kmkat and her kneedles

First and latest.

Quiddity/Jane (Jane Quiddity?) is having a contest. To quote her blog entry, "Yes, it's time to Show Me Your Socks!" Thanks to Chris for alerting the media, er, the Kingdom of Blog.

I have two latest pairs of socks, one pair a gift and still a WIP:

and the other a completed pair for mememe:

My first pair of socks, as originally photographed and posted, complete with delightfully hairy legs:

Sadly, if I were to photograph them today (which I did) they would look like this:

One went tragically MIA in the laundry process months ago; I am still in mourning. I kept hoping it would reappear during some deep cleaning episode of homemakerly activity, but that has not happened. (Perhaps there have been insufficient activities of that nature?) The big disappointment was last Chrismas when Smokey and I bought ourselves new mattresses, the installation of which involved lots of moving of furniture and vacuuming of previously inaccessible areas of carpet. No handknit sock reappeared. It may have gone to that great Laundry Hamper in the Sky, may it Rest in Peace.

The Dirty Details:

Socks 1 (WIP): The blue tweedy striped yarn is Online Highland Colors (discussed at length here), the black heels and toes are Knit Picks Essential, the gray tweed in the heel is reinforcement yarn leftover from some Lang Jawolle sock yarn. Started about a year ago. Promised for 2008 (hey, I know how slowly I knit and how distractable I am).

Socks 2 (completed): souvenir Koigu, some great colorway of unknown number bought at Purl Soho on our trip to NYC for Andrew's graduation. Started May 2007, finished June or July, 2007.

Socks 3 (the pair with one sock MIA): Schoeller & Stahl Fortissima Colori, color 9070; red heels and toes, Lang Jawolle sock yarn. Started March 2005, finished June 2005.

* * * * *

Last Sunday Matthew hit a deer with the Metro. He is fine, the car suffered,

and we don't know about the deer. He saw it go flying through the air into the opposite ditch, so we are not optimistic about its chances for survival. I said nothing parentally negative to him about the incident in relation to his driving because I have noticed that he tends to spot deer -- on the road, coming out of the ditch, even barely emerging from the woods -- sooner than I do. If he hit it, it was probably unavoidable. There are an uncountable number of deer on the road -- and dead by the side of the road -- every autumn. We are just glad he is okay and that the damage is relatively minor. As I type this he and Smokey have taken the car over to Lennie's (remember Lennie? he's our auto guy on retainer) to assess the damage and probability/cost of repair.

I told you all that so I could show you this:

What remained of the deer on Tuesday morning.

Addicted.

I have become addicted to the striped Noro scarf, as you can clearly see above. The one at the left has been seen here before; it is for the Red Scarf Project and was actually knit from Plymouth Boku. The other two are the real thing, both knit from Noro Silk Garden and both intended as Christmas presents. I also have 4 more skeins of Boku lying lightly in my stash, intended for a scarf similar to the first one but with a bit more red, and intended for myself [insert selfish giggle].

I cannot describe in words how much fun it is to make these scarves, to watch the different colors come out of the ball and onto the needle, to see what color falls next to another, to see how they contrast and complement each other. It is sheer magic. I have decided that Noro SG is okay with me. Irregularities in the yarn are were previously annoying are now charming; now it is reminiscent of handspun rather than incompetence. In fact, when I was working on the rightmost scarf above in the car on the yarn crawl a couple weeks ago, every one of the Fiber Guild spinners asked me independently if the yarn were handspun. I just wish the [significantly cheaper] Boku came in as many color variations as the Noro.

QuasiPseudoNeoNoro:

Multicolored Noro scarf:
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, most of 2 skeins each of colors 204 and 249, bought on eBay.
Needles: Knit Picks Options US#7.
Pattern: Cast on 39 st. 1x1 ribbing. Slip 1 purlwise wyif at beginning of each row. Edited to add: Work 2 rows from one color, then 2 rows from the second color. Repeat until scarf is long enough or you run out of yarn.

Natural/brown/gray Noro scarf:
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, most of 2 skeins each of colors 267 and 269.

