Over-indulgence

This weekend, I allowed myself an extended weekend full of knitting, Friday afternoon, most of Saturday, Sunday evening, and Monday afternoon /evening. In all, over 18 hours of knitting - enough time to completely listen to Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and begin listening to "The Monsters of Templeton" by Lauren Groff. All that knitting had a price. Last night, my elbow was too sore to play our new Wii (a birthday gift for my husband from his parents) and today I woke up with very sore shoulders. I have to remember to take breaks and stretch. Oh, and not to over-indulge.

So what did I accomplish is all this time.
1.) I have almost completed the Icarus Shawl. I just have the few border rows, which are not charted for some reason and, from what I have heard, the never-ending bind-off. I started in on the first row of the border, but messed it up somehow.

2.) 1.25 hats, of which I do not currently have pictures. Plus, they are a bit of secret, shhhhhh.

3. ) Metaluna Mutant Mitts - I have been wanted to knit fingerless mitts for a while. I have had some Frog Tree Alpaca sitting in my stash for a while and when I recently checked out from the library this book, it all came together. While in the throws of creativity, I saw my husband's Metaluna Mutant Toy, and the colors reminded me of my mitts. Thus the name. Here are a couple of "In Progress" pictures.




Hmmmm, those really don't give you a sense of the overall pattern. At this time, I have actually finished knitting both mitts. But some of the fingers are too tight and need to be re-knit. Oh, I forgot, I still have one thumb to do as well.

4.) Re-knitting cuffs for my husband's alligator or lizard or baseball socks. I don't remember what we ended up naming them. I had the same problem with my stuffed animals as a kid.

Anyway, these socks were a birthday present for my husband last year.

After he wore them a couple of times, they developed holes in one sock, mostly in the cuff. I think the yarn was weak in places. I have fixed the hole in the leg and cut off the bad cuff. I am now ready to re-knit the cuff.

The Swap Complete

One evening last as I was making dinner the door bell rang. The UPS man had left a package at the door. I knew it was my package from my felted nest swap partner, Knittrips. I forced myself to wait until after dinner to open the package. Here is what was in it.

The nest, embellished with a beautiful blue flower pin.

The Extra goodies - Stickers for my student's papers, a lovely green bag of glass hearts, a sample of Eucalan Wool Wash, and wonderful tea called "Ancient Happiness".
What a wonderful set of treats. I am always on the lookout for new stickers for my students (in my experience, college students enjoy getting stickers on their papers). I have been wanting to try Eucalan for a long time. My favorite is the tea - it smells and tastes delightful. Plus there is the added joy of saying I am drinking Ancient Happiness. Thanks Knittrips, you have helped to make my first ever swap a great experience.

Embroidery

I embellished my Blue Skies hat with motifs that remind me of giant kelp and red algae. I suppose a name change is in order. I am thinking about adding some orange starfish, but I'm not sure.

I have been doing a lot of knitting while watching Lily. My husband is also sick, so it is convalescing day at our household.

Our Furry Friend

Pets are part of the family. This is not a stunning new insight, but it is true none-the-less. Our cat, Lily, is beloved by my husband and I, and by many of our friends.

We aren't sure how old she is, but in the 12 years or so that she has lived with us, she has always been really healthy. She does not act like an old cat, still running around on wild tears through the house on an almost daily basis. Thus, when she stopped eating and stopped playing, we became worried. On Thursday, we realized she had not eaten all day, and then we started thinking, the last time she was really frisky was about 2 weeks ago. We had both assigned her reclusiveness to the visit of my rowdy and loud nephews. So I started watching her and noticed that she kept licking a spot by her tail, and she was sitting down really slowly.

Yesterday morning we went to the vet and the diagnosis is an abscessed anal gland. Not a serious condition if treated. The abscess was lanced and drained. We now have to give her antibiotics and clean out the wound twice a day.

