The Digital Knitter

For the Birds

2011-03-31T21:11:00.000-07:00

We put food out in our courtyard for the birds because we enjoy watching them. I have large terra cotta saucers on the ground for the bigger birds (doves, blackbirds, grackles) and three window-mounted feeders for the little birds (finches). I don't feed hummingbirds because the neighbors do, although hummers do visit our flowering plants.

The smaller window-mounted feeders are new this season and it's really been fun watching the birds discover them. I have a feeder with nyger seed (thistle) for the finches on the window across the hall from my office, located so I can just look up through the arch and watch them. The other ones are mounted on hall windows where we can watch from our bed.

These feeders are stuck on with suction cups and are fairly small, much to the annoyance of the doves. The doves can't get into the feeders, which frustrates them no end. They sit on top and try to reach down and in to the food, but the feeder is too big for that to work. They try to fly into the feeder, but it's too small. The doves even try to hover outside the feeder, but they can only hover briefly and their wings smack into the feeder if they get too close. They don't even try to get the nyger seeds, maybe because it's so obviously impossible for them.

I don't think doves are very intelligent. These doves could be eating from the big terra cotta saucers on the ground without any problems at all, but there they are, flailing around the little feeders instead. A few of the grackles and blackbirds have made half-hearted attempts to get at the food in the feeders, but they give up quickly. The exercise pen around the saucers baffle the doves, too. They get very frustrated when they're on the outside, walking up and down the fence line trying to get through. The exercise pen is there to keep Gordo the Collie out, not the doves.

In fairness to the doves, they may be stupid, but there are a lot of them, so they're doing something right.

And roadrunners occasionally drop by, either for small birds or peanuts. I feel a little guilty about the former; the buffet isn't supposed to be that extensive. That's how nature works, though.

It's amazing how much pleasure we get from watching the birds. The bird seed isn't particularly expensive (I buy the no-waste feed from Amazon) and we get hours of enjoyment. Birds can be very funny, as when the finches are chasing the doves away. Right now we're seeing a lot of courting and mating behavior. It won't be long before we see parental behavior, bringing the young birds to the food and teaching them to eat.

Gordo the Collie Does It Again

2011-03-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

The night before last, Gordo the Collie got into the bird seed. This time he opened a 5.75-lb bag of Nyger seed, intended for the finches, and ate about half a pound. Nyger seed is very small, maybe a sixteenth of an inch in diameter and three-sixteenths of an inch in length. The seeds went through him really quickly yesterday, but he sure left a lot to be picked up. He's pretty much back to normal today.

Yes, I know it's really my fault for leaving the bag where he could get to it. He loves to open bags and boxes and I should have known that bag would be very tantalizing to him. The noise the seeds make when the bag moves would get his attention. It was a nice rattly plastic bag, too.

Gordo the Collie is almost three years old and I'm still having to puppy-proof the house. I blame this on the epilepsy and resultant brain damage. It doesn't matter if he's not perfect. I still love him just as much. I just have to quit forgetting my part of the job.

Lemons, Lemons, Lemons

2011-03-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

When the gardeners pruned the lemon tree, I ended up with about eight gallons of lemons. This is a serious number of lemons. Last night I made seven pints of preserved lemons and now I only have about two gallons of lemons left.

It's really easy to make preserved lemons, which are from Morocco and are traditionally used in chicken tangines, or stews. You slice a lemon almost into quarters, leaving the four pieces attached at the stem end. Then you stuff kosher salt into the cuts, about a quarter-inch thick. Drop the lemon into the canning jar and cover it with lemon juice. It took four or five small lemons to make enough juice to cover two salted lemons, using one-pint wide mouth jars.

Then you let the jars sit in a cool place for a month and the preserved lemons are ready to use. You take the lemon out of the salty juice, rinse it off, and chop it fairly finely. Drop the rest of the lemon back into the jar for later. Use this anywhere you need a bright lemon taste. I put it in tuna salad, for example.

