One Crazy Fiber Lady

I’m going to let these pictures speak for themselves and just add one word:  DONE*

Here’s a tighter shot on the border, along with a lovely picture of my fingers:

*I don’t consider the lack of blocking a factor in doneness   Blocking is just a fact of life and part of the routine maintenance this shawl will face during its life.  So nya-nya, its done.

I finished this last night and was just giddy when I got to the last repeat.  Judging by the dates, it took me just about 2 months to do this.  I also popped it on my cheesy, cheap scale and found I used just about 5oz of the 2/28 merino from Silk City on a size 5 needle.  I love it.  I’ll probably block it this weekend and will certainly post official finished pictures then.

I’ll be starting the Stonington Shawl shortly as part of the EZasPi knitalong shortly, but I need a break from shawl lace knitting and to give something else a chance to be the purse knitting.  Ah my old favorites…. SOCKS!

My time flies when you’re busy as hell.  I can’t believe over a week has gone by since my last posting.  I want to thank everyone for all their kind thoughts regarding my wrist.  It is indeed better and I avoided having to go to the doctor.  I still feel twinges from it every now and again as I pick up a squiggling toddler that would rather be running down the rain soaked driveway.  They’re all suicidal I’ve decided.  The twins are now very into playing ‘catch me’ and are rather like herding cats.  Speaking of cats, the little beige fur-beast has taken to waking me at 5:15AM by alternately licking and nibbling on my hands/fingers/nose/any exposed skin.  I alternate which side of the bed I toss him off of until one of us gets tired of the game.  In his case, he moves to the foot of the bed and curls up with Earl, for me, I have to get out of bed.  Bleh.  I’m not a morning person by a long shot.

I’ve been terribly busy at work recently, ergo the lack of blogging.  I haven’t even read others blogs.  I’m going into withdrawal and will be twitching at any moment.  I’ve been juggling two pretty big projects that both had similar deadlines.   By the time I get the twins down for the night, I’m so tired and so tired of computers that I just plunk on the couch with my knitting and watch television for a couple of hours.  Fortunately for my loyal readers, I got the work on the projects done yesterday and have nothing left to do but the paperwork to release it to QA so now I have time to blog again.  Yay.

I’ve made remarkable progress on my pi shawl.  I finished the body of it Wednesday last week.  I started the border on Thursday while I sat in the cold and dark waiting for PSE&G to show up to fix my power problem.  I called them at 8:30AM.  They were happy to send someone over, but they didn’t know what time, could be any time up until 11:30 PM and that I would need to be there.  It probably isn’t necessary for me to tell you that they didn’t arrive until 5:30 and had no need to enter my home.  No power means no heat, no TV, no computers, barely any phone because I only have cordless phones.  My cellphone battery needed to be recharged and I couldn’t do that either!  What a long day.  I did get 15 repeats of the border done though before the metal needles got too cold.  As of this morning have completed 75 of the 96 repeats.  I would be further along but I had to frog some 8 points on Monday night.  Seems I can’t do these lace repeats at lunch  What a pain.  The lace pattern I chose for the border (thanks for all your help dear readers) is a fabulous one that I’m quite happy with.  It has enough variation that it isn’t boring, even after 75 repeats, but it isn’t so tricky that I wasn’t able to memorize it during the first 1 hour/ 6 repeat sitting. 

I also got some spinning done during my powerless day, returning to the gray jacob roving on my Tina II.  Damn, whodathunk that preparing the fiber ahead of time would make me love spinning more than I already did?!  Thanks again to Stephanie for that.

