Yes, There is Spinning

I am spinning some of the fiber I bought at Stitches West.  I split the fiber in half (roughly) the long way and planned to spin one half and then the other half and ply them together for a two ply yarn.

As I spin up the fiber I am rethinking that plan.  I would like to preserve the beautiful hand dyed colors and thought I might be able to match up the colors when I ply each half together, but I don't think that will work out as well as I thought.  I am now thinking a Navajo ply would be the best way to get the yarn I want out of this fiber.  I am hoping for enough to knit a pair of socks.

I had a wonderful Mother's day yesterday, Paul took the boys dirt biking for two days to give me some downtime, it was lovely but I found myself missing them.  PJ and I had a lovely time planting some flowers and jumping on the trampoline. 

Finally, Something Interesting

Meet Arashi, the second kit sent by Abstract Fibers.  You all know how much I loved the purple goodness, how bittersweet the finishing was, I spent several weeks with nothing on the needles.  Then one day a lovely package came in the mail...the rest as they say, is history.

Arashi, you had me at hello, when I opened the envelope and saw the red I was smitten.  It is as if this company has designed their kits and colorways just for me.  This is a larger shawl and will therefore take me longer than the first one, do you think I can have it off the needles in time for the next shipment?  The whole pattern is so much different than anything I have knit before that I don't know what kind of progress goals to set.  I will commit to picking it up and knitting a bit every day, but when those rows get to be 512 stitches long I have no idea how much that will slow me down.  It will grow to a whooping 630 stitches in total. 

I think Shannon has the most experience of all of us with lace.  I bet that beautiful blue shawl was bigger that Arashi.  Shannon maybe you can give me the best guess on time frame.

I am using my smallest Addi lace (US4) one size down from the recommended needle size (I am usually a size down for all my knitting) I think I would like it knit a bit tighter, I am going to try a US3 Addi circular, but it is not a lace needle.  If that needle size works well I may splurge and order a signature circular, I am craving a better point for this project, and enjoying the lace knitting enough to make the investment. 

I am wondering if whomever redesigned blogger has ever actually blogged themselves.  I can't seem to place my pictures where I would like them in my text.  It all just seems a little clunky now, I liked blogger so much better before they "improved" it. 

PJ is surfing on YouTube and just me she now knows how to make a stink bomb.  I am wondering why she is looking that up and surprised the parental controls I have set did not block that site.  She is sitting on my bed with me while she surfs, so rest assured not unsupervised.

Zoom Zoom

I am not sure where the time is going, I can tell you I don't have much to show for it's passing!

I have nothing new on the needles, still just enjoying the feel of purple goodness across my shoulders and not quite ready for a new love.  I am spinning up one of the fibers I bought at Stitches but have no photographic evidence of my work thus far.

Edited to add: Blogger is bugging me!  It ate half this post.  I am going to post what is left to see if it will work. 

Blogger is Eating My Posts!

Testing, will Blogger Eat This?

I Am So Glad You Asked

Shannon, Thank you so much for asking about the lace wrap, I know there was week I did not post any progress pictures. That was kind of deliberate, it looked pretty much the same as the previous pictures only longer and I was pretty close to the grand finale so I decided I would wait until it was off the needles.



I finished it last Sunday afternoon, which means it took me only 3 and half weeks or so to finish. I came in well under my self imposed deadline and I enjoyed every minute of knitting it. I blocked it the afternoon yesterday and my love affair with the pattern continues. I am so pleased with the finished product I am already planning what to wear with it for work on Monday. I am thinking a purple knee length skirt with a plain white t-shirt to show it off, maybe with some boots or flats depending on the weather.



I have to say that since it came off the needles on Sunday I have been wandering around the house feeling a bit restless. Like a break up with a lovely boyfriend, not quite ready to move on but needling something to fill the void.



