The Race is On

and the knitting is winning.

With only ten kitting days left until Christmas, I've managed to get one shawl done and the other is pretty close. If I can manage to sit down for a couple of hours with it tomorrow afternoon, I might be able to manage to get it finished. However, I've still got to finish two more hats, three and a half scarves, two pairs of socks and a set of golf club covers. They're mostly relatively small, quick projects, but I also need to do regular housekeeping, laundry, get the Christmas decorations up from the basement and get the house decorated and get food prepared for our Christmas party. And, oh yeah, there's that pesky gainful employment thing that eats up so much of my day.

I was feeling so confident at the beginning of the month. I knew it would come back to kick me in the ass.

Hey, weird people - come talk to me, I like it....

Apparently there is a sign somewhere about my person that lets them all come to find me. That's the only explanation.

So, I'm on the train last night coming home. We had a closing today for a problem file so we were in the office late and I was on the 11:00PM train, so I suppose some weirdness was to be expected. After the station before mine I put my knitting into my bag, put on my coat and walked up to the door to wait until we pulled into the station and the doors opened. The woman in the seat behind me got up at the same time I did and walked forward as well. Nothing weird so far. Except just as we were pulling into the station this woman, who I have never laid eyes on before in my life starts playing with my hair.

Like, picking it up and running her fingers through it. When I inquired as to what the freakin' hell she thought she was doing, she said that she had been wanting to do that since I had sat down and just couldn't control herself anymore. She seemed insulted when I suggested that she try harder.

In other news, the knitting funk seems to finally be over. I think that I have Ravelry to thank. I've never understood the allure of MySpace or Facebook but I have to admit, I love Ravelry with a deep and unrivaled affection. I have found my people here. Being exposed to this large a community of other knitters is remarkably inspiring. It's also kind of nice to be able to have a conversation with people who don't give me that "we love you, but you're a little odd" look every time I mention knitting and don't think that my yarn obsession is the least bit strange.

Duty vs. Enthusiasm - I'll Take What I Can Get

Okay, so it's not what you would call a raging case of startitis, but I have been casting on a few new projects during the past week. More out of a sense of duty (and let's face it - fear of December) than out of any real joy, but still..

My mother and my grandmother are getting shawls for Christmas (my sister-in-law too, if I can find something that I like for her) (something fast). Grandma is getting the Litla Dimun Shawl from Folk Shawls and Mom is getting the cable shawl from Philosopher's Wool - Sheep to Shawl. (I don't think either of them actually reads this blog. I really hope they don't, anyway.) I don't know what to make for my brother - he doesn't wear hats or scarves and he's 6'7" so a sweater is - unthinkable.

In non-knitting funk related news - I went to see a very good play Sunday night called Humans Anonymous. Off-Broadway can be sort of hit 0r miss sometimes, but this was quite good. It was written by a Canadian playwright named Kate Hewlett, who also performed. I loved the play - it was funny and a little sad. The characters and the actors were very real and extremely engaging. I was talking to my mother about the play yesterday and I thought she would like it. The tickets weren't particularly expensive and the theater is pretty convenient to both our offices, so we're actually going to go see it together next Friday.

Not Quite There Yet

I know I'm going to pay for it later, but I still can't interest myself in getting very much done. It's driving me crazy. I have things that I want to make and things that I know I need to get done for Christmas. I keep thinking about casting them on. I even go so far as gathering everything I need - book, yarn, needles - into the WIP basket next to the chair, but I never seem to get quite as far as putting stitches on the needles. And it's not like I'm really doing much else. The past few weeks may have been some of the most unproductive weekends of my life. About the only place I'm actually getting any knitting done is on the train and honestly I don't think that's going to get everything done.

Thing is, I know that a day is going to come - and it's going to probably come soon, when the Funk is going to give way to a mad case of Startitis and I'm not going to be able to cast on fast enough.

Just a Phase

I've been feeling extremely unproductive the past couple of weeks. Nothing is working to get me out of it, I've tried everything - fondling the stash, organizing patterns, going through books, buying new magazines... Nothing. Not a single urge to cast on anything new. And forget the stuff in the UFO basket, it's all just sitting there looking forlorn and abandoned, waiting uselessly to be knitted, fringed, blocked or sewn together. (Or some combination of these.)