Speaking of Stephanie, Saturday I went to Barnes & Noble and picked up amongst other titles:

I also grabbed a copy of this finally:

I’m completely inspired.  I have SOCKS SOCKS SOCKS SOCKS repeating in my head presently.  A flip through this book, as well as the other sock books I’ve added recently had my running to the Internet for more sock yarns.  I really want to make the Aran Sandal Sock, so I have to find a good sport-weight to use.  While surfing for yarn (forget that I could be blogging then please) I found that Elann now has the Kroy Sock yarn for half the price that Joann.com sells it for AND they had a load of it in stock.  Needless to say I placed an order which should be arriving shortly.  I ordered some 12 skeins of it so I’m pretty set for standard socks for some time to come.  A picture of the new pile of sock yarn will be posted when the package arrives. Okay so I haven’t purchased any sport weight yet, I’m hoping to find some locally.  I’ve been quietly adding sock yarn to the collection recently when I discovered I was down to 2 skeins of koigu and the 2 kits from Vicki.  This came in handy last night.  My copy of IK Spring’05 finally arrived yesterday.  I was flipping through it and came on the Cable Rib Socks.  They spoke to me.  Off to the yarn cabinet I went, pulled out two skeins of the Sock It To Me 4ply Essential from Elann.com in Marine Blue (had to choose between that and Chestnut for the Sock It To Me or Black or Natural in the Kroy that I got quietly from Joann’s last week in placing my orders to qualify for free shipping for the rest of the year) and I was off to the races on the socks.  This is the very reason we have a stash!  No way in heck I could have gotten to a yarn store last night at 9pm, the twins were in bed, I was tired and yet I had the burning desire to knit these socks.  Forget Pi.  I’ve been knitting Pi almost exclusively for over a week.  So close to the end.  Thankfully.  So much yarn, so little time.

At the risk of turning this into a purchase history blog and making it appear that I’m a bit of a shopaholic, I’m a sucker for a good deal.  I couldn’t pass up the price that Jannette has during her current sale of the Jaeger Shetland Aran yarn.  $55 for a bag INCLUDING air shipping from the UK.  Wowza.  Naturally I took advantage of the buy it now and bought.

I got two bags in the blue and one in the pink.  I’m going to make the twins each a hoodie in their respective colors with enough to make a sweater for next year as well.  The other bag of blue will be to make a sweater for me.  Though I’m very tempted to make one with both colors for a cutesy coordinating mom/kids outfit.  Yeah I’m sick.  I’m sure I can find a use for this stuff.  Its 80% wool 20% alpaca and just can’t be had for this price.  Hell, I’m tempted to buy more, but I don’t really NEED any more yarn or more to the point, none of the other colors are calling me.

That pretty much catches us up to date.  Other than a new Manager starting in my group this past Monday.  Cute guy too.  Wonder if he’s single.  No ring, but that really means nothing. I’m waiting to see if pictures materialize on his desk.  I’m hoping for nothing more than a dog photo.  Hell, I don’t meet anyone anywhere else these days, might as well keep my eyes open at work. 

I’m ready to frolic in the warm weather and am so ecstatic by the 60′s temp that I actually put on a skirt!  I am a girl!  I have learned from "What Not to Wear" that at my height I shouldn’t be wearing ankle length skirts so I opted for a just below the knee pleated light-weight knit in black with a sleeves gray sweater and my black cashmere cardigan over it.  Quite a change from my standard jeans and shirt fare.

Knit on!

Late late update for me.  Today I was so busy at work hacking data, copying, pasting and doing all sorts of lookups in the Oracle database.  No real details what I’m up to, but suffice it to say, all this work is being generated because I was right about something back in June of last year. Nice to be proven right, but it has resulted in quite a bit of painful work since.  This too shall pass and its given me something that made the day go quite quickly.

I’ve worked almost exclusively on pi for the last couple of days.  I can see the end of the tunnel and that is enough to spur me onwards.  It also helps that each round completed is one more percentage point towards completion.  I did the measuring at lunch yesterday, modifications to my spreadsheet (which now lives on my palm pilot for easier updating) and I decided that the third round of diamonds was necessary.  I’m halfway through that round now.  I’m actually surprised at how fast this repeat is working, but then exclusivity has that effect.  It also helps that I sat and knit it last night while watching Nanny 911 and 24.  While today is Tuesday, I might just pass on spinning and knit so more during House.  I love House.  That’s the kiss of death for the series.  Please don’t blame me when its cancelled. 

