kmkat and her kneedles

Almost your last chance.

Stacey's, aka Purling Dervish's, fundraiser for the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation is almost over.

Go read her story

Go read about GJCF.

Donate and be in the running for these awesome knitterly prizes.

Winner!

A package arrived. What could it be?

I won Vicki's contest awhile back*. What did I win?

Goodies! Awesome goodies!

I cannot wait to use those cans for flowers. Or yarn.

Those of you who read Vicki's blog will recognize that those are her own photos on those notecards and that that gorgeous tonal rose fingering yarn is hand-dyed by Herself.

Thanks, Vicki!

* To be perfectly honest, I had totally forgotten about this until Vicki emailed me a few days ago to tell me the package was on its way. Faulty memory has its advantages -- this is like a surprise Christmas in October :-)

Free reading.

Three stories from the Bordertown series.

Free.

On the net.

Go.*

Read.

(Image at right shamelessly lifted from the linked page in hopes of luring you over there.)

* This has been a not-paid-for advertisement written in hopes of winning one of three [purportedly magical] prizes.

WIP Wednesday.

Today's WIP is brought to you by Twinset Ellen via Carrie K.

 

This is the beginning of a 2x2 ribbed hat intended for either Senator Ron Johnson or Rep. Sean Duffy, both of Wisconsin and two of my three guys in Congress. The previously mentioned Ellen and her friend Alison have started a project they call Warm Heads, Not Hot Heads.

Here is Ellen talking about the project:

"Pick a Congressperson for whom you’d like to knit a hat. You don’t have to agree with their politics, in fact it may be a more enriching experience for you if they don’t." 

And Alison (emphasis mine):

"Invite any and all knitters who would like to join in to knit a hat...for their own congressional representative, whether Senate or House.  Ask them to email me, perhaps send a photo or link to a Ravelry project, and let me know to whom a hat has been sent. I can track who is being covered (literally!) and if anyone wants to knit more than one hat, they can send them to me and I’ll handle mailing them to a rep who hasn’t received one yet.

"I’d like to write a standard note to go with it, to which any knitter could add her own personal message. I’m also thinking how cool it would be to design a hat for it, but I am also telling myself to keep it manageable. (Her husband) suggested that the hats be purple, a blending of red and blue, but I told him I want them to be worn!...After thinking on it all week, though, what is really compelling me is to highlight the need for civil discourse even over things we disagree on.”

Ellen's letter to accompany her hat(s):

Dear Congressperson,

This hat was hand knit with care for you.  Many of your colleagues will also be receiving hats from knitters of all political stripes and from all around the nation.

Why a hat?  Knit hats meet a simple need for warmth.  They are an every day comfort.  Everyone can use a good hat.

Civil political discourse also meets a simple need - the need for our government to have the best information and insights from many viewpoints.  It would be an every day comfort to me and many other Americans if the airwaves were free of hate-filled rhetoric, and it would lead to good government.   As I’m sure you agree, everyone can use good government.

Thank you for your service, and best regards,

Ellen

P.S.  More information about this effort, Warm Hats, Not Hot Heads can be found at http://twinset.us/?p=3732 or http://spindyeknit.com/2011/01/lets-change-the-world/.  If you can not personally use this hat, please donate it to a worthy charity.

You can find out more about the project at either of the linked sites, above. For myself, I am knitting for two people whose political views are pretty far from my own. The yarn is some lightweight worsted superwash merino I got recently from Smiley's Yarns, and, yes, I would wear it myself.

* * * * *

The other WIP that has been pending for w-a-y too long is my name-the-glass-head contest. Remember that? I didn't think so.

There were 16 entries (so much for bringing out the lurkers), each of whom suggested a dandy name.

And now... (drum roll, please)

...the winners are... (suspense mounts)

Gayle, for "Bubbles" (my favorite*)

...and...

Sophanne, for "Ida Lee." (the random winner).

 

Winners, check your email. Check your spam folder, too, since I foolishly made the subject line "You won my contest!" which is sure to be flagged as spam.

 

 

 

* "Marie Antoinette" was a close second (headless, get it?) but was ruled out on the basis of length. I couldn't see myself using a five-syllable name. Gail, you lost only because of my laziness energy efficiency.

Show us your wallpaper (redux)!

I did this a couple-three years ago and got a lot of responses. Let's do it again!

The rules are easy-peasy: put the image of your current wallpaper on your blog and put a link to it in the comments below.

