Polgara Knits

I need better pictures–bigger, spread out, and taken with the Canon and not my Blackberry–but here it is!

After the frogging incident on Friday, I was a little discouraged, but I was driven to finish this project, in a way I’m rarely driven to finish anything that doesn’t have an immovable deadline, so Saturday I picked it up again and finished the continuous join while watching Angel season one dvds.

But even more importantly, on Sunday, since the monsoon outside was making me rethink stepping a single foot outside my door, I picked it up again and weaved in all the ends! Seriously, this is monumental for me, as I hate end-weaving more than almost anything else. I just really really wanted a finished afghan to put on my bed, that wouldn’t tempt my Zeva to pull at the loose bits.

Anyway, it’s finished, and I love it, and it’s beautiful, and I can’t wait to get started on the next one.

(Oh, and the specifics–16ish balls of Plymouth Encore (the multicolor ones in the middle might’ve just been leftovers from the other 12?) for the squares, and two balls of black Plymouth Encore for the joins. And almost a year from start to finish.)

I finally finished it!

I’ve been working on this blanket for my niece Hailey since September 2008. Although really, it’s been sitting in my WIP pile for probably two years of that, just waiting for the final border and the ends weaved in. (I really hate weaving ends.)

The final motivating push happened last month because I was going to actually *meet* Hailey in person for the first time. See, my brother’s family lives several states away, and, since I suck, I haven’t visited in at least ten years. (It’s a long and boring story.) But last week they came to L.A. for a family vacation, so I pulled out the blanket, steeled my resolve, and weaved those damned ends for my wee niece. And it was such a pleasure to finally present it to her while she was still (mostly) small enough to enjoy it!

The pattern is Beth’s Little Star Afghan, and the yarn is Bernat’s Satin Solids.

(Cross-posted with polgara.net)

May 1st?? May freakin’ first?!!! Wow, someone needs to kick my ass. Let’s see if I can summarize the past holy-wow-six months.

May:
Bad news first: My cat Trouble died. It was a terrible terrible thing, and I still blame myself for being too busy to take her to the vet sooner. She spent almost a week in the vet hospital before she passed, and I visited her every day. I wasn’t with her when she died, arriving about 30 minutes too late.

June:
Was the “official” photographer for a meet and greet fan event with Nick Brendon.

Got a new friend for Jack–this is Dr. Zeva Tinycat, although she’s no longer quite this tiny, as she eats like the shelter cat she was. She’s two and a half, loves string and meowing a lot, doesn’t like people food, and bounces on the stomachs of my houseguests when they sleep on the couch.

Started seeing a therapist. She’s cool, albeit expensive. The expense adds a little to my stress, but I feel it’s the one thing I can’t really talk about with her.

July:
Drove out to Zion National Park in Utah by myself and spent a couple of days hiking. It was an incredible experience. The park was beautiful, and being on my own and beholden to none was very freeing. Next time, though, I’d rather share the beauty with someone–and the little travelled trail I’d discovered.

August:
For my birthday I got my first ever kidney stone. Yeah, it sucked donkey balls. It hit two days before, at work. I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where my boss hung out with me until I was released (and it was *his* birthday). Spent the rest of the week on my couch in much pain. Bonus, I still have two more stones hanging out in my kidneys that could drop at any time. Yay.

September:
Spent nine days at Disney World with nine friends and relatives to celebrate my sister’s 40th birthday. We had a BLAST! Seriously, one of my best vacations ever.

October:
Work project kicked into high gear and the stress became the center of my life. Not the greatest month ever. However, I did make it to Carnaval in West Hollywood for the first time in about seven years, so that was cool. It’s still just as fun and crazy as I remember. And I spent four hours on a Saturday helping to assemble holiday boxes to send to troops in I believe Afghanistan. That was cool.

So now it’s November. The work project is still in progress and still stressful, but should be launching in a week and a half. Unfortunately it coincides with a Fitness Challenge being held at the work-site gym, where eight teams of eight are competing to lose the most (percentage-wise) in seven weeks. I’m blogging my progress with that little event over here, but I must say, not being able to eat chocolate when I’m stressed is doing bad things to my general disposition.

I’ve been crocheting this whole time. All summer I’d work on granny squares–boring, basic squares, each made from a full ball of Plymouth Encore. I now have 20 squares that need to be joined into a blanket. Don’t know when that’ll be happening. I also made one ginormous granny square blanket for my sister’s birthday.

So that’s the past six months in a nutshell. Hopefully it won’t be another six months before my next update.

WIP: Hailey’s Comet

Wow, have I been lax! My most sincere apologies for not updating for two freakin’ months. I tend to forget that I actually do have some readers.

The last time I posted, I mentioned the horror of finding out the yarn I was using–Bernat Satin in Palm green–had been discontinued. Well, Decherd Needleworks sent me their last four skeins, and right quick too, so they are ROCK STARS. Unfortunately (through no fault of theirs!) I’ve become distracted from the star afghan and have instead been making puffy slouchy hats, as they are easier to carry around now that the afghan is so big, and the pattern is easy to remember. I made one in variegated pinks and reds with the puff-stitch rows in cream and another a solid bright red. (No pics yet, but soon!)