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

2011-02-22T19:06:00.000-08:00

We had a dramatic bit of nature happen in our courtyard yesterday. A roadrunner killed a small bird and carried the body off. All that was left to show this had happened was a few spatters of blood and some feathers. The roadrunner came back three or four more times after that, probably looking for more prey. We think the roadrunner has a nest with chicks nearby.

This is the part of nature that Walt Disney didn't show in the nature shows. The hero character always escaped the predator. When we were on photo safari in Botswana, we saw a pride of lions pull down, kill, and eat a Cape buffalo. Only it wasn't quite in that order. It was more like pull down, eat, and kill. It was horrible to see and hear, but it was an important and regular part of nature. Predators kill, prey gets eaten. It's just that it usually doesn't happen right outside the sliding door.

Rainy Nights in the Desert

2011-02-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

Our weather has been reminding me of that song about Camelot, where the rain may never fall 'til after sundown... The last two days have been just like that. It was cloudy on Thursday, but it didn't start to rain here until about 2200, well after dark. Friday had scattered clouds, mostly white and rainless until late afternoon. Again it didn't rain until well after dark. We got almost an inch of rain on Thursday night and a whole lot less on Friday. Then it was very cold Saturday night.

Gordo the Collie hates the rain. He doesn't like getting his feet wet at all and he's not at all fond of having drops of water fall out of the sky onto him. As a result, all of his expeditions outdoors on both nights were hard on both of us. He'd go out, take a few steps, and stand there for a while, then turn around and come back in, without doing what he'd gone out to do. So he'd come in, lie down, and then get up, go back out, on and on and on, thereby keeping me awake for hours. Fortunately, I think we won't have rain again for a while, so we can both get back to normal.

Just In Passing

2011-02-10T19:44:00.000-08:00

This is totally not one of the subjects I write about, but it's an important warning.
This blog has excellent information about a very deceptive Trojan horse that may attack your computer. It is entirely safe for you to click this link. Of course, I'd say that anyway, wouldn't I? But it's true, it's just a blog.

Socks Photo

2011-02-04T19:25:00.001-08:00

Here's the photo I promised, showing the first seven pairs of socks I knitted. Actually, there's another pair, made with the same yarn as the baby socks, that I didn't get a photo of. I gave the socks to my cousin and forgot to photograph them. I managed to get a big pair and a little pair out of one ball.

The purple socks on the right end are the first real pair of socks I knitted. My sister-in-law, for whom I made them, says they're great and fit perfectly. I'm proud of that.

It Was the Socks' Fault, Not Mine

2011-01-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

My blog seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. I blame it on two things: facebook and sock knitting. The thrill of the first has worn off a bit, although I used its messaging to arrange a huge surprise for my husband's birthday. I got his brother, sister-in-law, and niece to fly out from Iowa for his 70th birthday (26 December) and our 40th anniversary (31 December).

The thrill of sock knitting lives on. I finally tried it, years after it became so popular. I got Melissa Morgan-Oakes's two books on knitting socks two at a time, cuff down and toe up, using Magic Loop. Then I sent off to KnitPicks for worsted weight yarn in approximately the colors she used for her sample socks. Carefully following each well-illustrated and well-described step, I discovered that sock knitting is easy. Then I did a little shopping and discovered that it's fun and pretty, too. I've just finished turning the heels on my twelfth pair of socks.

I can't recommend these two books enough. I've collected a bunch of other sock patterns and it's very easy to adapt any of them to her techniques.

The bitter irony of this new-found passion for knitting socks is that I don't wear hand-knitted socks. Mostly I wear thongs because I live in fairly warm places and sandals work just fine. On the rare occasions when I do wear socks, I wear Katie Bell socklets that I buy from Costco in bundles of ten pair. Or I wear a pair of cotton socks from my vast collection from Lands End, as these socks, bought before I retired in 2002, show no signs of ever wearing out.

