Category: Blog

Isabella may be done but of course there are no pictures yet. I washed, dryed & blocked her. And, if it’s sunny on Thursday I may just wear her to our knit group.

 Which, by the way, I posted a poll on the yahoo site today for all Santa Barbara Knitters members. We had talked about meeting at the Concert in the Park one time this summer & this Thursday was set on the calendar. I just wanted the democratic process to work so I made a poll & the majority will decide where we’re meeting this week.

With no pictures this is such a boring blog lately. Sorry about that! But my camera has been shipped & should be here by the end of the week.

I am happy with HP. I am happy with the end. I got my copy at Costco yesterday morning, got home put away my items, had lunch with the family & started to read, 12:51pm. I finished the book close to midnight. I have to say that with only 40 pages left I was too tired to finish but when I woke George up to go into bed he asked if I had finished, I told him no I only had 40 pages left, he told me to just finish & went back to sleep.

So I did. It was a quick read, without skimming, I didn’t want to miss a thing. I felt it was a good ending, enough people died to make it exciting but not devastating. And, I loved the Epilogue. I hate it when a series ends but you have no idea what happens later. Very satisfying, that book.

So today I have been working on finishing the Isabella armholes and getting ready to start Clue 4 tomorrow.

I can’t make it to knitting tonight at Java Station & it’s oh so sad. George started a league soccer team & their first game is tonight so it looks like I will he home, knitting & pretending I am somewhere else ;o)

I am so close to being done with the Isabella sweater that I can almost taste it. I have lost some knitting time being at the beach everyday from 8:30am-2pm (sometimes 3pm) for Sadie’s Beach volleyball camp but it’s worth the loss. I have been able to re-read HP6 and read both of my daily papers from front to back every day. Normally I scan, do the sudoku puzzles & then toss them. It’s nice to actually read them in entirety.

All I have left is to finish about 30 rows on the left front side, sew front & back together & do the armholes. Really it’s not much I just can’t seem to get more than an hour or two a day to knit on it. Shocking, yes? Me not knitting at least 6 hours a day. Summer is here & my life stops being mine.

I did teach an entrelac class this week so now I have a pillow front to work on for the next 2 weeks until the second class. It’s a fun, fast pattern and I am using Rowan Tapestry on size 6 addi lace needles so it does go rather quickly. Not as quickly as say, Silk Garden. Of which I am still waiting to come from Discount Yarn Sale. I will never, ever shop there again. Bad, bad experience. I will just say that it’s been 15 weeks since I ordered & they just got the yarn in to ship to me next week. Lovely!

I am looking forward to the HP7 book release Saturday morning & it’s just wrong that there are spoilers available already so my internet searching will be very limited until I have finished the book. I am also looking forward to Clue 4 of the Mystery Stole tomorrow. I am okay with it being a longer than normal clue due to the anticipation of us all reading HP & not knitting on our stoles. I still hope to have it done by Sunday night like I have the last 3 clues. Not sure how I am going to do that with the book & normal weekend plans but I will try.

I found the camera that I want, it’s on ebay (no worries, I have much better experiences on ebay than with normal web stores) and the auction ends tomorrow. It’s a Minolta dslr, I already have a Minolta 35mm slr that I will be able to interchange lenses/filters & the like with. I am trying not to get too excited over it until I have won it & it’s in my hot little hands. Then I will brag with photos & beautimus things!
So until then we are pictoorless yet again!

Let me start by saying, Saturday we went to Universal Studios Hollywood & I lost my camera. Yeah, it’s not in the only bag we had with us. I distinctly remember removing it from a pocket to put wet socks in there but can’t find it anywhere else.

So I will just tell you what’s up without showing you even though I am dying to show you.
I finished Clue 3 of the Mystery Stole yesterday & I love, love, love the pattern so far. Beautiful is what it is. And I do believe it will be very, very wearable. Everyday wearable, not just for fancy occasions.

Second, I am over half way through the front of the Isabella & the back is done. I really am hoping to have it done tonight but not sure how far I will get.

Today Sadie started her Beach Volleyball camp. It’s this whole week from 9am-noon each day. Good beach time for all of us. Today was all overcast & cold, actually drizzly at times. That’s alright but tomorrow I hope it’s a tad warmer so I don’t have to wear jeans, wool socks & a hooded sweater. I’ll never get tan that way! (not that I will ever get tan although I do try so I dont’ scare all people when they see my transparent skin)

I worked on my clog socks at the beach, read the paper & did my daily sudoku puzzle. It’s the only real challenge my brain gets these days.

So, for now, no pics. Hopefully that will be remedied soon & I can parade my lovely knits to you all!

Firstly, Ravelry has sucked me in & is not letting me up for air! I am trying my damndest to get projects listed, all of my 16 pages of stash inventoried (I am on page 10, finally some headway) and get used to using flickr for pics. I do believe it will be so well worth the effort once I get it all up to date.

Yesterday I got a package from Little Knits and oh how I love Fleece Artist!

This is my Sea Silk in Bronze, so gorgeous! It will become a Swallowtail Shawl from IK Fall ’06

That is not the greatest picture of the Seawool in Cosmic Dawn but this should be better for you all. Of course, it will become socks. Not sure when or what pattern but it’ll happen.

I also bought myself Barbara Walkers First Treasury of Patterns so I may just make up my own darn pattern for the socks. Sometimes that is just more simple, don’t you think?

I finished clue2 of the MS3 so I started Isabella from Knitty spring ’07. I have the back & half of the front complete, yay! This is the knitting as of last night, back done & front started.

I am using Brown Sheep Cotton Fine in New Age Teal on size 3 Addi Lace needles from Knit & Pearl. Love it!