I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours ;^)

My current wallpaper:

Don't remember where I found this photo. It is a composite of different photographs taken during a solar eclipse that occurred last summer; iirc, the total eclipse was visible only across a swath of the Pacific Ocean (but my memory is very vague on this last point).

Other recently used wallpapers, many of which you may have already seen here:

(from CuteOverload.com)

(ditto)

(lolcats)

(photo taken and decorated by Heather of lectio.ca)

(from NationalGeographic.com)

(photo taken by Y.T.)

(ditto)

Maybe I'll make this into a contest...

LMAOSaturday.

* * * * *

Jessalu is giving away a skein of her handspun if you vote for her husband's car club; it is applying to a local bank for a grant. Go! Vote! Win!

Friday confessions.

Remember those eagles I wowed you all with? My friend Jeff informs me -- and I trust his judgement 100% on this -- that they are not eagles, but rather...

.

.

.

.

.

.

(wait for it).

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

...turkey vultures.*

Crap. But thanks anyway, Jeff. I prefer to be educated and disillusioned rather than happy but stupid.

* * * * *

And now for the moment you have all been waiting, for: the contest results!

The winner is...

Dani B for her story about her grandmother:

True story: My grandmother can't quite manage on her own any more, so she lives with my aunt's family. No driver's license and a new neighbourhood have meant a big upheaval, so to help keep her social life active all of the grandchildren take turns driving her to church euchre nights or the local senior's centre or to visit girlfriends. She always protests that she doesn't want to be any trouble, we say that it isn't (because truly, it isn't), and she puts on her earrings and goes.

Last week we had this conversation in the car on the way to euchre: "Let's skip this and just go for a drink. Or I'll take you for ice cream. You don't want to play cards, do you?"

"I'm lactose intolerent Nanny, and I do like euchre. You taught me, remember?"

"Oh, piss on it, I don't want to go! I hate going to cards because all the people there are so OLD. All they talk about is their joints and their teeth and their feet and they never tell new stories!"

"Nanny, last time I checked, you were 87. How old ARE these people exactly?"

"What does my age have to do with how OLD I am?!" *scandalized stare*

Confession: It was the "Piss on it!" that did it for me.

RANDOM.ORG tells me that #3 in my list -- Lene! -- is the random winner. Yay, Lene!

Congrats to Lene and Dani. I have emailed both of you, so check your spam folders just in case an email with the subject line "You are a winner!" got tossed in there. Yeah, like that could happen.

Thanks to everyone for their good wishes and for all the giggles I got from reading your comments. A special thanks to lisa, who gave me the perfect answer to any and all stupid remarks I may ever hear: "Yes, isn't it FABULOUS!"

As in, "My, your hair is getting gray." "Yes, isn't it FABULOUS!"

"Have you put on some weight?" "Yes, isn't it FABULOUS!"

I plan to use that at every opportunity.

ETA: Smokey reminded me of what his grandfather said on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. "Ninety isn't old. Why, it isn't even 100!" I wish I could have known the man, but he died the year before we met. By all accounts he was quite a character.

* I would have put a picture of a turkey vulture here but TypePad is being pissy uncooperative and not offering the click-able icons for easy insertion of pictures (or fonts, or indents, or any of those fun things). Just so you know, I did any and all formating in this post by editing the HTML myself. ::self-administered pat on back::

Today is the day!

Yes, it is official. 

Today I am Old.

Okay, enough of that. I'm still kicking, so let's move on.

 I promised a contest, and a contest we shall have.

Here's the deal: make me laugh about turning 60.

There will be two winners, one chosen at random by some means yet to be determined, and one chosen because s/he made me laugh until I peed my pants. That's not really so hard to do when the laugh-er is a 60-year-old female.

    

And the prizes? Oh, the prizes.

One is this skein of hand-dyed silk from Chamomile Connection (she has an Etsy store, too)(Huh. I bought this yarn at Shepherd's Harvest, a fiber festival in a northern suburb of St Paul, but she lives in New Mexico. So much for *local* fiber.).

100 grams and 650 yards of lusciousness.

  

Am I generous? No, not really, I bought two skeins but have since decided that a 650-yd scarf would be plenty, no need for a full scale shawl.

The second is this skein of hand-dyed sock yarn from Pippi Knee Socks. The link is to her Flickr stream; her website seems to be gone.

  

The colorway is Free Tibet and is guaran-damn-teed to be full of good karma; she chanted Tibetan prayers or some such over the yarn as she dyed it. Once again, I have two skeins and one is plenty for a pair of socks. 3.6 ounces, approximately 400 yards.

