Christmas Recap

Wow. That was fun. Let's get to the goods, shall we?


Pattern: Voyager Lace Stole from Elann.com
Yarn: School Products Supergeelong Coned Yarn
Needle: umm... 7?
Yardage: Goodness knows, but I've still got plenty left.

This project, a Christmas gift for my Aunt Judy, was my first real experiment with lace and my first experiment with coned yarns.

In my naivete, I thought it might be fun to just knit right off the cone. And then I read this post by the Yarn Harlot way back before Rhinebeck and all that changed. The yarn is a coned wool yarn from School Products and this is how it looked before I washed it:


Pretty much like straw

And on the left is the yarn after:


Washed vs. Unwashed

Pretty amazing, really. Plus, it was a heck of a lot more fun to knit when it was this soft. And once the stole was washed and blocked it was even softer. Very nice. I still have a bunch left over and used some of it to make a balaclava for my bro.

This towel rack was the best model ever.

One yarn, two Christmas gifts: can't beat that. (Although Dad kept asking why I knit everything in black. Ugh!)

There were these little guys:

I learned to crochet for real. How about that?

There was also a clutch for Cousin Jess that I had intended to line with fabric. I found some bonding web in the sewing kit and thought I'd use that. I grabbed the iron and discovered it wouldn't turn on. I tried several outlets, no luck. Dad tells me "Jiggle the wire." I do this and a flame shoots out of the cord and nearly singes my hand.

Singe marks are never a good sign.


It is quite possibly the oldest iron in the history of the world, a Sunbeam Jewel series, (with a fabric covered cord!) so I don't know why I was surprised. I'm pretty sure I've seen this iron in house museums where they replicate the way a room would've looked in a given time period. Pity it had to happen on Christmas Eve after all the gifts had been purchased and wrapped.

The gifting in general turned out very nice, but I still have one item that is in severe need of help. It's a felted Giants pillow I made for Dad.


I tried stranding at first, but that got way too messy and complicated so I switched to intarsia which was a vast improvement. Only problem was, I continued stranding the white and without the aid of a swatch (yes, my own damn fault) I was completely unaware of how much the fabric would shrink on the horizontal relative to the vertical (or whatever) so there's a fair bit of pulling across the center which not even I can rationalize as a "design feature." The pillow further suffered the indignity of having an insert that was too small (I opted for a 12x12 pillow insert, should've gone for 12x16, but again that whole vertical vs. horizontal shrinkage differential took me by surprise) and a lack of adequate buttons. I could not find a SINGLE button in Michaels this week and I'm extremely irritated that I had to raid my mom's old sewing basket for buttons - but for some reason I actually found a set of 4 that match! Oh yeah, and I also completely forgot to do the i-cord border before I felted the damn thing. EZ didn't call it the idiot cord for nothing.

As for me, thanks to the wonder that is my Amazon wishlist and the not-so-subtle hints I dropped to Dad and my brothers, I wound up with some things I completely love this year. Only one item had to be returned and that was because I got two of them! Thankfully they have accepted that, yes, I actually knit and, no, it's not funny. I got Inspired Fair Isle Knits by Fiona Ellis although Jenn from DC thinks I should've requested a spinning wheel ;) heh. I also got some books about art theft that I've been eyeing which led to some interesting questions and (2 copies) of the My So-Called Life DVD (Dad says he didn't think anyone watched that show. I asked him if he completely forgot my hypersensitive, moody teenage phase and thinks I've always been this well-adjusted?).

There has been knitting on Enid, yes. But I seem to have strained my neck and shoulders which makes knitting slightly painful right now. I'm very unhappy about that :(

Massive Update?

1. I am not in hibernation. It is July in the Northern Hemisphere.

2. I am taking a microscopy course for conservators this week at the IFA and have little access to email and internet which is torture when you get to #6 on my list. It's me and 12 other conservators from various fields: paintings conservation, textiles and paper, etc. So that was fun when we introduced ourselves and said what we work on. So after people saying "Paintings", "Books", "Anthropological Artifacts" we get to me: "Buildings" Beat that fancy pantses. Actually though they are all very nice. And I am having a great time. Makes me dread actually going back to work. I really need to be a professional academic.

Today we looked at fibers! Wool! Silk! Cotton! Alpaca! Linen! Huzzah! (also bizarro stuff like Kevlar) We talked S-twist and Z-twist. Funny how in reading about spinning I never totally understood what that meant, but thanks to this course I can identify them! We started on pigment identification today and will continue tomorrow. I am, understandably, very excited about this class and wish it could last forever.

3. I am in Ravelry! Got the invite this morning but could not promptly start loading pics and projects due to item #2 above.