I have been knitting a little bit on my Plane sock (named after it's job to keep me busy on my plane rides to California and back home again) I have to say it is falling a little short on the satisfaction scale, and not quite filling the knitting void left behind by this lovely shawl. I am going to take some time today to have a look a sweater pattern I have been working on that was tossed the void when this lovely beaded pattern stole my attention.

I am not sure if the sweater will do the trick as the lace portion of it is complete and its knit, knit, knit from here. I will be sure to keep in the loop. I have been ignoring the siren song of the fiber lately...

Wishy Washy

Added to Post Today: I have been writing this post for over a week now. I seem to be a bit easily distracted this past week. I started this post last Monday, I keep bringing up on my computer while I am at work to finish up and then patients come in or paperwork needs to get done, or I get distracted by any little thing and forget I was working on this post. I have a couple more posts in my head I would like to share so I think it's time to wrap this one up and get it out there.

When I was at Stitches West I ordered a set of double pointed needles. I had seen the set for sale here at home, and like the points on the needles but the set was $80.00 I thought that was a little pricey. I saw the same set at stitches, even after they shipped them here I saved myself $35.00 what a great deal.



It's all about the points on the needles for me. I like a nice pokey needle. Here is one of the new needles pictured next to the matching size Signature needle. (Signatures are the gold standard when it comes to points as far as I am concerned). I have not knit with the new needles yet, but they are looking good so far.



I have been in the Spring cleaning mood. I am trying to get back to my 15 minute habit. I think I mentioned it before: cleaning something I really don't want to do but really needs to be done. I Set a timer for 15 min and tackle one thing, these days it seems to be the kitchen cabinates.

Here is the after picture of the pantry, I did not take a before a before, no need to publicly embarass myself!

A Day Late

I took a bunch of pictures yesterday for blog posts this week, but never posted! I have the best reason in the world for not posting, the kids are on spring break and I was playing with them most of the day.

I know this is not looking all that different from week to week, but here is the Tuesday update picture. I was a bit disappointed in myself this week because I only got 8 repeats done. Then I took a moment to think about why I was being so silly and hard myself. Eight after all means I have exceeded my goal for myself of one repeat a day.

I hear what Shannon was saying about rows getting longer as you work on a shawl. My repeats were taking me longer because my rows got longer. I am passed halfway on my shawl, which means with this particular pattern, my rows are getting shorter again, so I should be flying by the end of the week.



It has been really windy the past two weeks, and its a very cold wind. So windy in fact that we have had our BBQ slide across the back deck, hockey nets blow across our driveway and onto lawn, crazy wind.

One day last week as I was driving into our neighborhood, I was driving pretty slow as school had just let out so there were lots of kids around, I saw something blowing along the road. I said to the kids is that a ball of yarn that just blew by the us? I pulled over and a grabbed the suspect item only to discover it was a ball of yarn, a very nice ball of yarn, its Merino, Baby Alpaca and Possum.



What do you do when you rescue a lost ball of yarn. Do you post signs on the mailbox? What if someone lost it and needs it to finish the project they are working on?

Progress

I am going to try to show you my progress every Tuesday so you can keep me honest.

I have done better than I hoped this past week, as of bedtime last night I had 10 pattern repeats done which makes me 3 ahead of my goal. I hesitated to say I am getting the hang of this lace stuff, I don't want to tempt the knitting goddess to humble me quite so early in the game.



I was able to do pattern repeats while watching a bit of TV last night. This is huge progress, normally when I knit lace I lock myself in the bedroom or the kissing cave and have complete silence. Mind you I only kept one eye and both ears on the TV and Paul was okay with me pausing the show a time or two so I could count stitches.



Q is playing his last hockey game of the season as I am typing. He scored his very first goal ever in a tournament last weekend and I just got a text from Paul that Q just scored a goal in tonight's game. What a great way for him to end the season. Oddly he has an evaluation skate on Saturday and then we are all wrapped up with the season for all three kids.

PJ got the most sportsman like award for her team this year. I can't think of a greater compliment. Makes me so proud!

