Everybody Loves Saturday Night

my mom is the shizz

I nominate my mom for the "Get This Woman A Blog!" category.

The woman does amazing things with needle and thread. She usually enters a bunch of pieces in the MN State Fair and pretty much always gets a ribbon of some sort. This year she entered five pieces, and came home with five different prize ribbons, including...Sweepstakes.

If you don't know what Sweepstakes means--and I didn't either--here's how it works: one of the pieces she entered, worked in Japanese embroidery, won first place. (yay!) Then all the first place winners get entered in the Sweepstakes competition, kind of like a Best in Show.

My mom won Best in Show, people. I could not be prouder.

But see, I don't have a picture of what won. Wouldn't it be great if she wrote about what she was working on, and posted progress shots and FO shots and talked about how difficult a certain technique was and then posted pictures of her flawless technique (because it would be flawless, trust me)? Yeah, I think so too. Because getting this info secondhand without pictures isn't as exciting, is it? No, it is not.

But--if you happen to be going to the MN State Fair (and I so desperately would like to join you, but can't make it out there this year), look for her work, OK?

so what's new?

I finished Kew. Flew through the second sock in less than a week, then knit up a toe chimney (if you're as kitchener-challenged as I am and you haven't heard of the toe-chimney trick, hie thee hence, because it will change your life) and didn't quite feel up to actually grafting, so I let it sit. For a week. While I didn't blog. And then the completely finished socks sat around, waiting for me  to have the time to take pictures and all that so I could give them their due.

I do love them. It's a simple thing, but one of my favorite things about knitting is when a pattern pulls an edge into a scallop shape. I did toy with the idea of working a picot hem instead, but I'm glad I opted to stick to the pattern.

And now I'm in the midst of birthday knitting. The Michael has one coming up, so he's getting the requisite ginormous socks. Making OK progress on them; almost past the heel on sock 1.

Before Michael's comes Colleen's, so I've returned to a project I'd started back in February or so: the Endpaper Mitts:

I have a long, mostly unblogged relationship with this pattern. I bought Knit Picks' Palette a while back to make a pair of mitts for myself, and struggled with the first real Fair Isle + tiny dpns while visiting Juno back in...goodness, who knows when. The "click" moment finally happened, I am happy to report that I am now able to work fair isle two-handedly, and I finished my first mitt relatively quickly. Problem was, it was waaaaay too small. I planned on starting over, but then Colleen came over, saw the mitt, fell in love, and I promised to make her a pair to match the new winter jacket she'd bought.

I ordered the yarn--Rowan Soft 4 Ply in *mumble* and *cough*--and got to work when it arrived, but for whatever reason I did not use the Italian tubular cast on. I got all the way to the end ribbing and put it away to work on other things. I returned to the mitt just last week, finished, and then wondered what possessed me to not go for the tubular cast on. Was it because I couldn't figure it out? But it doesn't look that hard. Was it because it would've taken too much time? Probably.

Thing is, once I got how to do it, it doesn't take long at all. In fact, it seems to take less time and effort than any other cast on. So I started the second mitt with the tubular cast on, and that's what you see up there--finished. Tubular cast on = no problem at all. Tubular cast off, on the other hand, is a serious pain in the ass.

I should be able to get the second mitt done in two weeks, and I don't think I'll need to rip out that first mitt to make the second.

Fair Isle may be the next obsession for me. It's got a wholly different rhythm than regular knitting and it's a beat I can dance to.

 

you want a piece of me?

Well, you can. Sort of. The inestimable Shannon has a whole new batch of yarn, dyed by her hand in the blistering sun (clouds, really, but she's got the burn of a lifetime) that will soon be available at Stitch Cleveland but is now residing in the Stitch Cleveland Etsy shop, and she's decided to name them after women she admires. Her words. If that weren't gratifying enough, just to know someone awesome admires you, I have yarn named for me. Me! I have a namesake colorway! And I am in exceptional company as well, as my colorway is surrounded by others named for women I also greatly admire.

