...insert witty title here

Knittin' Kitten was fun last night.



I have always used a long-tail cast on. It's what Mindy at Fiddlehead Yarns taught me a couple of years ago when I learned to knit, and I've had no reason to use anything else.



Until last night. When I wanted to cast on for the FIL scarf V2.0, and with 250 stitches to cast on (for a scarf knitted lengthwise in rows), I knew I needed a new way to cast on.



Diana came to the rescue, with a knitted cast on that allowed me to cast on my 250 stitches and knit a whole row, in 1.5 hours. I came home and watched a Discovery Channel special about USA 1549, and knitted a few more rows. It's fast knitting, all in garter stitch. Someday, I'm going to make a striped version as is done in the pattern I stole for this scarf.



I have to work on my homework for sock knitting class, too, another few rows of K1P1, and then 9 rows of knitting in the round. Hoping to finish that tonight, so that I'm not scrambling early next week to get that done. And, of course, I want to work more on the FIL scarf V1.0 too! But before I do anything at home tonight, I need to clean up the kitchen! I haven't been home much all week in the evenings, and I've slacked on the kitchen. Must load dishwasher, stat!



Sean sent me a photo last night, as he was on his way to dinner, and it so made me miss California. I'm looking forward to making a trip out there soon, and at least in August, for an anniversary trip. Sean's back in CA next week, to San Diego.



Mind you, I've never lived in California. And only visited there a few times. But the Bay Area is one of those places where, when I visited for the first time, it felt like I was coming home to someplace I'd known and loved, not someplace I'd never been. And it doesn't hurt that some of my favorite people are there. Two of the places I feel the most at home are the Bay Area of CA, and southern ME. Talk about opposite ends of the country!


Sean and I are traveling to Boston in mid-April to attend a wedding, and we're making the drive up to Maine on Easter Sunday, to see my best friend Rose and her family. We'll get to meet Athena Jane, who was born the day after my 34th birthday, about which I am very excited. And her extended family, who was like a second family to me growing up, will get to meet Sean. Poor guy doesn't know what he's in for.


It was 38F as I drove in this morning and supposed to be in the mid-40s today. As much as Autumn is my favorite season, always, there's something about Spring that gives me a sense of renewal, and a sense of success at having survived the long winter.

Wow, it's early!

Sometimes, things manage to work out.

Sean got up to head for the airport this morning, and was going to take the Civic and park it at the airport, and I'd have the loaner car for the week. I'd forgotten to grab a couple of accessories for my gps out of the Civic, and was going to have him just swing them by our front door for me to grab. I ended up walking over to the parking garage with him instead, and am glad I did.

I got into the Audi to pull it in front of the building, and there was no power to the battery. *sigh* So, we got him further downtown so that he could catch a cab to the airport, and I have the Civic parked in front of the building. I don't have jumper cables, which I've needed to fix for a long time, so I'm buying a set of cables and a jump pack for both cars tonight. It's a reasonable investment given the MN winters.

But if I hadn't gone out with him, and hadn't tried to get the Audi out of the garage, I wouldn't have known the battery was dead until I headed out for work, so it all worked out. And now I'm wide awake, and it's just 5 am. I'd like to get to work a little early this morning, though not too early, so I'm going to sit here and knit for the next few minutes.

I didn't knit as much as I'd like over the weekend, but I'm sure I'll catch up this week. My sock knitting classes start tomorrow night, so I'm hoping that goes okay. Sean gave me sock yarn out of his stash, so I'm hopeful to knit a pair of socks for him.

I suspect I'll be in bed early tonight, though, since I woke up at 4 am.

It's beautiful this morning...

I survived Deth Storm 2009.

My boss told me to leave work at 2, and it took me 75 minutes to get home. I did not take any of the interstates, preferring Hwy 7 instead. Sure, Hwy 7 wasn't plowed, but at least I was moving. Almost got stuck a few times, and the snow was falling fast. Our cute little front-wheel-drive Civic performed admirably, getting me home safely. She's a good car.

A few hours later, Sean was not so lucky in his driving excursion, driving to a restaurant with his co-workers. He chose to take the Infiniti G35 (our fun RWD sportscar, not at all made for MN winters), and regretted that choice through the whole trip. He spent a lot of time stuck at intersections, and he was not a happy boy when he finally got home.

That's me, in the photo below, & the G35, on Forest Lake about a month ago.

When he came home, I told him that during my drive, I had never wished more for an AWD vehicle. After this latest travail with the G35, I've now been cleared to research AWD vehicles in Mpls. As much fun as the G35 is in good weather (and oh, how I'll miss the sound of that engine), it's not practical for us to have. We didn't notice it in Chicago as much - not because it snows less, but because Sean was travelling more, and travelling overseas more. He's working in Mpls and Chicago more now, and is home more often, and so we use a second car more often.

There is a knitting part to yesterday, honestly! I came home, finished up a little work, and took an hour's nap. Then I got up, ate, and proceeded to sit down and produce 40 more rows of knitting while watching movies (Glengarry Glen Ross, Criminal). That puts me at almost 180 rows on the scarf. I'm now a little over 25% of the way. With any luck, I'll get some quality knitting time Saturday evening and Sunday.