Other than that all is pretty quiet here, I think we all need a bit of time to decompress after the busy season.

Re-entry

I am finally feeling caught up after my to quick trip to California. It was a wonderful trip that went by far to quickly. I had a bit of rough time jumping back into routine here, there was a lot planned the first few days after my return, including packing up my suitcase and heading off to a hockey tournament with SeaBass. Things have settled now and hockey season is wrapping up, always bitter sweet, we get our weekends back to do other things, but I will miss watching the kids play the game they love so much.

Stitches West was fun, spending the time with Mom and Shannon was the highlight of the event. Of course I bought some fiber and yarn while I was there, I don't have any pictures to show off right now, and I am not sure I will post any, the fiber and yarn folks that read this blog have already seen the goods I brought home.

I started the beaded shawl kit that I bought at Stitches on Tuesday. I feel like I am making good progress on it and the lace portion is simple enough I can listen to the TV or an audio book while I knit. My goal is to complete one pattern repeat every day at that rate it will take me 34 days to finish the project. Here are a couple of pictures of the project, the pictures did not come out so well even though I pinned it out real quick so you can see the pattern more clearly. I don't think the pictures do the yarn colour any justice and don't show off the beading well.

Still Going

I am so sorry for the long hiatus. My lovely two week flu bug turned into a nasty sinus infection and a cough that would give me no rest. I went to my Dr. again yesterday thinking I had some fluid in the bottom of my lungs I just could not shake. He gave a listen and sure enough heard the crap crackling away down there.

I love my Dr. he is very conservative with the medications and knows I hate to take them. He suggested a quick two days of a corticosteroid to get rid of the fluid (starting yesterday) and wants me to call him this afternoon to see how I am doing. The good news is the cough is settling down by half already and I feel like I can I breathe down into the lower portion of lungs today. I think this should do the trick

I have not had my camera out in the past four weeks, I think I have only knit about 10 rows on a sock in that time, just no mojo right now so I have no new pictures. Just so I don't bore you all to tears I added some pictures of PJ playing hockey.

She is there in the foreground with the blue helmet on, this was taken at a girls hockey tournament in Vancouver early this hockey season. PJ plays defense and can be seen here with her eye on the girl in front her in the black uniform. The girl in black has the puck and is on a break away heading to her net for a goal, PJ is very focused on shutting that girl down to prevent her scoring a goal.



Here is the third picture in the series (I thought the second one would bore you) You can see PJ did not quite catch the girl, but she was able to put on enough pressure that she pushed the girl to the outside, closer to the boards and off to the side of net where she did not have a good a shot to score to the goal. (she did miss by the way)



This last one is PJ and two of her team mates with Hayley Wickenheiser Olympic Gold Medalist for the 2002, 2006, 2010 Canadians National Women's Hockey Team. Hayley was born and raised in Vancouver and gives back every year by holding this girl's hockey tournament.

The tournament was amazing there were dry land classes the girls could sign up for that were free, PJ did core strength and one called quick feet, learning off ice skills to help you skate faster.

Our girls took second place in the entire tournament. The team they played in finals cheated by my standards. They short shifted, this means they played only their best players though out the final game and did not play their less skilled players at all. We are lucky our coach plays all our players with equal ice time in every game. It shocks me to see coaches short shift a 9 and 10 year old children's hockey game, I think it unfair and wonder what they are teaching the kids.

Our girls were very proud of themselves, it was awesome to watch.

Still Around

Last Friday, January 20, I took SeaBass to a hockey tournament in Kewlona. When we arrived home om Sunday I unpacked and remember telling Paul I did not feel very well. The hotel was very loud and I never slept well that weekend. I thought I would lay down for a bit and shake th mild headache I had.

