Help Wanted

Well, it’s that time of year again.  Mike is off next weekend for an out-of-town soccer tournament, and I have a decision to make.  Do you remember last year, when Mike was away for a tournament?

I knit this one weekend whilst watching season two of The Tudors.  My sister tells me that it is her husband’s favourite “Wubbee” (remember Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom?  If you haven’t seen it, check it out.  It’s cute and touching.  And it has a Wubbee.)  I am fortunate in that my chiropractor is a good sport, and hardly rolls her eyes any more when I tell her it’s a knitting injury.

Well, as I mentioned, Mike’s going away, and I am almost ready.  Here we go again.

 

I’ll be using bigger needles (9’s or 10’s instead of last year’s 8’s).  It is theoretically going to be a Christmas gift, so I hope the 2 different dye lots won’t bug the recipient like I know it’s going to bug me knitting it, but when Michaels has a sale you pretty much just take your chances.  I suppose that if I planned far enough ahead I could order direct from Lion Brand and get everything in the same dye lot, but planning ahead ain’t my forte.

The help I need is this:  Since I am currently watching the (somewhat edited) third season of the Tudors, I need something else to watch on TV while I work on this year’s wubbee.   I thought I could dust off Ghormengast (which also has Jonathan Rhys Meyers; this alone is enough to reel me in) and then Random Passage (which has Colm Meaney, and great scenery which is also enticement), but if anyone has any suggestions for any other mini-series on DVD that would make suitable accompaniment, I’d love to hear your ideas.  I am not above broadening my horizons here Under Sask Skies.

Meantimes, I am polishing up the needles and re-reading the pattern.  I await your recommendations.

Out of the Tub

Well, the water finally got cold and my fingers and toes got wrinkly, so I’m out of the tub.  I have laid to rest Mike’s skepticism about whether I would use the tub, and in the words of the immortal Harry Chapin “I never been so clean”.  Actually, I have been out long enough to feed the new obsession, and am nurturing my weaving mojo (to the detriment of a clean house).

A sampling of the last few weeks:

Adriafil Fruttamix and Mirasol Tupa- nice bright colours!

 

Regia Hand-dye effect sock yarn- warp and weft. Really soft!

Noro sock yarn- a little crunchy, but might soften with wearing and washing

More Regia Hand-dye effect, but I ran the warp ends back in for a tidier finish

Finished today- Misti Alpaca worsted. LONG- 88" (I was seeing how long I could go, and this is the max with worsted)

So, as you can see, I’ve been pretty busy.  My son complained today that I haven’t been blogging much, and suggested that perhaps I should start another renovation.  Maybe with my next husband, because the current one would be less than enthusiastic.

Once again, Andy got into the Hallowe’en spirit:

Amazingly, he wasn’t the only Gumby at the bar.  Or maybe he was seeing double (although he said that there wasn’t really a “beer opening”, and he didn’t want to drink much because he didn’t want to have to take Jordan with him to the bathroom for undressing and dressing.).   Son the elder just sat on his apartment balcony with his wife and watched the parade go by (and ate little chocolate bars).  It was ucky here- snowy, cold, wet; only 30 kids braved the elements.  So here Mike and I sit, eating little chocolate bars.

Here’s a little something to which I may have alluded, but haven’t written about in any depth:

It was raining- the photographers were prepared.

Crazy in love...

It’s almost six months ago and I feel like I’ve had a daughter forever.  In a good way.   In the best way.

 

 

 

 

Tunnel Vision

It’s not that I am particularly obsessive; it’s just that I just can’t seem to think about anything else.

Weaving.  I wake up at night thinking about fibre combinations.  I make deals with myself:  “Empty the dishwasher and you can warp the loom for another project.”  “Put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and you can weave for an hour.”  I am sure that the novelty will wear off eventually and it will just become a part of what I like to do, but in the meantime, am I ever producing a lot of scarves.

Yesterday’s production:

It’s AslanTrends Santa Fe sock yarn with DROPS Lin. Hopefully it will soften up with washing- it’s a little, shall we say, crisp for a scarf now.

Attie is already getting bored with the whole thing.   Too bad; it’s not like her schedule was full anyways.

And in the “Nothing says happy birthday like shredded cheddar on your dog kibble” department, Wallace turned 6 yesterday.  We’re expecting maturity and the cessation of barking that comes with it any day now.

