Holy Hannah!

Remember this? Well, it seems Ms. Fields liked it soooooooooo much that she wore it again.
That is all.

Moving on

Boudica is on a time out, thinking about what she's done

You'll notice that I've frogged her completely and even rewound the yarn and now she's going to hang out in her little orange bag while I focus on other things. Like this:

My sister and brother in law are celebrating their first anniversary on Father's Day and I'm making a small afghan/throw for them to celebrate the occasion. Yes, I know that I only have 17 sleeps left to complete it. Thank goodness for my Clifford needles.

No Pictures, Just Grumbling

I should have known better than to approach a pair of socks named after Boudica with anything less than the utmost respect because people? They are kicking my booty. I've cast on for them no less than six times since Friday morning and I'm still not past the first dozen rows! The toe technique that Designer Mim has chosen is, according to Sensational Knitted Socks, an "easy" toe. Mmmhmmm. Yep. Easy. Easy like giving yourself stitches in the sole of your foot. Sure it can be done but not without considerable amounts of discomfort, cussing, and alcohol. I'm almost at the point (and knowing I can do this is why I love knitting) where I'm going to rip the whole thing out, again, and just do a short row toe which for the record is easy.

What's really ticking me off is that I know that I'm smarter than the yarn but I just can't seem to grasp the technique I need here. It doesn't matter what videos and descriptions I use online because I need someone to look at what I'm doing and either show me where I'm going wrong or tell me if I have it right (Mathboy says it looks good to him but the boy's a muggle). I would love to wander down to my not so local yarn shop for help and advice but there are two problems. A) as I've mentioned, they're kind of far away and B) I don't feel comfortable going into a place of business with items not purchased there and asking them to help me. It would be different if I could pick up a couple of skeins of sock yarn or something while I was there but I really do need to hold off on unnecessary spending for the duration of the summer. I guess in the end I'm just going to have to keep plugging away, trying things, until it looks right.

That's enough whingeing. I'm going to go take another crack at them (socks, if you're reading this, I have nothing but respect for your beauty and intricacy) and contemplate how much I would love a Caramel Coretto from Second Cup right about now.

Goin' to the yarn store!

I've been extremely hard on my dpn's lately. There was an incident which I won't go into detail about but it may have involved a certain ... glove-like item leaping out of the open window of a school bus travelling at 55 mph. Turns out that even powder coated steel has a hard time dealing with speeding asphalt. Two actually came out unscathed, two had burrs and the fifth, well, I think of it every time I pass that stretch of road and sincerely hope that its final resting place wasn't in some poor saps tire. The other incident involved my size two bamboo dpn's and my knitting/book bag. All I'm going to say here is that you should be gentle when putting your sock in progress into a book bag that has a large and heavy binder in it.

When the metal dpn's bit the dust, Mathboy suggested that I make do and refused to even consider a trip to my nearest yarn store (which, as it's nearly an hour away, is not a good week day destination so we go as a couple while doing other things in Tampa on the weekends). However, on Monday when I sheepishly admitted to my latest accident and told him that I was going to need to replace two sets of dpn's, he said "oh, ok. When we're done at the immigration office on Friday, we'll go to Knit and Knibble and get you some new ones".
I was flabbergasted. Even argued with him saying crazy things like "I can live without full sets for a while" and "I can make do". I have since recovered from my temporary insanity and am now plotting routes through the store to get to the needles while caressing the maximum amount of yarn. There *would* be yarn buying also, but as the school year ended yesterday and there are no jobs in my immediate future, I'm pretty much reduced to knitting from my stash. The good news here? Well, my stash is very very small and once I start knitting hair and fur out of desperation, I'm sure that the budget will be rearranged to allow for a skein or two of sock wool.

Incidentally, the immigration office visit should be (please God) uneventful. Essentially the temporary stamp in my passport that declares me to be a Lawful Permanent Resident Alien will expire in July and I have not yet received my Green card. I've been pushing the USCIS to find out why they haven't issued that rather important document and recently found out that they were investigating and that I could expect an answer in October. Three months too late. When I asked what I should do about my rapidly expiring stamp, they told me to make an appointment to have it extended. As this type of joy is par for the course with Immigration, I made the appointment and now Mathboy and I will be spending the kickoff to our Memorial Day weekend running around in Tampa having a grand old time.

Lazy Blogger

We've got pictures!

I've been very busy not blogging lately.

There was finishing these:
















Baking this and assisting Mathboy in the decorating of it:















Finishing Nick's Knucks . . . which he did not receive in the end. Our deal was that I'd give them to him on the last day of school and he decided to skip. *shrug* Someone will give them a home.


















Making these:















And of course, variously confusing and downright tuckering out some of the animals.

Victoria Day and other things

Happy Victoria Day!



Comment answering:

As a child I remember being told that the hole in my hand happened when, as I developed in utero, my middle finger grew into my palm. *shrug* It might even be true. That finger is certainly shorter than it ought to be and also slightly crooked. Incidentally, it occurs to me that I misspoke concerning my knitting and my funny hand. I have not yet been able to master knitting continentally because I can't maintain tension with that finger.