The next time I remember waking waking was over 24 hrs later and 8 had the worst headache of my life, with nausea and vomiting and fever thrown or good measure. This Friday I scraped myself out of bed and went to see my Dr. He did some blood labs and toughly checked me over. He tells me I have the Influenza virus and I can expect to feel third crappy for another full week. I don't ever remember spending a full week in bed before, but as of today, I have. Not even able to watch a bit of TV until yesterday for a couple hrs. I feel a better this morning, so hopefully not to much longer now.

Changing the World

One knitter at a time:


The picture is Deb's daughter LB, she just celebrated he1 11th birthday. PJ and discussed what we should give this lovely lady for turning 11 we hummed and we hawed, and then a light bulb went off over our heads. LB has mentioned in passing to both PJ and myself that she would like to learn to knit.

PJ and I went down to Micheal's armed with very important information, LB's favorite colours for example. PJ went hog wild and picked out two very pretty yarns and the needles she thought LB might like, she even picked out a little notions case, darning needles and a small pair of scisiors. We came home and PJ carefully wrapped everything up and tucked in a knitting bag, wrapping it with a bow and making a card. She walked herself down to the sleepover birthday party, where the gift was a hit.

So much so that the next afternoon there were four young ladies in the Kissing Cave asking if PJ and I would teach them all how to knit. Supper cool.



A bit spinning all done up and ready to knit. Shannon and Mom will recoginze it as that sample pack of camlid fibers from the Brown Sheep Festival. It is soft and sweet, and I had to get if off my niddy-noddy so I could load it with another finished fiber.



I ment to post this last week but got sucked into spending my time off writing reports for work, my least favorite part of my job. On the up side, only one more report to go...

For Mom

A bit about PJ, who would be mortified if she knew I was posting on this topic and even more mortified if she knew I was posting pictures.

PJ for many years was the tidiest of my children, in fact when it came down to the kids bedrooms she used to have the cleanest of the three kids. I thought "This is so great, I don't know how it happened but it seems as if the messy child gene that was so strong within me jumped right passed my children! Yippee!" Indeed I thought of Shannon and her wonderful childhood tidiness, I even thanked Shannon quietly in the back of mind, how blessed I was that my lovely daughter decided to take after her Aunt rather than myself. Then it happened:



I am wondering if PJ was exposed to an environmental toxin of some kind within the past 8 months or so and the recessive Messy gene was exposed to rear it's ugly head. The boys rooms they get a bit untidy but never downright messy. Mind you they don't spend as much time playing in their rooms as PJ does in hers, they are often playing Lego's downstairs. (Crap, now I am thinking they also have the familial Messy gene, they are just better at spreading their messes throughout the house so I don't realize how mess they have!)



I know your laughing Mom as you scroll through the pictures, you are thinking about karma, remembering all the times you went in a mucked out my room while I wept and you mercilessly threw out all my treasures. I understand now your motives and your passion for a tidy space, I hereby publicly apologize for driving you halfway to insanity with my mess. (I would like it on record that I am only responsible for getting you half way there, the rest I think Shannon should take credit for, it's only fair)

Then it happened: I got fed up with looking at the mess, I could not take it anymore. I waited until she was off to school in one morning and I went into her room with a garbage can and a broom. It should be noted for the record that I gave my darling daughter warning and let her know I would clean her room if she choose not to herself, I was kind enough to give her a time line to work within.



I had no mercy, I recycled an entire garbage can full of tiny bits of paper, half finished paintings, cardboard boxes that she just had to have for one project or another, old birthday cards, hidden candy wrappers, flower petals wrapped in Kleenex that were a treasure as far a PJ was concerned. After filling an entire (read huge) recycle bin, I proceeded to fill two large garbage bags full of garbage and took those out to the curb thereby rendering them 'unrecoverable'. I stripped the sheets off the bed, washed them and put them back, tidy, neat and wrinkle free.



When PJ came home from school she was very angry with me, very angry indeed. She asked about her bits of paper, "Mom did you throw away that little yellow note that I was saving?" "Mom where are my American Girl magazines?" She tearfully sat on her bed and said, "Now I have nothing left to play with, my room is practically empty!"

