Catching up

The knitting

I finished knitting the Pennants and Peepholes poncho pattern I picked up at Stitch 'n' Pitch this summer. Next step: block, weave in the yarn ends, and sew side A to side B. Actually, the next step will really be to find a blocking surface.


Pattern: Pennants and Peepholes by Joni Olmstead (Village Yarn & Tea)
Yarn: Kauni Effektgarn, also from Village Yarn & Tea.
Difficulty: The poncho was pretty simple to knit once I put in stitch markers. It was a complete pain in the butt before that, but that's mostly my fault.

Here's a photo of the Hydrangea Lace Scarf I finished. It too needs to be blocked and woven in. I think I'm more into process than product when it comes to knitting.


I've started the Firestarter socks. The yarn is Claudia Hand Painted, and I think the colourway is Desert Dusk or something like that.

The Paisley Long Shawl is kicking my behind. I had stopped working on it for a while, and then when I resumed it about a week ago I managed to skip a row (or something) and not realize until about 10 rows later. I haven't gotten around to fixing that yet.

I've also started, and started, and started, and started the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I had to frog once to fix the gauge and frog another time because I twisted my cast-on when joining. Thanks go out to Kristen for her tip on knitting straight across for a few rows and then joining! That fixed that problem.

The cats
This, again, is Chester. He's been a bit subdued lately. I hope he isn't getting sick.


This is Melon. I think he's trying to be the alpha cat.


(He's very pleased with this cat bed.)


They like to hang out in front of the heating duct.



Life in general
We got a new washer and dryer! The old washer had an annoying habit of breaking down; instead of stopping when unbalanced it kept rotating until it rotated itself right off of one of the support springs. Boy, that thing could dance. Anyway, our landlord was really generous and replaced it with an HE front-loader, which should both help the resale value of the condo and help us avoid that stupid imbalance problem.

The cats have no idea what to make of a front-loader.





I'm also up to my ears (hah!) with choir stuff right now now. I'm in a new Renaissance music choir (no, it's not like neo-Classicism, it's a new choir that sings Renaissance music) and our first concert is this Sunday (for anyone in Seattle, the choir is Sine Nomine and the concert is at 7:30 on Nov 16 at Trinity Parish Church downtown at 8th and James. Admission is free/goodwill offer). Then in December Orchestra Seattle and Seattle Chamber Singers is performing Handel's Messiah and Bach's Christmas Oratorio, and the chamber choir and orchestra at Our Lady of Fatima are performing Vivaldi's other Gloria (i.e. the one without the orchestral octave leaps in the first movement) and Bach's Magnificat in E-flat. Eek!