kmkat and her kneedles

2009: That was the year that was.

January.

Well, there was this (bad).

And there was this (good) (from left, Wendy, me, Chris, and Susan).

On the knitting front:


 

February.

Good intentions.

 

Snow and cold.

Knitting:

March.

Winter melted away.

Knitting.

April.

Spring arrived in earnest.

Yarnover.

End of tax season.

Taste of St. Croix.
 

Knitting resumed after tax season.

 

May.

I scored big at Macy's sale racks, I helped Norm go away, I celebrated Mother's Day in an eco-friendly way, the bears and the ticks came out of hibernation, I picked up trash, I enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend, I bid farewell to our local librarian, and Hannibal discovered the joys of catnip.

Knitting was primarily of a stealth nature, but did include scientific swatching and the F'ing of a couple of O's that had been OTN for nearly, and over a year, respectively. (I am rather proud of that sentence -- and its punctuation -- awkward though it may be.)

 

June

June was for knitting and vacation and celebrating that brief magical time that is summer in the north woods.

 

 

Lots of knitting.

 

 

July.

July was for more vacation -- the rest of the one in Wyoming and another on the North Shore.

And summer.
 

And injuries.
 

And knitting.

 

August.

It was a very good month. I turned 60, had a contest, and laughed. We went to a concert.
 

I learned the difference between eagles and turkey vultures, and I had surgery to remove some extra/unneeded bits and pieces and repair that torn cartilage in my knee.
 

Knitknitknit.

 

September.

In September I had lots of cats on the blog, it was my turn to give the prayer at the beginning of the monthly county board meeting, the county budget process blew up, and the most gloriously gorgeous month of the year was here.

 

The knitting, she continued.

 

October.

I became a biker by proxy,

more new-to-me music found its way into my iTunes, and we celebrated 35 years together

by not-camping on Lake Superior.

The kneedles continued to fly.
 
 

November.

The van that took us on some wonderful vacations met up with an unfortunate bear on the road and was replaced by an older but bigger and more customized van.

Cold weather arrived, and once more I cooked and baked.

 

Mostly, though, I knitted.




Apparently I can crank out hats like other knitters crank out... sweaters

December.

I continued to be thankful (there is a lot to be thankful for).

With the help of Matthew and Maggie, I decorated for Christmas. This decorating thing is never a given.

I showed you my ornaments, y'all showed me yours.

 

We ate well.
 

A bit more knitting* for others.

I pretty much finished my Christmas knitting. (Shhh, the Calorimetry is a surprise.)


The medical mittens are still OTN -- stay tuned.

*For someone who doesn't like pink, I sure knit a lot of it lately...

The saga ends.

First of all, I must apologize for the typo in yesterday's title. It is particularly galling to me, since I pride myself on being such a perfectionistic picker of nits and a proofreader extraordinaire. To miss such a glaring error is... humbling.

* * * * *

The Saga of The Perfect Buttons is ended. Remember how I said it wasn't worth a 150-mile round trip to get the perfect, colored wooden buttons? Well, something came up yesterday* and I had to make a flying trip into Minneapolis. So, as long as I was there anyway...

Behold!

Perfect, no? Thank you, Needlework Unlimited. $3.75 well spent.

* * * * *

Of course, I couldn't walk out of a yarn shop without picking up a couple-three other items.

 

This is worsted-weight cotton that will become a long skinny scarf to wear with an olive-green pantsuit I have that is too boring for words as is. I plan to make Sally Melville's Shape-It scarf in The Knit Stitch, a pattern I never looked at twice until I saw one that Vicki made. The colors in my yarn, which don't show up well in the photo, are grayed navy, gold, olive, and pink, with the navy predominant. I wanted something that wasn't too bold (so I would not be self-conscious while wearing it, especially at work) and cotton (so I wouldn't die of heat prostration while wearing it, especially at work). This should be perfect.

Well, I hope so, anyway . Bamboo yarn would have been better -- such nice hand and drape -- but I couldn't find any in a suitable color combination. I plan to knit this on the biggest needles that work, so as to enhance the drape. Hope it works.