* * * * *

Big changes happening here:

I'm going back to work at the accounting firm for a few weeks to help in the pre-October 15th mini-busy season. (October 15th is the date that individual returns that were extended last April are due, plus the last date that 2003 amended returns can be filed.) So I will be back in Minneapolis, hanging out with my orange cat Tabby, and coming back here to the lake on weekends. It's all good: I like the work, I like the people, and the extra paycheck means Smokey can let up a little at his job and be able to work on the projects he wants to finish up before winter.

Matthew got a callback for an internship at a video post production company in Minneapolis. I was able to help him get his foot in the door because my cousin runs the company, but they use interns regularly, plus he has spent time there before and they know his work. He will probably work there for most of the next year.

I don't remember if I have talked about his plans before. He graduated from high school last spring. He wants to go into graphic design and advertising, and his educational plan is to attend the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. But although he is very bright, he is not a scholar, and he didn't want to move directly from high school to college -- he wanted a year off from the pressure of assignments and homework. So this internship/job is exactly what he wanted and needed. He will live in the basement of our Minneapolis house.

We both start Monday morning. We are all smiling. Life is good.

Eye candy Friday III.*

For Deb. I am home alone**, reading blogs, and knitting on another Noro scarf. That's sourdough bread and blue cheese on the plate (already eaten by the time I type this), and Fisheye chardonnay*** (already drun--, er, consumed). Say it with me now: Mmmmmmm!

* I find a particular delight in confounding the rules and being an outlier. Everyone else posts a lovely Eye Candy Friday photo with some text to go with it. I post three ECFs in one day. Sorry, I can't help it; give me a precedent and I'll find a reason not to follow it. It's called creativity. Deal with it.

** Yeah. Who in their right mind has Happy Hour alone? But Smokey is working and Matthew is at a bonfire, and today is the deadline for Deb's contest. So whatareyagonnado? I sucked it up and dealt myself a Happy Hour.

*** A winery with one of the more annoying websites ever devised. How does one get beyond the third page, the one with four bottle of wine/text/2 more bottles/music? Maybe that is all there is? But why does my cursor turn into a little hand -- the universal sign of a link to be followed -- when it floats over the image? Huh? Why?

Eye candy Friday (bonus, with sound!).

Eye candy Friday.

Let's play *Spot the Woodpecker*, shall we?

I got just one word fer ya.

Arrrrh.

Waitin' for the frogs to fall.

A new dispatch from Andrew in Chiapas, this time about an overly-entrepreneurial child, food, attitudes toward medicine and disease, eugenics, animals, and bugs.

Waitin' for the frogs to fall

My favorite knitting spots, by kmkat.

Yarnhog is having a contest. Tell her, or even better, show her your favorite knitting spot(s) and you might win some Regia sock yarn.

My own knitting spots vary with the season. The first one is summer only.

This is my favorite spot to knit, although I don't get to sit there as much as I'd like. (As much as I'd like =  24/7; unrealistic, I know.) You may recognize this photo; I took it the evening in June when I discovered the turtles. It is 40˚ and windy today, too cold to go onto the front deck if I don't have to.

The glider overlooks the lake and [what we laughingly refer to as] the front lawn. I take my knitting, a beverage, my iPod, and the phone with me and sit there on summer evenings and late afternoons, usually until it is too dark to see. Sheer heaven.

The second spot is good spring through fall and is the only other place I go with the specific purpose of knitting: the front porch.

Of course, when I am knitting, I will have moved the boxes. They are on the table now because they have been removed from the treadmill at the right. That's a good thing, right, that the treadmill is being used?

The other places I knit are wherever I happen to be. Riding in Smokey's van,  middle row or shotgun:

Riding in Matthew's van, ditto:

Riding shotgun in my car:

I'll spare you the back seat shot.

I knit pretty much everywhere I go except at work -- meetings, restaurants, on a plane, etc. You'll just have to imagine those.

But the very, very, very best place to knit is in my recliner:

Yes, our living room/dining room/kitchen is a 1976 time capsule. That's when this house was built; it had been used mostly as a weekend getaway when we bought it in 1991, so it seemed spendthrift-y to redecorate then. When we finish the remodel it will look more timeless (we hope).

