Obsession du Jour

Kitty Porn

Future Man and Melanie.  Cute as hell aren't they?  I'm hoping that the cuteness factor distracts you from the fact that this is the one and only picture I took at Ms Bookish's fantabulous gathering Saturday.   I blame it on the yarn, the knitting, the drinking, and the fiber.  In addition to the plain jane crack, er, roving that I took along. the CyberGoddess brought some of the Grade A, primo stuff.  Pin-drafted, even, yeah baby. This stuff is SO soft, and SO beautiful I can't even describe it.  Here, see for yourself:

This is a little oversaturated, but not by much.  Seriously gorgeous, soft, yummy stuff. And she let us play with it.  Cool, huh? And here's a sneak peek at my Indigo Moon batt from the NHS&W stash enhancement post. Yeah, yeah...soon - maybe even before Rhinebeck.

So um, yeah, you may have heard that I hauled my wheel, on my back, uphill both ways to a knit gathering on Saturday, but it's completely untrue.  It's only uphill one way, and it's a tiny wheel*.   But don't think there was no knitting, 'cuz there was (I can't find my swatch, or I swear I'd shoot and post it. One guess as to my theories on it's theft. ).  Also, there may have been some eclair squares, but I'll never tell.  Sangria though, yeah, there was definately Sangria.  Mmmmmmm.  OH, and Chocolate-covered pretzels.  Homemade. Uh huh, you heard me home.made.  Actually, I could do an entire post just on the food we had, but I'll just stop here, because not everyone is as driven to distraction by homemade mac-n-cheese and rice krispy treats (who the heck brought those, btw?  they just appeared as if by magic half way through the evening!) as I am.  I'll just mention here that opening her house up to the ravening hoard was brave and our hostess was nothing but gracious.  Well, except for the mosh-pit-style dive into the yarn basket.  That was totally uncalled for.  Since I'm working hard to be the laziest photo-blogger of the year, I'm going to suggest y'all head on over to all those other people's site to see much better coverage of the event.  Don't forget here, and here, and here. 

For all of you kitten junkies out there, I have at least started the kitten album (on the sidebar over there), though it turned out that of the 5 million photos I've taken, I really only thought that 5 were worth posting.  I'll work on quality over quantity this week and add some later. 

*And truthfully, it can't weigh more than 10 pounds plus it fits just beautifully in the back of my car, even WITH a bike in it.  After all, the whole reason we got the hatchback was so that we could haul our toys around.  Right.  Not a kayak....what.ever.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

No, no, not me....the SOCK! Check her out.

Luuuuurrrvely and so.very.scrumptious. So yummy in fact that I had a really hard time taking it off after modeling for the photos. So there I am, cold chillin' in the knitting chair, with one very happy leg in very long, very yummy sock, and a second, pissed-off leg in a short, crappy, used-to-be-black-but-is-now-sort-of-dark-gray cotton sock with a thin spot on the ball and a hole in the heel. (Don't bother scrolling down for a look, I'm not THAT cruel.)

Sexy, eh?

So I cast on for another sock.

What do you mean it's not the same?

Clever chit -- you're right of course. The other sock I cast on was my DH's first pair of handmade socks in LL's Pinstripe. If anyone out there knows of a better, softer, yummier sock yarn, you MUST tell me. 'Cuz I simply can't imagine it. This stuff is truly amazing. It's a little like those old Charmin commercials -- I'm often happy just sitting in the knitting chair squeezing and fondling this ball. I apparently don't actually need to knit it, I just want to play with it. Um, that came out a little dirty, didn't it?