4. Socks are progressing nicely. Hope to have them done this week.

5. Bedbug extermination finished (?) Have commenced the unpacking because I refuse to live out of garbage bags for 3 weeks (the most asinine directive ever IMO). Yarn remains in ziploc bags and probably will stay there for quite a while. Made the trip to the Container Store the other day and bought new storage containers for it. Not the pattern I would've chosen ideally, but otherwise I'm loving them. I was warned about the velcro closure on the front in advance but figured I'd be storing most of the stash still in the ziplocs.

6. Finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Many tears were shed. Loved it. Loved it. Loved. It.

More discussion, more depth later. Right now must commence uploading to the wonder that is Ravelry.

When Muggles Attack (on two fronts)

1. First The Times

2. Then the techies

I love the comments on the second article. I'm fairly sure they weren't expecting this kind of reaction. *sigh* only 510 people ahead of me in line.

As for the first, The Times has received an angry letter to the editor from me.

On the knitting front, the socks are almost done. Huzzah! Here's hoping I find time this weekend in between all the Harry Potter reading!

2 days...

I. am. freaking. out.

I cannot mentally comprehend the fact that all of my questions will be answered this weekend.*

Barring any unforseen douchebaggery by non-believers/muggles (and I'm not talking about the non-knitter muggles the Yarn Harlot discusses, I'm talking the originals!) I am certain that I will be very surprised when I crack the spine of my copy of HP and the Deathly Hallows.

Will Snape be a double/triple/quadruple agent?
Is Harry a Horcrux?
Will Ron and Hermione totally make out?
Is the giant squid really an unregistered animagus that will swallow Lord Voldemort whole and drag him to a watery doom at the bottom of the lake?

I'm all aflutter just thinking of it. I plan on going into seclusion starting as of about 12 hours ago, helped along mightily by the fact I'll be out on site visits tomorrow and Friday. Anyone who ruins this for me though will regret it. I promise you that.

*I am not as optimistic as Ms. Rowling that all questions will be answered. In fact I'm hoping they won't because if I have nothing to debate with my friends, a big chunk of the fun this book has brought me will be lost. Plus, it leaves me hope that we'll get some fun tidbits in the future.

Awe-some

Harry Potter? Loved it. I'm still exhausted from my 3 am evening tuesday night and I've already had a day to recover. By far the best of the movies IMO and considering I didn't particularly care for any of the previous ones you might think that's not saying much, but really, I thought it was delightful. (Or as delightful as an incredibly moody, dark movie based on a book I love that also happens to be incredibly moody and dark can possibly be). The 3-D stuff at the end? Wow. Audible gasps in the theater when that started. I think they finally managed to do justice to the book. But I'm still perplexed at the people who complain that so much was cut out and yet claim that movies 3 and 4 were great. Honestly??? Oh goodness I cannot wait for the 21st. This is torture! I've been spending pretty much my entire day at work trauling the HP fan sites (lexicon, TLC, QQQ, HP7, mugglenet) like a complete and utter freakshow. I really cannot continue to be this unproductive.

Not much progress on the sock unfortunately, I've been so neglectful although I did manage to do a few rounds while waiting for the movie to start. So that's something. :) I also managed to leave the pertinent page of the pattern somewhere so I'll have to reprint from Knitty. Although I just came across some toe-up sock stuff in the Summer 07 Interweave Knits that makes me wish I had used their pattern. Oh well. First sock just means that there can be many more socks to come!

And more HP

Meant to post this yesterday, but completely forgot. I'm particularly partial to Damon Lindelof's and Larry Doyle. Coincidence that they write/wrote for two fantastic shows? Heh.

HP

I'm going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight (at midnight, good lord) in IMAX-3D. And I've noticed I am surprisingly pumped for it. I generally don't like the movies all that much but for some reason this one has appealed to me more than the others. I'm certain I'll find something to bitch about, but I'm hopeful that overall it won't disappoint totally. In fact some of the reviews have been pretty good, which is promising.

In the spirit of HP, I've been looking for some HP themed projects to make for my brother's birthday in September. He's soon to be a senior in high school. He's adorable. He also happens to be a bit of a jock. For some reason I can't reconcile my baby bro with that last statement (or the first one for that matter). Anyway I want something that he will actually use and a knit wand or wizard hat does not exactly qualify. I was thinking an iPod cozy, but he (like me) only has an iPod Shuffle and personally while the house colors are lovely, it doesn't scream HP (although, maybe that's a good thing?). Dilemmas, dilemmas. I may just try socks again because I really am lacking in the idea department when it comes to teenage boys.