That recliner, however, is excellent. Good light (will someone please invent a 3-way compact fluorescent so I don't have to feel guilty?), an infinite number of comfy positions, cozy afghan for the winter, ample surface to hold the obligatory beverage and knitting supplies. But the best part, aside from the fact that it more or less faces the fireplace, the TV, and the lake, is that corded control nestled in the corner. It is a powered recliner. Slowly leans back, slowly comes back up -- it goes high enough to take the sitter almost to a standing position. Don't need that yet, but I'm planning ahead.

Eye candy Friday.

A green heron on our dock, 8/31/07. I was photographing stash for Ravelry when Matthew said, "Mom, there's a bird on the end our dock." I love living here.

Dancing on the deck.

Behold.

I started these in May and finished the knitting a couple months ago. It was way too hot to wear them, though, so they sat for weeks and weeks, waiting to have their ends woven in. Now it is cold enough to wear them. Thankfully.

This was my first project from Koigu. Now I knew what all the fuss was about. Squishy squooshy yum.

I like how the colors made tidy stripes on the feet. On the legs the stripes are more swimmy, if you know what I mean. Not entirely circling the leg but instead spiraling one way for a bit, then reversing on themselves and flowing the other way for awhile.

But how best to model them? Hmmmmm...

First.

Second. My legs are not long enough to capture both feet at the same time, sorry.

Third. Boy, that was piss-poor. These things get a lot harder with age.

Fourth. Ah, that's easier. Whew.

Fifth. You call that fifth? This is fifth:

Don't quit your day job, kat :)

Yarn crawl!

On Tuesday I went on a St. Paul yarn crawl with Eloise, Joan, Kay, Nelda, and Peggy of the Amery (WI) Fiber Guild. Another friend, Julie, a Guild member who knits and spins and does who-knows-what-all-creative-stuff with fiber, invited me many months ago to come to a guild meeting with her, but first my tax season work and then her summer living on a sailboat on Lake Superior (!) interfered. I had been waiting for her to get back home so I could attend my first Guild function with her, but when I learned of this yarn crawl it was just too good to pass up. So I invited myself along.

Our first stop was 3 Kittens Yarn Shoppe in St. Paul.

I hadn't been to 3 Kittens in nearly ten years. I remembered it as a smallish shop with twice as much inventory as space but with a great selection of wonderful yarns. The new owners have rearranged and brightened and lightened the place but retained the excellent selection of yarns. Nicely displayed, too; see llama/alpaca in the second photo.

We were greeted warmly by one of the owners when we arrived, and she started to give us a tour of the shop. "This room is needlepoint supplies and this wall has all the felting yarns and..." Then she introduced us to another of the owners. "This is the St. Whatsis Prayer Ministry group." And we all looked at each other. I may be new to this group but I was pretty sure it wasn't from St. Whosis and had no more than a passing interest in prayer shawls. Nelda identified us properly and everyone had a good laugh. And the owner continued to give us the tour, which was nice because there is so much yarn it is a bit overwhelming.

A couple of the owners graciously consented to be photographed. I think they were hard at work deciding on yarns to order.

I wish I could tell you their names because they were so friendly and helpful and nice, but I'm a total git and forgot the names as soon I heard them. I'm sorry, ladies, but thanks for the good time! and the sock yarn!

* * * * *

Next stop was The Yarnery, the Grande Olde Dame of St. Paul yarn shops. That's one of our group heading up the steps.

No mistaken identities here. We wandered about, petted the yarn, and miracle of miracles! I found some more sock yarn to buy!

* * * * *

Perhaps I should explain my purchases. No, I am not going on a dull-  subtle-colored sock-knitting binge. These are all intended for a sweater (for me! the first one since 1980!) that I have been mulling over in my head for more than a year. The night before the yarn crawl I had decided Dang it! I'm gonna start that sweater! A timely decision, as it turned out, since I knew I didn't have as many colors of yarn as I needed; at 3 Kittens my mission became apparent to me.