  

While googling for images of "60" I came across this, where a 20-year-old model was photographed to look like 10 years old, 20, 30, 40,50, and 60. Here she is at *60*:

 

Yeah, that's how I look at 60, all right.

But the comments are interesting. I especially liked this one.

Besides, 60 is the new 40. Look at Sophia Loren, Raquel Welch to name a few... No, nothing to fear about being older. Enjoy it to the maximum.

Check!

ETA: Let's make the deadline for entries midnight on Wednesday, August 12. That's CDT, although midnight anywhere is acceptable :-)

Tomorrow is the big day.

Tomorrow is my birthday. It is one of those n-zero birthdays, and the one that officially takes me out of middle-aged and into old. Phooey. How did this happen? Oh, I remember now -- I kept having birthdays and continuing to wake up in the morning. Funny how that works...

I have never had any trouble with getting older, maybe because people generally didn't believe how old I was. Vanity lurks, no matter how much I try to suppress it. The only birthdays I had any trouble with were 17 (I liked being 16) and 58 (that's the one that mentally tipped me over into old).

True story: A couple weeks ago I was in a drug store, the kind that stocks everything under the sun. There were some 10-yo boys playing in the toy section, bouncing balls around and back and forth. One ball got away from a kid and rolled between my feet. Because I am being extremely cautious since my last disastrous falls, I managed to stay upright. Gave the kid a dirty look and walked on. But a store employee, and a middle-aged one at that, told the kid, "Be careful! Keep those balls away from the old people!"

That hurt a bit. But when I told Smokey about it, he reminded me that we ARE old. Sixty is the beginning of old age. (He is a year older than I am and so has had longer to get used to this. Although given his everlastingly sunny outlook on life, I doubt that he has ever worried about it.)

I know some of you will say that a person is only as old as they feel/think/act. There is some truth in that, but one aspect of good mental health is to have a firm grip on reality. And my reality says that sixty is the beginning of old.

So be it. I intend to continue to feel (mentally, at least; I certainly have my share of physical aches and pains), think, and act like I am much younger.

Not that I have much choice in the matter; I keep remembering hearing older people say things like, "How did I get old? I feel like I am still 40/30/20/16!"  Funny, no one ever seems to want to be much younger than that. In our inner selves we know that childhood wasn't necessarily the best part of our lives, and that growing up was A Good Thing. We just don't want to continue the process that inevitably follows, and we certainly don't want to think about its unavoidable conclusion.

Anyway.

In honor of tomorrow's monumental significance I think I shall have a contest. Don't know yet what it will be or what the winner(s) will get, but the latter will probably involve yarn in some form. Perhaps there will be chocolate, too...

Emergency knitting bag. Sorrow.

 

Several of you were intrigued by my red emergency knitting bag. I won mine in a blog contest over at 1870 Pearl, but I worked the google fu and found that you can get them here. That site has them in red, green, and blue, $19.95 with free shipping.

* * * * *

A moment of silence for Carrie/pacalaga/Strickerin, whose husband Rick passed away. My heart aches for her.

Go. Hug your loved ones. Life is too short.

The knee update. And stuff.

Thanks for all the sympathy and good wishes for my leg and knee. Today I saw the ortho doc who fixed my ankle. It has healed well, and we scheduled surgery at the end of August to remove the hardware. I have had a patch of itchy scaly skin on that ankle bone ever since the cast came off; we suspect I may be slightly allergic to something in the hardware.

That doctor is a foot and ankle specialist, so someone else looked at my knee. She had it and the tibia X-rayed. The good news is that she saw no cracks or obvious breaks. The possible bad news is that she saw something floating around inside my knee. Thursday I go back for an MRI. Wait and see...

* * * * *

I won knitnzu's Snow Pile Melt contest! The massive pile melted between June 22 and 24; my guess of the 24th (Smokey's birthday) was the closest.

Look what I won -- a Nantucket bag!

Lisa wrote about these last winter, and I ordered a natural canvas one, which I have been loving. Now I have a black one for winter -- yay! The cool thing about the bag is its clever and versatile design. See how it zips open?

Look at all those pockets. It can be zipped back together inside out if I want the pockets on the outside. It has handles to carry it as a tote or a shoulder bag, plus it has straps so I can carry it as a back pack. That last one is especially handy, since I tend to fill my bag to the brim.

Was there yarn involved in the prize? Why, yes, there was! How did you guess?

She threw in some stash-busters that I will probably knit into hats:

  

but the real yarny prize was some lovely Mountain Colors sock yarn.

