Category: Blog

I love how they say they will tow us if we are parked in the street but don’t show up as of 1:53pm! They even said that we wouldn’t be able to use the street at all so we had to park either off of calle real or winchester canyon for the day if we had errands to run. Who’s the big badass that’s gonna stop me now??

Good luck City of Goleta, getting the entire street re-slurried by 5pm. I am not parking off the street for another day because of your mismanagement! Some of us have lives! Oh, and I won’t complain about work not getting done that doesn’t need to be done anyways!

I am actually knitting my stash yarns & loving it! I am whippin’ projects out right & left with yarns I already own instead of drooling over yarns online or at my LYS. And, the best part, I love doing it! For some reason last year I became a true yarn hoarder! Now that the $$ well has tapped dry, I am really happy that I have all this stash to work with. Nothing super fantastic, brand name mind you but I love it all! I have plenty of wools to do what I need, plenty of large lots to make sweaters and random balls to be creative with. That doesn’t even get into all the cone yarns I have. They are very slowly dwindling down also though! Yippee!! Okay I confess I did just get an order of wool of the andes for the brocade sweater in rowan38 but who can pass up that price for that yarn?? Not I!! I promise I won’t do it again any time soon! I have more sweaters going than my poor little corner of the living room can handle! Pretty soon I may have to banish a few out here to the ‘office’. Let’s hope not.

Oh & crazy me! I pulled out some gorgeous lace weight merino single spun that I have from Uruguay to start a shawl. Now, when you hear (or read in this case) the word shawl you may think of charlottes web or some such lacy item. No, this shawl is knit stockinette in a half circle. My own design based on a shawl I saw a woman wearing last winter at our favorite restaurant in Santa Barbara, Longboards. Gorgeous solid knit in a camel color machine knit cashmere. Closest I can get is lace weight merino on my budget. So I started out single strand on size 1 circulars and cast on 700. Now, I don’t like my edge to roll so I start out with a smaller needle for about an inch then go up to my working size. After 12 rows, one inch, I stepped it up to a size 2. When I realized it was taking me an hour to go one row of 700 stitches with that tiny ass thread I decided that I probably have enough to double it up & move up to a size 5 needle. So in the interest of saving myself the headache of getting halfway through then frogging it because it’s taken a year to get that far & I don’t want it anymore, it is double strand on size 5’s. Not quite the fine knit I wanted it to be but I want to use it sometime this year! The half circle will be done in stockinette stitch then I will pick up all around the edges for a simple ruffle edging. I loved it on this woman! For me, so much more practical than a lacy shawl. Although I do love lacework & how pretty they end up. I find I just won’t wear it. So there you have the beginning of my merino shawl. We’ll see how far I really get on it!

 

First I will start with Saturday knitting progress. We had big plans to spend the day at UCSB Campus Point surfing & playing but George hurt his back friday at work. Badly enough that he was on the couch with the heat pad, muscle rub & muscle relaxers all day. So I got a TON of knitting done! Woohoo for me! Mom & Dad’s christmas sweaters & smokin’ along now! I had moms sweater (cream aran in the round) started but decided to reconfigure it & frogged the whole thing. Dads sweater (gray tweed cardigan, pattern from hello yarn) I hadn’t even started on. SO below is the progress made on Saturday

And dads sweater Saturday morning

Okay now moving to Saturday night

Front one complete!

Now moving on to Sunday knitting, oh yeah & I finished one sleeve of the carrot fair isle sweater. I was able to work on Moms sweater most of the day. That is after waking up late, half hour to get all 5 of us ready for church, out the door, home at noon, lunch for all 5, then I sat & knitknitknit!

Woohoo! I am so proud of my baby growing a good 7″ in one day! I need to feed it more yarn! I am also happy with the aran patterning that I chose. It kinda matches my dads but with a different center cable. That way they match! So cute! I won’t tell them that they match & see if they are quick enough to pick up on it!

In another turn of events I am jonesing to make something I said I would never make! Legwarmers….yes I know….so last year….so 80’s….

But I find them to be practical for where i live. Some days I wear 2 different outfits just to suit the weather. I would like to wear nothing but skirts all day everyday but oh no! The marine layer/fog thwarts my efforts every morning & I change into a skirt somtime around noon-2pm. If I had legwarmers I could wear my skirt with my fancy legwarmers then take them off when it’s warm enough not to need them! Utility my friends!! Also excuses, but mostly utility!

Oh & by the way, I stay home most days all day anyway so as long as my kids don’t care why should I really! I am dressed with a skirt on aren’t I?? Sheesh! I just can’t figure out what yarn to use that I have, I certainly don’t need to go buy more! I do know what pattern though so at least I am half way there!

Today at Michael’s I thought I would use a 50% off coupon for an early gift for my secret pal. Of course I know we don’t know who we have yet but you can never be too prepared! It’s something that will be tailored to the SP that I receive & I am excited about it! So there! Oh actually 2 items plus one for Tracy’s SP too. They were too good to pass up for any knitter, no, you can’t see them! Not for at least a month! Teaser!

I leave you with fabulous Labor Day wishes~

*don’t drink & drive

*don’t forget your sunscreen

*Enjoy your day off!!

This is part of our seashell collection from here on the beaches of Santa Barbara

I posted a new photo to Photosnotknitting.

I posted a new photo to Photosnotknitting.

I posted a new photo to Photosnotknitting.

We have had some seriously thick marine layer the past couple of days! It doesn’t help that living way out here at Winchester Canyon we are on a bit of a jetty so it tends to stick around longer. Yesterday afternoon it finally cleared up so I headed outside to take some p-hotos to share with y’all!

I am not sure if you can tell but that is wall of fog coming our way. A little ways out from the power lines there should be some 50ft tall eucalyptus trees, no more! It just creeps in & then you only have like a quarter mile visibility! Crazy!  This morning it’s like living in a haze, but at least I am living & have a haze to be in!

I worked on a couple of things last night. I managed to get the back of the fair isle to the point where it is on a stitch holder waiting for the other pieces to be joined. I cast on for the sleeve and got through the ribbing and the little bit of fair isle work on the lower arm.

Of course I did all this while being scared out of my wits watching The Ring 2! Gotta love those scary movies! I also hanked up the yarn for my dads sweater to wash it before starting to knit with it. It got a soak overnight in some wool wash & a good conditioning to make it even more soft. It’s not soft yarn to begin with so I will take what softness I can get with it.

I also managed to work out just how I want the colors of wool of the andes to go into the fair isle sweater. I am using yarn I already have so it’s gonna be a bit of a mix of funky colors. Here they are just waiting to be fairisled!

So with the weather so nasty I am going to drink my coffee, knit a bit and somehow get the motivation to clean! Woohoo! Happy knitting Thursday!