 

My US#3 Addi has gone walkabout somewhere in my house; several hunting safaris have not yielded any results so I bought another one. And I like to enclose a little bottle of Eucalan whenever I give a hand-wash knit item to a non-knitting recipient.

There you have it.

* We are refinancing the Minneapolis house, and the appraisal came in significantly lower -- like, 25% lower! -- than the assessed valuation of the house, upon which the property taxes are based. Smokey has been grumbling for several years that he thinks the assessed value was too high. We probably would never have thought to spend $350 to have it appraised (duh! on us -- if the protest goes through it will save us $1500 the first year alone) but since we now have documented professional proof that the house is not worth what the city says it is, we will protest their valuation. When we checked the website yesterday to see what the procedure was, we discovered that the petition must be filed by... April 30. Which was yesterday. Hence, the flying trip.  

Loony results.

The results of yesterday's button poll, as of 12:56 pm today:

The red pearlies are clearly a favorite. Going by the comments I need to tweak these results a bit to account for some erroneous clicking and the failure of the quiz to load for at least one person, but such tweaking is not enough to change the outcome. Personally, I favored the brass hearts -- I truly thought they would be a runaway favorite -- but I am thinking hard about whether to follow my own inclination or to go with y'all's opinion. Stay tuned.

* * * * *

The loons are back!

It is unusual to see three adult loons on the same piece of water -- extrememly territorial are loons. Perhaps what we have is a pair and their yearling offspring. The Canada geese are especially vocal today, probably because they resent the *intruders*, never mind that last year was the first in nearly twenty and perhaps in many more that there have been geese on the lake at all.  Keep your fingers crossed with us that the loony pair remains!

Beat those buttons to death.

I tried a slightly different approach with the button box. Since what I am looking for are small buttons, I reasoned that they might easily be overlooked in the wealth of buttons in the box.

So instead of rummaging through the box looking for likely prospects, I dumped all of them out onto the table and removed the ones that obviously didn't work -- too big, too white, too green/orange/purple. This left me with a lot of smaller buttons that might not have noticed before. It also allowed me to conclusively eliminate any that did not have at least three of a kind.

What I came up with are these, some of which you have seen before.

Brass lions:

Brass hearts:

Red pearlies with shank:

Mottled red:

Brass helmets:

Wooden:

Buttons with a shank might work better given the thickness of the garter stitch fabric. Styles with >3 items allow me to sew an extra button on an inside seam in case one gets lost.

Let the voting begin!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Button, button!

My original plan for buttons on the Einstein child sweater was to make some of these, found at CraftStylish.com:

But when I reread the directions today I found that they recommend starting with 1" rings for the first project. That is way, way too big for this sweater. The buttonholes are tiny. Plus I don't have any rings small enough to work.

On to Plan B.

Who knew how hard it is to pick the right buttons? I have a large assortment from which to choose in the delightful button box I inherited from my mother-in-law.

Above, you can see all the buttons that had any chance of working. The buttonholes are very small, so the buttons cannot be larger than about 3/8". Many of those above are too big.

The buttons circled in red, below, are my favorite. Tragically, I need three and there are only two. But they are too big anyhow.

The color of these transparent red ones is good, but I would like this sweater to be as unisex as possible just in case my friend has a boy someday. Clear red buttons = too girly? Not to mention too big.

These next red ones have the advantage of having a shank, which would make them perfect for buttoning through worsted-weight garter stitch. But once again, too girly? And too big?

A couple different brass buttons look good and have shanks, too. In fact, they probably look best of all. But they are too large for the teeny buttonholes. (Click to embiggify.)

These neutral little wooden balls will fit easily through the buttonholes. So easily, in fact, that the sweater may not stay buttoned. Plus, they are a little... dull.

What say y'all? Any favorites? Given that I have this splendid assortment of buttons and that my only alternative is Wal-Mart, I would prefer to use some I already have.

In my heart of hearts, though, what I would love to put on the sweater are three squarish wooden buttons, one stained teal blue, one stained tomato red, and one golden-brown. But that would involve a shopping trip to the Twin Cities, and I cannot justify driving 150 miles round trip for buttons.