The hardest part for us is that we don't want to lose Lily's trust. She looks at us like, "what have you done to me and why are you torturing me". We have blocked her access to under the bed, as it is too difficult to lure her out. I don't want her to have negative associations with special food treats. Nor with us picking her up. So we have been holding and petting her alot, not just when it is time to "doctor" her. She is annoyed - she want to be left alone and she wants under the bed. We know we have to do these things to help her heal; I just wish we could explain that to her.

Things that make me laugh . . .

. . . include coming across funny scientific names while reading an other wise dry book chapter about isolation buffers.

I give you Sedum burrito.

Knit-Along

A pervasive theme in the "knit-blog" world has been the knit-along. For those of you not familiar with this idea, a knit-along is where a few to hundreds of people knit together in cyber-space. The knit-along may focus on a single type of item (i.e. socks), a single book, or an individual pattern; the possibilities are quite endless. The idea of knitting-along has been so popular that recently a book was published - not surprising called "Knitalong". One of the authors, Larissa, also writes one of my favorite knitting blogs - Stitch Marker.

I have not been much of a joiner of knit-alongs. There have been a few (including one for the Blue-Ribbon Wrap pattern in Larissa's book), but mostly, I don't like to have external deadlines associated with my knitting. I have enough stress in my life. The life of a teacher is filled with small daily deadlines - papers to grade, lectures to write and present, etc.

Thus, I am a bit surprised at myself that I have joined, or am contemplating joining, several knit-alongs. Maybe it is the unstructured summer schedule or maybe it is wanting to share my knitting, I don't know.

Here's the rundown.

1. Felted Nest Swap - Based on the felted nest pattern in "Knitalong", the idea of this swap is to knit, felt, and embellish a small bird's nest and trade it with a partner. This swap was set up by a woman named Heather through the Ravelry web-site. My partner is Knittrips, someone I have never met. I have finished knitting the nest and I felted it last night. Currently, it is setting in the sun on my back step. No pictures - it is a secret until Knittrips receives it.

2. The TikkunTree Project - A community art-project advocating peace.

3. Ravelympics - To celebrate the summer olympics, a group of people over at Ravelry have organized this event. The basic idea is to choose a project (or projects) that would be a challenge, but not impossible, to knit during the summer olympics. I have joined in three events.

W(ork) I(n) P(rogress) Wrestling
Mitten Medley
Gift Knit Pentathlon

I haven't yet decided exactly what my projects will be.

Aunting

This week, my two nephews, age 7 and 9, are staying with us. So far, so good. Today we: played outside with the hose, went to Crown Center and Union Station, drove through the Plaza looking for fountains, played video games, explored the sculpture park at the Nelson Atkins, and watched a movie about giant ants (Them!). My goal - get them to bed before 11 pm.

In knitting news: I have gotten past the first chart on my Icarus Shawl. Right now, it has over 375 stitches per row. The shawl grows at the rate of 4 stitches every other row. I just figured out that I messed up a row and will have to pull it back. UGH!

Science and Junior High Kids

Last week and this week, I have been teaching "ecology" to 7th and 8th graders as part of our science camp. Last week we had the girls, this week the boys. I have placed "Ecology" in quotes because our lesson about determining species diversity has collapsed into - what is the insect? what is this plant? Which is fine, but if I do this again in the future, I want them to see that ecology is more than natural history.

Surprisingly, the girls seemed more enthusiastic collecting spiders than the boys. They had no problem with going into the tall grass and though there were screams when they found large spiders, they were really into it. The boys - not so much. They would have stayed at the edge of the field if we would have let them. Though once I told them "The girls last week had no problem getting into the tall grass", they finally went into the grass. While I don't like to appeal to stereotypes, I felt like I had to do something to get them into it. And, I knew it would work.

I have really enjoyed the experience and hope that I have been in some way a role model to these kids, even if it just demonstrating that most insects and spiders won't hurt you if you touch them.

