Coming Back, but Slowly - Part One Redux

Hi, friends! I've been sending dozens of emails to those brick walls at Blogger, trying to get them to recover my poor deleted blog. It's weird that, when I just now typed the title to this post, a previous post-title came up as a choice. So it's there, somewhere.

However, with more than 2 weeks having passed since I unwittingly zapped my blog, I've decided to try going forward with a 'new' blog. I immediately remembered exactly why I've been dragging my feet: setting all this up is a major PITA!!! So the necessary accessories and the frills will be coming to this site slowly as I have the determination to wade through the process.

You will have noticed that we have some changes:

• a new URL (http://cbmsyarns.blogspot.com),
• a slightly different blog title, CatBookMom's Yarns Too (in hopes of recovering the 'old' blog) and
  
• a new photo. Since I go by 'CatBookMom', I thought I'd show the Cat and the Books. I am a 'mom' only in the sense that I care and cater for both. If you look carefully at the picture, you will see some of my favorite mystery writers being represented, lol.
  

I still miss our little Shadow cat so dreadfully. She's been gone 2 months today, and I only wish I'd saved at least that post from my old blog. But I can remember most of it, and I have 15 years of memories to cherish. Shadow died of acute pancreatitis and its effects on her other organs; she was not a victim of this dreadful pet-food poisoning. Here she is lounging in one of our chairs, which she always custom-covered in extra fur and leftover kitty litter.

I have lots of yarny news, many new nearly-FOs, and just plain chat, so I'm going to break this 'first' post into two, since there are lots of pictures.

Today I received my first order of hand-dyed yarn from a new source. See Jayne Knits has just opened for business in Vancouver, BC, and I am privileged to have some of the very first yarns she's created. The yarns are all soft as can be, with no nasty vinegar or dye odors. Here's my booty:

First, we have Coral Glow, a 100% merino sock yarn, one of the very first SJK skeins ever. This is a happy-making color, and it will make some lovely socks, when I find the right pattern for it. The flash makes this look a bit garish, but it's the closest I dould get.



Then there's Hydrangea, which is IMO a most perfectly named yarn. This is 100% superwash DK merino, and the shades of blue-pinks and pinky-lavenders and all shades in between include my complete range of favorite pastels.



And not least, this is Forest Camo sock yarn, 80% wool, 20% nylon. DH is going to love this - again, the camera cannot capture the colors. There are greens from cedar to balsam to olive to new leaves...., and the browns and tans are just as wide-ranging.



You HAVE to check out this new dyer! Jayne has been known among the Elann knitters for her unerring sense of color and color mixtures, and she has brought all of that talent to the yarns she is creating. She has found sources of high-quality yarns in a wide variety of weights and fibers, and she has already begun to compile a number of repeatable colorways. Right now there are some copper and midnight-blue yarns showing that I really covet. The Copper mohair could convert me from a 'waters' color fan to an 'earth' colors fan. All of us who have known her for a while are warning her against burn-out, a la Sweet Georgia, so the output won't be large, but it will be high-quality and in stunning colors.

For more news, see post number Two.

Sock UFOs

After knitting 2 pairs of socks in less than a week, I decided to raid the UFO pile to see what I had in the sock area. Look what I found! [Edit: see the 2/28 post; the two pairs were knitted with worsted weight yarn and went fast]

First up is an abandoned sock made with Paton's Kroy. Left at the heel turn, this has been around since, oh, 2004. I don't remember where I bought the yarn, but considering how icky the yarn feels, these may be candidates for total frogging. I don't know if I want to put in the time to finish the single sock to find out how the yarn feels after washing.


Next, we have a sock and a bit of sock #2 from 2005. This is KnitPicks' Sock Garden 100% merino in Hydrangea. KnitPicks has since consolidated several of its early sock lines into one, now called Memories, and the Hydrangea colorway is no longer available. This is lovely soft yarn, though I'd have liked it better if the leg had turned out with narrower 'stripes'. I'll probably finish these.



Before I started the Hydrangea socks, I made this pair in KnitPicks' 100% merino in the Yukon colorway (which is still available), a lovely blues/greys blend, and DH hijacked them. That pair is holding up well, as you can see, though there's some felting on the sole. I love how the narrow stripes worked out.


Saving the best for last, these are Grumperina's Jaywalker socks. The yarn is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in #38 Mixed Berries, and was a gift from a very special friend. I couldn't quite get the hang of 2 socks on 2 circs, so I knitted the two on 2 sets of circs, working an inch or so on each in turn. These were my 2006 Knitting Olympics project and sadly, I was a non-finisher. In my defense, I went to Stitches West during the Olympics, and found that very little knitting happens at knitting conventions. With all the socializing and shopping and classes to take, there isn't much time or energy to knit and not much in the way of good lighting. I did knit a couple more inches on both of these at Stitches, but I found errors and had to frog all of that progress when I got back home. These I will definitely finish. I love the way the chevrons show up in the variegated yarn.

