Summer Knitty

Why does the only pattern that I like on the Knitty summer page have to be piquant? I can't knit piquant! I'll eat piquant, but I won't knit it. I like to knit mild.

Malcolm on the Hunt

Here is Malcolm stalking down some prey. He circles steadily coming in for a taste.

Triumphant Malcolm digs into his meal eagerly.

SSNB Knitter's Digest 6/25/07

Our meeting took place in Studio 2. We never figured out what was happening in our usual area. And we owe the front desk guy a cupcake. N was working on a sweater. F was working on her shrug. M was working on a silk shawl. T was working on a red capelet. M was working on a pocket for a conference bag.

We talked a little bit about working out. Buff men at the gym aren't interested in anyone but themselves in the mirror so there's nothing to worry about. We also had a run down of people's pets. Everyone has their own way to get the cat to take its medicine. Some people like giving dogs peanut butter, medicine or no medicine, because it's fun to watch them eat it. And a reminder to all, the fiber fest bus trip is to Allegan, MI not Livonia, MI. Evidently there is a big difference.

Shawl Follies

I have cast on and off for the new shawl to replace the lost shawl about 3-4 times. This is a 291 stitch cast on. I cannot say I'm giddy and skipping around casting on all these stitches. Then I knit two rows, then I get into some bind offs to get the patterns started. I have never made it through this bind off row without leaving the wrong number of stitches at the end of the needle. When I'm done with this 291 stitch row of madness, I'm supposed to have 3 stitches left on the needle. This has never worked. My next plot is to try and mark the sets of bind offs with stitch markers, but I need 32 to get the job done. I'm not sure that I have 32. I'll exhaust my supply and move onto yarn scraps. It is after all a good way to destash. Here’s to getting through row 4 for the first time!

Meanwhile, this is not a hamster, but it's funny anyway. If my hamster could do this move, he would.

Malcolm Escaped

So where was I instead of my SNB meeting? I was cleaning out the hamster cage. I had been out of town for a while so I needed to regroup. For some inane reason I opened the door to the cage that I wasn't cleaning where the hamster was sleeping peacefully. I forgot to close it. I absentmindedly cleaned out his smaller cage, felt a sense of accomplishment and went back to clean his main cage. He was gone. I looked around for him inside for a while and then realized I had left his door open.

I looked around my place for sights and sounds of a small hamster and came up empty. Then I thought MY STASH!!!!!!!! When Malcolm runs around in his ball, he spends an awful lot of time hanging out by my stash closet. I ran back in my room, sure enough the closet door was open. (I can't really close it seeing as stash is perpetually oozing out.) My precious stash! If he's in my stash I'm gonna kill him! I sealed off the closet with his playpen gate and put a spoonful of peanut butter out to see if he was indeed hiding in the stash closet. I went away to begin cleaning out his other cage and returned in a few minutes. There he was looking at me to see what I would do. Naturally, he ran back into the stash as I approached. I proceeded to inspect the stash taking out each bag looking for damage. The hamster retreated to a pile of flip flops. In retrospect, he looked kinda cute peering out from within the closet. I might've had a photo, but trust me I was not thinking he was particularly cute at the moment.

I kept emptying the closet and I finally got him into his hamster ball. I transported him into the cage I had just cleaned only to realize that I had forgotten to close off the area that connected to his larger cage! He noticed. I spent another frantic couple of minutes trying to corral him.

He ended up having a usual night running around in the ball and farting around in his play pen. I tried to read him some passages from a self help book (so he can get used to your voice and so you don't talk to yourself as much) and the furball fell asleep. He slept during his awake time. This morning he was rearranging his nest during his usual sleep time.

In the end, my stash seemed ok.

SSNB Digest 6/18/07

a midsized group braved the weather for ssnb last night. m (me) couldn't make it, so i'll fill in with a brief recap. f was working on her pink shrug project. n was swatching for socks. s was making progress on her scarf (?). t was back & working on a shawl (red is her color!). l was very rapidly crocheting a hat. d stopped by (with her adorable baby boy) looking to join our group. conversations were lively & varied, ranging from the 'bug room' at the field museum (fascinating, but malodorous!) to renewing marriage contracts. the olympics, pie crusts & fireworks were also discussed.
until next time!

SSNB Digest

I have been logging the activities of my local SNB which people seem to enjoy, so I'll go ahead and post the digests here as well.

SSNB Knitters Digest 6/11/07

It was WWKIP day part 2 at our SNB last night. The projects run down is gonna be a long one, bear with me. L worked on another notched scarf. F brought her shrug back. N started working on some arm warmers with her first ball of homespun. They came out a bit bulky so she reconsidered and started a hat. (The hat might spawn a stem and leaves becoming reminiscent of some grapes.) M brought her first ball of homespun as well. It was the fuchsia, not hot pink, yarn which was knitting up into some snazzy socks. M was swatching for a shawl. She started with a lace pattern, ran into some difficulty and reconsidered using a lose garter stitch. (Amen, we’ve all been there.) In fact, M was starting a garter stitch shawl as well. N was finishing up her entrelac bag knitting on the strap. A brought a chevron sweater. A had a beaded crotched lariat. And last but not least K was working on the Ribby Pully from Chic Knits. Phew!

