So very warm

Yup, I'm still around...I've just been too sleepy, or maybe overheated, to post.

I finished Traveller's Stocking #1 about a week and a half ago and am now on the stockinette part of sock #2. It's hard to match needles to the yarn, so I've been rotating between three sets. The 32" Aeros are nice and sharp but just a little too short and they often split the yarn; the Clover dpns are also nice and sharp but get tangled up in yarn; and the 40" Addi Turbos are the right length but oh so blunt (though it looks like people are aiming to change that! Speaking of which, I need to send in an email too...).


Sock #2 and the needle group effort.

Last Wednesday a few of us went bicycling on Block Island. When we weren't busy getting sunburned I managed to take a couple of photos:

Foliage at the southeast end (Mohegan Bluffs). My husband actually took this pic.


More of the Mohegan Bluffs, with the Southeast Lighthouse in the upper left hand corner. Although the lighthouse was originally built about 300 feet inland, so much soil eroded over the years that by the 1990's it was only 55 feet from the cliffs, so the entire building was moved about 250 feet inland.


Does anyone know what type of ducks these are??

Speaking of travels, I'm going to be in San Francisco this weekend for a wedding. Any suggestions for must-see yarn stores?

Random cute discovery of the day: Cats in sinks

There's weather out there!

It's been HOT! I spent most of the evening slouching in the papasan, knitting, and adjusting the fan. Then the thunderstorm came through and cooled things down a bit (and, judging from the smell on the breeze, also frightened a skunk).

In my slouchy knitty state, I finished off the third side of edging on the Tina Shawl today. Click on the photo for a larger view:


Assuming I finish it in the next few weeks, I'll have to find a replacement for The Amazing Lace. I haven't really given this much thought yet, but a few things do come to mind:

1) the Paisley Long Shawl from Fiddlesticks Knitting
2) Eunny Jang's Print O' the Wave Stole
3) Something from Sharon Miller's book Heirloom Knitting, but that would involve buying more yarn, and I've been getting strong hints about shrinking my stash so we can actually sit in the living room.
4) Lacey socks?

Speaking of socks, I've turned the heel on the first Traveller's Stocking!

Amazing Lace Challenge #4

Challenge #4 of The Amazing Lace was to post a photo of what our lace might look like if we bound it off right now. The first thought that popped into my mind was that a square shawl with half of its edging done, bound off, would look like...well...a square with unfinished edging. Fortunately, the Tina Shawl (which still hopes to land that plum TV role) has put a bit more thought into the challenge and come up with some alternatives. For your consideration, I present the Tina Shawl...

...doing COMEDY (as a sloth hammock)...



...and TRAGEDY (as a half-eaten kite, in tribute to Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, and the Kite-Eating Tree).



Gotta go, the shawl is booting me off the computer so it can look up agents.

Just because

I'm still working on my entry for Challenge #4 of The Amazing Lace, but in the meantime, for your viewing pleasure (or a hay fever trigger) here are some flower photos I took at my husband's parents' place today.

Artifacts

I saw Theresa's response to Jenn's meme and thought I'd have a go at it too. The question was, what's in your notions bag?

I have a couple of bags, but they're nothing fancy--just sandwich-sized ziplocs because otherwise I'd probably forget what I have. The travel bag has a tape measure, scrap sock yarn, stitch markers (open and closed), stitch holders, point protectors, a pair of folding scissors, and a Chibi.

The home bag has similar stuff, plus t-pins for blocking, a row counter, cable stitch holders, a pompom maker (?), a...I forget the name--bobbin thingy? It's actually for needlework...I'm not sure how it ended up here.


So those are my notion bags. My turn to ask a question! I don't often get a good look at my knitting needle collection, and perhaps it's just as well. What's the most common needle size in your collection? The winner in my stash is 3.75 mm (US 5) if you include the Denise needle set and count only circulars (which seem to predominate in my collection), but if you count everything there seems to be a tie between 3.75 and 4.5 mm.