My wrist hurts so I don’t think spinning is the right activity for it.  I strained/sprained/whatever my right wrist last night playing with the twins.  They’re getting heavy!  It was either catching them as they "jumped" off something repeatedly or it was while I was lying on my back almost bench pressing them.  Not one of my brightest moves, but heck, we were having fun.  Not so much fun now. Heck it could have been too much pi last night, but I’d be loathe to admit that knitting created an injury. It hurts to rotate the wrist in any direction and there is little strength in my grip.  I have a support on it now and if its not better in a couple of days, I might just consider seeing a doctor.  Bottom line, my right hand holds the fiber when I’m spinning while the left controls the twist.  While I don’t generally have a death grip on the fiber, I don’t think I should push it.  Cutting and pasting at work were bad enough.

While I might not have responsed personally to comments recently, rest assured that I have read them and will shortly respond. 

That’s it, a shorty tonight. The twins are already in bed, I’ve done my evening routine and I can now go park myself on the couch with pi and see how far towards completion I can get.

Oh @#$@#@#F@#$@#.  When the heck am I going to learn?  I was just about complete with a posting when an email came in with a link.  Did I copy that link and paste it into a new browser window?  Of course not.  I clicked the damn thing and watched in horror as my witty and engaging post disappeared.  Oy.  Fudge.  No way I can repeat said wittiness so you’ll just have to imagine how cool that perfect post had been and suffer through this version.

Who’s this sitting in my living room?  Why, that’s none other than Deb.  She mused on in her blog posting about getting a new wheel, but the lack of a local store was a bit of a hindrance.  Being the enabler nice person that I am, I invited her to my home to try out my collection since the Lendrum was one that she was considering.  I think she liked the wheel.  Unless you’re looking for the fairy tale saxony wheel, the Lendrum is a great wheel.  It was my first wheel and the one I always turn to.  As I told Deb, it is my PB&J wheel.  I doubt I’ll ever part with it.  While she resisted the siren’s song of the Tina, she did take a liking to the Journey Wheel.  Heck what’s not to like with that!  She was the first blogger that I’ve met through blogging! Well had a face to face meeting after meeting online through blogging.  Cool.  I enjoyed our all too short visit.  I enjoy getting together with other spinner/knitters, but the twins are at an age currently where I can’t take them to guild meetings.  Soon enough.

She brought the nicest thank you gift too… shetland roving!  This roving is oh so exquisite, so fine and so soft and so very white.  I had to spin it Saturday night!  I pulled out the fast flyer for my Lendrum and using the 12:1 ratio, I spun a very fine single that thanks to the newly found pre-drafting skill is oh so consistent.  Thank you Deb, thank you!  I must have more of this roving and implored Deb to tell me where she got it.  eBay strikes again and I now have the seller in my favorites.

What you see here is 1,392 yards of 10wpi corriedaleX 2-ply yarn.  I like it much better now that it is all spun, plied and skeined up.  finally I can call this stuff done.  Yay.  I should have plenty for a big sack like sweater for next year, but I’ll put tha on the list for late summer.  I can’t contemplate a bulky wool sweater now.

It appears as Spring has finally reached New Jersey and I was greated by these in the front flower bed on Saturday.  Ignore of course that Saturday was the last day of winter.  It was a beautiful day that was gratefully mild as I woke up to no heat.  Once again the yearly air got in the lines and rendered my hot water baseboard heat completely useless.  Thankfully though it was a 50F+ day in March and not the 15F day in January that it chose last year.  The nice man came to bleed the lines around dinner time (a very yummy chicken and noodle stir fry ) and by bedtime the apartment was comfy again.

I didn’t get a load of knitting done this weekend, but I did manage to finish the second round of diamonds in the outter ring of my pi shawl.  That wad of blue on Deb’s lap is my pi   That reminds me, Deb brought her beautiful Pi-are-square shawl, its abolutely gorgeous.  Go take a look.   I’m currently debating continuing for the third round of diamonds or calling it quits here and adding the border.  I think i’ll do some rough measurements during lunch and decide then if the additional 18 rows are necessary. 