I have been knitting socks on the train (everyone is getting a pair of socks for Christmas this year)(That's not all they're getting, but everyone is getting socks)(I mean everyone in my family, not everyone in the world) but even those have just been YarnHarlot's Plain old sock recipe from Knitting Rules! in self striping yarn. I think it qualifies as pretty much the minimum effort you can put in and still call it knitting.

Whatever this funk is - and it doesn't just extend to knitting, I haven't been working on anything else, either - Let's hope I get out of it soon, otherwise people are going to be getting pictures of thier Christmas presents this year. Again.

Whoohooo!!!!!!!!

I'm finally on Ravelry! I actually did a little happy dance in my chair when I saw the invitation in my in box last night. That is all that I did today. No laundry, no vacuuming, no grocery shopping. It's like crack. Happy, happy crack.
I've spent the day adding my books, stash and current projects. Adding future projects to the queue. There are a lot of patterns in the queue. Lots of patterns. I joined groups, I checked out neighbors. It's fabulous.

I'm going back in.

So This is What We've Come to...

Besides the firm that I work for there are three other tenants on the floor of our building, which means that the other women I work with and I are sharing the bathroom with about a dozen other women total. Now anyone who has ever had to share a common bathroom with other women holds this one thing to be true.

Women are pigs.

Following is what is now hanging on the mirror in our ladies room. It probably won't take much imagination to figure out what led to this being hung up.

To the Person or persons who have been leaving “evidence” of your occupation of this bathroom (and you know perfectly well who you are so don’t just stand there getting mad or pretending you don’t know what we’re talking about):

We do realize that there is a certain freedom in anonymity and understand that since this is not your home you feel that you are not technically responsible for cleaning and maintenance of this room. However, we would like to remind you that the rest of us are forced to share this very small bathroom with you five days a week and would appreciate it if you would please observe the following niceties:

1. Flush the Toilet – No they don’t work particularly well and it frequently requires more than one flush. However, pushing a lever is not a complicated task and if you managed to dress yourself this morning you can probably handle it. Keep at it until everything has disappeared.
2. Stop Peeing on the Seat – If you must hover above the seat like a UFO from the Planet WeeWee, please turn around and look behind you when you’ve finished. If the seat is wet it’s because YOU have just peed on it. Please take a piece of toilet paper and wipe it up. Yes, it’s icky, but there is soap and water available to take care of that. Trust us; it’s less icky to clean up your own urine than it is to clean up someone else’s.
3. Stop Doing Anything Else on the Seat – If, as apparently was the case this past Tuesday, you are having – let’s just say “intestinal difficulties,” please refrain from hovering. On the off chance that you were raised in a field where it was considered acceptable to simply drop your pants and take a crap wherever you happened to be standing and so don’t realize that this is not considered appropriate here, we would like to offer this piece of advice. It’s supposed to go “In” the toilet, not “Somewhere in the General Vicinity of the Toilet.” There is no reason why an adult woman should be shitting on the floor of the ladies room.

As was mentioned earlier, no one else actually knows who you are, but you do. So instead of standing there being insulted or pretending that you have no idea that this is aimed at you, please do the rest of us the same courtesy that I’m sure you expect to have extended to yourself and stop behaving like some sort of farm animal.

Bad Blogger!

Wow. Sorry about that. It doesn't seem like its been a whole month since my last post. It just went by so quickly and so much has been going on that I didn't even notice.

In case anyone has been wondering all this time, I did stay in the city to get my copy of Harry Potter at midnight. I got a lot of comments from various friends and co-workers on Monday about a possible sanity deficiency on my part because "all the stores had plenty of copies." I wasn't afraid that they would run out - I wanted it at midnight! These people have all known me for a while. You would think that they would get the fact that I don't like to wait for things by now.


I met a woman, whose name was Karen if I remember correctly, in the knitting aisle at Borders. The two of us just sat on the floor, knitting and chatting until it was time to go line up, so it was a very pleasant evening.


There was this rather odd woman there with us - we did try to keep her included in the conversation as much as we could, but all she kept asking us was how how to knit a cape with a hood. She wasn't asking for explaination of a stitch or help understanding a pattern - she wanted me to tell her step by step how to knit a cape with a hood. She kept pulling books off the shelf, showing me patterns and asking "Would you recommend this?"or "How would you go about attaching a hood to this cape?" or "Do you think I can do this pattern?"