 

Thanks, Lisa!

Leavin' on a jet pl--, er, van.

We are leaving on Wednesday for the annual camping trip in the Big Horn mountains of Wyoming. I have not started organizing the camping gear.

I have, however, gotten all my knitting projects ready.

The big project is to finish the kimono sweater that I started in November 2007. The back is done. Here are the two fronts, being knit more or less simultaneously, each on its own circ.

 

The red is actually maroon; the grayed lavender is accurate in the photo. The fronts should go fairly quickly (I hope), but the sleeves are enormous. Still, if not now, when? It's a good mindless project and I'd love to be able to wear it come fall.

I'd like to finish this child's sweater intended for Afghans for Afghans:

It has been in time out since September or so, when I realized I had been so busy counting rows for the sleeve increases that I had passed the spot where I should have begun the striping. You can see that I started it anyway, but it is not right. I need to sit down with a pencil and some graph paper and chart out how the increases and striping work out; then it will be a breeze to finish. I was planning on making this a knit-in-the-round saddle shoulder sweater, a la  EZ, but I may just do a seamless yoke. Depends on how ambitious I am when I reach the point to join the sleeves to the body.

After I finished the chemo hat for my friend Mary I got an overwhelming case of startitis. Swatched for a clapotis with the laceweight Knit Picks alpaca:

 

A US#4 needle makes a very nice fabric; now to decide exactly what it will be. Some of you pointed out that this is very sticky yarn, but I don't think I will mind dropping the stitches one by one for the clap, if I decide to make that. (I have lots of practice at that from fixing mistakes six or sixteen or twenty-six rows back.) The other option is to buy some more of this yarn and make something bigger, like a dressy sweater. Decisions, decision...

Clapotis on the brain inspired this, a long skinny cotton clap on US#10.5 needles:

It knits up wonderfully fast. I have two more balls of the Gedifra yarn and am hoping the length comes out right.

And then there is this, inspired by a couple other bloggers:

 

Angie told me about Faroese shawl construction and Myra Stahman's book on the subject when I complained last summer about how traditional triangular shawls always slide off. Cindy's Scrap Shawl, a make-it-up-as-you-go design, looked like a lot of fun to knit. So I combined the ideas and cast on with some Cascade 220 that has been marinating (and breeding) in the stash for three or four years. Thank you both! This is a fun project. I don't know if I will actually wear it in public, but I wanted a super-warm shawl to wear at home next winter. This will fill the bill nicely.

Of course, there will be some socks OTN, too. I'll finish the Indian Corn socks.

Then I need to decide which sock yarn to take along for the next pair. I had intended that my next socks would be knit from this:

 

since I need some blue socks. But then this gorgeous stuff arrived in the mail on Saturday:

 

and I am itching to cast on with it. 325 yards of Fleece Artist BFL Socks, 80% superwash blue face Leicester/20% nylon, and totally yummy to the touch. The part that looks fuschia in the photo is actually darkish red; the whole thing is darker than it looks here. I won this from Tammy in her latest contest, wherein she asked her readers to tell her about their favorite books. Thanks, Tammy! That topic is right up my street.

Okay, that pretty much wraps up the knitting projects. Now for the camping gear...

Snow, Baggs, candles, sock, and blocking.

Knitnzu is having a contest; when will the massive snow pile in her area melt? Hint: she lives in Maine. She also gives some data on last year's snow pile results in the post I linked to. The prize she is offering is AWESOME; a Nantucket Bagg! (Click on "Watch the pitch" in the left sidebar on the Bagg site -- the inventor demonstrates all the tricks that the bag can do. It is truly amazing.) She blogged about the bag a couple weeks ago, and I was so impressed that I ordered one myself. I have been using it all week instead of a purse (which was falling apart and needed to be replaced), and I love it! Plenty of interior pockets, plenty of room to hold the usual purse stuff plus my knitting, lunch, a book, whatever, and since it has straps to use it as a backpack, the extra weight is not the burden it would be if I were carrying it in my hand or on my shoulder. Win!

* * * * *

Tonight was Earth Hour. I was home alone so could participate without having to explain it to anyone else. At 8:05 my neighbor across the lake called to find out what time she should turn her lights out. At 8:25 I gathered some candles and matches and my iPod and my knitting; the latter two were already in use, I just took the iPod off its dock to run it on battery power. At 8:30 I turned off the lights.

 

The iPod dock was turned off, but I realize now that it was still drawing enough power to dimly light its blue screen, left. Oops.