This may have done to death already--if so, let me know whose it was.

In other news, I picked up a couple of cool things recently:

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Yarn. Being a Canadian I felt a bit odd about choosing this colorway, but I'm curious to see how it knits up.
I posted a question about user-friendly sock yarns at Wendy Johnson's blog and was psyched to see she responded. Woo-hoo! I'll have to try those brands out at some point.



And then there was this--the Paisley Long Shawl from Fiddlesticks Knitting. I'll probably pair it with this cone of Jaggerspun Zephyr.

Don't taunt the Sock Fairy

The last week and a bit have been pretty productive, my lack of poetic instinct notwithstanding. Here are some photo-heavy highlights:

1) Revealing the birthday buffalo to my husband. There's nothing kinky about it, so you can retrieve your brains from the gutter :). I started knitting a buffalo last summer intending to give it to him last Christmas, kept knitting and decided to give it on Valentine's Day, finally finished it around May, and gave it to my husband last weekend for his birthday. Huzzah to the rolling deadline! The buffalo was based on a Debbie Bliss sheep pattern (the one for this sheep, in fact), used more Manos del Uruguay than I ever thought I'd see plus a fun fur-like yarn for the shaggy bits, and ended up being about 18 inches long.


2) Attending my first Waterfire of the summer! Sitting by a river at night staring at flames is super-relaxing and I heartily recommend it.

3) Finishing sock #2. The sock fairy managed to have the last laugh; I discovered a stitch missing but, being unable to figure out where things had gone wrong, decided to ignore it.


4) Casting on Conwy from Nancy Bush's book "Knitting on the Road" and frogging it a couple of hours later after deciding the yarn was too skinny for the pattern.

5) Casting on the Traveler's Stockings from the same book using 2.25 mm dpn. I've hated using dpn in the past because mine always fall out of the stitches, but these birch needles worked out very well...until I swatched, realized the gauge was too loose, frogged the sock, and decided to try appeasing the sock fairy with a symbolic offering of yarn.


6) Casting on the same sock with 2.0 mm circular needles. This one seems to be a keeper.


7) Going to Riverside on July 4th for carousel rides, clamcakes, and a stuffie (quahog clam with I-don't-know-what-but-it's-tasty added, then wrapped in foil and baked).

8) Seeing numerous fireworks displays on numerous nights, including a display beside Highway 195 that shook the car.

9) Finishing corner #2 of the Tina Shawl. No photos though...it looks like corner #1, honest.

10) Taking random photos of the tabby in various stages of decadence.

Amazing Lace Challenge #3

Yeesh, this is seriously close.

So Challenge #3 of the Amazing Lace was to write a poem about/to/etc. your lace. After a maddening spell of writer's block I decided to go with the Fibonacci sequence (where you take the preceding number and add it to the current number to get the next number...oh heck, go here and you'll see what I mean). So, here goes. Numbers at the start of each line show how many syllables there are.

0)

1) Shawl!

1) Name?

2) Tina.

3) Knitted how?

5) Start in the center,

8) A square panel in leaf pattern.

13) (If you knit in public you may be asked, Is that Birch??

21) Whatever you do, don't say to them What, the needles? That just sounds silly. Believe me.)

34) After you finish the center, you pick up along the edge. Then you knit a square in the round on circular needles. Sounds strange but it works!

55) You spend quite a while working on the border. I think it took me six weeks. Somewhere along the way, your shawl may develop a personality. It may dream about fame and fortune. I blame this on reality TV.

89) Finally, you do the edge and join it to the border. The border stitches are live, so if you don't use lifelines, be careful or something might fall off the needles while you're not looking. By now the Tina Shawl's personality is in full bloom and all it wants to know is WHEN ON EARTH ARE YOU GOING TO BLOCK IT??? ...Maybe I should go work on mine. I'm signing off.