a little traveling company

Well… OK. Not exactly completely unknown. But that makes such a nice post title, don’t you think?

I’m actually taking off for a couple of days to the DC area on business. I’m not sure that I will have time for doing anything fun non-work-related pursuits. But if I do and if there is a yarn shop within spittin’ distance, I will find it and yarn will be fondled and perhaps there will be a Stash Enhancing Experience.

Just in case that doesn’t happen, I’m taking a few things with me. The unfinished socks are the Salish Sea Socks, Cat Bordhi’s pattern for the December Rockin’ Sock Club offering. The yarn is Socks That Rock medium in Bella Coola. I really love this yarn, and I love Cat’s pattern, and I am determined to finish these before I return. I think I deserve to knit something fun, considering how long I worked on the clown barf stripy socks.

At the top of the picture are two skeins of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Pioneer.

At the bottom, is a skein of Blue Moon Socks That Rock lightweight in Pirates Booty. It has almost the same colors in it as the Great Adirondacks yarn did. But I have a feeling this will knit up way differently.

There shouldn’t be an unpleasant surprises from any of this yarn. I’ve never met STR I didn’t like. And my experience with Lorna’s Laces had been good, too. I know that I have more than I like to remember several skeins of recently acquired yarn that I’ve been saying I must knit now with. But for this trip I decided instead to do a little deep-stash diving. These three skeins have been marinating for awhile, and I think it’s time for it to bubble to the top.

I may check in from time to time, but I won’t have any way to get new pictures uploaded. Not that there will be much interesting for me to see inside a conference room. But if there is, I’ll show you when I get back.

a bevy of knitters

OK. We’ll go back to talking about knitting, now. But before we do… did you read the incredulous tone of the pingback to the previous post? … That’s right, a blogger whose focus is knitting hacked WordPress… 😆 The ping came from a very nice person who is as unhappy with the WP admin panels as I am, so I don’t want to give him any grief. (But I did wander over to his blog and tease him just a little.)

Thursday night I definitely left my comfort zone, but I had the best time! Several months ago, I had been asked to speak about Judy’s Magic Cast-on at the April meeting of the Tigard Knitting Guild. I was very pleased and excited to accept.

And I started thinking that I really should try to figure out exactly what I was going to say. And then I got busy and I didn’t. But I did think about teaching JMCO to a crowd and wondering exactly how people in the back were going to see it. The largest group I’ve taught it to before would probably be one of my sock classes. And that would be around five or six intrepid knitters.

This was around… 50. 😯

A week ago at Tangle, I spied some US#19 circular needles – these are really big, gentle reader. I bought two – one in wood and one in metal. And I bought two balls of the bulkiest yarn I could find in the brightest colors that Alice had, and I hatched a plot.

more knitters

At the appointed time I arrived at the appointed place. I had yarn, needles, my current projects and a few items to show some cool things that JMCO can be used to do. There weren’t many people there yet, and I knew some of them. All were warm and welcoming, and I was invited to join a table. I sat and knitted and waited for the meeting to began and reminded myself that it would be a good idea to figure out what I was going to say.

Now, I know I am going to hear howls of protest when I say this, but I’m really a shy person. Once I get to know people, then I’m not shy at all. But in crowds where I don’t know people… yeah. I realize that some people are totally comfortable speaking to thousands of people. I’m not one of them. I have to force myself to come out of my shell and talk to people. Even knitters. And the knitters kept coming and coming and coming. And I just kept knitting and knitting and knitting. I knit two inches on the Salish Sea Socks – last December’s Rockin’ Sock Club pattern – all of which had to be frogged out the next day.

The meeting got rolling, and before I knew it, I was being introduced. I rose from my chair, waved at the crowd, took a deep breath, and started in.

It turns out that my voice is loud enough that I didn’t need a mike. Whodda thunk it? (I hear you laughing out there.)

I totally winged it, telling about how I had developed JMCO when I was home sick, and why it was cool. And then I called for volunteers. One volunteer played Judy’s Index Finger, and one volunteer played Judy’s Thumb. I handed each a ball of yarn, tied the ends together in the middle, and, holding up my humongo needles, demonstrated the cast on. The needles were so big that I actually needed both hands to hold them and loop the yarn around. Once I had demo’d, I showed off a few FOs that I had started with JMCO: two pairs of socks, and The Wings Of The Raven, and a bag that I’m pretty sure I started with JMCO. Well… I could have, so it got the point across.

and even more knitters

And then I wandered amongst the tables, helping the knitters master JMCO and having a really marvelous time with everyone. In the pictures, you can see a bunch of wonderful knitters, concentrating on winding that yarn just right.