There’s been some chatter on the various mailing lists that I still currently read regarding the wonderful Woolee Winder.  Now I have one of these babies for my electric wheel.  I love it.  Perfect.  Makes a sweet spinner even sweeter.  Naturally something so sweet doesn’t come without a price.  The flyer and one bobbin is $148 with additional bobbins priced at $25 a piece.  Not exactly one of the cheaper addons for a spinning wheel.  With my attention span, I wouldn’t get anything less than two additional bobbins.  With shipping,we’re talking a $200 package.

While I’d love one for all the wheels I have, thankfully I do show some restraint periodically.  I just can’t justify that kind of outlay.  Making my retraint a bit easier is that they don’t make the WW for all models.  Yet.  They’re always adding new wheels to their list.  I debated for the longest time which of my wheels that they did currently make for I should get before buying the one for the electric.  I was content with that.  Now with the chatter on two different lists regarding WW’s, I’m back to debating getting another one.  My choices are one for the Lendrum (upright, not the saxony) or the Jensen Tina II, which they just recently created a version for.  Figures.  The prior debate had been the Lendrum or the Ashford.  Now that the ashford is gone I thought it would be an easier choice.  I’m leaning towards the Tina currently as it uses the Jensen flyer whorls and I have just about all of those, so I could use the WW for all available ratios.  The Lendrum version is limited to the three ratios built onto it.  While I don’t use all the options I currently have now, I don’t like to limit myself going in.

Underlying this debate over which wheel to get the WW for, is the should I spend the cash for it at all.  It’s not much more than say the amount of yarn I bought last month and certainly cheaper than a new wheel.   But still, restraint does pop out every now again.  (Ignore that I placed two orders with Joann.com yesterday to take advantage of free shipping for the rest of the year.)  Just as I lean towards the Jensen for the new toy, pay day comes around.  I checked my balance online (have that every wonderful direct deposit) and whoa, a balance much larger than I expected.  Bonus hit today!  While I haven’t gotten the stub yet from the bossman, it is more than enough to cover a WW and two extra bobbins.  YAY ME.  I’ll get the WW and stick the rest in savings along with my nice sized tax refund, which arrived already.  Double sweet.

I came to the realization though, in time for my review later this afternoon.  If I got bonus then I had a decent review and can quit worrying.  Bonus from what I understand is based partially on the company’s performance last year, as well as my own.  So if I was a crappy rotten employee I would have gotten nothing.  Whew.  I was worrying over nothing.  Still, I won’t rest completely until I sit down with the boss later and yes, get the nice letter from HR as to what the salary increase will be.

I got the major tasks done last night:  changing the litter box, packing away all of the birdie things, cleaning the major mess from the day.  I parked on the couch and pulled out the tri-color Jacob roving (picture tomorrow?).  The three colors, light/dark/medium are separate thing rovings rolled together into one ball.  I’m not sure how others have spun this, but I decided to separate it into its component parts, spin it fine and then 3-ply it.  I’m sure that I can get out of the pound of roving enough for a pair of socks at the least.  While I’ve never been one for preparation, rather prefering to jump into something, I took Stephanie’s pre-drafting lesson to heart this week and figured if she could do it, so could I and decided to give it a shot.  Wow.  It does make a difference.  It is far quicker and easier to pre-draft rather than futz with it as you spin.  It was also far easier on my hands to spin from well prepared and pre-drafted roving.  Duh.  I was able to accomplish more in far less time.  I’m sold.  While I’ve been able to produce even singles in the past, this is just so much easier that I’m so sorry I haven’t done it.  I guess that’s what comes from learning to spin from a book rather than from an actual teacher.  Better late than never.

PS:  I had my review.  While there where some slightly negative comments, they weren’t entirely unexpected and I’ve already shown vast improvements in the criticized areas.  (Boss and I had a chat in January and I’ve been working to fix since.)  I got the standard increase so the negatives didn’t have too much effect.  Additionally, the bonus did hit.  Sweet.  10% of my annual salary from last year.  Okay so the government took its chunk.  When do they even miss an opportunity? With big ole lump sums they take at the highest tax rate just in case this balloon payment bumps you into the next bracket.  Umm, no danger there so I’ll get a good part of it back next year with my refund.  I can live with it.  Woolee. Winder.  Woolee. Winder.  Woolee.  Winder.