* * * * *

After all that hard-working yarn crawling, we were hungry. Plus it was noon and we were in one of the best places in the Twin Cities to find ourselves in that calorie-craving state: the Victoria Crossing area on Grand Avenue. Cafe Latté to the rescue.

Unfortunately, I was such a bad blogger at lunch that I took exactly zero pictures. Imagine if you will six women, five with gorgeous salads and bread and one with a delicious bowl of salmon stew. And a slice of raspberry tart that she generously shared with the rest of us. Mmmmm, thanks, Peggy.

* * * * *

Our third stop was Borealis Yarns, which may have been my personal favorite. I'd only been there once before; I'd liked it a lot and planned to go again, but yesterday I discovered that the first time I had missed a whole other room filled with sock yarn. And a clearance area. It was heaven and kismet, rolled into one, I tell you.

The Pace skeins were from the clearance table -- $4.80/each, 50g, 220 yds. The two in front are deep, deep heathery charcoal, a color I had been seeking for a year. Woot!

* * * * *

Back into the car for the drive to our last stop, Knit'n from the Heart. It is in Woodbury, an upscale and fast-growing suburb of St. Paul. Such locales are not near and dear to my heart, but I was willing to suffer it for the yarn. I'm all about the sacrifice, ya know?

Because it is a new and apparently well-capitalized shop, the stock was both tidy and ample. There was even a cute baby there when we arrived (sorry, no photo, bad blogger, yadayada).

Here are Kay and Eloise  checking out the patterns and books. And the comfy chairs.

My purchases here were of a slightly different sort:

The latest issue of Knit Simple, purchased solely for the Norah Gaughan modular bag pattern at the left (I already have yarn* for it, and I think I may knit the hexagons larger and felt it); 2 tiny bottles of Eucalan to include with Noro Christmas scarves, and a skein of Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn. This one is for actual socks, though. The colors are a bit odd -- brownish-green-khaki-ish with occasional shots of red, gold, and a gorgeous deep teal -- but they called to me so strongly I could not leave the yarn behind.

And then it was time for the color- and texture- and fiber-dazzled group to make their way back to Wisconsin. We did drive past one more yarn shop but it is open by appointment only on Tuesdays; the organizer was reminded of that fact a bit too late to make an appointment for us. It's okay, though; that shop will make a great destination on another day.

A great day and new fiber friends -- thanks to the Amery Fiber Guild for being so welcoming. I'll see y'all again next month!

* Nashua Wooly Stripes, purchased online and at closeout at Webs for $4.99/ball; the exact same yarn in the exact same color was $10/ball at Knit'n from the Heart. Heh.

A little light knitting.

Eight facecloths for Rabbitch's project. The two light-colored hearts (vertical garter ridges) are a pattern from Ann and the blue/multi one (horizontal ridges) is my own design. Yeah, hers is better :)

All the acronyms you'll ever need. And a contest.

From a weekly Circuits e-mail from David Pogue, technology columnist of the New York Times:

* GI -- Google it

* MOP -- Mac or PC?

* FCAO -- five conversations at once

* IIOYT -- is it on YouTube?

* DYFH -- did you Facebook him/her?

* BIOI -- buy it on iTunes

* CMOS -- call me on Skype

* GGNUDP -- gotta go, no unlimited data plan

* WLF -- with the lady friend

* JUOC -- jacked up on caffeine

* 12OF -- twelve-o'clock flasher (refers to someone less than competent with technology, to the extent that every appliance in the house flashes "12:00")

* SML -- send me the link

* RHB -- read his/her blog

* MBLO -- much better-looking online

* KYST -- knew you'd say that

* NBL -- no battery left

* CTTC -- can't talk, teacher's coming

* TWD -- typing while driving

* CMT (CMF, CMM, CMB) -- check my Twitter (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

* CYE (CYF, CYM, CYB)--check your email (Facebook, Myspace, blog)

And a few just for iPhone owners:

* SPLETS -- send pics later; Edge too slow

* CSVUI -- can't send video, using iPhone

* BPWMI -- boss playing with my iPhone

* SIK -- sorry, iPhone keyboard

* OOM -- out of messages (for iPhone users who haven't upgraded their AT&T "200 messages a month" plan)

Finally, it occurred to me: Why should the convenience of online shorthand be the province of teenagers and twentysomethings? There ought to be a list that we, their parents and employers, can use, too. And now there is:

* WIWYA -- when I was your age

* YKT – you kids today

* CRRE -- conversation required; remove earbuds

* WDO? -- what are you doing online?