Here is the same scene with camera flash on.

 

The multicolored sock at the back was for size comparison. I started some new socks for spring.

 

The yarn is some Opal that I won in Carole's Tour de Fleece contest in summer, 2007 (the white cuff is Knit Picks Essential Bare). I did about a quarter of what you see during the blackout hour. Let me just say that I am thankful for electric lights; at 9:30 I was ready to turn them back on. My eyes are not young enough to knit in dim light.

At 10:30 or so I stopped knitting and came into my office to write this post. A few minutes later my neighbor called -- she and her husband had kept their lights off for 2 hours, playing cribbage and Scrabble and having a great time. They had seen my office light go on and called to give me a hard time about turning it back on before they did. Fun!

* * * * *

I had to start that new project because the first piece of the baby sweater, upon which the next part will be built, was blocking.

 

Yeah, I know. That does not look like a baby sweater-in-progress. Here is a picture of a finished one on Ravelry to help you visualize. It is the child Einstein jacket by Sally Melville in The Knit Stitch.

 

The blue piece currently blocking is the lower part of the sweater. Tomorrow I will pick up stitiches to knit the fronts.

I'm a winner (again)!

But there is no yarn involved in this one. This contest had an entirely different -- but no less wonderful -- kind of prize, .

Eleanorfromthecommentbox had a contest. I'll let her tell you about it.

"I have just noticed that I have 110 posts on my blog. I'm amazed at myself! ... Now. It has come to my attention that many bloggers offer up a little prize to be raffled off to one lucky commenter, in celebration of a blogging anniversary. I have therefore decided to offer (as a lucky comment-box-door-prize) this beautiful knitted pair of socks I whipped up yesterday:













"Hahaha. If you fell for that one then you are obviously a very new reader. I cannot knit, nor can I sew (at all!), nor patchwork.

"Oh, really? What did you say? Oh, yes, well...that's true.....I do occasionally write a little poem.....yes.....I admit it....what? You say that maybe I might make a poetic offering to one lucky commenter? A poem on demand. I like the sound of that, and yes, I know it is a good idea because it makes me very nervous and self-conscious - that is a sign that I am on the right track here.

"So, without further ado... I proclaim that one of you will have your name drawn out of a hat (Miss Commentbox's hat which I bought her from Etsy for her birthday and which she adores and which I would never have found if I had not been blogging) if you leave a comment below. You comment below should also state the SUBJECT of said poem!!

"Good luck and may I not regret this decision tomorrow."

My amazingly good luck (except for the part about the broken ankle) held true, and Eleanor's beautiful daughter drew my name from the hat. Eleanor e-mailed me the good news and promised to begin thinking about my poem right away. Three days later she e-mailed me to say it was done and to let me read it.

The subject I had chosen was blue October... with a little bit of orange.

Here it is. (I added the corny coloring just because I could. Eleanor has far too much class to do such a thing.)

BLUE OCTOBER

That month's added numbers
May well write of
Equality,
And that mother of men
May well dream of
Eternity.

But I have seen
All her books,
Arithmetically labelled,
And to me they did
Colour-talk,
Blue, red,
White and
Yellow.

Primarily blue
Told a tale of
A whiteness,
Of fiberglass mouldings
And chairwheeling fantasies.

Then red
Itself knitted
A man for all seasons,
And a wife
For good measure
And the very best reasons.

But the yellow
Spoke harshly
Of numbers
Of lifetimes,
Of death
And destruction
In her desert imaginings.

So I took out
My paintbrush
And my dirty old palette,
And started to mix it,
Out of love,
And some madness.

I married the red
Of her son’s future bride,
To the yellow of climates
Of warring disguise.
The ending I coloured
With hope, thought and courage,
And her sunset soon flourished
In glorious orange. 

I was stunned. That is beautiful and profoundly moving. I didn't realize she would read my blog and get to know me in order to write the poem (although in hindsight that makes absolutely perfect sense). I am honored by her generosity and talent and sensitivity. Thank you, Eleanor!

* * * *

You might wonder how I chose the subject for the poem. Here's what I wrote to Eleanor.

I just realized that I never disclosed the reason for my chosen subject. There is an old, old poem called "October's Bright Blue Weather" that was a favorite of my beloved fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Howieson. She was the sweetest lady; I totally adored her. It was a tradition in her classroom that she read that poem to her class every October and had all those little nine-year-olds draw a picture representing the poem.

