Why I have not been blogging much lately

Or knitting much to be honest.

Before: (note the incredibly sexy rust brown paint in the middle of the blue, also the white patches where the wall was repaired, and the general dinginess of the paint)


After primer:


With nice bright happy paint!


This took all weekend. Also, we painted the weekend before and we will be painting Georgia's room next.

And here's why Georgia hasn't been knitting or blogging much (despite the fact that she can't knit, read or write):


She "helped" to paint. And then put herself down for a nap that lasted about four hours. Awesome. Maybe we should do this every weekend. :)


Side note, actually about knitting: The February Lady is coming along beautifully. Got the body completed and am about halfway down one sleeve. Should be done by the end of the week.

We're going on vacation!

Here (that would be Aguadilla, Puerto Rico):

I am SO FREAKIN EXCITED! End of April, here we come.

Book Bonanza!

First things first though: The February Lady as it stands right this very second. Because I know y'all are DYING to know. Because I know these things. I can hear my tens of readers clamoring for news on this sweater. The desperation is tangible. Tangible I tell you.

So [waving hand in an elaborate manner whilst bowing] here it is, ladies and gentlemen (well, gentleman, if we're really being accurate here).

I am having absolutely no troubles with this sweater, and other than one very strange conversation on the subway while I was knitting it, nothing has happened. No mistakes, no ripping back nothing.

This sweater makes me feel like a knitting genius (unlike the Damson, which makes me feel like the knitting village idiot).


All righty, on to the book bonanza. I picked up Home Is Where the Wine Is by Laurie Perry. If you haven't read her blog, it is fabulous. And funny and touching and wonderful.

I started reading this book today on the subway platform and it has many things in its favor:

1. She's very funny.
2. It has really big print, so it can be read quickly and in low light.
3. Did I mention that she's funny?
4. And it's (peripherally, at least) about knitting.

No, I was not paid to write about her book. And I purchased it with my very own hard earned dollars (and if you knew my boss, you'd know just how hard earned those dollars really are) and a 30% off coupon from Borders.


Also, after I discovered this book (Fairie-ality Style by David Ellwand) at the New York Botanical Gardens, my lovely husband ordered it for me and it arrived today. It's really lovely, and a fabulous design source book. The photography is gorgeous and I love the colors. Ellwand really knocked this one out of the park. There are shots of furniture and clothing made from leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, shells and sticks. I like the furniture, but the dresses really got me going.


This is my favorite dress from the book:


Another spread that is super cool (I think this Georgia's favorite):


Colors that remind me of the Damson (Malabrigo sock in Primavera) that is currently giving me fits. I love these colors so much, and they don't suit me in the slightest. Argh.


Yes, that is Georgia in this shot. As soon as she saw the book, she was all over it. I think it reminds her of Tinkerbell (the movie). As much as I whole-heartedly dislike the first Tinkerbell movie, (though I do enjoy the second one) I really loved Disney's full realization of the world that the fairies live in. The details and the art are beautiful. So when we watch it, I mostly tune out the dialogue and just look at the pretty colors.

A Brand New Day

A few trees came down in our neighborhood in the aftermath of Saturday's storm. It wasn't too bad, and seemed localized in our park.

Probably screwing up the schedules of the tranny hookers that troll that area, but otherwise, everything looks ok. The park is still really flooded and it has tons of old trees, so I'm going to stay out of there until things clear up.

Today I took a walk over to Battery Park City and knitted on my lunch break. Gorgeous day. 60 degrees F in the shade. I got too hot sitting in the sun with my cardigan on, which was a lovely feeling.

There was a family of loons floating in the river. It's hard to tell the difference between the trash and the loons in the photo below, but you can sort of spot them.

I haven't seen too many loons down this way, so it was kind of an event! Lots of folks taking pictures.

And of course, one shot of the sweater of great sexiness, February Lady. I've gotten a few repeats of the lace done, as you can see, and am averaging about one repeat every subway ride (45 minutes or thereabouts).