Not that I'm ever unwilling to help if I can, but does this ever happen to anyone else - complete strangers asking if you think they can do something? (The somewhat snarky answer is "If you have to ask, probably not.") I was really quite proud of myself for managing to not say that out loud at the time. Sometimes my mouth engages a second or two ahead of my brain. I'm sure that she was a lovely woman normally, but the whole encounter was just slightly to the left of bizarre.


Anyway, the rest of my missing month has been equally crazed. My aunt got married, I went on another camping trip with my mom and some friends, not to mention various barbeques, cookouts and get-togethers along with the usual level of insane busy-ness at work. I'm actually looking forward to the end of summer so that things will calm down and I can relax a little.



Oh, right... Christmas.

Decisions, Decisions...

I had a plan for this evening. It was a simple plan, but a good one. I was going to kill the proverbial two birds with this plan. You see, sometimes, I like to work late on Friday nights. Everybody else is always quick to get out of the office on Friday so it’s quiet. No interruptions, and I don’t have to get up early the next morning, so it’s perfect. When I do this, I’ll usually stay till about 10:00 – 11:00 – get some of the backlog from the week out of the way then get the train and go home.

My plan for tonight was to work until about 10:30 then head across the street to Borders, shop until midnight (bookstores and yarn stores are about the only places that I can shop for two hours with no problem. Anyplace else, I’m in and out as quickly as possible.) pick up Harry Potter, get the 12:50 train and read on the way home. The 12:50 gets me home a little before 2:00 AM, but I don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow, so fine.

Small glitch in the plan. The 12:50 was the train that I ended up on last night due to some unforeseen problems with a file that was scheduled to close at 9:00 this morning. So, I was in the office until twenty minutes to 1:00 last night – or rather this morning – home at a quarter to 2:00 and back on the train to come in again before 8:00 AM. I’ve been mainlining coffee this morning but I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to midnight.

I don’t know what to do. Should I stay in the city, attempt to force myself to stay awake and get the book before I go home? Should I go home, take a nap for a couple of hours and then go out around 11:00PM to be at a store on the Island at midnight? (The one drawback to that plan is that I have a feeling that the bookstore in the suburbs might be a bit more packed with overexcited children than the one upstairs from Penn Station. I was going to go to the store near my office specifically because this isn’t a residential neighborhood and I’m hoping it will be less crowded.)
Or, should I just go home, fall into bed and get up early to go get it in the morning?

Adding to my dilemma is the fact that I’m a clue behind on the Mystery Stole. Clue 4 is out today and I’ve only just started Clue 3. What I need to do this weekend is figure out a way to sleep, read and knit all at the same time.

Into the Woods

A highly successful Mother/Daughter camping trip went off pretty well all around. We went to Harriman State Park, which is pretty convenient ot the city and we're familiar with the area. It's normally a 1 1/2 - 2 hour drive, but we got a slightly later start than we planned and got caught in the Friday evening rush hour, so it ended up taking about 4 1/2 hours. Bit of a bummer, but we got there okay eventually.



We got in, got the tent up, got everything in. I got the fire going (1 match- 3 minutes to full campfire glory) I put dinner on, Mom and I sat down to play a game of Scrabble while it was cooking - and then the thunder started. Of course.



So we go rushing around, getting everything either into the tent or stowed in the car, hurried to get the food cooked and everything into the tent. The whole time the wind is picking up and lightning is flashing and the thunder is coming closer and closer. We just made it into the tent as the first drops of rain started – and it sprinkled for about five minutes. Nothing was actually even wet. It actually ended up being gorgeous all weekend. Sunny, not too hot, nice breeze.

We hadn’t been to this campground before and we had sort of mixed feelings about it. The campsites were way too close together. Actually the people on the next site were literally right on top of us. I now know more about some of their relatives than I know about some of mine. The swimming area was much too small and barely hip deep. Okay, I’m 5’10”, but still, three feet of water is hardly a refreshing swim.