Visitng the other side of the color wheel

In balance with all of the cool blues of recent knits, I have also been knitting on the warm side of the spectrum.

Clockwise from the top we have

Icarus Shawl - Very easy lace knitting so far. I actually knit on this quite a lot during my recent road trip and at the conference we attending. I am now someone who knits during conference talks.

Corn Head Scarf - I have started collecting plant based yarns (linen, hemp, bamboo, etc), and I saw this yarn at the recent MisKnits sale. I have also been wanting to knit headbands to hold my hair back in the summer. Perfect timing, and so I came home with corn colored corn yarn (A-MAIZing in the Ducky colorway). I chose a pattern that reminded me of ears of corn.
Purple Gauntlets - I have more to say on these, and I plan to post a more in-depth post soon. Let's just say that there are issues. These purples are warmer in real life than the picture shows.

Love yarn from the Vicki Howell Collection, also purchased at MisKnits. The color is called Peter and Mary Jane (awww, how sweet). It is a blend of 30% silk and 70% bamboo. I am not sure what this yarn will become. I had my eye on a beret pattern, then I remembered I already have an orange beret. Suggestions?


And finally, the newly named "Flame Azalea" socks, previously known as "Candy Oranges". I decided to change the name because (1) this picture of flame azaleas reminded me of the socks, and (2) these are going to Sparkling Squirrel.

The final leg

For completeness, I want to finish updating the highlights of my roadtrip with SS. After the day of plant hunting described previously, we started hotel hunting. We had about the same success rate, in that the first two towns we stopped in did not have hotels. Ok - one did, but the door to the office was locked with a sign that said, "Please call 555-1234 from the pay phone (there will is no charge)". But then there was this semi-scary guy who was involved in a conversation on the pay phone. We decided to move on to the next town. Finally, in Elizabethon, TN we found a decent hotel that just happened to have a Long John Silver's. I know LJS is not the best food for you, but I think SS and I have eaten there for every roadtrip we have been on together. I might be wrong, but it is kind of a tradition. Plus, we were too tired to do anything more elaborate. So we brought our fish, chicken, hush puppies, and cole slaw back to the hotel, watched a couple of episodes of "Top Chef" - a real treat since neither of us have cable at home, and knit. In a phone call to her husband that evening, SS learned of the 4.5 feet of water in her basement.

Despite knowing that a hard day of work lay ahead of us, we had a lovely time on the second day of driving.

We stopped at a winery (which I cannot remember the name of) and took a few minutes to knit on the patio overlooking the vineyard. Most of the wine was pretty good and we ended up bringing some home to Mr. SS.
We did not stop at too many places - we were both tired and we needed to be at the car rental place by 3 pm. We did stop at Tamarack, a huge store featuring crafts and products made in WV. We had also thought about eating lunch there, but the line was really long and none of the food sounded particularly tempting. In retrospect, I think we should have taken the time, because instead, we drove around the sad downtown of, I think, Beckley looking for a local restaurant. We finally found a place (again, I don't remember the name - I need to write my travelogues much closer to the actual days of travel), but it was not good. At least it was cheap.

We took a brief stop at the New River Gorge to view the bridge. You have to walk down lots of stairs.We did find a bird's nest on the way down.
You are rewarded with a wonderful view of the highest vehicular bridge in North America.


All in all it was a great roadtrip. I love traveling with SS. We have covered a lot of miles together and have always had a great time.

The next day - I helped SS and Mr. SS with basement cleanup. It was wet. And messy. And dirty. The national guard came by to pick up garbage from the flood. The fire department came by to wash the layer of mud off the streets. I swept up a lot of water and mud. We were all tired at the end of the day. But, we were all too muddy to take any photos.

The next day, we went to Pittsburgh (I flew out early the next morning), where we ate brunch, watched a Pirates game, and ate Indian Food.

Thanks SS and Mr. SS for your hospitality.