Wachet auf!

It's already Advent! After a few years of feeling kind of meh about December, something seems to have snapped and I feel like sticking foliage all over the place. It started after service this morning when I walked out to the lobby and into a cloud of pine scent. People were making Advent wreaths, and I figured I might as well join in since I'd never made one before. The church provided candles and a wooden base with a wire mesh attached, so all my friend L and I had to do was thread in pine and cedar fronds.



It was nice, but the center looked a bit plain and showed all the cut branch ends, so afterwards I bought a spray of berries and leaves from Fred Meyer, dismantled it, and added them to the wreath.



While I was at FM I thought about getting a wreath for the door and some cedar garlands for the balconies as well, but decided to wait a couple of days in case this is just temporary madness from all the fog outside.

Knitting
I've finished most of the body for the Hourglass Sweater and knitted half of a sleeve. I haven't taken pictures yet, though, because I used up most of the camera's memory photographing the cats (sorry...they're cute, they're photogenic, and they're here). Based on the pattern measurements I figured I would have to make the body in one size and the sleeves in a different size, which really messed up the raglan shaping, so I set up an Excel spreadsheet with a revised set of decreases. Now I think I might have made the sleeves too big! It might be more a kimono-hourglass top. I guess I could always frog the sleeve if it looks really bad.

And the cats
So yes, here are more gratuitous shots of the cats.

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!

Yay! Computer!

My computer is functional again! I took it to a friend for a second opinion and after a quick test he said the problem was with the power supply, not the motherboard, and thus very easily fixed.

Now I have to upload some photos.

We saw the Met Opera's HD broadcast of Dr. Atomic today. It was really cool, and the singing was amazing. I did get a bit antsy in the second act, but that might have been more because after knitting 15 rounds of the Hourglass Sweater body I finally realized I had twisted my cast-on row before joining the ends, and that I would have to frog the whole damn thing for the second time (the first time was after admitting my gauge was all wrong).