* NIWYM -- no idea what you mean

* NCK -- not a chance, kid

* B2W -- back to work

* AYD? -- are you drunk?

* LODH -- log off, do homework

* DYMK? -- does your mother know?

* IGAT -- I've got abbreviations, too

© New York Times Company, 2007

* * * * *

Becky is having a contest. Go tell her what she could make from her stash of Rowanspun 4-ply and have a chance to win 1600 yds of that yarn in the color Sludge.

The Blood Brothers and The Kinks.

It would be massive understatement to say I don't care for this Blood Brothers' song, but the lyrics -- especially the bits about xylophone trees and skin-cooking coffins -- are some of the more creative ones I have ever read.

Ambulance X extracts several consultants
from the slow gumming death at the office orifice.
Ambulance Y imprisons the sigh of the recent amputee
and dumps her in the xylophone trees.
Ambulance X scours the tanning complex for repunzels
rotting in their skin-cooking coffins.
Ambulance Y drops the body off at the door step.
Ambulance X pulls you out of the party
and rubs your freckles like a DJ to his records
but Ambulance Y teaches you the word goodbye
and cuts off your hands to show you where you stand,
under the monolith of what is love and what is scam,
what is sun and what is tan.
The Ambulance Angels pull up to your doorstep
the sirens flash emergency,
"you'd better come quick."
The Ambulance Angels chisel a crack in your mouth,
and then they paint a landscape with your regret and shouts.
Roll tape and decode the moans,
ventilate the scandal from these locked up mouth holes.
You'll never see your wife
and children again so tell us what it was going through your head,
when you looked into their eyes
and said "no thanks i'll take the hooker instead"
You'll never see that office again
so when the nurse amputates both of your thighs
come a little bit closer to the mic
and tell us what you miss more your desk or the hungry sky.
The Ambulance Angels pull up to the graveyard,
and leave you there bubbling broken sonnets and shards.
The Ambulance Angels notify your next of kin
and show them the scrap book of your operation:
His head was a faucet leaking love, laughter and lies:
all his secret wishes, all his world famous sighs.
Before you remember, Oh yeah, before you give in,
just remember we're coming back for your children.

And now for the performance. Thanks to Matthew for sharing this song with me. Warning: if you don't care for screaming hard core either, you will want to skip this and go right on to The Kinks.

* * * * *
The Kinks.

Here's what I'm knitting right now.

It's another Noro scarf, this time for a gift and this time actually knitted from Noro Silk Garden. Yeah, I know I talked up the Plymouth Boku a few days ago, but for this particular gift scarf the Boku didn't have the perfect colors. So I bit the bullet and went for the Noro. That yarn is a bit... problematic, though. Look at this.

The Kinks. All four balls kinked like that right from the skein. Grrrrrr. It is annoying to have to stop and untwist the yarn as I knit. My knitting technique is such that I twist S-twist yarns and untwist Z-twist ones as I knit. The Silk Garden is a Z-twist but my unconscious automatic untwisting doesn't seem to be happening with this yarn. Or, more likely, it is happening but the yarn is so freakin' overtwisted that my untwisting is undetectable.

I can find a lot to complain about in Noro yarns. The overtwisting, the vegetable matter, the extreme irregularities in the thickness, the sometimes weird color combinations, the occasional Blob (that's a technical term) of untwisted, unincorporated fiber. I think it shows an incredible lack of respect for the materials, for spinning technique, and for the knitter.