Shopping? Good. Accounting and computers? Bad

I was so happy that I got back from holidays in time to head on over to Prairie Lily last week.  Charlene was having her big fall sale, and it was a gooder!  I met Terri for tea and goodies (packed my own picnic- I told Charlene if I’m going to be entertaining at her store, the least I could do is bring the fixings.  That and enough coffee to offset at least part of what I have consumed there over the years.) and we did a little visiting and a little shopping.

It’s funny how you look at fibre differently depending on what you plan to do with it.  Right now I seem to be a little obsessed with Simon Baker weaving, so every choice seems to be a function of that.   Along those lines, I got brave and tried to add a few floats to the most recent scarf.

I promised Mike I wouldn’t warp for the next scarf until I had our company books ready to go to the accountant for yearend, but I’m having trouble getting the stupid frickin’ files transferred to the thumb drive.  I really hate stupid Windows Vista, and the stupid accounting program I had to switch to because of stupid Vista, and the stupid computer (which I suspect is woefully under-memoried) and having stupid real life interfere with my fun.   At least I don’t have a spider crawling down my pants.

Is it happy hour yet?

Pause. I said Pause!

We watch a lot of television.  Since the acquisition of our PVR (or personal video recorder, for those who aren’t tech savvy (like me, before we got the PVR, and Andy and Mike made fun of me because I didn’t know what it was)) we have been much more selective about what we watch, and when.  While it’s handy to record shows and watch them at our leisure, it has also taken some of the fun out of viewing and turned it, on occasion, into more of a chore.

Take this week:  We were away last week, but the PVR has been programmed to record everything in our absence (it only stops when it’s full- like with twelve thousand hours of captured tripe).  Modern technology- who’d a thunk it?  So, we got home, and have spent every evening since “catching up”- like the world would cease to turn if we missed an episode of CSI.  (or Two and a Half Men, or Bones, or the Mentalist, blah blah blah.)  I enjoy most of these shows, but I  feel quite free to leave the room if I don’t want to watch.  One big attraction is that we can skip through the commercials, although a certain husband is not very quick with the remote, and quite often has to backtrack to where the actual show picks up (and how do I know what to buy if I can’t watch commercials?  Advertisers must hate PVR’s.).  Another advantage is that you can pause the TV any time, and until this week our favourite place to pause has been the Chuck Lorre vanity cards at the end of Two and a Half Men and my current favourite show, the Big Bang Theory.  These are the last screen of the show, and are only visible for one or two seconds.  I suspected for a long time that they were each different, so when we started pausing them long enough to read, we found that they are quite funny;  right up the twisted alleyways that are this family’s senses of humour.  Well, night before last the big light bulb went on over my head and I thought “I bet these are online.”  Sure enough, a quick check of  “Chuck Lorre” and I hit the motherlode.

This is the very first one Chuck shared with us, and there have literally been hundreds since:

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS

Thank you for videotaping “Dharma & Greg” and freeze-framing on my vanity card. I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my personal beliefs. I believe that everyone thinks they can write. This is not true. It is true, however, that everyone can direct. I believe that the Laws of Karma do not apply to show business, where good things happen to bad people on a fairly regular basis. I believe that what doesn’t kill us makes us bitter. I believe that the obsessive worship of movie, TV and sports figures is less likely to produce spiritual gain than praying to Thor. I believe that Larry was a vastly underrated Stooge, without whom Moe and Curly could not conform to the comedy law of three (thanks, Lee). I believe my kids are secretly proud of me. I believe that if you can’t find anything nice to say about people whom you’ve helped to make wildly successful and then they stabbed you in the back, then don’t say anything at all. I believe I have a great dog, maybe the greatest dog in the whole wide world, yes, he is! I believe that beer is a gateway drug that leads, inevitably, to vodka and somebody oughta do something about it. I believe that when ABC reads this, I’m gonna be in biiiig trouble. I believe that Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High”, is the greatest rock song ever recorded. Once again, thanks for watching “Dharma & Greg”. Please be sure to tune in again to this vanity card for more of my personal beliefs.