Later: I did a little googling for "yarn ball buttons" and found instructions for some in Maggie Righetti's Crocheting in Plain English. That may be the solution.

Assuming I can summon the courage to take up a crochet hook.

Lemons, an (almost) FO, and a wee rant.

Just in case you are curious, here is the recipe for the impossible-to-overbake Lemon Bars.

* * * * *

I finished knitting the toddler Einstein. Here is it, drying under the ceiling fan.

 

The markers show me the buttonholes, which are remarkably easy to lose.

Now to find (or make!) the perfect buttons. Stay tuned...

* * * * *

I have a wee rant bubbling up inside, and it is time for it to come bursting forth.

WTF are people thinking?

  

  

  

(All images shamelessly lifted from The Sartorialist except the last one, which is Wendy teetering in someone else's 5" heels. I have met the woman, and I don't think she is so nutso as to wear such things as a matter of course.)

People are perfectly free to wear whatever they want on their feet, of course, but I really and truly do not understand why anyone would CHOOSE to wear ankle-breakers like these. Bad for your back, death for your knees, painful for every single part of your body except perhaps that part in the mirror in your head. Yeah, I know they make the wearer's legs look shapely and sexy. They also make it impossible to run away.

Do men do this? No, they are shod thusly.

 

Happily, The Sartorialist is not exclusively hung up on those ridiculous heels. I was so relieved to see a woman wearing the boots below a day or two ago that I was compelled to comment.

Another sensible and trendy example.

 

Those would have been my fashion choice ;-) Now you know another reason why I shall never be featured in anything resembling a fashion layout.

More signs of spring.

The view from my dining room window this morning:

Can you see the faint bits of red just above and to the left of center?

The swamp, or red, maple (Acer rubrum) is in bloom. 

Let's take a closer look...

There is a faint red haze in the woods.

 

* * * * *

The spring peepers have woken up. (ETA: spring peepers are a species of frog. There are also recordings of their sound, minus the sound of my car engine in the background, at that link.)

Yeah, the visuals are, um, shall we say, less than spectacular (it was 10 pm) but the sound? The sound! Such a welcome harbinger of spring.

* * * * *

Knitting on the Baby Einstein sweater progresseth. I sure hope a good soak and block will smooth this out. Yeah, I know it will, but we always harbor that tiny bit of doubt, don't we?

It progresseth on the current pair of socks, as well.

Sock on left = totally done. Sock on right = row 28 (of 30) in heel flap = halfway.

 

Golden random.

I picked up the stitches for the right front on the Einstein child sweater.

If you have made this sweater, or the adult version, you may notice that I have changed the front slightly. I omitted the overlap in the lower portion (blue), instead knitting it so it will exactly meet in the front. The upper front (gold) will have three buttons and buttonholes and will overlap appropriately. Somehow that seemed a better, more current, design than the original. Not that there was anything wrong with the original, you understand. Sally Melville, if you are reading this (yeah, right), please forgive me.

I also found the perfect pattern on Ravelry and the perfect yarn in my stash for a stealth project. The intended recipient may read my blog, I'm not absolutely sure, so I will not reveal any details until the item is knit and blocked and received on the other side of the world. (Hello, Eleanor!)

* * * * *

Smokey's co-worker Dan, with whom he works all his regularly scheduled night shifts, has a small farm where he and his wife raise chickens, goats, bunnies, a large garden, two dogs, two cats, and three children. Remember the pink and white baby hat? That was for Dan's newest progeny.

Smokey buys eggs from Dan. This morning he -- Smokey, not Dan -- made me breakfast.

 

I don't know if it is apparent to you in the photo, but the yolk of that egg is way, way more colorful than the yolk on any store-bought egg. Mmmm. Smokey says they taste more egg-y, too, but I couldn't tell. Need to do more research, which will be easy because we have nearly three dozen (that's 34!) more off these little hummers in the fridge. Anybody got some good egg recipes?

* * * * *

Hannibal missed some intense feeder action yesterday. He was sleeping elsewhere.

 

Don't tell him, okay? He would be all depressed and waaaahhhhh! And we don't want that...

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.