On the other hand, it was kept clean and the rules and quiet hours were actually enforced. Unlike the campground we went to the year before last where the bathrooms weren’t cleaned for three days, the trash was never picked up and the idiots across the road spent the entire weekend drinking and playing the 80’s Power Ballad Collection at top volume until 3:00 AM every night.

Saturday evening after dinner I was sitting, working on my Mystery Shawl, mom was working on the afghan she’s making for my aunt, it was just about twilight and I looked up and over to my left and there was a buck about ten or twelve feet away, just standing there looking at us. He just wandered by, nibbling on things and then I looked over to the right and there was a doe following right along behind him.

Definitely a high point of the trip – and, of course, the batteries in the camera had died about fifteen minutes earlier.

Woosh

It's been a very long but very fast week. Aside from the usual busy-ness at work, my evenings have been busy getting ready for my annual camping trip with my mom.

Now, my brother and I have always loved camping. My brother and sister-in-law actually went camping for thier honeymoon and I was a counselor at a Girl Scout camp through college (I still miss having my bed outside all summer). My mother's idea of roughing it however, pretty much meant anything less than three stars. So imagine my surprise when I talked her into going tent camping a few years ago and she loved it.

Keep in mind, now, I'm talking about "go to a campground with flush toilets and showers, where you drive into a site and unload your stuff onto the spot where you'll be living for the next few days," camping as opposed to "hike up a mountain carrying everything you need to survive on your back" camping. Let's be real. But she took to it pretty enthusiastically and now we go at least once or twice every summer. Last year, we got her to camp in North Carolina for an entire week and we also got her to do this:

That's her in the front. Can't wait to see what we can get her to do next. For now, though, I need to pick what knitting projects I'm going to take with me and get some sleep.

I am Weak

You would think that someone as stubborn as I am would be a bit more strong willed. Well, strong willed I've never had trouble with, but I crumble in the face of yarn.


Despite my - well, let's call it ranting - of just four days ago about how I can't stand all the clutter and the unfinished projects lurking around the house I have in fact, started two new projects.


I have no explaination.


Well, actually, one project is within the rules. It's a cute little baby blanket that I'm making entirely out of stash yarn. No real problem there unless you count working up from the bottom of the list, but I think we can all let that slide. Right? Say right, you know you want to.


The other project, which technically hasn't been started yet, I'm having a little more trouble rationalizing. But come on along with me while I try. Here's why it's not my fault.


You see, I've been seeing mention of the MS3 project on various blogs for the past few weeks. I resisted. I think I resisted pretty admirably. But then it was mentioned yesterday that today would be the last day to sign up. I thought, I've never done a knit along before. I'll miss it. I'll never know how it comes out. How could I live with that? I decided that I couldn't and right over the edge I went. Like a Lemming. Apparently I'm a joiner. Who knew?


The problem was that if I do have any laceweight in the stash, and I'm pretty sure that I do - pink is coming to mind - I have no idea where it is. (See Monday's post) So I had to find some laceweight and wouldn't you know, they had some at Habu, which is an entirely too convenient 1 1/2 blocks from my office making it way too easy to get there at lunchtime.


There you go then, perfectly reasonable. For my penance, I will find frames for the finished pieces this weekend and finish the blue butterfly cross stitch that only needs one wing filled in to be done. Then I can start the mystery stole.

The "D" Word

I'm going on a stash diet.

This is not a decision that I've reached lightly. I know it won't be easy, but it must be done.

I did a little bit of straightening in the basement this weekend and I found at least half a dozen more of these.

This discovery has led me to an inevitable and frightening conclusion.

I have too much stuff.

And a short attention span, so I'm not really confident that the stash diet will last very long, but I digress.

I seem to have more unfinished or unstarted projects than I have finished ones. My discovery in the basement led me to start checking the rest of the hiding places, I mean closets. Please to enjoy - a small sampling of the things that I unearthed.

There's this

It's a half quilted map of the globe. I don't remember buying it. I don't remember why I would have bought it. It really doesn't go with my decor.

But I apparently did a fair amount of work on it before it crawled away to hide.

Let's see then, there's this.