Remember, click on the pictures for a larger view.


And for some quizzy fun, here's one I enjoyed:

You Are 60% Left Brained, 40% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

This summation is interesting, and seems to reflect how I've always thought about my own ways of "brained-ness". I'm not particularly philosophic, and I'm totally hopeless with sports of any kind, being terminally clumsy. I can't draw or paint but I do find a lot of pleasure in working with colors in knitting. I was a pretty good tax accountant, which involved a lot of reasoning skills and an ability to write coherently about tax law in a way that could be understood by non-accountants. Pre-retirement and pre-knitting I was quite organized, with an incredibly tidy if crowded desk and filing system, and my house was far less cluttered and messy. Oh, the faults we can blame on knitting!

Musings on This and That

Not a lot of new knitting to show. I finished the orange socks. I took them to Unwind on Friday for help with Kitchenering, but the clerk is a newish (though very talented) knitter and hasn't done any socks or Kitchener stitch. So I sat down and kept doing those toes over again until I got them nearly right, at least right enough to stop. The socks left here a little while ago, on their way to San Francisco via Priority Mail. I attached a good length of the sock yarn and a darning needle to each pair, for future darning and repair.

I nearly finished the other side of the EZ Ribwarmer; there's no picture since it looks just like the first side. But it was a great item to knit Saturday afternoon while watching Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in 'Sense and Sensibility' (1995 version) via TiVo. Hugh Grant spends the entire movie with his shoulders hunched up and held stiffly. I wonder if it was the way the coat fitted him? Not his best role, IMO. The nasty step-sister-in-law is played perfectly by Harriet Walter, who was so wonderful playing Lord Peter Wimsey's great love, Harriet Vane, in the 1987 BBC-TV versions of the Dorothy Sayers mysteries, 'Strong Poison', 'Have His Carcase' and 'Gaudy Night'. The big link is to the boxed set at Amazon.

This and That
Sweater stones work -
I got big handfuls off my Highland Triangle Shawl - but the rotten-egg/sulfur smell, ick! This is a reminder that the 'stone' is volcanic, pumice to be exact.

Online shopping math -
On Thursday, I decided to order a couple of the new needles from KnitPicks, who have upped their free shipping amount to $45. Found myself adding to the basket, nearly $25 worth, to save $3.79 shipping. Sanity caught up to me and I'm paying the shipping but only ordered the $18+ I really wanted.

BTW, they are discounting their KIP totes as separate items, but the set is still $49. Huh??

The needles arrived today, and I'm happy with them, but they won't replace either my beloved bamboo circs or my Denise Interchangeable Set. The 16in sock-sized needles are particularly nice, in that the tips are shorter than the interchangeable tips, and fit more comfortably into the smaller circle. I also bought the smallest KIP tote; hard to resist at $10, though it is singularly underwhelming. It's a small fabric/vinyl handbag, rather frumpy in design, but a good size for small projects. I'm thinking with it being a zip-top tote, it will be better for holding my "emergency" knitting in the car than my present open-top tote. And the material of the tote is dirt-resistant, another good thing for car totes.

Skacel Addi Lace Needles
Unwind had some of these in stock on Friday, so I picked up one, though they only had the 32in length. Lovely needles, and they are not as slippery as the regular Addi Turbos. I haven't really worked with it, but I'll report when I have. Price is quite ouchy - $16.50.

Reading
Most of the weekend was spent deep in a newish trilogy from Nora Roberts, called the Circle Trilogy. This one starts in Ireland but then jumps to a mythical land called Geall, where an army of vampires must be defeated on behalf of all the worlds. Lots of Nora's usual great characters and rather steamy sex. But a nice plot line, assuming you can believe in vampires and sorcery.

Wendy Johnson (Wendy Knits!) explained how she manages to read and knit at the same time. Not too surprisingly, she knits mostly by touch. Well, *that's* a few more years of knitting in the future for me, and perhaps for most people. I've been wondering how she and others manage the two at once.

OK, back to some knitting interspersed with some long-deferred bookkeeping. Ugh! The bookkeeping, not the knitting, of course!

Socking It (but not Socking It to Me)

My knitblogger friend Vamanta put out a call for some help with an Afghans for Afghans project, one which will bring warm socks to some Afghani kids. So a bunch of us from the Elann Chat Center have hauled out our neglected sock-knitting skills and have been knitting in small circles the last few days. The link is to Vamanta's post on the socks project. Deadline for having them in San Francisco is next Thursday, March 7.