L made no idle threat about showing up to SNB buzzy. A's leaving the Windy City for Michigan so the former South Loop SNB got some drinks then partied with the SSNB who had no drinks. (But we had cupcakes!) In addition to the other SNB, L also brought some great knitting magazines that were passed around. One of them was Knit1 which always has some great patterns and some duds. Some SNBers were most amused by a knit romper in the green issue. There is no place in a decent woman’s closet for a romper and a knit one is certainly not going to flatter.

Men entered the conversation for the first time in a long time. SSNBers usually have better things to talk about. The hotness of soccer players was overlooked. Most agreed that soccer players were all kinds of hot. K had been serenaded by some Swedish fans/and or players the last time the World Cup was in Chicago. Men were also deemed hot when they picked up knitting terms and used them properly. People’s husbands had correctly discussed “intarsia” and “knitting in the round” and that was pretty hot.

Then there was a lengthy discussion of Chicagoans decorating their yard for every holiday imaginable. Halloween was a big favorite for L and N who had some sweet displays and only made one kid cry. However, with the electric rates hike these ladies were shocked by their bills. Yes, someone really said that.

Until the next digest.

Hamster Update

Ugh. Malcolm. He is a snippy little hamster. Lately he's taken to waking up after 10 p.m. which is precisely the time when I need to be sleeping. So I've been waking him up early and he gets all grouchy.

Yesterday, on the other hand, he was a lot friendlier because I bribed him with some broccoli. He took a taste of the broccoli and chewed. Then he wanted another taste. He chewed. Then he came back and took the whole spear. He let me pet him with no problems. After that he ran around in his hamster ball for a bit.

I took that time to switch up the toys in his cage for hamster cognitive development. I got him a new chew toy. After the multiple attempts to get him back into his cage, he attacked the chew toy. If he could've growled, he would've growled. Here he is gnawing enthusiastically on his new chew toy. So the people training attempts are not going too well, you can see him clearly saying, “Do you mind? I’m busy.”

WWKIP 07

We had a beautiful day for WWKIP. It was sunny and not to hot or too cold. According to a photographer from the Tribune there were about 60 knitters behind the Crown fountain. I didn't do much socializing because I was so busy knitting. I got a lot done! I made it to the heel flap on the crab yarn sock and I made it to the toes on the two at once socks. (WWKIP photo lifted from another South Side blog.) That lady behind me in the blue-ish cami is famous!

Of the socializing I did do, I talked to a soon to be ER dentist who told us horror stories about doctors putting people's molars in backwards (one more thing to worry about). And one of our SNB members is threatening to show up to our meeting buzzy.

Afterwards we went on a yarn crawl to 2 lys: Loopy and Knitwerks. I had to fight myself to keep my purchases in line. I got a new ball of crab yarn. I love this stuff! And I picked up this cute nail file with sheep. It’s supposed to be for hangnails that catch on UFOs, but I’m using it for my nails. Maybe they’ll stay neater if I get to look at sheep while I file. Then I also got some yarn and a pattern for a new shawl. Sigh. The cast on for this pattern is 219 stitches. ZZZ. It out to keep me busy all summer. Photos to come.

Goodbye Dear Friend

I seem to have lost a shawl :( It wasn't really a shawl, it was a knit triangle made in lovely grayish baby alpaca. I was bringing it to the office because the air conditioning is intolerable. One day I brought it home and the last thing I remember is unloading it from the car. Where it went from the car to my closet is beyond me. I imagine someone found it lying in the street or in my building, picked it up and is wearing it about town. If I see them, I will demand it back. I will take it. Or maybe it ended up in a gutter somewhere and is clogging all the sewers. I dunno. I am very sad. I don't even have a photo because since it's lost I can't take a photo.

Camouflage

You know when you go to a conference you frequently get a bag? Usually it’s to throw all the stuff the vendors give away (pens, key chains, stress squeezers). You take the bag, sure why not, I could always use another bag. You take the junk, sure why not I could always use another stress squeezer. But you never really use the bag or the stress squeezer. Why not? Because the bag’s frequently emblazoned with some stupid logo that you don’t care to promote. And because the stress squeezer can’t handle your stress.

Anyway, I have a ton of these bags and I thought I might be more likely to use them if there were decorated with some pretty knitting. So I got the knitted flowers book and three months later finally got some flowers done even though the instructions are only ever a couple of rows long.

Thanks to the good times at the local SNB that make stuff like finishing tolerable I finally sewed a couple of flowers onto one of these pesky bags. Tada! It looks. Um. I’m still not carrying this bag around. It definitely looks better than it did, but it still doesn’t pass inspection. Of course, I expect to use it when I’m about to run out the door and need some place to throw my UFO. Currently I have a UFO in a battered paper shopping bag.

In fact, there was already a UFO in this bag even though it had a conference logo on it.