And yet, I am finding this stuff strangely compelling. After a while I got used to the irregularities, I forgot to notice the VM, and the occasional Blob™ became a charming feature. Oh, look how cute and fuzzy the yarn is there! Isn't that sweet?

All this is to say, last night I found myself over at eBay. Looks what is coming to live  at my house (temporarily; it is intended for another Christmas gift scarf):

times 2, and

times 2.

Oh, how we are tempted, and how easily we, er, I fall. And the falling is such fun.

Eye candy Friday.

Smokey's snack for work. Mmmm, grapes...

Gimme a break: a rant.

      

From our local paper, the caption alongside a photo of a car with a smashed windshield:

Mary V...felt lucky to be relatively uninjured last Friday when a large white-tailed deer crossed her path and landed on her windshield as she drove south on Hwy W just north of X. One of the first on the scene to offer assistance was Pastor Larry Y of Z. [Mary] told him that she was listening to Christian music when the collision occurred and felt that her faith played a factor in keeping her safe, aside from some minor glass cuts.

Okay, compare with this:

Smokey A, husband of kmkat, was driving south on Hwy B, when he struck a deer, but only lightly. The deer stumbled, then bounded away unhurt. Mr. A's vehicle suffered no damage.  Mr. A stated that he was listening to AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" cranked up pretty loud at the time of the incident. He credits the Australian band with saving both the deer and his vehicle.

AC/DC trumps your Christian music every time.

* * * * *

I am not dumping on Christians in general here, only on those people stupid and arrogant enough to feel that their God favors them over others. This rationale seems to have gotten a lot of play lately. Yeah, like the other children and mothers and husbands who died on That Bridge were somehow less... worthy. Gimme a break. It's pure chance, being in the right/wrong place at the wrong/right time. Get over yourself.

* * * * *

[/rant] Please return to your regularly scheduled (and less noisy) knitting and blogging.

* * * * *

In a totally non-ironic vein, here is an e-mail I got from Andrew yesterday. I had e-mailed him a screen shot showing that Hurricane Felix's path was project to go pretty much right up his backside.

Huh, National Geographic says that Hurricane Felix went from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in 51 hours, faster than any other storm ever recorded.  Then it made landfall in Nicaragua yesterday morning, moved inland over a sparsely populated area, ran into 7,000-foot mountains and fell apart.  "...Felix's remnants will be gone by Thursday."  So it was a hurricane with ADD or manic depression or something, look out everybody here I come oh forget it I'll take a nap.

Andrew

My thanks to those who expressed their concern for his safety. Once again, he is fine.

Colors.

Took a little break from photographing stash for Ravelry. I was having such a good time. C'mon over and say hi. I'm kmkat, same as here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... knitting!

My contributions to Norma's Red Scarf Project. From the left:

QuasiPseudoNeoNoro (say it, it's fun!)
Yarn: Plymouth Boku (95% wool, 5% nylon; 99 yds/skein), 2 skeins each of colors 6 and 11. This yarn is clearly a copy of Noro Silk Garden, minus the VM and some of the silk; it is also about $6/skein vs. $8/skein for the Noro :) It made a good substitute in my mind. The scarf is lightweight but squishy and warm. I was afraid it might be too scratchy to be comfortable, but it isn't. I wet-blocked it using Eucalan in the soak water which probably helped.
Pattern: Just like the Noro scarf. 1x1 ribbing, slip the first stitch of each row purlwise, alternate skeins every 2 rows. Knitting this was positively addictive; I wanted to know how the colors would play out. I kept thinking I would need to break the yarn and take out lengths that didn't contrast enough, but that proved not to be necessary. Even when the colors of the two skeins were very close, the subtle differences still created discernible stripes.
Needles: KnitPicks Options, US#7.