1st Aired: 24 Sept 2007

If you check any of these out, and find that they don’t make you at least smile, and then you think that “Judy has a really stupid sense of humour”, please keep it to yourself.  I like to live with the delusion that I am smart and funny, and that I appreciate funny, and I would be heartbroken to find out otherwise.  (You know when you hear that every family has a black sheep or strange person in it, and you examine your own family, and you can’t figure out who the black sheep or strange person is, and then you start wondering if it is, in fact you?  That’s where I sit.)

Anyways, I hope this brings a smile to your face, or at least a feeling of superiority.  Have a nice weekend.

Oh yeah.  I almost forgot.  I wove a scarf.

There and back again

We had a lovely visit to San Francisco, although even with my physics prowess in high school, and a little geography thrown in, I cannot for the life of me figure out how everything is uphill there.  I mean, you go out for a little walk for ice cream and it’s uphill, okay.   Then you come out to walk back to the hotel, and it’s uphill.   I don’t know how that works, but the shinsplints were just as real as if I had imagined the whole issue.

A few highlights from the trip (which was just recreational; we couldn’t think of a single thing we did that we could legitimately write off as a business expense.)  included a performance of Wicked.  We splurged and sat in the tenth row right in the middle of the theater (the Orpheum, which is a very cool building).  I knew nothing about the show before we went, and Mike had to talk me into going.  It was fantastic!  The music is good, the staging was great, the acting/singing/dancing was marvellous, and one of the Oz citizens was wearing this green sparkly dress that I just wanted to snatch off her and take home with me (the dress, not the person).

We visited several museums- the SFMOMA was a little disappointing.  The building itself is pretty cool, but the exhibits left me a little cold.  Now, the de Young and the Palace of the Legion of Honor were fabulous, especially the latter.    Favourite things:  the de Young has a really great textile collection, and I found a pair of knitted stockings there that were so finely knit I could barely make out the stitches.  I tried to find a picture of them online, but so far no luck.  Also, there was a picture called Sunlight and Shadow by Albert Bierstadt that mesmerized me.  The whole Legion of Honour was just what I was looking for after the SFMOMA:  Large, quiet exhibition galleries, not many people, and those that were there were talking in hushed tones as befitted the old masters paintings and sculptures.  There was enough furniture to keep me happy, and paintings by artists whose names I recognized.  There was also a whole Impressionist gallery, which is probably my favourite genre.  Also the biggest collection of Rodin sculptures this side of wherever the biggest collection is- somewhere in France.

Mike and I got much use out of our transit passes.  We took the F-line almost to the end, and ended up in the Castro district (which to you less worldly folk is the GLBT-friendly neighborhood, although the whole city seems to be that way.  Castro is just moreso.)  which is home to Imagiknit.  What a great store!  There was a dog to keep Mike entertained, and two big rooms chock full of things to make me happy.  I bought Betty Linn Davenport’s Hands On Rigid Heddle Weaving, and a little fiber.   Some Misti Alpaca Pima Silk Hand Paint which has already become

There also was a little Mirasol hand dyed merino that jumped into my bag, but that doesn’t have a plan yet.  (The colour is fifth from the left.)

My stealth knitting is nearly done, having advanced during airport downtime and that rare opportunity called A Whole Row On The Airplane To Myself, aka elbow room.   I’m excited about it, but cannot post pictures because the recipient might check in here.  Rest assured, I am still knitting.  (as if anyone cares.) (except people who do.)

We got home to snow and sub-zero temperatures (or sub 32 if you’re from stateside).  It’s supposed to warm up this weekend, which is good because we need to get the underground sprinklers blown out before a really hard frost so the lines don’t rupture and cause all kinds of issues in the spring.  I should also dig up my pathetic flower bed (which featured volunteer snapdragons from last year.  I planted nothing this year; not a single thing)  and put away the patio furniture.  All this while my brain is in overdrive with weaving ideas.  The icing on the cake is the big sale on now at Prairie Lily, so I’m trying to plan a little purchasing for tomorrow when I meet Terri there.   All this activity and planning has made me hungry, so I think I have to go and eat lunch now.

Irony

It’s Fleet Week here in San Francisco.  What does this mean to me, a Canadian?  This means that down on Fisherman’s Wharf, while the Navy recruiting booth was enticing potential recruits with their message of  “Defend the country- protect the environment”, the Blue Angels were screeching overhead using up as many carbon credits as Al Gore can buy in a year.  Go figure.