I got a few repeats done last night watching Princess & the Frog with Georgia. Not too many though, because the movie was so beautifully rendered. The art in it was just gorgeous. It's the first movie I've seen in a while that I was kind of upset about not getting to see it in the theater.

And I'm not ashamed to say, I cried like a baby at the end. (I won't say what part lest I spoil the movie for somebody)

(also, please don't faint if you know me well. Yes, "Ms. Cynic Lifetime Achievement" cried at a Disney Princess movie. Get over it.)

And finally, in Battery Park City, a field of crocuses:

We're finally getting a full-on spring!

Knitting is apparently very provacative...

Had to repost my experience on the subway that I wrote about on Ravelry this morning... It's too weird NOT to share:

This morning at 7am I was on the downtown 4 happily knitting and minding my own business.
This guy gets on at Grand Central, sits down next to me, and starts asking me questions about my knitting. Ok, no problem.

“What are you knitting? Who is it for?”

I answer, tell him the sweater is for me, and chat with him for a bit…

Then he asks me what size I’m making. Oooooooohkay. Not giving out that information. And he keeps pressing me “Didn’t you measure your body? Didn’t you write down what your measurements are?”

Um. Again, not answering that question. I deflect, redirect his attention to something else. He talks about his grandmother and how she used to knit, and how he adores a fisherman's sweater he bought in Ireland.

As he’s getting off the train at City Hall he leans down and says “You know, if you ever want to supplement your income…”

and I reply “Knitting doesn’t pay that well, but thank you.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about knitting.” He stares pointedly at my boobs and gets off the train.

WTF? Seriously? I don’t look like a hooker. If anything, I look like a soccer mom with really bland taste in clothing. No makeup, I don’t bother with my hair most days, my boobs aren’t particularly big, and I’m wearing a high-necked shirt today.

Yeah, because we all know that knitting and prostitution go hand in hand.

Maybe he was just hot for granny?

It was a dark and stormy day

We're having one heck of a nor'easter today. We're getting extremely high winds, driving rain and it's friggen COLD. It's awful. We've broken out the candles in the event we lose power. Georgia and I haven't left the house today. Bruce went out only to the garbage area. It sounds like a freight train right now, and there is an extreme amount of water flying horizontally past my window. (ooh, there's some sort of warning siren happening... I don't know what that's about)

On the plus side, it's ideal knitting weather. I've been occupying the couch all day in my Francis Revisited (which is PERFECT for this kind of weather) and working on a new sweater. Oh, and drinking lots of coffee and tea.

The new sweater is a February Lady. Here's a picture from the designer - Pamela Wynne of Flint Knits:


It's a free pattern (thank you Pamela) based on an Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern for a baby. I'm going to make a matching one for Georgia, me thinks. Anyway, it's available on both Ravelry and off of Pamela Wynne's website should you have the yen to knit one.

Here's what I've done so far:



So in relation to the finished product above, I'm down to the second buttonhole and will probably reach the lace section by this evening (woot!).

I will give you a full report if I end up knitting by candlelight. That will feel rustic.

Oh, and I just found out that the siren is a flood warning siren for the Bronx river, which is just over yonder.

Yes, we are very uphill from the river. And on the third floor. I think we're safe. The trees blowing in the wind just outside our large bank of windows are a little more disturbing than the river.

I hope my blogging buddies in Maine are doing ok in this beastly storm.

Still fighting the good fight

I finished the Francis Revisted and it's lovely. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I finished it the DAY the weather started to get warmer. It's now in the 60s here - 15 degrees c - and far too warm for my lovely wooly sweater.

After that, I immediately jumped back into the Damson. Which is awesome, and I adore the pattern, but I swear that either I get stupider every time I try to knit it, or the pattern itself is just evil. I got all the way up to the lace section and discovered that I'd screwed up about 25 rows back.

Oops.

