In lieu of knitting, I give you this.

I normally don't post this stuff, but this one, er, I sorta had to, doncha think?

You Are Dr. Bunsen Honeydew

You take the title "mad scientist" to the extreme -with very scary things coming out of your lab. And you've invented some pretty cool things, from a banana sharpener to a robot politician. But while you're busy turning gold into cottage cheese, you need to watch out for poor little Beaker! "Oh, that's very naughty, Beaker! Now you eat these paper clips this minute."

The Muppet Personality Test

Dirt

You may know that I watch everything, including that new show w/ Friends and Dancing in the Dark Courtney Cox. I didn't watch the whole thing 'cause I was doing other things, like trying to figure out a VLT pattern (the red curved one with the circles in it). Anyway, my favorite line from last night?

'Dude, you killed Kenny!'

Stitches wow!

Well, I'm back from my one day at the Stitches market. No, didn't do classes, didn't meet up with internet folks, just went to look with MIL.

I didn't have that many sightings , but man, were the one's sighted cool. I saw Cookie of the sock fame from SF. But major coup was meeting and getting a bookplate signed by Jane Sowerby of VLT. Cool or what. She seemed like a really lovely woman. I wish I had told her how much I enjoyed her book and that I'm actually participating in the KAL (but I didn't). Cookie had tons of folks all around and I'm just too shy to go up to her and introduce myself...'hi, I'm a blogger stalker and uhmmm'...right. I'm pretty sure I had additional sightings, but I was there for the fibers.

There was lots of lace -- maybe 'cause that's all I was looking at. I saw that Malabrigo has laceweight yarn (nope, control. remember?!). After walking around and fondling many a yarns, I showed much restraint and only bought yarn at 2 places. I left with 2 cones, one 100% crunchy silk, and the other, alpaca/silk from WEBS--both laceweight.

What did I miss? Lace Addi Turbos. The very nice man from the Lacy Knitters Guild told me they were here, but I just didn't see it. But he did show me his cool gadget for knitting off cones. I got to get me a bearing doodad. He mentioned that your whole piece could end up biased if you don't have a way of making your cone turn while you knitted because you'd be putting extra twist into your yarn.

I'll post pics soon, I promise.

Off to Stitches tomorrow!

Is 'sqee' a word? I'm darned excited. I will have control. I will.

It will be lots of fun since z&a's dad is going to be watching little a while mom(me) and his mom (my mil) will be off to the yarn convention.

happy dance...see you later.

KALs

I can't believe I forgot to blog about this, that's lame. I won some yarn from the Gilmore Girls KAL. How'd I win? Well, go and read about it here . How lovely was that? Mandies was looking for how to make a scarf LG was wearing, and I thought it looked like something I'd seen before. And she liked it. Anyway, I was gifted some lovely yarn.
(unfortunately, I've not had the opportunity to download pics from my camera, so it'll have to wait)

Thanks Mandies!

As for the KAL itself...well, I'm one of those delayed viewers. I tape (not Tivo) the show and then watch it the following day or two. I usually can't KAL since there's wrangling of small child usually occuring...does that mean I can or cannot join? or would that be should not?...

Oh, there's also Grey's Anatomy KAL I've discovered. hmmm...too bad grey's not my color. This show I watch live because I'm taping CSI. And I do knit when I watch this show. Maybe I should look for grey at Stitches West this week.

Finally, I did join another KAL, VLT. But ofcourse, I'm doing this new fangled blogger and I've not figured out how to put that little tag on my sidebar. I will figure it out this week...end.


an aside -- TV watching: I watch too much. I watch anything and everything, so please don't judge me too harshly...

Lace leaf

I finally finished, washed, rinsed, blocked etc. for this shawl. This is an Evelyn Clark pattern and has been knitted by many. It's an easy lace pattern, but that's sort of what I needed to take to my SnB. It went very slowly simply because I didn't have the opportunity to knit. Then I got bored, but really wanted to finish it.

And yes, this is what my back yard looks like. That would be California burclover (Medicago polymorpha) aka a real pain to get rid of.

Specifics:
start: Feb 3, 2007
finished: Feb 16, 2007
yarn: 2/28NM cashmere/cotton in Natural (maybe 1/3 of a cone)
needle size: US4
pattern: Lace Leaf shawl
adjustments: I stopped pattern 2 (body) after 287 stitches because I got bored and wanted to move on.


Here it is in a little ball post washing with Dawn detergent and rinsing well with water to remove residual machine oil.




Another shot of the shawl. Now I just have to figure out when I'd actually wear a shawl, much less a triangular one...

Non-knitting post Today was z's birthday

Can't believe that it's already been 4 years. Four years ago, I stopped in at my lovely OB's office and was told to get going to Alta Bates, they would have a room for me and that the induction was going to commence that day. Four years ago, I called z's dad to tell him that I'd like to have Korean food for lunch (since I knew that they were going to not let me eat once I got to the hospital). Four years ago, we were trying to figure out what to name him. And four years ago, our most amazing fun intelligent son was born.

This was his first real kids party. He invited 7 of his friends (mostly girls, go figure) and we invited some of our friends and we had a really nice bowling party at the local AMF. I highly recommend this if you happen to have a birthday during rainy season (of course, the one day it didn't rain? yep, on his birthday). Oh well. It was stress-free and everyone seemed to have fun.

I'm going to be better...or aka 'well, duh...'

The reason I don't respond to comments is that (insert duh) I never had the notification setting set to let me know when I've got a comment. And it's not like I'm CAP or anyone like that who gets hundreds of comments, I only get one or two tops...

Anyway, it was too difficult (insert I was too busy or lazy) to respond to comments. I thoroughly enjoyed reading them (when I noticed I received one, anyway), so please keep sending them to me.


In summation, I'm going to be better.

Yarn over and unders?!

So, I'm surfin away, minding my own business, when I encountered a yarn over question on the knittyboard. Apparently, I've been yarning under? Oh shoot, now I'm totally confused. I just watched knittinghelp.com and argh! This is not a good thing, especially since I'm in the midst of Fiber Trends Lace Leaf shawl. BTW-- easy peasy, except for the fact that now, I'm going to be trying to figure out whether I've been doing it incorrectly. Of course they're showing English style and not Continental style, but I'm not sure what I do...hmm...

Mantra to self...forget...forget all that you just watched (not too terribly difficult thing to do since I only had maybe 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night, thanks to the a girl)...forget, yarn over...just do as you've been doing...continue...

But then again, the person having the problem wasn't able to get a hole in their lace, and I definitely can. So, even if I'm yarning under, I must somewhere, somehow be compensating for it.

Did I mention I'm using 50% cashmere/cotton laceweight yarn for this shawl. Tis quite lovely yarn. Go to their site (colourmart.com) and buy some yarn! If you need convincing, just google cashmere yarns and see what you get. The way I figure it, why not use cashmere when it's so reasonably priced? It seems like alot, but for 2300yds of laceweight, you just gotta do it.

As for this yarn (the 50% cash/cotton), it's sweet. It's nice to knit and literally from the never-ending cone.