Another “unfortunately” is that I couldn’t get my act together enough this season to make something for the annual charity auction at the company holiday party (it was last night). And from what I saw, many of the usual knitters and crocheters that donate each year also had a hard time coming up with something this time, as the pickings were slim for yarn items (fortunately the slack was covered by the paint-inclined artists).

Things are sucking all over this time around, not a great way to end 2008. Is it too early for new year’s resolutions? ‘Cause I’m thinking 2009 needs to have more knitting, more crocheting, and more blogging. And maybe a site redesign–the pink is starting to wear thin.

And as for the past two months, allow me to nutshell that for ya: painted a wall in the living room; went to a wedding on Jekyll Island, GA, and had a great time; psyched about the results of the presidential election; bought a laptop (green! I named it Lorne); went to D.C. for a conference and had a great time; knee is healing slowly but steadily; cats stopped like their food and we’ve been taste-testing for the past month; had a great Thanksgiving with lots of bourbon-flavored sides; and I intend to have a great Christmas. And to post more.

Yesterday I learned that the lovey Palm green Bernat Satin that I’m using for Hailey’s star afghan has been…wait for it…discontinued. Can you say panic? My usual supplier (Stitches from the Heart) was sold out, and had been out for quite some time (damn you, tedonitis, for making me skip the summer!), so when I got home last night I’d barely put my keys down before heading for Google.

Fortunately not everyone is sold out yet, and I found a lovely store in Tennessee named Decherd Needleworks that was still listing it. I ordered five skeins, not because I expect to need five skeins, but because I love that green and want to stock up before they’re all gone. They emailed me today to let me know they only had four skeins left and did I still want them (Hells yes!). Here’s to hoping their follow-through is as quick and efficient as their follow-up, since I only have two more rows to go before I need the green again (although I probably have enough left to last me about three rows before running out).

Honestly, I’ve been using that green for nearly four years now, about as long as I’ve been knitting–never in a million years would it have occurred to me that they’d discontinue it! Such a pretty color. *sigh* Sad now.

It finally happened–the PT gave me dispensation to start knitting/crochet again! Woot! I’m on the easing-back-into-it program, started at ten minutes, a couple of times a day, and I’m up to about 20 minutes at a time now. I’m working on a crocheted star afghan in Bernat Satin for my niece, and it’s now large enough that I can’t finish a full round in my allotted 20 minutes, but that’s ok. I don’t want to rush it and ruin all the progress of the last four months, not when we’re this close to Christmas and winter knitting.

In knee news, it’s also progressing slowly. I’m back at work, but I’m still using a cane, as I can only go so far before the knee gets very, very tired. PT has banned me from big stores (Target, Michael’s, etc.), given how much walking one can do there without even realizing it. The couple of times I tried Target, I came out totally exhausted. But I can walk around my office suite without the cane and not feel pain, so that’s a plus, especially since the cane use is starting to screw with my back and hip.

I’ve been slowly, slowly emptying the shelves of the bookcases that I’ll be swapping with the entertainment center. I have no idea where I’ll put the bookcases in the interim, but they need to go somewhere so I can paint that wall, hopefully next weekend. I was going to paint it green like the attached smaller wall, but I’m also considering a complimentary blue. It will most likely be green, though, since I already have the paint for that, and I’m more of a path-of-least-resistance person.

That’s the it for now. Hopefully now that I’m back with the yarn I’ll be updating more frequently again. Yay yarn!

Children’s knitting group turfed from library under new craft ban

Pamela Haley, manager of library services for the united counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, said the ban on crafts was put on place because the municipality is revamping its 18 library branches in an effort to attract more people and needs to be more literacy-focused to achieve that end.

She said the library’s new fall lineup includes teen book clubs and Scrabble nights. The library will also be holding some events not focused on literacy, such as video game nights, to attract a younger crowd.

Seriously?? Video games?!! WTF is wrong with these people?!

So last week, as I had mentioned, I went yarn shopping at Stitches from the Heart, and as we all knew would happen, I bought more than I’d planned. That’ll teach me to carry my vacation credit card with me when I’m no longer on vacation! First it took me forever to decide on a yarn for Haley’s blanket–cool colors, soft texture and machine washable is a tough combination to find!–but I finally chose Universal Yarn’s Classic Worsted LP (20% wool/80 acrylic) in the variegated ”purple allure” (aka 11418) pallette. But before I decided on that, I’d kept returning to the Bernat Satin wall o’color. So many bright and beautiful colors! I’d been wanting to do some amigurumi work, but you need a good acrylic for that, so the stitches don’t stretch and leak stuffing all over the place. In the end, I couldn’t resist all those beautiful colors, and ended up with twelve balls of Bernat Satin, in twelve different colors.