I found it in a antique store in New Jersey. Every single piece in this quilt top was sewn together by hand. They wanted $40.00 for it. It was filthy and needed some repair and I actually didn't buy it when I first saw it. I kicked myself the entire week and spent two hours driving back the following Saturday hoping that it was still there. I was so happy to see it I didn't even try to haggle, and that's half the fun. I repaired it and washed it, by hand. And then folded it up and put it in a drawer.

There's this stuff. These are pieces that I've either started and put down and not picked up again or just haven't even opened yet. I must have liked these things and wanted them. (This isn't everything)

Then there are the books, the leaflets and the magazines. Who knows when I'll get to any of these.

And yet I keep buying more. Never ending, never thinking about it. There were about half a dozen things that I found duplicates of. That means that on at least six different occasions I forgot that I already had something and went out and bought another one.

I can't even explain these. They're all finished pieces. They were folded up in a box. I have no words.

So, in the next few days I will be making an inventory. I will be putting things into a rotation. Things that are almost finished will go to the top of the list. Things that are started will go next. Then I start working my way through the rest of the stash. It may not last long (remember the thing about the short attention span), but if nothing else, I'll at least have made room for more stuff.

It's getting Biblical out there...

I love thunder storms. The noise, the spectacle, I love it all. But there's a small problem around here with thunder storms. They knock out the electricity and, unfortunately, electricity is what runs the New York City transit system. It's also largely underground. Water, electricity and underground tunnels, apparently not a combination that's conducive to the moving around of several million people.

Once you manage to get across town to Penn Station, you get to take the Long Island Railroad. Which also doesn't run well in the rain. In fact, it went about 15 mph the entire way home. It took a very long time to get home tonight, and once I did get home, then I had to go back out again to pick up my mother, who was even more stuck than I was, because by the time she made it across town the railroad wasn't running at all anymore. So, fun evening all around.

Luckily, I never leave home without my trusty Bag O' Yarn. Between sitting on the train and sitting in the car, I got a whole lot o' knitting done tonight.
I had gotten maybe an inch past the split for the neck on this morning's train ride, so everything above that was done during the commute home or in the car while I waited for my mom's train.

Okay, so it was a very, very, very long trip home. But at least it was productive. Looking at it that way, it's harder to complain. Or, at least it was before the battery on my ipod died.

I'm not complaining, but...

It's been some week. They've been keeping me very, very busy at that place they make me go to earn yarn money. I've been getting home later and later every day this week and my dinners have been getting less and less - well lets just say less ideally nutritious. Monday's dinner was pretty good - pasta primavera with some nice fresh asparagus. Nothing wrong there.

Tuesday - I gave in and stopped at KFC on the way home from the train. I try to avoid fast food as much as I can, but desperate circumstances....

Tonight I had ice cream.

We'll speak no more of this.

Look...socks!

The first pair are a bit bright, aren't they? I have someone in mind for these. She's 12, I think she'll appreciate the colors. So that's one Christmas gift down.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the other socks are green. I like the color, but I'm not sure about the pattern. I know you can't see it at all, but i think it's getting lost in the color of the yarn. Odds are though, that I'm not going to pull it out to change now, so I'll probably just keep them for myself.

Two Down

I've actually (pretty much) finished two things. There's this afghan:





















which I started about a year and a half ago. Yes, it sat in a bag about 2/3 done for that long until I came across it and decided to finish. I tried a few different patterns with this yarn, but nothing made me happy. Everything I tried just interfered with the color changes.



All those endless rows of stockinette threatened to make me crazy, but I was saved by the pretty colors.

















I've also (sort of) finished the striped shawl.



I finished the knitting anyway. It still needs to be blocked and fringed, but I'll knock that out over the weekend.

I really need to get it finished because it's absolutely freezing in the office. The guys don't seem to notice it quite as much. They really don't understand the connection between the cold and the fact that the rest of us keep having to run to the ladies room every hour.

No Pictures Today...

I suspect that the digital camera has gone to a Yankees game. I may have to break down and get one of my own. I will, however describe for you what would be in the pictures if I could, in fact find the camera.

1. These are the plants that I spent most of my money on at the garden center yesterday. We should have a good supply of zuccini this summer, along with some nice eggplant and several different varieties of tomatoes. (My mother finds it amusing that I grow tomatoes, since I don't actually like tomatoes and don't eat them.)

2. These are the geraniums that I've been growing in pots in the house since last year. I'm going to have the biggest geraniums on the block this summer.