Here's my progress since Saturday. It is incredibly easier to knit socks in worsted weight with size US4 or 6 needles than to work with sock yarn and US 1-2. The green pair I did with size US5, and it is my very first effort at a toe-up sock. I like the concept, particularly since it doesn't involve my own nemesis - Kitchener stitching - but I'm not loving those short-row heels. Even though I carefully made every single wrap & turn, I still had decorative but unwanted eyelets. I will be attaching a mini-skein of yarn and a darning needle for future repairs, even though I've tried to duplicate-stitch or darn every weak spot. This is done with Paton's Classic Wool, in a lovely dark foresty green color, trimmed at the top with a bit of Paton's Decor wool blend. I did use some nylon reinforcement at the heel on this one.

The orange pair is done top down. The 'finished' sock needs some help with the Kitchener, even after 3 tries, and it will go, with its mate, to Unwind on Friday for a sewing lesson. I *know* how to do Kitchener (purl on, knit off; knit on, purl off), it just never seems to come out right. Both of these yarns are left over from my holiday hat-making, being Nashua's Creative Focus worsted weight superwash wool. This is done with the basic slip-stitch heel, but I forgot to go find some reinforcing nylon for this heel - I'm totally positive I don't have any in orange - though IMHO the slip-stitch technique makes a sturdier fabric than the short-row heel.

All the WIPs from my last post are still WIPs-in-waiting, but I'm a bit jazzed! Today's post at the Yarn Harlot shows that Stephanie herself is also doing an EZ ribwarmer, the same pattern as my lavender-pink project!!! Her pictures are better than mine, no surprise, and she's got both pieces done. But still, knitterly sisterhood, y'know.

A few weeks ago an online friend of mine had a little girl, nicknamed the Wee Imp by those of us who were helping the mommy wait and cheering her on. I knitted a little vest for the Imp, but I couldn't show it here till the Imp was born and the mommy received it. I got an official announcement this week with a big thank-you, so herewith are photos of the Wee Imp and my baby gift. The pattern is an adaptation of a pattern designed by the LYSO of Unwind; I modified it so I could knit it all in once piece. The yarn is some very nice acrylic I found at the Stitches from the Heart LYS; the camera has washed out the colors, which range from aqua to a nearly-forest green. The Imp has some growing to do before the vest will fit, but I'm hoping it will be useful by the end of the year.

I will finish with a completely off-topic bit of news: the Powers That Be who decide when a favorite, long-cancelled TV program becomes a DVD have smiled and the First Season DVD of Beauty and the Beast (not a Disney product) has been released. I got mine from Amazon by way of the TV Shows on DVD website, which is the source of information on all sorts of past TV favorites and the DVD release dates. (Follow the link from the website to Amazon; it's the same price and helps pay the people who keep track of these shows and DVDs.) So the tales of Catherine and Vincent are available for viewing in my house; just call to be sure of show times.

Elegant and Purry Pawsitude

Jen-La seems to be looking for cute pictures of furry feet, something she/they have written in the 2/27 post. As I've written before, our Midnight spends much of her time with her front feet crossed, even when she's sleeping on her side. It's such an elegant pose. So here's a cute picture of today's pawsitude.

Follow-ups and WIPs

Several readers have inquired about my reference to Fleetwood Mac in the naming of the 'Knit Your Own Fleece' cartoon. I'm a huge FM fan, and had a great time a few years ago when I went to a live performance here in LA. Lindsey Buckingham wrote a song named "(You Can) Go Your Own Way", from which I took the cartoon caption. Here's a link to a performance of the song. Just in case you're not familiar with the band members, Lindsey is the dark-haired guitarist and singer on this song, Mick Fleetwood is on drums, John McVie is the guitarist in the hat, Christie McVie is on keyboards and Stevie Nicks is the long-haired blonde. John and Christie divorced many years ago. Both Christie and Stevie have solo albums, though they are some years old. This is the cover of their 1997 comeback album, the live performance of which was filmed here in Burbank.

I am now a member of the Wicked fan club. The picture of Elphaba in the link isn't Eden Espinosa, who plays the role here, but of all the actors I was most impressed with her voice. Megan Hilty, in the role of Glinda/Galinda-with-a-'ga', instantly reminded me of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, particularly with her entrance sitting on top of a mound of perfectly-matched luggage. Elle, of course, wasn't nearly as ditzy! Our seats were about 25 rows back in the orchestra section, on the left-hand aisle, so we had a wonderful view. In a lovely coincidence, the mother and daughter sitting next to us were there for the daughter's birthday treat, though they'd bought their tickets in November!

I wouldn't have wanted to be any closer, since some of the music is pretty loud. The headaches held off until just the last few minutes, so I guess that's proof that Tylenol lasts about 4 hours, lol! DH commented that he wished there'd been a song or two, like those in 'Cats' or 'Phantom', that had you walking out humming the tune. Friends who have seen 'Wicked' before say that you'll do that after a few times of listening to the album. I expect that "Defying Gravity" will be one of those. I did not buy any souvenirs except the $20 program; it's amazing what the show sale prices are!