When you announced your contest it was November 1, but the weather outside my window as I read your post was exactly like what is described in the poem. I looked outside and knew exactly what I wanted the subject to be. I threw in the orange because it is such a typical October color here in the northern US, the orange of pumpkins and changing leaves.

You can read the poem here:
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw10.html
Clearly it was written a long, long time ago, but it makes me remember Mrs. Howieson and all the Octobers she helped me appreciate.

Hey, I'm a winner (again)!

There was was in the mailbox a couple days ago.

What might be in there?

Well, yeah, it's yarn, we all knew that, but what kind of yarn?

This kind:

To be precise, nine (9!) gorgeous skeins of alpaca, which I won in Dr. Mel's raffle to raise money for an animal shelter in Maine.

These colors are fairly true, although the red is a bit deeper and the one on the right is really a brown-gray, not just gray. Yummy stuff, and the colors are absolutely perfect together. I may see a warm vest in my future.

Thanks, Dr. Mel !

This, that, and the other.

I am bored. I haven't been bored in so long that I almost didn't recognize the feeling. What I am bored with is the limited number of activities available to me in a wheel chair or on crutches/a walker: read, knit, surf the net, take a nap. I have managed to do a few loads of laundry, and I have gone to some meetings. But overall, my time is pretty much spent reading/knitting/surfing. Given that I am a relatively quiet, sedentary person, I find it remarkable that I have reached the boredom plateau. The idea of nothing to do but read, knit, and surf the net has long been my idea of heaven. (All together now: Be careful what you wish for.)

It really hit me Saturday, when I realized that I had a actual, literal visceral desire to get up and walk around. Of course, I could not indulge that desire, so instead I slept until 12:30 pm, took a 2-hour nap in the afternoon, and went to bed at 10:30. Perhaps boredom is not the right term. Maybe what I am is depressed. How does one get the endorphins to flow -- without drugs, that is -- if one cannot move?

[/whine]

* * * * *

In spite of my boredom, I have done some enjoyable things. I made myself another toe sock:

That is one strand of Online Highland Color #841 held together with one strand of Lane Cervina Calzetteria fingering in a very dark gray solid, knitted in 2x2 rib on a US#1 needle and using Cathy-Cate's decrease method. Yes, that makes a very, very dense fabric -- I live in Wisconsin and it's getting cold.

There is a second toe sock OTN:

That one is a strand of the same dark gray yarn held together with a strand of Schoeller + Stahl Fortissima Colori Socka Color #4006 (the link will take you to a photo of what the yarn looks like knitted up by itself as intended), once again knitted on a US#1 and yielding a very, very dense fabric. Hey, our floors are cold!

* * * * *

I have been remiss in not telling the world about the goodies I have won/acquired in the past few months.

First, this emergency knitting kit bag from 1870 Pearl, which I won for leaving the 400th(?) comment on her blog.

Thanks, Abigail! I put that puppy to good use during the Wisconsin Counties Association conference I went to last week. Let's see what I was working on, hmmmm?

Yes, another Noro striped scarf. This is my fourth, I think, and it is just barely possible that this one might actually be for me.

This next one was not a contest prize; it was a gift from a very sweet and generous knitter. It is a stitch saver, to be used in those knitting-out-and-about moments when you drop a stitch and do not have your usual crochet hook handy:

Thanks, Ruth! She enclosed this when she sent me her copy of Greeley's Cove, a scary thriller that she had blogged about. Please notice that this stitch saver is personalized Just.For.Me. Ruth sells these in her Etsy shop. Go. Buy one. Or six. I love mine.

Did you wonder what that objet d'knit was in the emergency knitting kit photos, the thing that the kit is resting on? Let me tell you right now, it is gonna blow your [hand-knit] socks right off. You are all gonna be soooooooo jealous of The Kat™.

Does anyone recognize this?

How about if I show you a larger photo:

That, my friends, is the grand prize from Claudia's MS Ride fundraiser back in June, knit by Angela. If I were to wait until I knitted a lace shawl for myself I would have been waiting -- and shivering -- for a long, long, long time. I have been wearing this beauty proudly and happily and gratefully ever since the weather turned chilly a few weeks ago. Thank you, Angela, and thank you, Claudia! The shawl is lovely and soft and warm (and has not been used as a cat bed; it is way too wonderful for that, much to my kitties' dismay).

* * * * *

Well, guess what? I am not bored now. The key is just to Do Something. Doing Something motivates me to Do Something Else, and so on, and so on.

