Polgara Knits

It’s been a partly productive day, partly terrible day.  I woke up ridiculously early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I was actually up and drinking tea at 7am this morning, the better to start off a planned Day of Laundry. I got a lot done–cleaned my closet and got rid of five bags and a box of clothes; cleaned out the fridge; dropped clothes off at Out of the Closet and mailed a package at the post office.  The seventh and eighth loads of laundry (winter clothes, gak!) are waiting for the dryer, with another four loads minimum still in line.

Then I noticed a termite on the couch–yuck!  I grabbed my dustbuster to terminate the sucker, and found he wasn’t alone; in fact, he had an entire party on the couch!  GAH!  Wondering where they came from, I pulled the curtain back, and found EVEN MORE on the window sill, and between the closed window and the screen.  ?!!!!  This was too much, and I pulled the building manager away from his garden to come look at the insanity.

The short of it is, some guy is coming in on Monday to “spray”.  Yeah, ’cause that’s gonna help a wall that’s been infested for long enough that it should be crashing down any day now. Thanks so much.

I did my own spray job (I can finally smell something other than Raid), and have been dustbusting the stragglers all afternoon.  It’s depressing and demoralizing, because I live in a rent-controlled apartment, which means that I pay a fraction of what apartments are going for in L.A. right now, i.e. I can’t afford to move.

Anyway, to cheer myself up as I sat staring at the couch, waiting for another interloper, I pulled out the purse I finished knitting last night and actually stitched up the bottom–go team me! To my own surprise, I think this one is my favorite so far.  I didn’t think the colors would work (turquoise and white), but so far they totally do.  We’ll see if I feel the same after it’s been felted.

That’s the it for now.  The mountain of laundry is calling.

This is very off-topic, but it’s for a cause I support.  As you must know by now, the members of the Writers Guild of America are on strike.  This means there’s no one in Hollywood or New York writing for television or movies. I’ve seen some critics blasting at the strikers, claiming they’re all rich folk crying for more money. The fact is, the “rich folk” are the show runners, and the writers the next level under. The baby writers–the ones just starting out, the ones still climbing the ladder–they’re not rich folk, and they make up the majority of the WGA. These writers go from show to show, and oftentimes spend many months unemployed between shows, so the shiny dollars they earn when they’re employed have to stretch over those leaner times when they’re not. Residuals–for instance, moneys paid for reruns, syndication and dvd sales–help them over those lean times, but their cut of these residuals is miniscule compared to what the studios are reaping, not to mention the complete lack of percentages from sales from downloads and advertising for streaming.

To find out more about the strike, check out United Hollywood.

The brown and red purse is off the needles, and now I’m working on a turquoise and white clutch purse from One Skein.  I brought it with me today to work on during lunch, but forgot to bring the pattern, and I couldn’t remember how many increase rounds there were.  Damn.

I’ve starting thinking of the next month as my own version of “Summer of Socks” only instead of summer, it’s the holiday season, and instead of socks, it’s felted purses.  It’ll be interesting to see how many of them I can finish in the next month.  But then, I also want to make items for my b.i.l. and a couple of other people that aren’t purses, so I’ll have to find time for that, too.  For now, though, it’s all purses, all the time!

And to give you something pretty to look at, here’s a picture of my first ever felted purse, made for my mom for the first Christmas after I learned to knit (2004). It was made with Cascade 220, and the pattern was free from the store, but I think they’d downloaded it from the web. It has a magnetic closure.

So I made a list of the people I’ll probably be gifting this year, and it’s about 23 people–GAH! I wish I’d made this list two months ago, as now I’m thinking knitting my way through as many gifts as possible, while stressful and not at all easy, will at least be cheaper, ’cause yo, seven boxes of stash!

At the moment, I’m contemplating the Birdhouse Bag from Elann.  The pattern looks easy enough, but I’ll have to check the colors of my feltable yarn to see if they’re suitable.  If it’s manageable and I can make them quickly enough, it could be the gift of the year for as many as six little girls that are on my list!

It’s been another taxing day at work, and tomorrow promises to be no better.  I’ve done no knitting yet today, but hopefully will tonight while I’m watching Bones.  I played some Scrabulous during lunch, removed some patterns books from my Amazon wish list that I no longer want, and read a disturbing blog post about an elderly Japanese man who was removed from a train in Connecticut by security for the horrible crime of photographing pretty scenery from the train and not understanding English when (conductor?) told him to put the camera away. (I’d link it, but I don’t have the window open anymore, and I’m too lazy to look it up. Also? It made me very angry, and I don’t want to revisit that.)

Also also, I 100% support the striking writers of the WGA.

It’s freezing outside of my cube, but nice and cozy here where I sit, because I have my space heater on full blast.  This is why I’m still in the office at 6:30pm–I don’t want to leave my space heater.  Alas, I must go, mostly ’cause I’m hungry.

Starting to feel the pressure.  Not sure what to post today, unless y’all want to hear about my busy day at work or the coworker that pissed me off. Still hard at work on bag #2 (brick red and tan). Freezing in my cubicle, where my heater is doing little to alleve the chill. Almost done with the gazillionth viewing of season seven of Buffy.

I have not looked at any knitting sites or magazines or books today, so I can’t post about that.  Haven’t even logged into Ravelry yet today–horrors! Um, I did take two minutes out of my day to contemplate buying a knitting related Xmas gift for a friend. I showed my current bag in progress to a colleague, and explained what stitch markers are for.

Oo! I lost five pounds in the last week, does that count as news?