PPS:  I just (9:17pm) ordered a Woolee Winder with two extra bobbins for my Tina   WEEEEEE.  Hmm, maybe I’ll spin something else on a different wheel and wait to continue my jacob roving when the WW gets here.  The idea of waiting to use the WW until after the jacob is complete is just nuts.  Like that will happen.  I’d rather all three plies be consistent, which means spinning them as close to same as possible.  Okay time for chores and then Battlestar Galactica!

Have a good weekend!

Ignoring just about everything that I had mentally planned to do last night (loads of laundry and various other boring housework related chores) I sat down and plied all the corrie singles.  I so wanted to finish with that fiber once and for all!  Initially I had to finally skein up the plied yarn from the last time I worked with the stuff.  It had been aging on the bobbins for weeks now.  There were two skeins worth of somewhere around 300 yards.  I also did a quicky wpi test to see what weight yarn I was getting.  It isn’t the most consistent yarn that I’ve ever spun, though the variation is nowhere near the thick and thin of beginner yarn (or half of the fancy shmancy yarns that cost a fortune these days) so its averaging about 10wpi and will probably knit up at 3.5 st/in.  Hmmm, a modified big sack sweater?  I don’t think thick and thin yarn is so great for cables, but for an oversized pullover, this shouldn’t be bad.  And here I was talking about getting rid of it yesterday.  Anyway, after almost 3 hours of plying (take 30 min for futzing with the driveband on Tina) I have everything plied, even the two Lendrum bobbins which had aging singles at least a year old though probably older.  I have 3 full Tina bobbins with 2 ply 10wpi yarn waiting to be skeined up.  Yay.  Done.  Now onto something more exciting and probably in smaller amounts  

I did a bit of thinking of what I have active, which wheel better suits it and will probably change up that yummy cormo from the Lendrum upright to the womack electric.  The roving is so well prepared that it takes very little in the way of pre-drafting and is perfect for feeding the electric.  The angora blend from Kim will stay on the Lendrum Saxony as it is really perfect for laceweight without treadling like I’m in the Tour de France (which I do anyway).  This leaves Tina and the Lendrum upright empty, along with the Journey Wheel.  Hideously neglected is the little danish saxony which has flax draped around its distaff and hasn’t been used since this past summer.  Never fear that I have a lack of stash to spin.  Remember the organizational effort of my Christmas break?  I have two 32 gallon garbage pails disguised as night tables that are filled with spinning stash, not to mention the rest of the stuff spread hither and thither in my wool house.  Yup.  I live in a wool house too.  Oh yeah, I still haven’t displayed for the world to see my rubbermaid shed outside that is jammed with fleeces.  I don’t think I will either.  I think I’ll probably start the tri-color jacob roving that I got from Edie at Joy Farm, who’s fiber fair is this weekend.  I went last year and it was great fun.  I bought some beautiful Border Leceister/Mohair roving and two Jacob fleeces.  Only downside is that she’s in Woodstown, NJ about as far away from home and still in the same state.  The drive home took forever as the babies went insane on the Turnpike.  It was one of those rides where I found myself jammed between their carseats, giving them both a bottle while parked in one of the rest areas.  Thanks.  No thanks.  Though it would be a good preview of what a trip to the MDS&W festival would be like with them, but I think if I do go the twins will stay with my folks for that weekend.

anyway…

Here’s a nice sunshiney shot of my Summer Ribby.  The color is definitely a keeper and if I knit in short bursts, the cotton doesn’t so much kill my hands.  This picture is of the first front piece that I finished yesterday.  I’m just shy of ending the ribbing section on the second now.  I should be well clear of the botton ribbing by the end of today’s Knit Club.