In which I present my first weaving projects

Instead of rushing out the door today to go to my regular S&B, I am, once again, waiting for the tradeguys to show up to stretch the carpet.  I have amused myself so far by doing the dishes, drinking coffee, taking copious pictures of my first children woven scarves, and posting the projects on Ravelry.  And now, for your amusement (keep it to yourselves, if you please) and awed amazement (I’d love to hear about it!), I present (drumroll) Woven Scarf the First:

and a closeup:

After the previously-mentioned mauve and white Astra Disastra, I was happy with how evenly my selvedges turned out.  Then, after closer inspection, I realized that Dollar-Store Novelty Yarn covers a multitude of sins.  Huzzah for Dollar-Store Novelty Yarn!

Drunk with my own success, (and it had nothing to do with this purchase from Ravelry:

)

I proceeded to go again.   Remember this uncooperative Yuzen?

Well, after a suitable time-out in the Bad Yarn Bin, it ‘fessed up that it really wanted to be part of a ground-breaking experiment.  So, I combined it with Patons Brilliant, and here is Woven Scarf #2:

The selvedge on the left-hand side is showing signs of being even, but the right-hand side is all over the map.  I’m still happy with the results, and have visions of busting the stash in short order.   In no way does this mean that I have stopped knitting, but in the Nearly Instant Gratification Sweepstakes, this weaving thing has merit.

Oh yeah.  One more picture from the reno.  (Will she ever stop talking about the damned renovation?)  This was Mike’s idea, so as soon as he mentioned it, I jumped on the bandwagon before he could change his mind.

Glass tiles on the kitchen backsplash.  They reflect onto the counter, and really brighten up the kitchen.  Me like.  Maybe now I’m done talking about it.  Maybe not.

Normal? What’s Normal?

Now that our contractors have managed to cram a six week renovation into 4 months, I can almost imagine a day when everything will be done.  I thnk it’s this coming-up Wednesday.  That’s the day the upstairs carpet gets stretched, and then we are done.  (Well, I have a few little details like throw rugs, hanging pictures and whatnot, but that’s easily done in my underwear.  I don’t need to fear strange men in the house any more.  Or get dressed for them.)   I have bathed in the new tub, and discovered that people who need glasses to read shouldn’t try to do so in a hot bath.

serenity now...

So possibly my favourite place in the house now is the dressing room.  Sounds a little pretentious, but it’s so much more than a closet.  I love that there is a place for everything and, until Mike gets loose in there, everything in its place.  (Those people at Ikea are so clever…)  I’ve had to leave him little notes about the proper place for shorts (two drawers down) and please coil up your belts and put them in the little cubbyholes, but I think he’s catching on.  (in spite of the grumbling and complaining about how there are too many rules in the closet.)

closet (left view)

closet (right view)

I like how, with the correct placement of the mirrored doors, it looks like we have 2 chandeliers.  I would be totally happy if only there was a matching chandelier over the bathtub, but I’m not bitter.

One little thing that I did in the guest bath on the main floor was to add this:

I give up. There will be magazines in the bathroom.

We’re waiting for the spindle to come in the mail- but that gave me time to paint it to match the walls, and carefully apply scrapbooking paper to the backside.  As an aside, I had no idea that scrapbooking was such a big deal.  I went into the store (specializing in scrapboooking supplies- can you imagine?  A whole store dedicated to a single craft!) and was overwhelmed by the paper selection.  They must have had hundreds- nay, thousands- of different patterns.  I knew that was necessary for a wool store, but scrapbooking?  Who knew?   Anyhoo, the bathroom is very small, so using the space between the studs seemed like a good idea.

Because I am a little distractible, I have taken a leaf out of Ruth’s book and bought a Knitter’s Loom. I shall spare you the pictures of the first project, because mauve and white Paton’s Astra doesn’t deserve any exposure, and my selvedges are gross, but I have an interesting scarf going right now that is surprisingly pleasing to me.  I will finish it today (now I’ve gone and jinxed the whole thing) and then give you a look and some details.   There is definite potential to bust some serious stash with this loom, and in quick time, too.

As an antidote to all the chaos in my life, I have started some Christmas stealth knitting.  Since the recipient has been known to check out my blog from time to time, it  shall have to remain a mystery.  Suffice it to say that Norah Gaughan’s brain works in a mysterious way, and that’s going to be perfect for the recipient.