Of course, now that I have all I need for a cute amigurumi doll, I can’t decide on a pattern. Sigh.

But yes, I bought a ton of yarn last week, so hopefully that’ll carry me over the summer. There have been many yarn sales lately–at WEBS and at Unwind (one of my LYSs), but I haven’t even glanced at either one, so as not to tempt myself.

So back to Haley’s blanket–I started a crocheted log cabin, but so far I don’t love it. The yarn is great, but it’s the pattern–no matter how many of these I do, I still can’t nail the right number of stitches to add when crocheting across the side of a row, so some sides are longer than others, and there’s a folding/pinching issue where I picked up too many/didn’t pick up enough. I’m thinking of frogging it and making a star afghan instead. If I do that, then I think I’d switch to the Satin, ’cause the pattern would benefit far more from different colored yarns than from one variegated pallette. And the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a “Haley’s Comet” blanket. Hmm….

In other yarn news, I haven’t done anything lately with the sparkly market shawl, the too-big pink slouchy hat, the pseudo fair isle tam from Knitty, the scratchy my so-called scarf, or Kristen’s hat. I really suck at finishing, yo.

And finally, on a completely unrelated tangent, I rejoined Weight Watchers this week, and had my first meeting yesterday. My plan is to relearn how to eat properly. Lindora did great things for me the first six months I was on it, but it just went downhil from there, and I’d like to be able to look at a potato again without freaking out or binging on them (or is it bingeing?).

That’s all I got for today. Have a great Memorial Day tomorrow!

First, I hate the new WordPress interface. I feel like I’ve stepped back in time, design-wise. I wish I could revert it back. Blech.

Second, I feel the need to note that many of my posts are made when I’m avoiding something else–this time, my long list of weekend chores. At least I can feel like I’ve accomplished something once I’ve made a post, though.

Ok, so, more important than all that–I seem to have recovered from my knitter’s block–woot! While I was waiting for the Wildwood to arrive, I started and finished a Puffy Slouchy Hat (left) using my Berrocco Foliage that I bought at Handmade last fall. At first, I was verra disappointed in it–too small! WTH?! I still liked the idea of it, though, so I started another with a worsted weight variegated in pinks and browns, adding stitches, adding rows, essentially making it enormous. During this second hat, I realized my mistake with the first–it need to be wrapped around a plate to block the crap out of it. Oops? So I did that, and of course the hat came out awesomecakes! Except, then I had this enormous pink and brown hat to deal with. I finished it anyway, in the hopes that maybe it would work out fine by skipping the blocking step. Um, not so much. So, I frogged it back 3/4 of the way last night and now I’m making it more to the pattern (still with a couple of extra rows, though, given the smaller gauge)–the yarn was too damned cute not to try again. It’s like pink cammo!

And of course, the Wildwood arrived on Thursday, so once this hat is finished, I’ll be getting back to the sparkly shawl. I hope it turns out half as well as the hat.

Oh, and in other news, I realize that I never followed up on the Little Coco. Back in November, I posted about the hit count on my flickr picture of the Little Coco bag, and how absurdly high it was at 98. Well, the hit count is now at 2,673. And the reason my pink purse is so popular? Apparently Little Coco is also the name of a porn star. ?! BWAH! I had no idea, and I wonder if the designer of the bag was aware of this and did it on purpose. It cracks me up that people looking for something to whack off to are instead finding my cute purse.

Ok, that’s all I’ve got for today. I really should get started on that chore list now. *sigh*

I haven’t been posting in awhile, but mostly it’s because I haven’t been knitting/crocheting much. My friend K’s hat is finished, but wrong–it’s more slouchy than beanie, which means I really will have to frog the whole thing and start over, and I’m so not looking forward to that. I finished the single-crochet scarf (Patons Soy Wool) while I was at the hospital two weeks ago with K, who was admitted after experiencing heart attack symptoms (wasn’t a heart attack, whew!), and I started a hat with the leftover yarn, but only had enough for the crown. I tried starting the hat my sister asked for, with the purple Lion faux-suede, but ugh, that yarn is tough! I got discouraged fast. I did start and finish another hat for a friend that asked for one since she has a hard time shopping for hats (larger than normal head size), but I haven’t got around to mailing it to Iowa yet.

That has been the extent of my yarncraft in the past three weeks. Pathetic, yes? I haven’t even been to the SnB group on Thursdays since Valentine’s day, and won’t be able to go next week as I have plans for that night.

This is why I don’t often take requests–if I get bored or stumped with them, I feel guilty about starting something more interesting until I get cracking on the obligations, so instead I do….nothing. I’m so predictable.

That’s all I’ve got. Depressing, no? Here’s something a little more cheery:

It’s a picture I took of the Maroon Bells in Aspen back in 1999 or 2000 (can’t remember the year). I’m going to Colorado next month and hope to go hiking at least once while there, if only to get more cool photos like this one.