Safe and Warm

We survived the weekend. On Saturday we got this: Which wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been; snow, but not as much ice as was forecast; it rained on Sunday, it wasn’t warm enough to melt the snow, but it didn’t get quite cold enough to freeze everything, either – now we just have crunchy snow.

Zelda tested it out for us and reported it to be uninviting

Saucey stayed in.

Oh, and I got this:

my swap package from the Harvest Sock Swap. My partner Sharon made the “I Love Gansey Sock” in a nice sage green color. She also tucked in several other nice goodies. Some yummy sock yarn from the "a swell yarn shp" site and another pattern called Falling Leaves; some leaf shaped chocolate and a cool little tote bag that comes all folded up inside a little mini-tote. Perfect for keeping in my purse so when I go to the store for just a couple items I can use it instead of taking home another plastic bag.

On the knitting front, the hoodie is almost: That is it’s a complete sweater minus the hood and pocket. With gauge issues behind me, this turned out to be a very quick knit. The only part of the pattern I changed was that I knitted it mostly in the round instead of flat as the pattern calls for. I switched to working back and forth for the raglan shaping only because of using two colors. I worked the color sections like intarsia. Otherwise in one color I would have just worked in the round right up to the neck shaping. Hopefully I’ll have a finished picture to post in the next day or so.

A Tale of Two Socks

This weekend was a little bit of a whirlwind travel weekend. My hubby has been promising his family a visit, so since he had today off for Columbus Day, he decided we should drive to Des Moines, IA on Saturday. Fine, great, 6 hour drive, lots of knitting time! Well I did actually get some knitting accomplished.

Since we left just after the morning paper arrived, 1st there was that to read. Then I did settle into a good knitting groove. I was making excellent progress on the HSS sock and we were almost to Des Moines when I did the thing where you smooth and stretch your work out to admire it and then…. Uh, oh! There it was a big mistake – right at the end of the pattern rows.... grrr…4 ½ hours of knitting … wasted.

So I did the only logical thing; put it in impound and got out the other sock OTN to work on. That’s the surf sock which is kind of slow going right now because I’m stopping every other row to make note of what I’m doing. I want to get the charting done while I’m working on it so I can write up the pattern. The good news is my SIL took me to one of the local yarn shops near where she lives. It is a very nice shop and I found a couple of goodies for my HSS pal. So once the sock is done, the box will be quick to put together. We also went to JoAnne to look for fabric to slipcover an ottoman she wants to update. I found the fabric I needed to line the felted purse, so that project is very near completion.

On Sunday, we left a lot later than we thought we would, so the knitting didn’t progress too much further (it had to be called on account of darkness).

Today was more about laundry and errands and keeping DH company, so I only got a few rounds done while waiting for him to get a hair cut. That went like this: knit 1 round, begin second round, knit across needle 1 and partway across two; notice mistake, fiddle with stitches to fix “mistake” knit to next needle, recognize mistake was not a mistake, because it was on the needle not knit yet… tink back two rounds, update chart, knit 1 round. Put sock back in bag, go grocery shopping.

Next up: frogging the HSS sock and trying to finish it.

Mostly, I have had some sort of sinus-allergy-traveling related doozy of a headache all weekend. Do you think this is why I’m making all of these silly mistakes in my knitting?

Festival and WIPs

We had a busy weekend! The weather was beautiful which helped immensely. We got up and went out to breakfast Saturday morning and then drove up to WI for the Harvest Moon Farm festival (more here). It was actually more of a rabbit show with a few distractions thrown in. There were LOTS of rabbits, goat, sheep, even a couple of cute kittens, a puppy, some spinners and a giant kaleidoscope. Not much else, but we found it charming. We saw a few knitters too. Mary, Sherry, Lynn and Lynn from my Weds Morning Koffee Klatch group checked it out, too.




(Picture L-R, Mary, Sherry and Me)

Since it was such a nice day, we really didn’t mind getting out and about and stopped at an orchard for apples on the way home~ got a bag of honey crisp apples, some yummy cider, a jar of cherry preserves and some homemade caramels; double yum. (I plan on baking apple cake tonight for DH).

I poked around some in ravelry, but only got some of my books entered and a shaky start on my projects. Like I said before, I’ll be taking it in baby steps.

