Facelift

Well, I haven't yet figured out how to get the pictures from my phone onto my computer, and I've got a loooong to-do list to finish up before I go out of town on Wednesday, so it's not likely to happen before I leave. But I did figure out how to change some colors and stuff, to make this blog a bit prettier (and a bit more "me"). So, enjoy!

Rest assured, I'm working hard to find a good sweater pattern to work while I'm at my denomination's Big Meeting in Connecticut. And I will take WIP pictures of whatever pattern I choose. Maybe you'll even get to see them someday.

Until then, please enjoy this picture I found on my harddrive, from the 2005 Iowa State Fair. No, I have no idea who those people are. (Hi, People! I hope you don't mind being posted on my blog!)

Slowly improving

My one-year Blogiversary has come and gone completely unnoticed. My poor, poor, neglected blog!

The good news is twofold, however.
1. I got a new (free!) phone. It has a built-in camera. I've already started taking WIP pictures and other knitting-related pix, and as soon as I can figure out how to get them from phone to computer, I will post them here.
2. I've been knitting! Actually knitting! I just finished the most adorable pair of baby pants for a church friend's newly-one-year-old boy. I did them in an olive green superwash wool. They're wayyyyy too big for him still, but it doesn't even matter. The pants are adorable, Baby Ben is adorable, and it will all work out in the end.

Also, the new Knitty is up. It's about dang time!

My technology guru (read: fiance) is going out of town tomorrow, and then I will also be going out of town late next week. I may or may not be able to figure out how to post the pictures on my own. If I can, I will do it before I begin my travels. If not, you're going to have to wait until I come back and I will make Joel do it. That's what technology gurus are for, isn't it?

On Tragedy and Hope

Oh, don't you wish you could knit the world back together?

I'm so sad for the community at Virginia Tech. And I'm also sad for my own undergrad's personal tragedy that came to a head yesterday, when someone found the body of a student who'd been missing since last September. So much sadness in our world this week.

But I also have a great deal of hope today. Tomorrow I travel home to spend a weekend with my parents, doing some wedding planning and some secret knitting. More important than all that, though, is a super-important meeting on Sunday afternoon: a meeting that decides the fate of my career in ministry, I suppose, as my Association decides whether or not to approve me to apply for jobs. If you're the praying type, please send up a good word for me. If you're not, then please cross your fingers. And either way, knit me some good Spirit and eloquent speech on Sunday afternoon.

Thank you.

From Drought to Surplus

I really need to get a digital camera.

I've been doing some good knitting lately, and (mostly) I've been not buying yarn, trying to save money for the wedding. It's only four months away, after all. The one exception has been that my second-favorite yarn store is closing this month, and I did pop in to take advantage of the please-take-away-this-yarn sale. And I bought an umbrella swift (my very own!), because, well, it's a swift and it was on major sale, and I am not a fool. And I did set it up and wind one ball of wool today, and it officially works and everything. It's a wooden swift, and I have no idea who made it, because there were no identifying features but the price tag.

So now I'm looking for a good sweater pattern for a lovely hand-died variegated heavy-worsted wool. It's Naturwolle by Ingeborg Michels, in the Steppe color, which is a lovely rust and sage and creme and mustard combo. I was thinking the Lace Leaf Pullover from Loop-d-Loop, but I think that requries a chunkier yarn than this is. I have yet to do a gauge swatch, though, so I could be wrong.

It's funny, a few months ago I went through quite an inspiration drought. Now, however, I'm full of knitting ideas -- so many that it's almost paralyzing. And my right wrist has been hurting lately, in a repetitive-motion-injury kind of way. Not cool. Plus, I'm super-busy right now (wedding planning, lots more travelling than usual, and the job hunt is finally picking up), so I don't have the time to go somewhere and pore over books until I find the perfect pattern for this yarn. But oh! I'm itching to do a sweater now. Now that it's spring, and there's no need for one anymore.

I am quite excited about a quick project I've been working on, though. I've designed my own fingerless-gloves-with-mitten flap, and I'm almost done with the second hand. I'm using Malabrigo, the lovely dark blue color (that's my color, you know), but the finger-stubs are a lovely mustardy yellow-orange. If I had a digital camera, I'd post a picture. But I don't. Maybe someday. Would it be considered uncouth to register for one? I'm sure Macy's has a lovely selection.

Woods, Women, and Hot Tubs

I just spent a fabulous weekend of renewal and reconnecting in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, with ten of my seminary girlfriends. And yes, I finished the Clapotis. It's gooooorgeous. I only wish we'd gotten a picture of it. We didn't.

But we did get a picture of this, my new secret knitting.