When I had circled the entire room and made it back to my table, I answered questions, took a few photos, thanked everyone for welcoming me into their fold, and sat down with relief. I used almost exactly my allotted time. Whew.

It was amazing and fun and I’m so glad that I did it! But I’m not sure that I’m even going to become comfortable speaking in front of crowds.

I’d also like to talk to you a bit more about the Great Adirondacks Soxie yarn. The link is just the first place I found that actually had a picture of the color. As you were, I was a bit surprised that they compared this yarn to Koigu. It’s nothing like. For one thing, although it felt softer after washing and would be OK to wear, it’s obviously not Merino. And the most obvious difference: I’ve never had Koigu pool or stripe. Ever. I couldn’t keep this from striping.

Interestingly enough, at the TKG meeting I sat next to Karen, who was knitting lace with this same yarn in a blue and green colorway. And, although I could see that the colors in the ball were lovely, in the scarf the colors looked darker and just not as luminous. Karen mentioned that this was the second time she’d used Great Adirondacks, and both times she’d been disappointed with the colors – lovely in the skein, not so much in the FO. And she had not knit socks either time! So I feel vindicated.

I still haven’t decided what to do with that second skein. I think it will need to be something like entrelac to get the biggest punch from the colors that I can.

clown-barf-socks

OK. So can you tell that I’m happy that the clown barf stripy socks are finished? Oh, I cannot begin to express my joy at this event!

I don’t hate them. Really. But I want you to follow this link and then scroll down until you find High Desert. Then pop the bigger picture up.

That’s the yarn that I saw in the skein. Glorious, isn’t it? Whodda thunk it that it would knit up like this? The colors in the sock picture are brighter than they actually appear in real life. It’s early in the morning and raining again so the light was a little weird.

These socks had it in for me right up until the last. I finished up the ribbing, and leaned forward in my chair to fetch my needles from my knitting bag. As I sat back I heard crrruunnnchhh. Yep. Broke two harmony needles. One from each circular. Aaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh I’m not safe around wooden things, apparently. I’d best stick to metal.

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Great Adirondack Yarn Co. Soxie, 100% wool, 360 yds/skein, in color High Desert
• Needles: US#1, Knit Picks Harmony circulars
• Pattern: my own – toe-up, short-row heel, plain stockinette. Started with Judy’s Magic Cast-on, of course

In completely non-knitting, techie news, I’ve been fighting with the new WP 2.5 admin panels. All I can say is ICK. The write panels were especially horrible, as all of the little check boxes and drop-down lists were moved under the post write area, making it necessary to scroll for a bazillion miles every time I posted. Which I realize has not been often lately, but let’s not digress.

A long, long, long thread started over in the WordPress.org support forum amongst those of us not happy with the new arrangement. The end result was that this intrepid reporter, along with a few others, made changes to the panels to make them more usable. You can see a picture of the new panel here

If you are a self-hosted WP 2.5 user and would like to incorporate these changes, you can download them here, although I think this is the version that has an extraneous comma in the draft list. Or, to get the very latest version, download directly from the WordPress bug report. The files all go in wp-admin/, except for global.css, which goes in wp-admin/css/. Sorry, I can’t help you if you are on WordPress.com.

Didn’t know I had such mad codr skilz, didja? 😆

strange flower

My camellia starts blooming around Christmas, and is done by the end of February. It’s bright and cheery pink flowers always lift my spirit when I see them through my kitchen and dining room windows during the dark, gloomy winter days. Each flower stays pink through its life. Then in the end they drop off whole and the ground around the bush is littered with pink and brown globes.

This year it’s continued to bloom, and it’s just finishing up now. This year, most of the flowers did their usual thing. Except for this one. I don’t know if it was because of the warm days followed by cold and wet again. But, this one turned orange. I was so surprised when I saw it that I ran out in the rain and snapped a picture.

It’s gone now. It didn’t leave in the normal way, either. The petals dropped off one by one, and the base of the flower is still on the tree.

Very strange.

I’m about 1/2 way up the legs on the clown barf stripy socks. Stay tuned for knitting news.

In techie news, I have upgraded to WordPress 2.5. Can’t say I’m entirely pleased with the admin panels. I had to hack the life out of the new media uploader and the write panels to make them usable. But there are other things I do like about it. So the jury is out. I’m used to hacking WP. But the previous release (2.3) finally incorporated most of my changes. Now I’m back at square one. Ah well.