Chocolate-covered Cherries
Yarn: A hodgepodge. The purpley red is the leftover alpaca from the scarf on the right, plus another skein of KnitPicks Andean Silk in the Sangria colorway (which turned out to be exactly the same shade as the leftover alpaca, but solid with a slight silky gleam instead of woolly and a bit heathery). The brown is 85 yards of Skacel Adagio (70% baby llama, 30% silk; 110ys/50gr per skein). The ivory is Rowan Kid Classic (70% lambswool/26% kid mohair/4% nylon), color 828; I still have most of the 153yd/50gr skein left. This scarf is meltingly soft.
Pattern: Garter stitch, knit lengthwise. Cast on 270 st, leaving a tail of the approximate length that you want the fringe to be. Break yarn, ditto. Knit every row, leaving the fringe-length tail at beginning and end of every row. Change colors as it suits you. Bind-off with Elizabeth Zimmerman's sewn cast off. I made the brown stripes 3 rows wide so as to have a garter ridge on each side and to eliminate any possibility of the scarf having a wrong or right side. The white stripes are just one row. The purpley-red ones are at least three rows. The scarf isn't quite finished; I need to neaten up the ends and trim the fringe. Mañana.
Needles: KnitPicks Options, US#7.

Ribbed and Striped Alpaca
Yarn: Filatura Lanarota Puno (100% alpaca, 100 yds/50gr), colorway 1526, most of three balls. I bought this yarn last year at Smiley's Yarns internet sale ($2.99/skein), intending it for the RSP, but a proper scarf really would have required another ball; I didn't figure that out soon enough. So the yarn sat -- and sat -- until I bought some other yarn for the stripes: KnitPicks Andean Silk (55% superfine alpaca, 23% silk, 22% merino wool; 96yds/50gr per skein), one ball each of Navy and Hyacinth, plus a bit from a second ball of Hyacinth. This scarf is also sinfully cuddly.
Pattern: Standard scarf, 2x2 rib; slip the first stitch of each row purlwise. Narrower stripes are 4 rows each; wider ones are... wider.
Needles: KnitPicks Options, US#7.

The Orphan Foundation folks say they want unisex scarves so I tried to make these as non-gender-specific as possible. I may have succeeded a bit too well -- the one on the left is definitely masculine. I'm pretty sure the OFA folks will have no problem with that.

Now to gather some other goodies to go into the packages with them. Starbucks cards and chocolate, natch. The hodgepodge scarf reminds me of chocolate-covered cherries, but those are difficult to find in local stores. I shall persevere, though. Matching the chocolate to the scarf is key.

Sewn bind-off.

What follows is an insultingly basic photo tutorial on a technique so simple I learned it from a casual 3-line instruction on another blog. But maybe, just maybe, you don't know it yet, in which case I offer it up humbly. Yeah, like I ever do anything humbly.

The sewn bind-off is a good one to use when you want the bound-off edge to match the cast-on edge both in look and, more importantly, in tension. A usual bind-off is rather tighter than the cast-on, something that can spoil the drape of a scarf knitted lengthwise.

This became important to me a couple days ago when I finished a lengthwise-knitted scarf for Norma's Red Scarf Project. I sort of noticed (meaning, I noticed but ignored) that the bound-off edge was tighter than the beginning row; I rationalized I could compensate by binding off more loosely than usual. Yeah, right, that always works.

So I was happily binding off and reading blogs on Friday night when I came upon this:

A standard "chain" cast off does not match the cast on, and on a long edge, the disparity becomes striking. Try the sewn garter stitch cast off from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac.

My heart sank. Oh, crap, that's what I should be doing. Every time I held the scarf up to see how the two edges compared it was obvious that my *strategy*  wasn't working quite as well as one might have wished. The problem came in the fact that I had already bound off sixty-eight inches of a seventy-two-inch scarf. Roughly two hundred fifty stitches out of two hundred seventy. Was I going to frog that edge and do it right? Hmmmm. Let me think about that one for a minute...

I spent the next eighteen hours with my metaphorical fingers in my metaphorical ears going, La la la, I can't hear you! But eventually good sense prevailed. I frogged and did it right.

If this post can save someone else the [admittedly minor, in the greater scheme of things] trauma of frogging nearly six feet of bound-off alpaca, it will be worth it.

The sewn cast-off.

Begin with yarn at the right side.  Break yarn, thread through needle.