A couple of days ago, can’t for the life of me remember and I’m too lazy to open the photo and look at the date stamp, the twins were playing in the living room.  Some of this playtime was dedicated to pulling all the scarves off the coat rack.   They weren’t hurting anything/one and they were having clean fun.  I let them.  Anyway, I turned around and found Kathryn standing like this:

You think the girl needs a shawl?  She’s a natural!  Look at the form!  It almost matches what she’s wearing too, and well it doesn’t clash horribly.  My girl has good fashion sense.

She’s such a sweet girl too.  She’s been a very big help recently.  I can get her to put the dirty clothes in the hamper as I take them off her brother.  Recently she’s actually holding her hand up and grunting at me, indicating her rediness for hamper duty as soon as I put the boy on the changing table.  She did something super sweet on Sunday.  I had given them each a cookie.  While she had hers and was alternating eating it and stuffing it in a box, her brother had put his down and crossed the room to play with something else.  Shortly thereafter he had a bit of a freak out and while I pointed Alex towards his cookie, he stood there crying trying to get Kat’s.  Well my little girl got up, walked across the room, picked up the cookie and brought it back to her brother.  No, she didn’t tease him with it and chow down in front of him (as I sort of expected her to), but she handed it to him.  Awwwww.

Finally some random cuteness from the cats:

This is exactly what I was hoping for when I added Baron to the mix.  Earl is such a lovey cat that he needed a snuggle buddy.  Baron is much the same way.  I wake up every morning with his fuzzy little beige body tucked under my chin.  While these two boys have been buddies from early on, I was quite surprised and honestly relieved to see Duchess playing with Baron this morning.  Things are settling down quite nicely.

I love it when a plan comes together.

First off, thank you to everyone for their comments on poor Merlin’s demise.  I am thankful that the twins are not old enough to have understood what happened and as a result are not traumatized by the events.  I do so hope that it was over quickly and that the poor birdie did not suffer long. 

Once again, Tuesday was spinning day at my home.  It has been a while, but I finally got back to it.  The lure of the other projects was not so strong as to distract me.  Of course it did have to wait for a trip to AC Moore for more sex. After I finished the first ribby, I picked up the pattern from ChicKnits for her LoTech Sweat.  After spending some time consulting the budget and the yarn options out there, I decided on the Patons Classic Merino for it.  I know Smiley’s has excellent prices on it but I seemed to remember that AC Moore carried it so I hit their website to see if I could confirm this.  While they don’t list all their products on their website, I did check out their current circular.  Imagine my surprise to find they were having a 25% all yarn sale.  And yup, they carried the Classic.  Oh no, the sale ends Tuesday 3/15th.  After a quick dinner with the folks and a surprise visit from my baby sister, the twins and I popped off to fondle some yarn.  I wound up picking up enough yarn to do the LoTech, as well as another Ribby. All for $3.74 a skein.  The colors are Dark Grey Mix, New Denim and Denim Marl.

The LoTech will be in the Dark Grey mix.  The denim for the body and the marl for the sleeves and probably the collar as well of a new Ribby.  I also picked up some beads to make a custom pull for Ribby 1 and should have that done by the end of the weekend.  Now to make room to put the yarn.

I finally, FINALLY, finished spinning up that moorit corrieX lamb roving that I have been spinning on the Tina.  Thank goodness.  I was oh so tempted to fill the bobbin and toss whatever wouldn’t fit on it.  That’s how tired of this stuff I am.  Oy.  Now I just have to ply it.  I have two very full Tina bobbins, plus the two Lendrum bobbins of it to ply.  Not to mention the two Tina bobbins of already plied stuff that I’ve been too lazy to skein up.  I’ll be happy when this stuff is in the complete pile.  I’m so sick of it, I’m not even sure I can knit with it.  I might just have to put it up as looking for a new home.  I’m not sure what I’ll spin next on Tina, but I’m sure something will hit me.  I’ll hopefully ply it soon and just get it done.