I wish I could show the sumptuous details of the Pantages Theatre. The link shows a tiny view of the orchestra section and a bit of the theatre's history. This is a temple of Art Deco style, and the restorers seem to have missed no detail. The only complaint I've ever had, a purely female one, is that the intermissions need to be longer; getting the women of a 2500+ seat theatre into and out of the bathroom takes longer than 15 minutes!

Back to a bit of knitting content:
Here's a picture of the unfortunate baby jacket. When the scissors disaster happened, the entire jacket was done except for the seaming and the trim on the cuffs and collar. This should be finished in the next couple of days. I will be in the area of the Stitches from the Heart charity's LYS on Wednesday, and I can donate it to them. The tweedy yarn is Red Heart Fiesta and the solid is Encore. The pattern called for 400+ yards, and Fiesta was less than 350, so I added the Encore, which with the front panels, the cuffs and all-around edging, will be a good design, IMO.

Here's another project that's part-way done. This is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Ribwarmer, which can be found in her 'Knitting Workshop' book. In EZ fashion, other than a suggestion of knitting gauge, there are no dimensions listed nor instructions for re-sizing. So I just started knitting. It is all garter stitch, with shaping by short rows. EZ just writes 'Turn', but I looked up 'wrap and turn', which makes a lovely detail. This is one of two identical pieces, which will be sewn together on the straight vertical edge to make a vest. Sorry about the turned-under corner.

I'm thinking this will be too big for my DGD-by-love, but I can give it to her mom, and make another for DGD; they may not mind matching mother-daughter items. The yarn is Cascade's Cloud 9, 50% merino/50% angora. In the skein it feels a bit cottony, but as you knit and the fabric bends with the knitting, the angora begins to bloom into a halo and it feels softer and softer. I'm curious how it will be after washing. This is going to take just about 400 yards (4 skeins).

My Ribby Cardi is on hold; I'll take it with me on Wednesday to a huge fabric and decorator's shop to find the zipper. A knitter on the About.com Knitting forum asked me about knitting this in one piece, and I've posted my thoughts there on both the bottom-up and top-down approaches. I still have to seam the sleeves, and that will be more difficult, since the yarn is a much darker color and I won't be able to see the stitches as well.

Last but not least, here's a new pattern book I picked up at Unwind last night during our Friday SnB group. Stephanie, the LYSO, carries Nashua's worsted and superwash yarns, and just got in a big shipment with spring and summer colors. This is a very good basic wool, with a good range of colors. This kids' pattern book, Zoo, grabbed me, and I'm thinking the DGD and DGSs will perhaps benefit from the ideas.

This, That, the Other and Whee!!

Many thanks to all of you who've commiserated with me about the headache attack. It is passing, down to the OTC Tylenol level.

I have to suck it up big time today and get back to something resembling normal functioning. As some of you know, yesterday was my birthday; I'm 50-mumble again. Thanks for all the great good wishes, on the Elann Chat Center, at the About.com Knitting Forum and by email. My darling DH has once again scored big on a birthday prezzie: tickets to a matinee of 'Wicked' this afternoon. It just opened yesterday!!!! Generally speaking, the show is sold out until September, but he has astonishingly good luck with things like this. A year or two ago, he found seats in the middle of the 5th row for a performance of Madame Butterfly! I'm playing on the computer, dithering about what to wear with the black pants (what else??), and with about 2 hours to put myself together. With makeup and everything.

The baby jacket is still in time-out. Yesterday I cast on for Elizabeth Zimmermann's Ribwarmer vest. It's in her Knitting Workshop book. This is all garter stitch, shaped with short rows; the two identical pieces are seamed down the middle of the back. I have done this in the lavender Cascade Cloud 9 that I picked up at Unwind last week. Cloud 9 is 50% merino/50% angora, and seems a bit like cotton when you first knit it, but as the piece moves around the angora comes out and makes it softer and softer. EZ doesn't give size info, so this is sort of a test knit. I think this is going to be too big for our DGD-by love, but it also looks like this vest is going to be done in about 4 skeins (400yds), so I can either frog it and adjust the size downward or make a mother-daughter set. Unwind still has some of this yarn, and they're holding a couple of extra skeins for me at the sale price. I'm thinking to edge this in knitted-on I-cord.

Here's a tip I found in the current Reader's Digest magazine. There's a website called zafu.com that is supposed to help you find well-fitting jeans. I signed up (free, of course), answered the info about fit (no real measurements, just general shapes) and have ordered a pair of jeans from LL Bean that they've recommended. I'll let you know how they fit. This website doesn't include jeans from Lane Bryant, which is my current favorite source.