I'm still here!

Have I really not posted since July?!?!?!

Wow. Well, it's been a busy summer. I just finished the 4th of my 4 sock knitting classes - I took a class @ The Yarnery w/ Jean Christensen on how to knit 2 socks at once w/ magic loop!

I love it!!!!!

I have about 10 rows left on the toe decreases and to do my kitchener stitch, and my 1st pair of socks will be done. Hoping to do that yet today, tomorrow at the latest. I'll find all the bad cell phone photos I took and take a nice one with the D80 and post 'em up this weekend!

I'll be casting on for socks for Sean this weekend!!!

I'm so happy to have found a sock knitting method I love! dpns and I are not friends. the end. I think that once I get started on his socks, I'd like to make a concerted effort to finally finish the Clapotis, and then I can devote myself fully to socks for a while.

Otherwise, we're heading into year-end at work... FY09 ends 9/30/09 and I won't surface till sometime in November. Hoping to do a long weekend of R&R in Puerto Rico in mid-November to shake off the year-end cobwebs.

Things continue to go swimmingly well for Sean and I.... :) We begin the birthday celebrations (his is next week, mine's 10/3) tonight with a Regina Spektor concert and dinner at the decadent 112 Eatery. And next week, we're going to another performance, which is still a surprise.

One! One Sock! Ha-Ha-Ha!

Here are photos of my Ugliest Sock Evar. Soon, I shall have a second sock, which I started on tonight, to give me the Ugliest Pair of Sox Evar. :)

Still, it's a sock, and more than I'd previously been able to do. I'm hopeful that I will be able to more successfully complete sock #2 of this pair, so that I do the socks for Sean justice, when I get to them. Sean provided easy access to his photo studio & lighting setup for me to take these photos (we set up a 2nd mini-photo studio/lighting setup in my office, too, which is nice!). That's his hand modeling the sock in the first one. And he's holding the sock in the second one. :) Helpful boy are helpful. I am a lucky girl.


I'm likely to not work on the second sock for a bit though. I'd like to see how much of the FIL Scarf I can get through by this weekend. My stepdaughter, Ann, will be arriving here on Friday for her spring break, and we're going to see her grandparents this weekend. So, the more I can complete on the FIL scarf, the closer I'll be to giving that to him soon! I'm really looking forward to seeing Ann.

She's a good kid, but really struggling with being 15, and I think she'll benefit from spending a week with her dad. Sean's a good listener, and a good advice-giver. I think he'll be able to provide some needed perspective. And they're going to look at colleges, since she's almost done with her freshman year of high school, and it's never too soon to start the process. We'd love to have her relatively close by, so that we could provide laundry service or make dinner for her once in a while. I know her mom will appreciate the week-long break, too. And we're going to see Rent at the Orpheum next Thursday!

I am working my way through a beer right now, in honor of St. Patrick's Day (I love St. Patrick's Day - my name's Kelly Ann, and my husband's Sean Patrick. We're a little Irish. (I'm also English, Welsh, Scottish, and Native American, but I've always identified with my Irish roots more than the others). )

It's time for bed soon, though. I've been feeling a little better today, but could use some quality sleep tonight. We've had the windows open since yesterday - love this weather. I appreciate a preview of spring, but I live in Minnesota, so I know the next snowstorm could be right around the corner! I don't take 40s and 50s for granted! Lola and I had fun driving with the sunroof and windows down, though. Whee!

Mumble...

Ugh.

There has been some half-hearted knitting, but I spent all weekend, plus yesterday, pretty dragged down by this not-feeling-well. I had hoped to be most of the way done with my Ugliest Sock Evar, and it's not too far off, but I didn't get to the toe shaping like I wanted to, and class is tonight. I figure I'll just start on the toe shaping/finishing to see how it's done, and worry about knitting myself a pair of socks that fits me later. :) I'd rather see how it's done, and then start a new pair at this point. I measured Sean's feet, so now I have measurements to make him a pair of socks. yay!

Frustrated by not feeling well, especially since it's felt like a low-level Something-Not-A-Cold. I probably should go to the doctor, but have such a non-specific list of symptoms (sinus issues, feeling nauseous yesterday (no, it's definitely not *that*), being utterly exhausted and not sleeping well) that it feels like it would be a waste of their time and effort because I'm not able to really point to anything really wrong, just a low-level not-feeling-well. Still, I guess can't see if there is something specific going on if I don't go in. I could wait till next week and get my annual physical at the same time, so that would be a good thing.

Was supposed to start my crochet class last night at Crafty Planet, but that was sidetracked by how I felt. Fortunately, I can try crochet again another time. It's probably for the best - with the sewing and sock knitting, I feel like I'm trying to tackle enough new crafts to learn. :)

I'll work on a photo of whatever the sock looks like later, after I get home. Have to have a beer when I do finally get home - it's St. Patrick's Day! And I'm Irish.

To close this entry:

Sean got a haricut on Saturday (he once typoed the word "haircut" in an email to me, so now I call them "haricut"s) and while he was at the salon, I was at home knitting a few rows on the FIL Scarf. Yertle felt the need to supervise (that's my laptop, with the knitting splashed across the keyboard, and Yertle inspecting the scarf):

Socks: It's like learning a new dialect of the knitting language!