I'm very glad it's Friday. It's been a challenging week, trying to figure out how to produce a February forecast with most of the information seemingly unattainable. Still, I'm making a go of it, and will hopefully have something reasonable by noon today. We'll see how good my forecast is next week. :)

Sean hopped on an early flight to Chicago this morning and will either be home at 7 or 9, depending on how early he gets to ORD this afternoon and whether there's room on the earlier flight. I'll get some good knitting time in waiting for him to come home.

The snow is coming! The snow is coming!

Moar knitting, plz. The FIL scarf is moving along quite well. I got more done last night at Spyhouse, and have now done 140 rows on the scarf. I'm almost done with skein #1 (of 4), so I predict this will be a long scarf. Or I'll decide to double it up and sew it shut. I'm not sure yet. We'll see when we get there.

Spyhouse was great fun last night. It's always fun to find funky coffee shops, and to meet new people. It helped to know someone in the place, too. I met Becca at drunken knit nite @ Merlin's Rest, and it was good to see her again last night.

With any luck, I'll be home remotely on time tonight, and I have no where I have to go. I was going to go out with Panda & DanRay to Freewheel and either get my bike fitted better or buy a new bike. But Deth Storm: February 2009 edition is headed straight for us, and I suspect my evening commute will not be a happy one. I'm hoping to be able to get out of here earlier than normal if it's bad.

I should grab some breakfast before I get so wrapped up in trying to puzzle out the mystery of how to do this forecast that it's suddenly lunchtime before I know it!

I'm so glad tomorrow's Friday.

(ps: a small shout out to the one, the only, my lovely tk! love you, sweetie!)

Settling In...

I went to knit nite last night at Borealis, and had a great time. I made some nice progress on the FIL scarf, which is a +1 toward my ability to successfully knit while listening to/participating in conversations with groups of people. I'll get a photo of it in the next couple of days to show its progress.

I'm hopeful that the FIL scarf will move quickly, so that I can move on to the next project. I'm not sure what that next project will be. I'd like to use up some of the yarn in my stash, which likely means another scarf, probably with my lovely Malabrigo. I'd like to branch out, and then I remember that I'll be taking a sock knitting class starting next week and crohet classes later in March, which will provide me with my RDA of new things to be learning.

Managed to (again) fail to put my camera in my bag this morning, which is unfortunate, as I could have had a couple of great shots from the parking garage this morning. Should be extra incentive for me to remember it tomorrow.

I'm thinking about setting up a little bit of a photography space in my cozy corner at home. It would be nice to be able to photograph stuff without having to disrupt whatever Sean has going on in his office/studio/shop. It's a thought. I definitely need to make sure we get up earlier this Saturday, so that we can go poke around at Accent Store Fixtures. I'd like to get a jewelry display, and maybe something else to use for photos.

My main project this weekend, however, is going to be clearing off my desk and filing paperwork. I'm bad about filing, and I can sit and sort through papers while watching tv or something. Once my desk is cleared off, I can work on projects on the desk, which is why I have that desk in my space.

I also need to find transparency film. I want to work on my scrapbook for the wedding/honeymoon, and I saved the flowers from my bouquet and dried them. They'll fall apart in the scrapbook by themselves, but I read on the internets that transparency paper/film works well for them. I'd like to get the scrapbook project completed and off my other table, so I just need to figure out where to go. There's a scrapbook store in Bloomington... maybe I can swing by there this weekend too.

I ended up getting a couple of extra nights with Sean this week... he was originally going to Chicago Tuesday, but now he's on an early flight Friday and back Friday night. That's full of awesome and win. Well, except for the 4 am wake-up on Friday. Still, any extra time I get with He Who Is Quite Awesome is appreciated.


I'm looking forward to joining the Knittin' Kitten group tonight. I haven't been to the Spyhouse yet, but I figure a nice cup of tea and some knitting is a nice combination.

*whew*

It's nice to have this part done. I finished taking the photos I needed to, and now I have all of my stash items catalogued on ravelry (I'm empire74 there), along with my 2 small FOs and my current WIP.

Speaking of the current WIP, here's a photo of the Magic Scarf I'm currently working on for my FIL.


I'm very happy with how it's turning out. I'm hoping to get some time to work on it today. It's been my plan, and we got up at 9 am (after staying up till close to 4 am) so that we wouldn't sleep the whole day away.

We went to Moose & Sadie's for breakfast, and then when we came home I finished taking my yarn photos while Sean worked on setting up an Oracle database box. Sean has been getting his sweeping and mopping on while I've been uploading and cataloguing my yarn stuffs on ravelry. It's now 3 pm and I haven't knitted a stitch! Once the mopping is completed, and I can reclaim the sofa, I shall start knitting for the afternoon/evening.

Weekends go by so quickly...

It's Friday; I'm in love...

I'm so glad it's Friday! I mean, it was a short week, even, with Monday off, and a breakfast meeting that ate the whole morning yesterday, and still, I am sitting here thinking, "Is it time to go home yet? How about now? Now???"

But the day will pass, and then I can go home and knit!