To which I answered, "I know, isn't it lovely?"

Bagged Out

I usually feel pretty bagged on Thursdays, but this Thursday I am bagged out like a cheap pair of jeans on their second day of wear. Why I am always so tired on Thursday takes a little bit of explaining. This year SeaBass asked if he could try out for Development Hockey. In the past he has always played House Hockey, which means league play within our local Association with a two out of town tournaments during the season.

Development Hockey involves trying out to play at a competitive level with the idea of developing the stronger players in each city for a higher level of play, if you don't make the team you get automatically put back into the House Hockey and play regular league games. If you do make the Developement team you play other Development teams from surrounding cities. BC and other provinces are divided up into geographical regions for hockey, Development teams play only teams from cities within their region.

This all boils down to traveling to play hockey, sometimes day trips involving a 2 hour drive to an arena in another city, sometimes staying the night for back to back games the next morning. The farthest teams in our division are 3 hours away, most closer to an hour to an hour and half (one way drive time). Paul and I told SeaBass he could try out for the team, but were not sure whether or not we really wanted him to make the team, it is a huge time commitment and more costly due to the travel. On the other hand it is competitive outlet for a kid that has a competitive streak and mile wide, the drive to play hard, and a passion for the game. Also better to be out on the ice than have time to get in trouble.

I am sure you guessed that he made one of the three Development teams that represent our fair town. It means he plays three days a week, including a practice every Wednesday morning at 5:30 a.m, we are lucky there happen to be two other kids in our neighborhood that are on the same team, we take turns carpooling the kids to the early game, but no matter what I am up every Wednesday at 4:30 in order to get him out the door and onto the ice. I told you it would take some explaining.

I do pretty good through Wednesday, but come Thursday I feel hung over and tired even though I have not had anything to drink. To add the mix I picked Q up at school yesterday with a fever and ended up staying home myself today to take care of him and not feeling so hot myself. We are both feeling better now, but a good nights sleep tonight will help us both be back to normal for tomorrow.

Just so you are not to bored with this post a couple of photos for you. I took these sunrise pictures Tuesday morning around 7:30, it looked like the sky was on fire.



Are you impressed with the amount of snow we have? So far only 4cm this winter, apparently our weather systems are coming from the tropics, were 11C yesterday for an all time historical high, 18 degrees warmer than we usually are at this time.



One more for the road, a pair of plain vanilla socks I knitted up while watching the kids play hockey. More to follow.

The Feet We Meet

I believe that Dr. Seuss gets the credit for the tittle of today's post. If my memory serves me correctly it is a line (I think the last line) from The Foot Book, one of my favorites. (By the way I had to ask SeaBass how to the good Doctor's name was spelled, he knew and I did not!)

Can you tell which legs belong to which kid? Mom knit up these socks for the kids Christmas gifts. They love them, they have an appreciation for hand made goods and they ask me to knit them socks with some frequency, so a perfect gift. They seem to really like that the socks don't match perfectly, they also enjoy that are really slippery on the tile and laminate, they are doing more sliding than walking down the hallways.

Mom sent me a text not to long prior to Christmas asking for the kids shoe sizes, I can tell you these socks flew off her needles. Three pairs I think in as many weeks, and all my kids wear adult sized shoes, PJ and Q are about a women's size 5 or 6 and SeaBass is a women's size 7/8ish.



I am hoping to have this all spun up by the end of the day today, it would make it my fastest spinning thus far. The fiber you see in the photo is all there is left to spin, should be easy to do this evening, except for the fact that my hands are little bit sore from spinning the past two days. I think that is more the function of the weather here than anything, we are unusually warm and have been all winter that means it is not near as dry as it usually is which equals sore hands I am guessing the moisture in the air aggravates the joints a little bit. Here's to hoping it cools off a bit more, and snow would be great too.



P.S. Mom, I remember the case but the kindle fire itself funny that knitting project stuck in my head but not the kindle.