*Thread needle through first two stitches as if to purl. Thread needle back through the first stitch as if to knit. Drop off first stitch*

Repeat between the * until you've cast off all the stitches. This has a similar tension and look to a cast on; use it where you want the cast off edge to match the cast on.

Now, the insultingly obvious part wherein I show off my mad photography skillz. And manicure. Don't forget the manicure*.

Thread needle through first two stitches as if to purl:

Pull the yarn through. I told you this was insultingly basic.

Yup, that yarn is pulled through the stitches all right.

Thread the needle back through the first stitch as if to knit:

Pull the yarn through. Omigod, is it through yet? Yes. Whew.

Drop that stitch off the needle.

Pull the yarn through the dropped stitch. Um... yup, she's dropped all right.

The payoff:

Yeah, they still don't look precisely identical, but trust me, they resemble each other a lot more closely than the original bind-off and cast-on edges.

Tomorrow, the finished scarf and its two red scarfy pals. And a lesson in boiling water, should you be interested.

.

* A few words on the manicure: I have the world's softest, weakest fingernails. I have never in my nearly six decades on the planet been able to grow my nails longer than a millimeter or two. Hardening nail polish (Sally Hansen!), gelatin capsules (daily!), healthy hoof cream (seriously!) -- nothing worked well enough to produce the lovely long nails I envisioned on my short little fingers.

I wore acrylic nails for a few years in the eighties and silk wraps on and off for the past three. Never the dragon lady style, just reasonable length almond-shaped nails. Loved the look, hated the upkeep, not to mention the health risks -- volatile harsh chemicals, the possibility of nail fungus or infection or the nail separating from the nail bed. 

Three weeks ago I was reading before bed and noticed that the current silk wrapped nails really, really, really needed maintenance. To motivate myself to perform this Truly Arduous Task (mañana! always mañana!) I picked off the silk and nail polish whilst I read.

The next day I procrastinated as usual until I had to go somewhere. In an effort to make myself more presentable I slapped a couple coats of Sally Hansen on my (temporarily) naked nails. By a fortuitous something-or-other, my nails happened to have been equally long under the silk, not just one or two long ones and the rest extended with tips.

The oddest thing happened.

I continued to procrastinate on the re-silk-wrapping thing and kept slapping on the Sally Hansen.

And my nails stayed long.

Wait, let me repeat that. And my nails stayed long.

No chipping, no peeling, no breaking. It has been three weeks now and I'm starting to get used to these nails. I admire them roughly eleventybillion times/day. Woot! I am Wendy! The other night, just for fun, I painted the tips white instead of my usual and conventional all-over coat of beige/pink/taupe/reddish polish. Double woot! I Am Fashionable!  

Apparently a new moon in the midst of the Neptune/Sun opposition  (scroll down to the Leo: August 2007 section, the paragraph that begins, "August 12th") makes my nails stronger. Who knew?

 

The difficulties of feline photography.

Hannibal, the Magnificent. Destroyer.

Shutter lag time defeats me. Camera 2, Kat 0.

So then I had the great idea to run ahead of him and get a face shot.

But he would walk toward me to get petted. Shutter lag time 2 more, Kat 0.

I ran from one end of the deck to the other, trying in vain to get far enough ahead of him to have time to aim properly.

Rinse and repeat. Lag time 2 more, Kat [still] 0.

By the end of this little misadventure I was laughing so hard I couldn't hold the camera steady.

I did finally manage to get this shot, though:

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille." [click] "Oh, no, not my broken whisker!"

It is retaliation for this, you stupid cat. The [former] rain gauge. Now I know why we never have a glass tube in the rain gauge.

Apparently, Hannibal likes to bat at them and watch them fall to the bricks below.

Arghhhh.

And for this: used to be a goldfinch. Not the leaf, silly, the feathers.

It was still wiggling when Hannibal deposited it proudly on the front step, then proceeded to kill it and eat the liver. Really. With fava beans and a nice Chianti, just like his namesake.

TMI, perhaps, but all of you who are owned by cats are familiar with this fact of feline life. Besides being warm furry purring heat magnets, they are also highly efficient killing machines. The little darlins'...