More blog posts need to be written. More knitting needs to be done. There is laundry I can tackle. I need to get myself over to the county clerk's office to do some research on previous board resolutions.

Time to go. Thanks for reading!

 

Eye candy Friday II, the Free Tibet edition.

"None of us are free until ALL of us are free."

Beverly at PoMoGolightly is having a Free Tibet contest on the occasion of the opening of the 2008 Olympics. Remember the Mikhail Bakunin quote above; remind yourself of it as you watch the Games.

PippiKneeSocks created the beautiful yarn pictured above and will give it to the winner of PoMoGollightly's contest. She based the colorway on Tibetan prayer flags. 

Let's check the mailbox.

It is a nice walk, albeit almost completely uphill, from my house to our mailbox. Wednesday was a beautiful day so I strolled up the hill to see what goodies Gary The Mailman had left us. In a small town you know everyone. Gary's wife is the librarian in the next town south of us.

I wasn't expecting anything special so I didn't take my camera with me. You will just have to imagine the lovely picture presented to my eyes when I opened the box. A largish white plastic mailing envelope, plump and soft. Could it be... yarn?

It was from a certain knitblogger so yarn was an excellent guess. Either I won something in her recent contest or she was just being a generous friend. I forget which. Aren't knitbloggers just the best, most generous people on earth?

ETA: Okay, I went back and re-read her post about the winners of her blogversary contest. I was not an *official* winner as chosen by the Official Random Integer Generator. She was being extra-special generous to send me something. Wowzers.

Let's take a look, shall we?

What is not visible in this photo is the lovely peppermint fragrance wafting from the envelope's contents.

First, there was what every knitter needs:

A knitting-themed [temporary] tattoo and a feline-themed bookmark. The latter is actually one of Cathy-Cate's Moo cards, I think, but it is destined for a new life  in my house as a happy bookmark.

There was a chocolate-nut-caramel confection that lasted about 5 seconds, or as long as it took me to rip it open and pop it into my mouth. Mmmmmm, good.

Here are the official contents, in a less-than worthy photo:

The soap is Queen Bee Driftless Flood Relief Soap, with lemon & peppermint, proceeds of whose sales benefited, through the Sow the Seeds Fund, the farmers in southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin who were flooded out last August. (In case you are wondering, "driftless" refers to the terrain of that area, which is the only area in thousands of square miles of the Midwest that was not scraped flat by glaciers in the last ice age.) A worthwhile cause, to be sure.

The yarn -- that's what you are waiting for, right? the yarn? -- is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock DK, a 100% superwash merino. Cathy-Cate e-mailed me to ask my color preferences, to which I responded "jewel tones." Boy, oh boy, is this jewel-toned or what? The color sends little thrills up my spine.

There are a few random strands of blue-brown in there, too, but I missed them in the photo. I have never knit with Cherry Tree Hill, so this will be extra special. The yarn will soon become a pair of woolly warm winter socks for me for next winter. I've been looking forward to making myself some heavier socks -- these will be my first pair.

Thanks, C-C! You are the best.

Contests: to get and to give.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Chris, I saw last week that Purling Dervish was having a contest. Off I went to enter, and lo-and-behold, a few days later I got a congratulatory e-mail from Stacy, the Dervish herself. I won! W00t!

Tonight I was heating myself a little dinner in the microwave tucked into the corner of our department -- there is a very nice break room downstairs with tables and banquettes and vending machines and lots of microwaves and a toaster and a toaster oven, but I use my eating time to commune with y'all, so I tend to eat at my desk -- and while my dinner heated (Kashi Chicken Florentine and a bowl of cream of chicken Florentine; sensing a theme here?) I checked the nearby file drawer to see if I had any mail. Wowzers, there was a package for me!

It was soft and squishy -- whatever could it be? Well, I kind of knew because Stacy had said when she posted the contest what the prize would be. Work with me here, 'kay? (The suspense builds.)

Whatever it is, the inner wrappings coordinate well with an individual tax file. Good thing I wasn't working on a partnership return; those files are blue. Or a gift tax return -- those are bright yellow. Horrors! (Suspense builds.)

Could it be.. yarn? (Suspense reaches unbearable level.)

Why, yes! It could be!

And this is not just any yarn. This is Malabrigo 100% merino laceweight. Two (2!) 50-gram skeins. That's 940 yards, folks. Enough to do some serious lace damage.

Now, I am not a lace knitter. I have attempted a few easy lace patterns in the past with less than stellar results. All attempts were frogged after a couple inches. But some say that the key to success in learning something new is to do it with a yarn or fiber that you love.