I finished George’s Tofutsies socks today, he loves them….whew!

I also finished Clue 2 of the Mystery Stole. I didn’t bother to pin it out this time, you can pretty well see the lacework. It’s so beautiful!

The dark spots you can see throughout are the beads. It’s a very fun knit!

In celebration of finishing clue 2 & a pair of socks I decided to cast on for Isabella from Knitty Spring ’07 using Cotton Fine in teal on size 3 addi lace needles. I will post something when there is more than 2″ to look at. ;o)

For now, here is my chevron scarf all rolled up and travel safe (it now is my go everywhere knitting & it’s rather handy).

I hope everyone had a wonderful Fourth!

We spent the day from 9am-5pm at East Beach in SB, playing in the sand & surf. A bit of volleyball (though not much because the physical therapist has told George it’s too high impact) but mostly just boogie-boarding in the water. It was a perfect beach day, warm enough to be in the water but a nice breeze to keep cool on the sand.

After the beach, we went to see Ratatouille with the kids. It was much funnier than I expected it to be. That could also be that there was a man in the audience that had one of those catching laughs. He liked it a lot too. Tyler & Sadie enjoyed it but Trevor really didn’t care. He sat through it happy enough but came out saying he didn’t even like it a little bit. Odd considering it was geared more at his age, 6, than the other 2, almost 9 & 10.

Once the movie was done, 8:20pm, we started our walk from the theatres down to the pier for front row seats of the fireworks. It is about 1.25miles downhill the whole way. It was an easy walk, especially considering we were in a crowd of huge proportions. Nothing compared to after the fireworks though. It was an expected crowd of over 100,000. I could safely hazard a guess that when we walked off the sand & back onto State St to walk our way back up to the car, we were in a crowd of over 10,000. We filled up the sidewalks plus the 4 lanes (and a suicide lane) of State St that was closed down just for this reason. It was insane! Once we got past the freeway underpass we could move over one street and avoid the crowd completely.

When we got home we had ourselves some ice cream cones & turned on the History Channel to give a little perspective to the events of our day. We had a Birthday Party for our Nation. I will say this, meaning no disrespect to anyone, we sat next to people during the fireworks that spoke perfect english but referred to the day as ‘their independence day’ and couldn’t believe the band was playing a song about ‘America’. That disturbed me to my core! They live here, work here, probably have legal citizenship here, yet it’s not their county too. I am not sorry that I want my kids to have a full respect for our Nations history, that does include the Mexican American War & we won. I want our Independence Day to be ‘Our’ Independence Day, all living here included. Respect it, if not then don’t go take part in the celebration.

Off my high horse now, of which I fall face first rather often, I love this country. I love the people here, I love the capitalism (we own our own small business), I love freedom. Even if I don’t like what people do with their freedom I still love it. And respect it. That is what makes us a nation that hasn’t fallen apart, we are a self-leveling community for the most part. 2 sides to everything with a little mixed in. I love my Party, that would be the Republican party. I love the freedom to disagree with my party & vote differently if I want to. In all honesty, that doesn’t happen very often ;o) I just am so grateful & blessed to be an American. We are privileged beyond belief to have the society and nation we have.

And most of all, thank you to all of our Heroes, troops now & in the past, that fight for our freedoms!

Yay to being 231 years old!

Don’t get me wrong, the Mystery Stole is not running my life…but…those first 100 rows are so beautiful I can’t wait for the next 100 on Friday. So until then, what should I do?? What should I work on?
Last night I dug through my cupboards/drawers/stash to find something I could pick up & possibly finish by Friday. I found a sweater back I had started for George but it wasn’t wide enough. It’s long enough to make a Starsky type cardigan for myself though! I cast on the sleeves last night & with only 30 sts on size 10.5 needles I just might have a finished cardigan by Friday! We’ll see.

In my beachbag I have the Orangina by Glampyre. I am using size 4 Addi lace needles and Brown Sheep Cotton Fine yarn in Orange, of course.

You can see that I decided to do beads on the Orangina. I am very happy with that decision. I don’t know how many rows I will do them on. It may end up only that one row on the top edge. Nice & Simple.

Julie has had 2 of the Lantern Moon Fish Messenger Bags for a while & I was just waiting for someone to snatch up that green one so I didn’t have to buy it. But, none of you obliged so I was forced, forced I tell you, to buy it!

That’s the chevron scarf hanging out of it. It has 2 pair of socks (the class socks & Tyler’s tiger socks) in it as well. I am hoping to have all 3 done in the next week as well. The scarf I am in no hurry to finish other than just to be done with it.
The bag is roomy, has lots of pockets outside as well as a zippered pocket inside. I think it’s going to be a fantastic bag!

So here is the sacrifice I made to wear my new shoes, the patent black platforms to be exact:

OUCH! Walking up & down State St. for 8 blocks wasn’t the smartest thing I could have done in brand new shoes. Oh well, learned my lesson & now I must remember to get moleskin patches to keep in my wallet at all times! It will be about a week of flipflop type shoes before I can wear any of the other fun ones. Damn!

For years I have been saying I want some yarn from Denmark. So, while browsing one of the danish blogs that I read I found a link to Garnbutik, a danish store & site. I went there & bought some Kauni wool.
They came in just over a week and look at how huge these hanks are! 8″wide by 13″ long by 4″ thick

It’s a fingering weight, pink & cream has 880 meters and the green has 920 meters. Enough for a couple of lovely shawls. I am thinking Garden Path Shawl or some other simple yet beautiful pattern. They are pretty rough wool but I think once I wash the hanks in some SOAK they will be just fine.