The Yarn Harlot, to my knowledge, will not be coming to Florida. *sigh* Nor will I be in Toronto for the Represent event up there. These things make me sad.

There will likely be photographs later of socks, knucks, and evidence of Mathboy's renaissance man tendencies. :)

By the by, Look! I can give things titles now. Easily pleased ya know.

Whoops!


Kristy tagged me for a Random Facts meme and I totally missed it for um, oh say, nearly a week. *sigh* In retrospect though, it could be because I got all distracted by yarn porn and talk of short rows. So, without further ado;

Robyn's Random facts.

1. I was born with a hole the size of a dime in my left hand. I have a lovely scar to this day that I use for distinguishing between right and left (sad but true) and debates about stigmata. Because of the hole, the middle finger of my left hand has little to no sensation which makes typing and piano playing interesting, but does not affect my knitting in any way.


2. I used to think that bus drivers, particularly public transit but also school bus, were crazy. Now, having done both, I know it's true.


3. I love to cook. I hate to clean. We would eat a lot better if fairies would be kind enough to swoop into my kitchen on a daily basis.


4. Mathboy and I met on the Internet. We were not plotting romance when we had our first face to face meeting, but he tells me that when he saw me at the airport that first time, he knew he'd marry me one day.


5. I loved the series "Firefly" and actually scheduled my wedding in such a way as to be able to watch the movie "Serenity" with the friend who introduced me to the television show. Also, I heart Adam Baldwin. (No, I'm not totally insane. It also had a lot to do with the fact that I wanted a candlelit ceremony and a long sleeved gown. Both were more easily accomplished in October.)


6. My cats are Hemingways or American Polydactyls and have extra toes on their front paws. They have all their claws and use their extra toes like opposable thumbs which can be very, very, bad. When we adopted them, their names were Jack (a black and white short hair) and Jill (tabby and white medium rabbit fur[she's so soft!]) which we thought was very unoriginal so we changed them to Otokonoko (Japanese for boy) and Otome (Japanese for girl). Noko and Ome for short, or, as my mother in law calls them "Ohno" and "Ohmy".


7. We have a fruit salad tree in our backyard. It's got Meyer Lemons, Honeybell Tangelos, Ruby Red Grapefruit, and Valencia, and Navel Oranges.

There will be no official tagging of people because all of the people I feel comfortable tagging have already done this. If you're reading though, and you haven't done it, consider yourself tagged! Leave me a comment so I can stalk you read it.

Kitty content!

Mathboy has read the blog and he is not amused. Evidently, it's just not right that I have not explained his blog name. So . . . here goes.

My husband is highly intelligent. The man has a mind like a well oiled steel trap (unlike my mind, which is more of a rusty steel trap. Facts go in never to be seen again). Anyways, his all time favourite mental pastime is playing with numbers. He's constantly running formulas and calculations in his mind. Again, this makes him my complete opposite, because I've always joked that I wear toe socks so that I don't have to take my shoes and socks off in order to count past ten. Because I am mathematically challenged, whenever I hit a calculation that is beyond my ken, I turn to him. You can see an example of his mathiness in the comments section of this entry of Kristy's. This is why he is Mathboy.

Now for some Yarn Porn:

That's Wooly Wonka's BFL sock yarn in the River colorway and the pattern behind it? That's Mim's Boudica Sock pattern. They were shipped on May first, and I've had 'em for a while, but I've been too busy fondling the yarn and working on the Crush sock of doom to focus much on posting them. Today I wound the yarn into two separate and equal balls. . . not that I can do anything but fondle it until I'm done with the C.s.o.d. *sigh*
Oh, and while I'm talking about those C.s.o.d. beasts, I've turned the heel on the first one and can officially count myself as being on the home stretch. Woot!

There's doings afoot! (With apologies to Kristy for my worse than usual grammar).
First, these came:













So, naturally, I promptly dove in and devoured my new books. (fyi, it's not a good idea to read a book like the Harlot's while there's a cranky muggle in the house. Giggle-snorting tends to poke the beast) "Casts Off" was reassuring because it reminded me that I'm not alone as a knitter, and I have been feeling a little lonely lately. Of course, it was also deeply deeply funny.

"Sensational Knitted Socks" is kind of an Idiots Guide to Knitting Socks and it led directly to this:



Yes, that's Mathboy modeling a pair of . . . well, deeply feminine socks. They're for my sister and frankly, chickie has feet like a duck. 9 1/2" around and 8 1/2" long. The yarn is Modea Dea's "Sassy Stripes" in the "Crush" colourway and I'm knitting the socks on size 2 needles. At this time, I'd like to mention that I love love LOVE the magic that is short rows. It started out straight, but now it's a smiley face! Gnomes!

Other goings on have included making another step toward having a proper office in place of our screen room/porch/lanai. To that end, Mathboy and his dad spent yesterday sheathing the frame that they installed a few months ago. Everything went well and we learned something new. Evidently our puppy thinks that tar paper is worthwhile entertainment and snack food.

Evidently, eating tar paper is thirsty work.