I’ve looked at it under IE 7, Firefox and Safari and it looks OK. Let me know if you find anything broken.

almost blossoms

It’s been that kind of day.

It started when I realized that the blog feed was not working, so my April fools post – which was actually created on April 1st – was delivered on April 2nd, if at all. Well… that sort of killed the joke, eh?

Having chewed on that problem for a bit, I headed out to the kitchen. There I popped a cup of coffee in my old, trusty microwave to reheat, while I gazed out the back door on my yard – sunny and, dare I say, springlike? The picture shows what my yard really looks like today. See the blue, blue sky and the cherry blossoms about to pop? Ah… finally. The snow picture was from January, 2007, and I do not want to see that return.

As I stood contemplating the return of spring, I heard what can only be described as a groan behind me. A groan, and then a thud, and then silence. I turned in horror. The microwave had died. It completed its mission to heat my cup of coffee. And it was dead. As dead as Marley’s ghost. Deader, actually, as Marley’s ghost could speak and rattle his chains. But Micro (as it was known to friends and family), could do neither. It was as dead as a doornail.

And why, gentle reader, do we use that phrase? Are doornails any more dead than, say, door knobs or window sashes or venetian blind slats? It seems they must, somehow, be. But I digress.

Since the demise of the old refrigerator, Micro has been the oldest of my major appliances. It has been my good and trusty servant for 20 years (it was actually older than #1 Son). In its youth, it was quite something – a combination microwave/convection oven that was rather expensive when purchased. I felt very proud when it came home to my kitchen. It had been repaired once, under warranty, but since then it had never missed a beat. Many a healthy and tasty meal were cooked in it, and certainly I got my money’s worth out of it. But in latter days, in deference to its extreme old age, it was more likely to warm a cup of coffee or pop the occasional bag of popcorn.

The last year or two it has made some sort of strange noises now and again. But it kept right heating up whatever I tossed its way with few complaints. Although I knew that in microwave years it was an ancient beast, it seemed to be one of those eternal things that are always there. I assumed that someday #1 Son would come to take care of my worldly possessions when I no longer needed them, and would find a good home for Micro. I just never expected to have to replace it. Poor Micro. The groan it gave as its last gasp was truly pitiable.

Thus I contemplated its life and mourned its death as I sipped my piping hot cup of coffee. Thank you, Micro, for warming my morning.

fruit bouquet

Tomorrow is one of my colleague’s birthday, and this fruit bouquet was sent to mark the occasion. Isn’t this just yummy? What a good idea instead of flowers!

The card said that it should be eaten within 4 hours, and so my colleague asked us all to help out. Who am I to turn down such a heartfelt plea?

Those roundish white things that you see – bananas dipped in white and dark chocolate. Yeah. To die for. And chocolate-covered strawberries. And I can report that the melons, oranges and grapes were quite tasty as well. I had to help out, right? 😉

The fruit fueled my after-work excursion to the local big-box store in search of a new microwave. Not a replacement, mind you, because nothing could replace Micro. But a new one that could do the job.

I found that the state of the art has progressed somewhat over the last 20 years. Microwaves are smaller, lighter and have tons of features for a rather small price. I was pleasantly surprised. I opted not to get one that has a convection over in it. I really haven’t used that feature much and I didn’t want to pay extra for it. But I found a nice, medium-sized microwave and brought it home.

The new microwave and I will need to get used to each other. In Micro’s honor, I decided to start with a bag of popcorn. The first bag was… burned to a crisp darned near burned the kitchen down set off the fire alarm a bit over-popped. The second bag was much better. I believe that, over time, we will grow used to each other’s ways. If I am lucky, this microwave will last even 1/2 as long as Micro did.

I do feel badly about missing Wednesday night knitting. Next week, for sure.

snow?

What a day today!

It snowed 6″ at my house and I was completely trapped in. See the picture?

Mt. St. Helens is erupting and Mt. Hood is rumbling. A scientist has predicted that all of the Cascade volcanoes are likely to explode any day now.

President Bush announced new surcharges on wool. We know those knitters won’t mind paying a little extra. They probably won’t even notice, he said as he sign the new Take Their Wool and Run bill into law.

All three of my cats existed peacefully together today with no squabbles or spats.

The major oil companies decided that they didn’t really need such large profits and the price of gas dropped instantly to $0.50 per gallon.

#1 Son has decided to give up his rock ‘n roll lifestyle and study accounting.

And I finished the clown barf stripy socks.

Yeah…

April fools. 😀