Meet the Michelle:

It is very satisfying to the vanity to have a gorgeous colorway named for you. I would totally buy this, or I would have if someone hadn't beaten me to it. Also satisfying: having your namesake colorway snatched up within the first 24 hours. If you spot it in blogland, let me know, ok? I want to see how it (I?) knits up.

sock day

I haven't finished the Go With the Flow socks from a couple months ago, but that didn't stop me from casting on for Kew about a week ago. This is what happens when the right yarn finds the right pattern:

Yarn: Claudia's Hand Painted Fingering, in Moss
Needles: US 1
Method: Magic Loop

The pattern requires that some stitches travel from the end of one needle to the beginning of the next, and I'm finding it a smoother transition to make with the magic loop. This is the only modification I've made. I've got 30 stitches on one side, 40 on the other. It's a 10-stitch pattern repeat, and it's very intuitive. Very fun.

In fact, I almost like the way it looks all bobbled up better than I do when it's on my foot.

[I know, my cat could not get any cuter. He actually posed for this--he'd been belly-down when I was setting the shot up, and right before Michael took this picture (thank you, sweetie, for taking time from your cooking to help me) he shifted position.]

Don't get me wrong--it's really pretty lace. I'm just not sure I like wearing lace on my feet. Is that weird? Maybe from now on I only make the leg lacy, and keep the feet in plain stockinette. Or maybe I'll wear the socks out some time this fall and fall completely in love with having lace on my feet. We'll see.

For now, I'm loving the excellently written pattern and working with this yarn again, which I haven't done in quite some time. I love the variations of green.

emerging from the rabbit hole

The past couple weeks have been hard. Not tragic or particularly stressful, but consisting of long days, hard work, a full day of media training (yes, I am now ready for my close up, thank you), going to sleep around 9:30 due to sheer exhaustion. Little time for knitting, less time for pictures,  ten days into August and it's already one whopper of a month.

I'm going to try and get back on blogging/Ravelry track this weekend. I've also got a stash sale brewing. You know, the stuff I've had lounging around that doesn't seem to want to be knit into anything. Around here it's knit up or get out.

Well now, this was a wholly uninteresting post. I guess it's just a placemarker for future picture-full posts. I've got progress on the Peacock and a new sock to show you. Until then, here is an old picture of a rainbow over highway 212 in Minnesota. Given the recent nasty weather, I thought it was appropriate:

Minnesota, hats off to thee

Just want to give my hometown the biggest of shout-outs.

My brother called me around 7:15 Wednesday night. Michael and I had stepped out for ice cream (August arrived in NYC with its requisite 90-degree days) and I didn't hear the phone ring, so he left a message: "I'm OK, Jhen's OK, The Neph's OK, and Mom and Avron are OK. We're all safe. The bridge on 35W collapsed but none of us were on it."

Holy. Shit.

I spent the rest of the night trying to get through to anyone in Minneapolis--and if you were trying to do the same, you know how well I did. We went home and I turned to CNN, and I still don't have the right words to describe how I feel about what I saw. I am still a bit in shock, but mostly I am so relieved that everyone in my extended family is OK. I know the odds were in their favor, statistically speaking, but still--in cases like this the logical part of my mind is rather detached from the emotional part.

I don't know if anyone else will understand this, but I also feel a powerful desire to be home right now. Interesting that I still feel, even though it's been over a decade, that the Twin Cities are still home. Or rather, that where I'm at now is home, but TC is Home.

I watched Keith Olbermann's Countdown segment on the bridge collapse last night. He had Brian Williams reporting in, and may I say that I've long admired Brian Williams, but now I positively lurve him. He pointed out that the RNC is set to be in the Twin Cities next summer, asking, "Wouldn't it be interesting if the unsexy issue of infrastructure became the hot topic of that convention?" (paraphrased, of course--but he definitely said "unsexy") He also said some very nice things about the people of Minnesota, which was very gratifying.

And I share them, tenfold. Watching the people involved in rescue efforts has moved me beyond words. I'm less than enthralled by the agencies who allowed the bridge to stand without repair--that construction work going on had nothing to do with structural repairs--but really, it's the people who are helping each other through this that I'm focusing on right now.

Are the other Minnesotans out there OK?