I think I might just leave the space recently vacated by the birdcage to put my Womack Electric back out.  When the bird arrived, I put the spinner away, as it had shared that space with an extra printer.  My spinning while the twins are up were put was put on hold as I’m still too chicken to tempt those nosy little monsters.  Heck the cats are bad enough and I had to spin last night with Baron in my lap.  I can see Alex shoving his finger in the spokes of the moving wheel in my mind’s eye and I just don’t want to tempt it.  Though, I could use my Journey Wheel.  Hell, I forgot I even have that one.  Too many wheels, too little time to use them.  Anyone want a small european saxony wheel? I NEVER use it and it probably would be very happy in a new home.  Inquiries welcome

I finished the first cotton ribby front this morning, on the elevator to the office too.  I was so close to finishing that I was tempted to take the subway an extra stop or two just so I could finish.  I knitted instead on the elevator and just need to bind off at lunch before I can start the next piece.  I do have to admit that I like the way the Cotton Ease is working up, though it is far harder on the hands than Peruvian Highland wool.  I do need to take more frequent breaks, but it is still a great project for my short hop train rides and lunch time knitting.

Knit on.

I returned home last night after work to find that there had been a battle in my living room.  While the cats have free reign of the house, the twins and the other pets do not.  Saturday I installed a new gate on the doorway to the living room to keep the twins better contained without having to deal with moving a temporary gate all the time.  Basically, I’m pretty lazy.  I’m honestly surprised that it took me this long to install something with a swinging gate.  Okay, I’m a lazy shopper too, unless it involves yarn, but that is another story.

Anyway… Yeti, the Abominable Snow Bunny, and Merlin, the parakeet, each have cages on opposite sides of the living room.  My front door is in the livingroom, and as I have no back door, it really is the only way in and out of the place beyond windows.  [why is it that I always type 'winders' and have to correct it?]  Yeti’s cage on the door wall, Merlin’s opposite it.  Well, I carried in the first of the twin monkeys last night and noticed something awry.  It took a few moments for my tired brain to process the scene.  I found Merlin’s cage lying on its side on the floor.  I then saw clumps of feathers about on the carpet.  Oh no.  I put Kathryn on the couch, scooped the cage off the floor and put it back on the shelf.  Mind you, Alex is still outside in the car.  No cats are about and Yeti is perfectly content hanging about and nibbling on some hay.  A few muttered oaths and I got Alex.

A search of the place revealed nothing more than the clumps of feathers that I had already found.  I saw a number of wing and tail feathers.  A few had some blood on the base.  That’s it.  Now when I got Merlin, his flight feathers had been clipped and still had not grown back.  So flight was not an option for him in escaping the unknown number of feline assailants.  No one has come forward and admitting to being the culprit in the carnage.  I suspect it was probably Earl and Baron who did the deed, but I can’t prove it. 

While Earl had been ‘content’ to watch Merlin from the floor.  Baron
was not and had found a way to the side of the cage.  I was able to
thwart him to some extent, but I think he taught Earl that there was another option.

Poor Merlin.  I just hope it was quick.

I learned an important lesson: you cannot have a small bird in a house with cats.

No, I didn’t take any pictures.  I did save some feathers though.  NO, I shan’t be replacing him.

A fish tank would be nice on that shelf.  Hmmm

And another ones gone from the WIP to the FO pile.  Sweet.  Okay so the picture of this is out there in a couple of spots and shockingly, I posted to another blog before my own.  But here is my finished ribby!  I love the thing.  Actually sitting here wearing it now.  Its a great sweater and oh how so perfect.

Project Details

Pattern:  ChicKnits
Yarn:  Elann Peruvian Highland – Black/Ruby
Started:  1/31/05
Finished: 3/11/05
Size: 37/38

(Click for a larger image.. and YES it is in the Ribby Gallery   I really love this sweater and it is so very comfortable.  Now with 3 days to have recovered, I didn’t so much mind hand sewing in the zipper.  I am toying with hand beading a black and red pull for it.  I probably will, just need to get some red beads.