I'm not talking about it, in case Joel checks my blog.

In related news, we're getting married in August. Yes, that's this August.

My girlfriend also took a picture of this:

My bridesmaid Cindy, proudly wearing a hat I knitted for her two years ago when we graduated. It's particularly well-preserved because Cindy lives in Houston and has little need for a super-chunky 100% wool hat. But gosh it's cute! Please disregard the beer. And please note that I did not knit the scarf, but it was lovingly made for Cindy by our seminary friend John (who is a preacherman and a husband and a daddy and a knitter, all at the same time). She was really excited to be in the general proximity of weather that required, well, any kind of warm-making clothing at all.

Back in the Saddle

So, remember that knitting lull I'd been in back in, oh, September or whatever? Well, it kind of lasted... and lasted... and lasted... until I started to wonder if I was ever going to knit something that truly excited me ever again. I kept knitting, but much of it was half-hearted. I did knit some gloves for Joel and a scarf for his mom for Christmas, but that was pretty much it. (I never did fix the botched beret, nor have I finished the seams of the Sunrise Circle Jacket I made last summer.) I kept looking through my books, looking through my magazines. The Winter 2006 Interweave Knits didn't do anything to help. The Winter 2006 Knitty didn't do anything to help. The three books I bought at Christmas (hooray for gift cards!) didn't do anything to help (except to point out that I've been buying the wrong yarn for what I really wanted to knit, and that I'm too poor to buy any more). Even the closing of the most awesome yarn store in Des Moines didn't help me much, because half of the yarn I bought over the phone is still in my parents' house, and I don't really remember what is there.

But! This week, a switch flipped. The Spring 2007 IK arrived in my mailbox this week. Suddenly, I'm sorting through my stash, figuring out what I've got that I can knit right now. I love, like, five of those patterns, and can't wait to start them. But I don't have any of the right yarn. Sooooo, I cast on for the Clapotis I've been meaning to make for a while but just haven't felt 100% thrilled about. But of course, now I do. I'm using a variegated olive-colored merino by Twisted Sisters, and my brand-new Lantern Moon size 8s, and I can't put it down. Thrilled!

Then I went to two different yarn stores yesterday and spent about $140 -- mostly on yarn, but I also bought LaceStyle, which I have been awaiting eagerly for months. (And the women at the LYS said they think I'm the first customer to buy it. An honorable distinction, surely.) Funny enough, I only bought yarn for one of the projects in my new IK -- the Clementine Shawlette. The rest was just random "oooh, I want that" yarn, or stuff for the Labyrinth Rug, which I started six months ago and put down because I was bored (19 and 3/4 yards of the same 22 stitches is a lot of very monotonous knitting). And with the new yarn for the rug comes a new desire for those monotonous 22 stitches.

So, now I'm knitting like a madwoman on my very first Clapotis, ready to jump back into the Labyrinth Rug, and plotting and planning for the Clementine Shawlette and several other projects as well. Oh, and this morning I designed a swing jacket while listening to the sermon, and I've got the yarn all picked out for that, too, I just have to go buy it. Wait wait wait wait. I only have so many hands!

It's good to be back.

Here's looking at you, kid

So, Joel's cat has finally taken to me. I moved in a year ago, and I am so incredibly pleased that Doc-the-kitty has started voluntarily climbing into my lap to sleep and purr and be petted.

Doc is a great cat. Smart, funny, still running and jumping and playing like a kitten, even though he's an old man of nine years old, and beginning to go gray, like one of those silverback gorillas, except he's a silver-cravat kitty. He's got the mellowness of middle/old age, observant and critical, yet detached and cool. He rarely takes an interest in my knitting. I think he's batted at a moving ball of yarn maybe twice, and only because the yarn was already sitting next to him. He would never, say, cross a room to interfere with my knitting. Or bother yarn that is just sitting there not moving or attached to anything.

So I'm sure you can imagine my surprise (and not delight) to come home from work on Monday and discover a lovely ball of Knit One Crochet Too's Douceur et Soie on the floor, severed by little kitty-teeth from the swatch I was knitting. Sigh. That's a $30-a-ball cashmere and silk blend. I have no idea how much he ate. It could have been nothing, it could have been several yards.

I guess it's nice to know that our cat has good taste.

Sunflower Tam in Action

Our friends Christy and Doug hosted a Scottish Night last week... any excuse to dress like a fool and speak with a brogue! If I can get this photosharing thing to work, you'll be able to see the Sunflower Tam being put to good use. If not, you'll probably just see a bunch of html mumbo-jumbo.




Hey, it worked! Sweet! My blog becomes a zillion times better, in the blink of a ctrl+v