I ripped back (by the way, Mal sock rips out beautifully and is fairly sticky so you won't loose too many stitches) and reknit. And got back to the lace section. I worked on the first row of it this morning and by the time I got to the middle section, I discovered that I was exactly 10 stitches off count. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE. So I tinked, counted, was still 10 off, thus I screwed up in the garter stitch section, AGAIN.

I'm currently in the process of tinking back to the garter stitch section to see exactly where I screwed up. Unfortunately, 10 stitches off is a completely awful number of stitches to be off in this pattern, because it is not the sum of the stitches added for two rows (which would be 8)
I looked at all my yarn overs in the middle of the pattern and they are correct, and it doesn't look like I missed any at the edges, so I have no freakin clue where the hell I messed up.
That said, I might just fudge the pattern a wee bit going forward. It might help. With my sanity anyway.

ON the plus side, the orchid show at the nybg opened, and we went. It was gorgeous. Such a riot of color and scent, and so needed after a long tough winter.

Here are some shots I took with my phone. My friend Auffermann took some beautiful photos, but unfortunately those are on a different computer.

Unfortunately, my poor phone can't handle a lot of light, but here is a picture of the main room which is just floor to ceiling white orchids:

My little orchid, Georgia:

Another large room full of orchids:

I'm amazed my phone picked up the colors of this one:

Everybody's favorite orchid name:

And what the Golddigger Fuchs Mandarin look like:

And finally, one that is just really pretty:

I'm sorry for the long lags between posts. And for not reading anybody's blog right now. I've just felt a complete lack of interest in doing much of anything (except knitting) recently. It's probably due to my tummy issues. I have ok days and I have horrendous days, but I haven't felt GOOD for a while. I'm working on it.

I am knitting my little heart out and listening to Outlander. It's a fabulous book to knit along to. And since I only have Damson on the needles right now, I feel like it's the right time to start another project, no?

Have a good week. I'll be back when I'm back.

She's baack... With pix.

I'm feeling better. Tummy is still having some issues, but for the most part, I'm doing ok.

We had a TON of snow last week, and Georgia ended up coming to work with me, which was a blast. I still get a goofy smile on my face when I think about her running up and down the hall yelling at the top of her lungs.

Bread baking is going swimmingly, which is wonderful. I'm on my second batch of dough and Bruce showed me how to shape baguettes the other night.

We also went to the Botanical Gardens and got a sneak (literally) peek at the Orchid show which opened last weekend.



Here is a shot of the Francis Revisited. One sleeve is done, the other is in progress, and I have yet to start the cowl, although given how fast the first sleeve went, I might start the cowl tomorrow night.

It's quite a bit of fun to knit, and I'm really enjoying it. I also made the sleeves full-length because the elbow length just didn't make sense for me right now.

Still hangin on...

I'm slowly starting to come out of feeling compltely craptacular, so that's a major bonus. I have a doctor's appointment in April with a specialist so hopefully that will give me some answers about why I've been feeling so horrible (tummy-wise) so consistently for so long.

I haven't watched all of my Olympic events yet, and haven't seen the ceremonies, so as far as I'm concerned, they're still on. Which means that I can still work on my Ravelympics sweater and might be able to finish by the time I get around to watching the end.

The good news is that I've completed the body of Francis Revisted and about half a sleeve. I tried it on and it looks good. So I'm pretty excited to have a full sweater all for myself. And I really like the Cascade Eco Wool that I'm making it from. It's a little sheddy, but I'm hoping some of that goes away after I block it.

The bad news is that I'm nowhere near a camera and have no way to actually upload any sort of photo. Maybe I can do that later tonight.

The good news is that I have a bunch of men's sweater designs knocking around in my head that I'm pretty excited about.

The bad news is, I think the yarn/pattern match for Bruce's sweater is poor and it's stretching out horribly. Eesh. The ribbing at the cuff, bottom and collar is flattened and the sweater has lost all shape. I steamed it last night and that seemed to help, but overall I think I'm going to have to chalk that one up to a fail. Sigh.

I'll be back with pix. I promise.