Oh, and I knit, too. I started the Christmas present for SD#2, cast on and worked the ribbing for surf socks (same as tidal pool, different color yarn), and I swatched, and cast on socks for HSS pal. Whew!
Saucey says: “pet me or no blogging today!”

Zelda says: “hey, how come she always gets to blog?”

Plodding along

It’s raining right now. Fortunately I got out early and took a nice walk this morning (about 2 ¼ miles with a few stops to shop along the way). I really need to do more of that. It was very humid and overcast, so I knew the rain was coming (that and the forecast said we’d get some today, Ha, Ha).

I did a little shopping and scouting for goodies for my Harvest Sock Swap Pal and after looking thru my stash decided the yarn I needed wasn’t to be found, but I did find some nice yarn online and ordered some so hopefully the shipping won’t take too long. In the meantime, I’ll have time to decide on the pattern. I have ideas.
I was hoping to start on some fall decorating today and got as far as bringing in one of the totes from the garage. Oh, well.

In the family news, my great niece has finally made her arrival! Kayla Mae was born yesterday evening. As soon as I have details or a picture, I will add those.

I’m almost halfway done with the afghan square so hopefully I can get it done for the group tomorrow.

Here are the two girlie cats anticipating their next meal.

Monday Miscellany

Lots of things going on since my last post, so this might ramble a bit. On Thursday we drove to MI for my Step-Daughter's wedding which was on Friday. The town she lives in is sort of small and there's not much to do. They were already having dinner when we got there, so we settled into the hotel then headed out to find a place to eat; before dinner my Husband did let me visit the LYS which is actually a really nice shop. He even encouraged me to buy some yarn (woo hoo!) I got some alpaca at 50% off and some gorgeous hand dyed merino that is very silky and soft. Plus a random amount of linen yarn for $2.00 from the clearance bin. The linen is actually enough to use for the eye-pillow pattern by Cat Bordhi.

I did get my Lotus Blossom Tank finished in time to wear for the wedding.

DH took this picture, I wanted him to zoom in to get a good shot of the tank, but, well you know how husbands like instructions… but as you can see, IT FITS! (Gotta love my picture face)

Here are some of the pictures from the wedding.

It was a very simple affair at the court house attended by the bride and grooms 3 kids, us, and the groom’s dad. The dads signed as witnesses. We went to the historic courthouse downtown to take more pictures then took the new family out for dinner. Since all the kids needed naps by then, we hit the road for home. My DH was so good to me he let me stop at another yarn shop on the way home! This one was about what you would expect in a small town. The funny thing is, the owners have been hitting all the fiber related events promoting a murder mystery centered on the yarn shop-if you know what I’m talking about and have read the book …. Well let’s just say that it is fiction... They are nice people, so I’m trying to be nice here, but the shop didn’t really live up to the hype. I did find some Wildfoote in Ragtime color way though… Other than the traveling, the rest of the weekend was pretty much the usual running here and there and watching too much Baseball/Football on TV. (My poor crippled Cardinals). And yes, for some reason my husband thinks the Cubs might actually have a chance this year….

I only worked on a square for the afghan my Koffee Klutch knitting group is making for one of the member’s son who is in Kuwait right now. We might get it done by the time he gets home. I’m trying to do reversible cables, but I had to frog the whole thing when I got home because somewhere right in the middle I messed up on the cable repeats and it looked goofy. So I had to do math and start over. (I figured out I had 2 stitches too many for the cable design). Now the cables are coming out more smoothly, but I only have about 3 inches done.

Mostly I spent my knitting time compiling a list of patterns that I would like to try and sorting out the growing collection of magazines and books that are threatening to take over my coffee table. Next I need to match the list to my stash (ravelry are you ready for me yet?) (2611 people are ahead of you in line).

Still no money or response from DFAS, so I had to call them again (pout); got an even bigger runaround than last time. Grrr

I did get my Harvest Sock Swap pal assignment, so now I need to start planning some cool socks for her.
Oh and I got a job of sorts. I’m going to be working in the Church office on Friday mornings to help out with phones and stuff. Our secretary left to take a better paying job and since finances were a little tight anyway the church board decided not to hire a new one right away, but instead asked for volunteers to staff the office…. which sounded like something I could do. Kind of a win-win thing, I’ll be serving and I’ll have something interesting to do.