3. Here are the two hydrangeas that came home in pots at Easter. They probably could have gone outside a few weeks ago, but I've been sort of busy the past few weekends and so they're going out now. They'll look good next to the driveway.

4. See the pretty peach rosebush. Note to self - roses have thorns that will cut your hands even through gardening gloves. Be more careful next time.

5. In case you were thinking that this was somehow a yarn free weekend - how silly of you. Since, as I mentioned, I'm trying to get out and meet other knitters - instead of ordering things off the internet as I usually do, I actually went looking for a few yarn stores in my area. One I wasn't too impressed with - not much of a selection. The other may be a bit more promising - I'll have to go back and check it out again. I did get some nice Regia sock yarn, though. That will be my train project for this week. I may have to start travelling a bit farther afield.

I also made a stop at AC Moore - they had Sugar 'n Cream cotton on sale for $1 a ball so I grabbed a few just in case I ever decide to knit someone a washcloth. I'm actually thinking about running over and grabbing a few more this afternoon.

What in the World?

Okay. Let me explain what happened here. I actually started this bag in different colors and ended up not liking them. Also, I like big tote bags beause I commute from Long Island to Manhattan every day on the Railroad so I need to carry a bunch of stuff with me and I didn't think the bag was coming out big enough. So when I decided to do it in different colors, I also decided to make it bigger. I'm really hoping that I shrinks a lot when I put it into the washing machine. Actually, I'm hoping for a pretty miraculous amount of shrinking. For my first big Fair Isle project though, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.

I think it's going to be a while though, before I find out how much I can shrink it. I've only got one handle done and the bag's place in the lineup has been usurped by my new shawl.

I've decided that since it's summer now, I'm probably not going to use the wool bag before Fall, so I don't feel bad. And now that the air conditioning is on in my office, I really need the shawl. Apparently they're trying to make up for the fact that we couldn't wear sweaters all winter because the heat was so high we couldn't breathe. How considerate of them.

I wonder if it's possible to get frostbite indoors in June?

The shawl is made from Paton's Soy Wool Stripes in Natural Earth. I'm liking the feel of the yarn and I can't even begin to tell you how much I love self striping yarn. I don't know why I find it so fascinating to watch the colors change. I'll just go with thinking its a good thing to be so easily amused.

I'd Like to Buy a Flea, Please

Mom and I spent the day today at the Spring Flea Market in Ocean Grove, NJ. Ocean Grove is a gorgeous little town on the Jersey Shore, full of pretty victorian houses and cute little shops right on the beach. There's a concert series at the Great Auditorium every summer and if you ever get a chance to go, you should.

I love these flea markets, they do one in Spring and one in the Fall. There are probably a couple hundred vendors there and the place was packed with shoppers.

<----(That's the Auditorium)

Of course, since no day is complete without knitting, I did this while we were waiting for a table to have lunch at a restaurant on Main Street.

At what point are you considered to have crossed the line between hobby and obsession?

Welcome to my Blog!

If you're reading this - let's face it, you're probably lost. But, as long as you're here.....

Hi! My name is Jennifer and welcome to my very first blog entry ever.

You may be wondering ( I know I am) why I would decide to start a blog considering that I do absolutely nothing that could possibly be considered interesting to any other human on the planet besides my mother.

Well.... I knit.

There, I've said it. They say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem.

It's not so much that I want to solve the problem. It's more that I want to find some other knitters to talk to. Sort of a Knitter's Anonymous sort of thing. My non-knitting friends ( a category that includes just about every person that I know) all used to find me vaguely amusing. Lately they're starting to look at me like I jumped into a great big pile of crazy and just rolled around in it for a while. Nobody will go to yarn stores with me anymore. Apparently they're not falling for it anymore when I say "I just need one thing." (Which is perfectly true, but has nothing to do with how much I buy while I'm in there.) It used to be easier to distract them with the pretty colors.

So, this has led me to the decision that I need more friends. Knitting friends. Friends who understand this...

and this....

This is just what happens to be handy at the moment.

Oh, and also, as seems to be required by the rules of knitting bloggerdom - I have a (slightly blurry) cat.

I just can't get her to keep still long enough right now to take a better picture than this.