I’m making some ginger syrup for homemade ginger ale (Thanks, Charity!), and drinking green tea with real live ginger.  (Nothing like a trip to the health food store.)  I’ve been struck with a horrendous cold, and because Mike and Andy have already been through it, their sympathy quotient is somewhat low.  I am reduced to nursing myself, and am at the point where any idea for relief and a cure will be entertained.    Suggestions?

Oh, I almost forgot.  There is a new man in my life, one who appreciates knitted hats.  Even wet ones.

Man of my Dreams

I think I’ll call him Jean-Claude.

and to the patient comes good things…

and that’s “patient” as in “not impatient”.   My little reward of the day was seeing a little bit of Darwinism at work.   I was in the parking lot at Home Depot, and walked past a guy who was trying to load two garage doors into his minivan.   To his credit, he was at least trying to go in through the back door, but honestly, the garage doors had to be twice as long as the inside of the van.  (They were all folded up in cardboard boxes but looked to be about 24 feet long.)   I thought to myself, there’s no way that’s going to work, but when I came out fifteen minutes later, he was just tying the red ribbon on the back of the doors that had to be sticking at least 10 feet out the back door of his van.  (Don’t try to tell me that the math doesn’t work.  I am taking Artistic License.)   He had used tie downs to keep the van door from flapping up and down- score a point for that- but he hadn’t bothered to secure the ends of the packages similarily.  Because of the weight of the hangover,  I’m not confident that one bump in the road wouldn’t cause a loss of cargo.  I did not drive behind him on the way home.

So what was I doing at Home Depot?  The usual; looking for something I couldn’t find,  and then looking for something else I couldn’t find (an employee to help me find what I was looking for).   Later in the day I took my requisite 2 trips to Sutherland Hardware (an adventure all in itself) (2 because I never get hardware right on the first trip), and now the headboard is attached to the bed, and the Ikea-approved assembly team is upstairs right now assembling wardrobes.   Yes, we should be living out of our new master suite (all except the shower) by tomorrow afternoon.

Here’s yesterday morning:

and here’s this morning:

and here’s the front entryway this morning:

But probably the most exciting thing to happen at  Chez Under Sask Skies this week is:

going...

going...

almost gone!

There is no picture of the “gone” because, well, the dumpster was gone and I was too busy doing my Happy Dance to take a picture of a blank space.  That and Andy drove into the driveway for the first time in 3 and a half months, and I don’t need a picture of his car.

Now it’s just painting touchups and other little things for the contractor to do.   Three cheers and a tiger for us!  I asked Mike if he would undertake a renovation again, and he mumbled something about his body and it being dead and something over it, but I would do it again.  Maybe not tomorrow, and not this house, but yes, I have that much of a masochistic streak in me.

How can we tell that Geoff has come home for the weekend?

because everyone need their tv mounted to the wall in the bedroom

He’s really not as cranky as he looks here.

What Geoff does when we let him out of the attic.

Ta-da!

Geoff was wondering why, when he was in high school, we freaked out when he wanted to run cables in the attic and hang speakers and other stereo stuff on the walls and ceilings.  Something about credibility and experience, I suppose.

Since knitting has actually occurred (Call Ripley’s!  Judy’s been knitting!) here’s what’s resulted:

If this looks fuzzy, just squint.

And because I am so happy with the way these turned out, here’s more:

inside out

Also inside out.

And in the great outdoors:

These are the Fake Isle Hat, with just a few modifications.  I used black Patons Classic Wool and Silk Garden, and reversed the colours in the second hat.  I also switched up the ribbing to a 2-by-2 instead of 3-by-1.   And for the very astute among you, the lower hat is indeed the larger size and with a fold-up brim.  Andy showed a little interest in the smaller one, but declined to commit to wearing one should someone knit it for him.  I’m not falling into that trap.

So, toques completed, I spent the better part of yesterday fondling some Silk Garden Lite and some Noro Yuzen that are calling to me.  By Sunday I should be able to access my knitting books and patterns, and get going on the Next Big Thing.  (or small thing.  whatever.)   Only a crazy person would pack things away for a renovation and not leave all her knitting stuff within reach.  (sound of cackling laughter here.)  And now I must go and mumble dogface to the banana patch.