one year of knitting) :). These are a good basic glove pattern, and fun - knitting fingers down is interesting. I'm thinking of making a pair for myself, with a different pattern on the back, as I've been noticing my fingers getting cold at work as well.

Here's one under construction (just after joining the thumb):














And the finished product, in use. I told Andy to try to actually code something for the shot (I named the project "Coding Gloves" on Ravelry, but I think he's faking it ;). You can see a terminal window in the shot, though.














Ooh, I also wanted to congratulate my sister-in-law on completing a wonderful birthday hat for her father. She designed the fair-isle layout and completed it in (what seemed to me) an extremely short time. It even has a 3-color section!

Colorwork is something I'd like to try soon, probably on a smallish project to start (I'm thinking a felted cat bed, since Sasha keeps sitting on our jackets, my felted bag, etc - and felting should be forgiving of beginner mistakes). But I also want to knit a pair of Monkeys, and fingerless gloves for me, and and and... (not to mention the vest I'm working on now - here's where I am so far, both front done, just starting the mindless stockinette section of the back...)

Oh well, too much to knit, too little time, what else is new?

And finally - yeah Pats!

Christmas Knitting wrapup

The holidays are almost over (we're just waiting 'til midnight so we can go to bed :). And I finished the major knitting projects of my first Christmas as a knitter! So without further ado...

Carl's hat - has already been posted a couple of times, but here's one more action shot, at the Oregon coast on Christmas eve:

Dad's scarf - I haven't blogged this one before - but I got the yarn in Japan, not knowing what I'd do with it. I never did manage to post part II of my Japan trip travelogue (and wow, that was > 5 months ago now!), but I visited a wonderful "natural dying" yarn store called Mother Earth, which was actually rather near the vendor's factory in Yamanashi. It was pretty funny, having my rather proper male sales engineer (who knew nothing about knitting) translate yarn labels - I really do need to finish blogging it. Anyway, eventually (actually, in Arizona in October)the yarn decided to be a scarf, in a simple lace rib stitch. I held two strands together throughout - always a medium brown, alternating a light tan and dark brown held with it. Hopefully the ribby-ness makes it warmish, although even doubled the yarn was rather thin.
Oh, by the way, if anyone reading this can send me a pic of the scarf stitching closeup, I'd appreciate it - forgot to take one...

Mom's bag - (Ravelry project link) - this is the big, modular project that I couldn't post about since she reads my blog. Many many shells! Pretty easy knit (especially since you don't need to weave in the gazillion ends that well, since it is felted), though a tad tedious. It was odd to be knitting a felted item on only size 8 needles (to keep the stitch pattern visible, I presume), but it worked out fine. Note the blue and gray color scheme, of course (Mom is a huge Civil War buff).

final pose:

Closer up views of it post felting (including one with it next to a felted bowl she made me for Christmas!). I love the bottom of the bag, where the shells come together - so symmetrical!









(did I mention I was running around the house, back and forth to the laundry room, felting it on 12/23 while everyone watched football? And that it blocked (on a bucket balanced on a table lamp on a garbage can!) and mostly dried through Christmas eve night? And it was still a wee bit damp when opened Christmas morning. Talk about last minute finishing!)

Here it is after finishing, but before felting.





Finally, a couple of pics of it under construction. It took basically a little over a month all told, though I wasn't working as hard on it as I could have. I might be tempted to make one for myself after I've had time to knock out a few smaller things :). I like the one one the right, since Mom made me those mitts almost exactly a year ago, right before I started knitting.









and finally, a picture from our impromptu day trip to the coast on Christmas eve. May you have a peaceful and/or exciting New Year!

Odds and ends and holidays!

Well, I'm briefly back from extended blogging hiatus. Referencing the previous post, I finished all the modular pieces (reduced the number of repeats, so it was actually 76 not 84) and most of the finishing on the big modular work. It's actually blocking upstairs, hopefully will dry before Christmas day :).

I got 4 of the minor gift "A" done and shipped off 3 of them (the others will become a New Year's gift instead of Christmas), plus the dragon scarf and gorilla vest. Phew!

Plus, a couple weeks back we went to a geocaching holiday party with a "white elephant" secret santa exchange. We were supposed to bring something <$10 and possibly funny. So I busted into my stash, whipped out the extra-bulky yarn I used for my first scarf, and (using guideline from the book "Knitting Rules" by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot)), managed to create a hat that actually was fought over at the gift exchange.

So, FO: White eleph-hat
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-ease thick 'n'quick, ~0.55 skeins oatmeal-ish color, and small amounts of blue and green.
Needles: US 10.5 circular (a longish one to magic loop)
General scheme: CO 48 stitches with MC. Work in 1x1 rib for a couple of inches (I wish I'd done it longer to make it easier to turn up at the brim). Then I did purl rounds in the main color with 8 2-stitch knit vertical stripes alternating green and blue. I did some twists in these, but the yarn is so bulky, they didn't really show. I made bobbins for the vertical stripes, and twisted them with the main color as it went across - sort of a hybrid intarsia / fair isle thing. Knit til it was as tall as Andy's hand, then decreased (K2tog before the stripes) so that the stripes came together at the top of the hat.

Oh, and what did we get in the white elephant gift exchange? Why, a beer mug night light, of course!

Here's the dragon scarf; and I can't show the gorilla vest yet, because there's kind of a cute surprise on it :)

In non-knitting news, my parents and brother are spending the holidays here. We've had a nice dinner downtown, hit Powells books twice now, did a hike, and went to a u-cut tree farm hunting the perfect Christmas Tree. We found it! I don't have a good picture of it all decorated - here is the before shot, though (with Carl cleaning up the result of a small overwatering issue)

And here are a few pics from our hike to Wahclella Falls in the Columbia River Gorge the other day.

<- Mom and Dad in front of waterfall...

Carl contemplating waterfall (note the hat!) ->


Full view of the waterfall:


And finally, a zoomed shot of Table Mountain, which we had a great view of on the way back down the trail. It's across the gorge on the Washington side, and I'm very pleased with how our new camera's 10x zoom performed.


Happy Holidays!

Knitting by Numbers

Number of major Christmas gifts still not finished knitting: 1
Number of individual (modular) units making up this project: 84 (!)
Number modular pieces knitted so far: 26
Number of additional minor gifts I'd like to do, ideally: 10
Number done: 0
Number of "gift A": 8
Number of "gift B" (which is a sweater for a gorilla :): 1
Number of "gift C" (which is a scarf for a dragon:): 1

Number of all of these that are for readers of my lil blog: 10

Number of posts actually containing current knitting pictures said readers of blog can expect before Christmas: very very few.

In other news, I wore my hat on the long walk from the parking lot to work this morning, and at 34 degrees out it kept me nice 'n toasty. And not itchy! Yay, baby alpaca!

To tide the blog over, here's a picture from June of my first magic loop sock. I finished it a few days later. There is not yet a second sock, which is why I haven't really posted about the project. But eventually there will be! Hey readers, what's the longest you've taken between 2 socks of a pair?