Okay, so I went to night 2 of my 3 night sock knitting class. This has got to be the ugliest sock evar. In fact, I might go so far as to rename this sock on Ravelry to The Ugliest First Sock Evar.

But. I'm making a sock, and the only way to get better at it is to do it, and we have to start somewhere. I turned the heel last night, which involved a lot of swearing on my part, because, as it turned out, the pattern was doing it rong. The pattern left out a K1 on my first row of decreases on the heel flap. That K1 was pretty important.

With the help of Joan, my teacher, we ripped out the sequence 3 times before she noticed what was missing in the pattern. But as an instructive device, I'll always remember that section with the K1 at the end before turning to start the next row of decreases. I think it'll click more when working on the second sock of the Ugliest Socks Evar, on my own.

I'm going to try to get all the way through the foot and the toe shaping to the last bit of the sock by next week, so that I can get help if I need it, and then I can start on my second sock if I have extra time.

I had plans to make my sewing machine cover this week, but it's been a week filled with activity. I got home at 9 from class last night, will get home around 9 from Knittin' Kitten tonight, and tomorrow night, Becca and I are going out to Bead Monkey. The 50th & France shops are having a ladies' night out, and we can make a free pair of earrings @ Bead Monkey, and I want to buy stuff for another beading project, so that I don't forget what I learned in my Elements class.

Friday night, Sean will be home from San Diego, and maybe I can at least get the pattern pieces cut out before he gets home, and work on the cover over the weekend.

I signed up for a Sewing 1 class yesterday through Minneapolis Community Education. It's 5 Mondays, and I'm think it will be a good class.

I also want to make more progress on the FIL Scarf this weekend. I'll probably work on the 2nd FIL Scarf tonight @ the Kitten, since it's all knit stitches, so I have to worry less about messing up.

I really need to crank through the FIL scarves, since I can see that sock knitting is going to invade my knitting life very soon, and I want to make sure I don't have so many projects on needles that I'm not making progress. (ha!)

In an update from lovely San Diego, CA:

Sean and Yertle got up yesterday, and got ready for work. Yes, Sean is a goofy kind of guy. He's charming, so he gets away with a lot of stuff. It's part of why I fell for him. Sean went off to the client site, and...

... Yertle carefully guarded the bed until Sean finally arrived home after a long day of work and sushi.

Eureka!

I stopped by Crafty Planet & JoAnn on my way home and got the stuff to make my sewing machine cover. Hoping to get started on that tomorrow night. I'm not going to post progress photos because I want to surprise Sean, and while I don't think he has any idea how to get to this blog, I'd rather not chance it.

Then I went over to Borealis, where I got just the support I needed to pull 4 stitches off of the needle, unravel them, and pick up the strand that got missed along the way. I can tell I had to rework it, but no one else will know.

To celebrate my Ms. Fix-It success, I bought a great book on sock knitting and 2 skeins of Opal yarn. For Sean's second set of sox. Not that I have started his first set, with the Sisu yarn he gave me, yet, but I will, once I am finished with my sock class next week. He's got 11.5EEE feet, so I need to measure his feet to make sure I make sox that fit him. I have a guide in the book I bought, but I think it only covers a standard width 11.5, not the super-wide width.

It was a great feeling to get it fixed, and the beauty of it was that all I really needed was the support that I could fix it myself. And I did!

Photo Evidence of my knitting!

At last, the photos of my fledgling sock. It's a short sock, so that we can cover the basics of making a sock from the top down, in the 3 weeks of class. This photo shows where I've done the first 28 rows, and separated 24 stitches onto a needle for the heel, and the other 24 are on a stitch holder awaiting, I think, the instep instructions.

I did a row or two on the 2nd FIL scarf, also, this evening. It's just kind of coiling around the needle, since it's a lengthwise garter stitch scarf. It's a good mindless project, so I'm glad for it.


I need to get myself to bed soon. Sean's flying home on a red eye through Vegas, and I am going to get up early, get ready, and pick him up at the airport. I've come to appreciate maximizing the time we get to spend together, and if I can get another 30 minutes by picking him up at 5:30 am at MSP, I'm all for it.

He's got quite a cold, poor guy. He sounded so sick when I talked to him on my way home from work (the bluetooth connection from my gps unit to my cell phone works pretty well. I was just sitting in the traffic jam on 394 eastbound, so I was glad for the chance to talk to him. Made the traffic jam go by more quickly. :) ).

Fortunately, he's had a tk and a jdd and a longdog to take care of him this evening - he's spent time with our awesome frients Tasha and JD (tasha's directly responsible for how Sean and I met, 17 months and 28 days ago) and their dog Charley, who's a longdog.

I've got the makings for hot and sour soup and chicken noodle soup, and got Kleenex with lotion, orange juice, fizzy alka-seltzer cold-fighting tablets, and honey-lemon cough drops all on hand.

We're going to pick up the new car on Saturday morning, and then I'm absconding with it for an afternoon/evening of fun for Becca's birthday. Yarn and ice cream and drunken debauchery? Count me in! (I expect to see you wearing that tiara, by the way!)

Sunday, I plan on taking care of Sean (he takes such good care of me always, and he's rarely at home when he's sick, so I'm going to take care of him when I can!) and knitting. And not much else exciting.

Okay, sleepynight time!

...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.