If so, look out lace -- here I come!

* * * * *

In the interval since I wrote the above, Things Have Progressed. Nora is hosting a shawl KAL. She blogged about it for several days, agonized over her choices, solicited input from her readers as to what shawl she should knit. In the process of reading about it Thursday night I got snagged, er, hooked. The Icarus pattern has been googled, purchased, downloaded, printed, and currently resides in my knitting bag. Icarus is mostly stockinette, with regular columns of k2togs and yos; the *real* lace doesn't come until the end, when I will be ready for it. I hope.

My swift and ballwinder are at the house in Wisconsin, so I sent one skein of the Malabrigo with #2 son, who is going there this weekend with his girlfriend (also a knitter, can he pick 'em or what?) Their assignment is to wind the laceweight into a ball, firm but not too tight, don't wind too fast or the ball will fly off the ball winder, be careful a strand doesn't slip off the winding platform and get tangled in the gears. Can they do it (the winding)? Can I do it (the lace)? Stay tuned.

* * * * *

I had a contest here myself a couple weeks ago. Remember this picture? Now it has a caption.

"I have six stitch markers, the fifth dpn, and the remote. You gotta problem with that?"

Congratulations to Sheepish Annie! Chris and I each picked our own several favorites, then I chose the winner from the overlap.

I know that Annie is a lace knitter, but guess what? That Malabrigo is all mine. Sheepie, you are getting something else (bwahahaha). I already know what the non-fiber, non-chocolate bit will be.

Thanks to everyone who sent funny captions. To be brutally honest, I had an ulterior motive in staging this particular contest: I wanted to entice people to send me things that would make me smile or chuckle or gigglesnort or laugh out loud during this, a rather stressful time of year for me. Last year I just came out and begged. This year I was sneakier.

* * * * *

Now, for your amusement I give you my winning entry in Purling Dervish's contest. First the set-up:

I know, you’re all here for the contest portion of this post. Recently, the possibility of not returning to my current position due to the floppy paw has been brought up. Something about being in front of a computer for 9 hours a day not being conducive to having full use of my arm. I was asked “Have you thought about what job you would do if you couldn’t go back to what you were doing?”

::: blink, blink ::::

::: deafening silence :::::

I hadn’t even considered that. Not on my radar at all. My thoughts were: Doctor fix. Do PT. All better! Return to my job. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Apparently not.

So the contest… give me an answer. What job could I do? or What job would you do? Don’t worry about education or talent requirements. No answer is too silly or too serious. It just can’t be sitting in front of and using a computer all day.

To get you all started, the first two that came to my mind are:

1. phone sex operator
2. pastor

No, I do not have issues, why do you ask?

Here’s a review:

• Post your answer to the question “What job could I do?” or “What job would you do?” .
• Let me know if you only knit or if you knit and spin. (I kept typing sit and spin)
• Random number generator will pick three lucky winners.
• I may even throw in a special prize if you make me pee my pants .

I guess her pants landed in the laundry that night because I won the Big PIMPing Prize. And here it is, the pee-pimpin' comment that won the Malabrigo:

Theoretical physicist*
Ethicist
Economist
Philosopher

The common factor among these, of course, is that those people don’t really DO anything. They read a lot, they think a lot more, and then they talk. Endlessly. The floppy paw thing? No problemo, dude.

My personal choice would be Empress of the Universe. But I would hire others to make all the decisions I didn’t want to be bothered with and to enforce my decisions on the important stuff: what sodas to have in the vending machine, what the chef should make for dinner tonight, what to knit next. You know, the important stuff.

* I have been listening to a biography of Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist to end all theoretical physicists. (He specialized in thought experiments.) And I've always been fascinated by non-Newtonian physics, although I will freely admit I don't really grok it. See the quotation visible in the first photo, above.

Pay it forward. With a twist.

  

I was just over at Norma's and read about her Pay It Forward thing. You can go read about there; to quote her most excellent summary:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days. That is my promise. The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

My personal twist is that the winner may, if s/he so desires, designate that I knit something for their favorite charity/cause instead of for them personally. The actual objet d' knit will be of my own choosing after due consideration of each recipient's preferences with respect to color, fiber, care, etc.

So…go for it!

* * * * *

Is it really December tomorrow? I guess that means I did the NaBloPoMo with only one missed day, and I didn't have real Internet access that day. So I am patting myself on the back and saying, See, Kath, you really can talk that much.

Whether I actually had anything worthwhile to say is a question for another day...