I bought 12 skeins of yarn, 8/4 black/red.  I used all but a smidge of the red and 6 skeins of the black.  I did shorten the sleeves from the pattern length.  While my chest and the hints for making this suggested working the 38 size, I’m still 5’0" and have proportionately short arms.  I’m glad I did as they hit spot on.  Yay me.

I love how it fits, how it feels, how it moves.  Wonderful sweater that I’ll happily make again and again. Hell, I did start the cotton version (picture tomorrow) for summer wear. 

No real knitting this weekend.  The twins and I hung out my with sister on Saturday, while yesterday was devoted to playing and laundry. 

Oh hey, Baron the Weird ate cooked peas off the kitchen floor last night during dinner.  Peas?  Weird indeed.

Today is turning out to be one of those no good ugly days.  It started off relatively benign, if you consider getting your fingers nibbled by a kitten benign.  Baron nibbled while Earl stood on my hair.  Needless to say I didn’t sleep in this morning.  Guess that wasn’t so bad afterall, as it is a work day.  I feel crappy though.  I have a twinge in my back that won’t go away and a headache to end all headaches.  I managed to put on matching clean clothes that actually fit before the twins got up.  Except the shoes I really want to wear are still by the front door where I left them yesterday to dry, thanks to the crunchy icy wet mess that was all over.  I put on a couple of place holder shoes (berkie clogs that I can’t remember the model name for presently) over my hand knit comfy wool socks so that I’m not traipsing over the house ruining the socks.

I got the kids up and dressed, though they barely cooperated and I had to dress Kathryn twice.  The cute coordinating outfits that I had picked out were a bust.  Kat seems to have grown a bit since the last time she wore the burgundy cord overalls and now they don’t fit her.  Needless to say that I discovered this after I had them on her.  Alex’s blue ones surprisingly still fit.  I had to find something else for her to wear.  She wasn’t happy about getting dressed the first time so you can imagine how thrilled she was for a second go around.  Anyway, I get the beasts into the kitchen for their breakfast and Baron swipes Kathryn’s waffle.  What kitten on the planet eats Eggo Nutragrain waffles?  Weird little beast he is.  I give her more food and set about feeding the rest of the livestock, while managing to whip together a cup of severely needed coffee.

Instead of screwing with the carseat straps, they have their assigned seats.  Kat behind me and Alex on the passenger side.  Well not this morning.  I took Kat out first, plopped her in the car and had her half strapped in before my brain parsed the fact I put her in the wrong seat.  Hell, my back hurt too much for extra lifting and I just left her.  She seemed happy looking at things from the other side of the car and Alex was as content in Kat’s seat.  At the train station I realized I never changed my shoes. 

My head still hurts.  My back is still crampy.  Worse.  My good friend and former manager, who gave me my break by hiring me for my first programming job, just came by to let me know that he was just let go.  It is not entirely unexpected, but still…  I’ve decided to wait for my annual review.  Depending on how that goes, I’ll decide whether or not to look.

I finished all the knitting on Ribby last night.  I also managed to buy a zipper!  I did not, however, manage to sew said zipper into said sweater.  I doubt I’ll do that before the weekend.  I am quite happy with the sweater so far. I’m even happier that I don’t have a huge number of ends to weave in as I used the spit-splice method of joining each new skein.  Sweet.  I also used a couple of the tails to sew up the seams.  I hate weaving in ends and will do whatever I can to avoid it.

I finally opened the box of yarn from Joann.com and took out the cotton-ease.  It’s pretty.  I cast on for another Ribby in the banana cream yellow.  Pretty.  Okay so there’s no give to the yarn but the acrylic does soften up the cotton a bit.  I didn’t swatch.  Personally I hate swatching and having learned from the Harlot’s experience with her "swatch", I cast on for one of the fronts, rather than the back.  I’m about a 1/4 stitch off of gauge in a good direction.  This would make the sweater a tad bigger than expected.  Not an entirely bad thing given that it is in completely non-stretchy cotton, so I’m going to leave it as it and not go down a needle size.  No pictures of it yet, but they will follow.

Now I need a cup of tea to calm this cough.