I just may have solved my struggles with the father-in-law scarf. I cast-on with the Noro Chirimen again last night and successfully knitted the first 19 rows of Crazy Aunt Purl's Magic Scarf. I am so excited! It's going to be pretty, what with the lovely squares of knit and purl stitches and the stripes of color from the Noro.

I've acquired another project idea. *headdesk* I just got a black aviator jacket at the military surplus store, and the lining is bright orange (reversible, so that if I get lost in the device networking mines, I can turn my jacket inside out for easier rescue!). Which made me think that my Noro Striped Scarf (all in shades of purple & brown) doesn't match (since I made it for my brown coat). So I just need to find one of those Noro colorways with a bright orange or gold in it and black. I don't have a pattern in mind yet.

This weekend, Sean's agreed to help me with the Great Photographic Record of Knitting. He's going to teach me about studio lighting, and then I can take photos of the 2 projects I've completed, all of my stash yarns, my WIP, and my jewelry projects. I'm looking forward to it, as a way to combine my love of photography with my other crafty hobbies.

I plan to spend a fair amount of the weekend knitting furiously on the scarf. :) At this rate, my FIL won't get it till June or something! :)

I don't think we have any big plans for the weekend. I think we need to amass a grocery store and beer run, and I think Sean wants to work on the bike, with which I'd like to help, as needed. And we seem to have a mountain of laundry, which is curious, since I had one day fewer of work this week and haven't worked out as much. But, I guess, since Sean's been home all week, the clothing's piled up over time, instead of him coming home Friday night and emptying his suitcase and immediately throwing it into the washer.

I seem to have twisted my knee somehow, and it's tender. I'm not working out at work today, about which I am sad, but I know when to listen to my body. Maybe I can get in a good chunk of time on the elliptical tomorrow at the Y.

It Feels Good to be a Gangsta Knitter!

I’m sitting here at work, waiting for the finalized P&L for the month so that I can complete the Product Line P&L and move on to the rest of my monthly reporting – before it’s time to close the next month already! I work in corporate finance – and most of my time is spent waiting for the details to be finalized, so that I can do analysis.

I can’t knit while I’m sitting here waiting, but I can write about knitting. And daydream about knitting. Which I seem to do far more than actually knitting anything. I'm taking steps toward that. Or, at least, steps toward being more social.

I moved to Minneapolis almost 6 months ago, and am just now venturing out to try to meet people. I spent the past 8 years in the Milwaukee/Chicago area, and didn’t quite realize the network of friends I made (thanks to 2 degrees and 3 companies) and have left behind. Although I didn’t consciously realize it, I guess I was scared about throwing myself out there to meet people, but my social nature won out. And here I am.

So, I've spent the past little while being the "new girl" at knit nites in the Cities. This past Friday was Drunken Knitting night @ Merlin’s Rest. I’ll be a monthly participant there when I can, as the combination of beer and knitting is too much to resist. However, I managed to completely mess up my simple pattern for my father-in-law’s scarf (which was: Row 1: K2, P1, Row 2: K, repeat rows 1 & 2 ad nauseam).

That precipitated a trip to Borealis Yarns in St. Paul after my beading class on Monday. Where I bought 4 balls of Noro Chirimen #1, and decided to do something else with the black yarn I’d been working with on Friday night.

And I brought the Chirimen to knit nite @ Borealis last night. It was, apparently, a little brighter than usual, thanks to the news camera there, filming pieces for a story about Etsy. I had a good time, even if I did determine, after starting over twice, that 1x1 ribbing was NOT what the Chirimen wants to knit up into. It’s a very comfortable place to sit for a couple of hours and knit, and I’m looking forward to getting to know people! Driving back to downtown Mpls in the snow was an adventure – I’m not familiar with that stretch of 94 between St. Paul & Mpls yet, and I couldn’t see the lane markers terribly well, and I’m sure a lot of drivers on the road were muttering in the general direction of the red Civic with Illinois plates. Thank goodness for the GPS Sean bought for me – I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to get home without it!

And tonight, I’ll go find the knitters at Spyhouse Coffee Shop. Where I hope that the Chirimen wants to be Crazy Aunt Purl’s Magic Scarf. And where I hope that I can manage 3 rows of K, 10 rows of K3, K5, P5, K5, P5, K5, P5, K3, 10 rows of K3, P5, K5, P5, K5, P5, K5, K3, ad nauseam. I think I just need to go more slowly.

I’m still new to knitting, let alone trying to follow/participate in conversations while knitting.

But I know that I can’t meet people without going places, and I can’t become more skilled at knitting unless I do it. And the advice is always given to go find people who like what you like. I’m hoping that being around people who Actually Knit will inspire me to do the same.

Things like beading, cross-stitch, and photography will also end up in this blog, since they’re all things I nominally do, and would like to do more.

In fact, I'm asking Sean to help me with a tutorial on lighting/photography for crafty things soon, so that I can post photos of crafty things here and on ravelry. Hooray for combining 2 things I like into one: photography and knitting!

I figured one way to measure progress is to track actions. I'm hoping this blog will give me perspective on progress.