What I learned from this sock:

1. Man-oh-man, do I love knitting socks.
2. My lower leg is longer than those of the teenaged models in SnB. Go figure. I'll make the 2nd sock of this pair just like the first, but the next pair (oh yeah, there will totally be a next pair) will be one color repeat longer before starting the heel. That's an additional 14 rows/1 1/2 inches and should be just about perfect.
3. Ladders suck. I mostly figured out how to beat them into submission, but there are two or three places in this sock where they won. I'll show them, though, they won't do that again.
4. This yarn rocks the house. I wish I'd gotten more. Shhhhh. I said I WISH, not that I DID. However, YOU should run right over and grab some because it's a close out. Go ahead, I'll wait - it's a close out after all.
5. I hate weaving in the end-y bits. I will make fewer color changes in the next pair. I love the stripes, I will look at these longingly wishing for more stripes, and I will tell myself that it really isn't all that bad, but I will still do fewer stripes. What can I say? I'm a lazy knitter with an instant gratification problem.
6. On a related note to #5, I will never, ever make these. Never. They're phenomenal, humbling, gorgeous, spectacular -- hell, they're even supercalafragalisticexpialidocious. But good God, there is no freaking way.

Maybe you've noticed, and maybe

Maybe you've noticed, and maybe you haven't, that it's been DAYS since I was here. Days....how does that happen? Where does the time go? You'd think that with an entire weekend at my disposal, there would be something pithy written here with accompanying visual aids. There's not.

I HAVE been knitting, though, and I've also been cleaning, spinning (just a teeny, tiny bit for practice's sake), reorganizing, rearranging furniture, and drinking. Not all at the same time, mind you, but still. In knitting news, I have finished my 1st ever sock!!!! It's the first of the Pippi Longstockings from SnB for the sock-along, and it ROCKS! What? Oh a picture, um, right. How about tomorrow? Yeah, tomorrow, I promise.

I'm also making progress on the Sari-along scarf, which I'm mostly back to liking, and I began swatching for my first Lorna's Laces socks for the hubby in "Pinstripe". Size 1's - what on earth was I thinking? I also did a quick swatch for a scarf I'll be doing in a lovely green Manos. Swatching for a scarf? I know. Did I mention that I was an accountant? I was also thinking of doing a quick swatch for Ribby tonight after work. Thank heavens I didn't make any of those "one project at a time" resolutions, eh?

In other news, and you heard it here first, I'm absolutely fed up with the transit situation in my little corner of Somerville, so I'm getting one of these. Seriously. I know I have my bike, and that works for some stuff, but there really are days when you just need to get your ass to work and waiting 35 minutes for a bus that is SUPPOSED to run every 10 is just unacceptable. Add to that the fact that I have had 3, count 'em, THREE 2-hour commutes this week (should be 35-40 mins door to door), and you'll find that I lost about 4 1/2 hours of my life to the MBTA, and since most of that was standing outside in the freezing-freaking-cold waiting for a bus that never came, that's a lot of damned good knitting time down the drain too. Bastards.

Ahem. I think maybe I should go get some coffee.......and maybe a Valium.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

And snow it did. They say it was the worst storm in the city's history, but I was so wrapped up in this sock, I barely noticed.....except for the screaming banshee winds and the hours of shoveling out yesterday. Luckily we didn't have anywhere to go this weekend, so it was just me and my socks and my spindle. WHAT spindle, you say? Why, THIS spindle:

It's brand new, and so far I have made this much yarn:

It's very sucky yarn, but I love it anyway, and I'm working very hard not to think about how long it would take me to spin up a sweater's worth of yarn this way.

This is so much fun I can hardly stand it. How do I go about getting someone to pay me to do this all day, while making only the stuff I want to AND getting to keep it all? ;)

Just in case you thought that maybe all this storm hoopla was overrated, here's me standing in my back yard.

And HERE is what happens when one tries to make a snow angel in 3+ feet of fluffy, powdery snow.

Yep. Me again. This time buried up to my neck. There was a moment there when I was pretty sure I was not going to be able to find solid ground in order to right myself and that my husband, incapacitated as he was with laughter, would not be able to help me, and I might suffocate right there in my own back yard just 3 feet from my back door.

Can you tell I'm from the South?