Well, Yes, I've Been Busy

How the heck did more than an entire month go by?

I've had some further unhappy adventures with the Internet. Intermittently, I couldn't get myself accepted by Google/Blogger, not even enough to post comments to my friends' blogs. Most recently AT&T Yahoo refused to recognize my password, and, in spite of my being really pretty certain of my date of birth, ZIP code of residence and favorite color code-word, refused to admit me to the email world.

Now that I think about it, this could have been an angry reaction to our decision to dump AT&T U-Verse TV service after only a few months. For those of you lucky enough not to have yet tried this new optic-fiber service, don't. U-Verse is NOT ready for prime time. (I expect the residents of Cleveland, OH, whose AT&T U-Verse TV service failed them during the 7th game of the American League baseball playoffs, may put their feelings a bit more strongly. I learned about the outage when I tried to get telephone support and was told they weren't dealing with any Internet issues right then.) [Ironically, as I am writing this, 2 hapless sales people from U-Verse knocked on my door. They're gone now. They have only small scorch marks on them; I tried to be as gentle as possible. My cleaning lady can vouch that they were still OK.]

OK. Moving on here. Charter Cable has more or less renewed our TV hookups, and the programs I expect to view at a certain time are there, not the 3-hours-different East Coast feed which was a major problem with U-Verse. As of last Friday, I am able to receive and send email once again.

The working email as of this minute is
catbookmom AT att DOTnet

This morning I got an email about a comment on my last blog post from the talented Dodile, so that blog-to-email link is back. Check out Dodile's lovely lace patterns both free (gratuit) and for sale at this link. Nearly all the patterns are in both French and English.


I've been knitting and knitting, and right now I have a huge urge to knit but my wrists are crying out from overwork, so I'm smelling strongly of Tiger Balm. I've finished lots of gifts: 5 pairs of mitts, 3 hats and 2 scarves, and I have a second scarf half done and a just-started 4th hat. I'm a bit past half-way on a Liesel Scarf for myself in lovely, soft blue-green KFI Cashmereno (stash!!). There's a limit on how many of these projects I can show you now, since many of these are for friends who read this blog. ;-D I really love how the scarf for my uncle has turned out. It's made with Paton's SWS in Natural Slate, using the Habit Forming pattern I found courtesy of Ravelry. The Habit in Habit Forming is the one and only Franklin, of The Panopticon, and the pattern has a very nice photo of him.


Last night I finished 2 quick hats for our honorary DGSs in Alaska. These aren't as nice as the superwash wool ones I made last year, just basic designs with Patons Shetland Chunky acrylic/wool yarn. I love the way the colors stripe and spiral.

All of this gift knitting has been the continuation of a huge amount of knitting productivity the last few months. There have been Afghans for Afghans hats, which went off just in time for the December 3 deadline - 3 hats I made since my last post, made from some lovely bulky Kross Mondial yarn, less than one skein per hat;3 tinier green ones I made sometime earlier in the year and a mohair/wool double-stranded Cloud hat, - all of these were from stash yarn!! - plus 2 absolutely adorable pairs of socks made by my dear friend JM. Check out the Dr Seuss-style fuschia star-toe pair!

And I've finished several baby hats for my seniors' charity group, who have had a special request from our local Temporary Aid Center. I forgot to take pictures of some of them. I've been making very basic stockinette and 2x2 ribbed hats, using some multicolor yarns I had in stash (hey, more stashbusting here!!), some Caron Simply Soft Shadows and Encore Colorspun. Speaking of my seniors' charity group, we had a great boutique this year. In the two days of the boutique, we sold over $1400 worth of scarves, hats, slippers, afghans, quilts and so forth. The following week, we displayed all the leftovers at our usual Friday meeting, and the front desk helped us to let others at the center know about them, and in that one afternoon, we sold another $500+. So we collected nearly $2000 this year! Woohoo!! We've already donated a lot of that to other groups around the community: a local parish's Thanksgiving dinner for the needy, postage to Operation Gratitude (along with our 225 hats for the soldiers), the Salvation Army, etc. According to Burbank's RSVP (Retired and Seniors Volunteer Program) administration, the over-600 of us seniors participating in projects contributed over 153,000 hours to various projects this year. Yay for us!!

Ah, yes, there have been new additions to the CBM Stash. Some Di.Vé. Autunno yarn, loosely spun merino, in a deep blue-green for an Emerald cardi (Knitty, Winter 2006) . More Patons SWS in Natural Slate for the Oat Couture Entrelac Tuxedo Vest for DH - he went wild over the scarf for my uncle, especially after he saw my swatch from trying to learn entrelac. Some absolutely yummy Austermann Inka (suri alpaca and wool) in off-white; this doesn't have a project yet, but oh, how soft and smooshy this is. Plus Elann has some great new house yarns arriving as December holiday gifts to their customers: a Silken Kydd (similar to Kid Silk Haze), a new chunky superwash wool, a lovely blend of wool/silk/bamboo, and a silk noile tweed. Some of the Silken Kydd in this gorgeous Baked Apple and some of the silk/bamboo blend will be coming here.



Last but not least, *of course* I've been spending too much time at Ravelry!! For a couple of weeks, it has been the only source of email I've been able to use. Plus there's the variety of forums and discussion groups. Last week, Stephanie started a new Unwind group. Check it out!! According to Casey, on a daily basis, Ravelry is now accepting twice as many new members as sign up, and as of yesterday there were only about 7500 in the waiting list. Go. Ravel in it!! Bwah-ha-ha!!