Shoot.  This is only going to get harder, isn’t it?

Ok, I just logged into Ravelry, and there was a group invite waiting for me, for a local yarn store.  Hmm, I wonder if the other local stores have groups?

Um, go Patriots!

And now, a picture:

This is the most popular knitting-related image in my Flickr photostream. We now return you to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Last night I finished knitting the first balloon bag (the sparkly blue one). Woot!  I still need to stitch the strap to the bag, and of course do the felting part, but woot! It’s a great start to my belated holiday knitting!

Now it’s Sunday afternoon, and I started the second bag–this one in brick red and tan (Cascade 220) with a tag novelty yarn to carry along–while watching the Patriots game.  (Three minutes left in the third, and it’s not going so well for my boys.)  I’m so glad I organized everything on Friday.  On my way out the door this morning, I didn’t have to make any decisions, I just grabbed a pre-packaged ziploc, complete with all three yarns, the pattern, needles and stitch markers. Hopefully I’ll zip through them all just as quickly.

I’d post a picture of the shiny blue bag, but since it’s a Christmas present for an as-yet undetermined recipient, I’m afraid pics will have to wait.  Instead, here’s a shot of a Little Coco I made last year with Cascade 220 that I’ve only just gotten around to photographing:

As promised, pictures of fun, bright squares, to be used at some future date for a cheery scarf in spring-like colors. The yarn is Plymouth Encore, worsted weight–basically, whatever was leftover from the scrap blanket that I haven’t touched in months. I adore these colors and smile whenever I see them. I just need to pick up some more green, and then I have to decide if I want join the squares together, or border them all in one unifying color before joining. (There are more pictures in my Flickr–just follow the image link to find the photostream to click through.)

In other news, I got started on the Christmas bags last night, and so far I adore this first one.  It’s a deep blue (Lamb’s Pride chunky) paired with two skeins of shiny blue Aura from Trendsetter.  It’s sparkly and shiny and glittery and yes, I know that’s three words that all mean the same thing, but I don’t care, but that’s what it is, to the nth degree.  (Perhaps double stranding the Aura was a bit overkill, but it’s too late now, it’s already half done!) Yesterday I went through my feltable yarns and my novelty yarns and paired complementary colors wherever I could, then assigned each set a pattern based on available yardage. Right now I’m looking at a possible five balloon bags, two little cocos and one clutch, and there’s still an enormous bag of Gjestal in three different colors that I haven’t even touched yet.  It’s nice to have a plan, though–no more wondering what to do next.

That’s all for today.  I hope y’all are having a marvelous Saturday!

For weeks now I’ve been trying to decide what to do about Christmas–do I knit/crochet presents this year? Do I really want to make myself that crazy? And what about the company’s charity auction at the holiday party? What would I do for that this year? I’ve done the scarf and hat thing to death already.

The three boxes and the blue bin in the front are what I just pulled out. The white rolling drawer set and the two boxes in the back are filled with yarn I’ve already photographed and catalogued.

Well, I pulled out four boxes of yarn to photograph and catalogue for Ravelry, and now my path is clear–I have so!much! wool that obviously this is the season of felted purses! Most of the wool is secondhand, passed to me when my friend Kat decided to divest herself of most of her stash, and therefore the colors are not what I’m usually drawn to–lots of earth tones, to be honest. It’s doubtful I’d ever do anything with this wool for myself, so transforming it all to gifts is the only answer.  And maybe I can get some space back in my bedroom in the process.

I’m a smidge undecided on patterns. I have several books with lots of neat felted bags that would teach and challenge me, but really, I just want to make as many purses as I possibly can before December 25 (and really, preferably before December 18th, to give myself some time off to focus on other stressful parts of the holidays, like baking and shopping). This will probably mean using the patterns I’m already familiar with–Booga Bags, Little Cocos, Balloon Bags, and the clutch purse from One Skein.

In other news, I’ve finally photographed the 12 granny squares I’ve finished in the past week and a half, but I’ll need something to post tomorrow, so I’m saving it for then. Hey, it’s something to look forward to, right? Until then, here’s a picture of my brother-in-law playing “zombie” with his and my sister’s kitty, Greta:

It’s November first, alright–I’ve been sitting at my PC for 20 minutes with GMA on in the background and have already seen two Christmas commercials. Yay?

November also brings the start of National Blog Posting Month, and to celebrate this, I’ve committed to updating this blog every day for the entire month of November. (*fingers crossed*)  My theory about this is that my content is going to suffer–coming up with something new to post about every day? I suspect within a week I’ll be transcribing the weather report and posting memes. Let’s face it, I’m no Yarn Harlot or Crazy Aunt Purl (my favorite knitting blogs, btw).

In yarny news, last night I pulled out the Berroco Foliage that’s been waiting for just the right project, and tried to start the short row rib scarf from Magknits…..and I didn’t get very far.  I learned that NONE of my reference books includes instructions for “purl in front and back”.  WTF? So I went to the go-to site for knitting techniques, knittinghelp.com, and guess what?  They don’t have that technique either! I tried to improve the stitch, and it turned out, well, very badly. I gave up and put the yarn and pattern down and made a couple of granny squares to rebuild my confidence, then returned to the computer later to google the technique.  I found some nice illustrations, but have yet to pick up the yarn to try again.

On the other hand, I’m building up a nice granny square stash!  They’re so easy to make–I even made one last night while I was on the phone. So far I have twelve, but I think I’ll need double that to make a decent scarf.  I promise to post pictures soon!