So what do I do with all these socks I knit? I give them away, of course. I have friends and family in cold climates who love my socks. The first pair I knit, a lovely pair in purple, went to my beloved sister-in-law. My niece, my cousin's wife, my goddaughter, my cleaning lady, my friend Pat, e-friends on Usenet (alt.fan.cecil-adams, to be precise)--all of them get my hand-knitted socks. I buy colors of yarn with each of them in mind. When my sister-in-law and niece were here we went through my four bins of sock yarn and pulled out an entire bin for the two of them (plus four balls for my brother-in-law). Every one they liked was one I'd bought with them in mind, which made me happy that I'd picked so well. My dear goddaughter finds wool too itchy to wear, so I buy non-wool yarn, like bamboo, for her.

I was going to post a photo of some early pairs of socks, but it's not working from flickr and I can't figure out where I put the original. I'll dig out the memory stick, which is probably in the camera, which I think is in a knitting bag somewhere here, and get photos posted. I should probably photograph some of my yarn, too. I discovered Trekking XXL and Zauberballs, to add to the KnitPicks and Elann sock yarn. I have stopped going to my favorite sellers on eBay and Etsy because I absolutely cannot buy more sock yarn until I've knitted up at least a bin's worth.

Oh, No, Not Another Kindle

2010-07-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

OK, I admit it. I bought the latest version of the Kindle, the higher-contrast graphite DX. My excuse is that I dropped my original DX and now it hangs up and has to be restarted every few days. Some of the real reasons are that the dark gray version is very attractive and that I like the higher contrast of the new display. That this version will work internationally isn't really a reason because I don't plan to travel outside the US.

I managed to drop my Kindle 2 and kill the display screen while it was still under warranty. I bought a two-year extended warranty when I made the leap into e-bookery. By the time I bought the DX I was familiar enough with the Kindle to think that I didn't need to buy another warranty. Of course, I waited to drop the DX until about two weeks after the one-year standard warranty expired. Oh, well.

I finished my first pair of real socks a few days ago and I'm going to send them to my sister-in-law early next week. Photos will appear here once she's received them. I'm going to ask her to be relentlessly critical of them, particularly of how they fit. I'll be asking her to go against her nature but it's really for her own good. If she doesn't give me feedback she may be in for a lifetime of badly fitting socks. It seems to take me about a week to turn out a pair of socks, knitting them two at a time, so this isn't an idle threat.

My husband claims I've bought every sock pattern book that Amazon sells, but I really haven't. I don't particularly care for either intarsia or Fair Isle color work, so I haven't bought any sock pattern books that only have such socks. I have bought a bunch of sock yarn from Knit Picks. They reliably sell good yarn, often with luxury fibers like alpaca, at very reasonable prices. I also picked up some cotton and wool Regia sock yarn from Elann.com. I have resolved to buy no more yarn, not even an inch, until I've knitted up all the sock yarn I've got right now.

Coming Out of the Knitting Closet

2010-06-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

I have finally come out of the knitting closet. I have knitted socks. OK, only four and they were the little practice socks knitted from worsted weight per Melissa Morgan-Oakes' two books[1], but they're still socks. The books are spiral-bound and lead the new sock knitter though knitting the practice socks step by step, with really good photographs. I used the books in the order printed, starting with classic cuff-down socks and then going on to toe-up socks. I'm still not sure which I like the best, but I know these two books are what led me astray. Photos will follow, but my little socks are still packed away from the yearly spring move back to the High Desert.

This afternoon I started an actual pair of socks. They seem to go really quickly. I'm not quite sure who I'm knitting them for, yet. The pattern is from one of Wendy Johnson's toe-up socks books[2], which are the other two sock knitting books dear to my heart. I've bought some others and will probably add more favorites, but right now it's just Melissa and Wendy.

I have a variety of fingering weight yarn in my stash, because it works well for lace shawls. I think some of it is going to be redirected into socks. I pretty much wear flip-flops year round, so I'm not going to be knitting socks for myself. Fortunately for SoCal me, I have friends and family in South Dakota, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

As a side note, I dropped my Kindle 2 from a height of ca. 30 inches onto a tile floor, flat on its face, and pretty much killed it. Fortunately, I'd bought it a supplementary warranty (it's about 18 months old), so the replacement was free. Still, I was really glad I had the Kindle DX to pick up the slack until I got everything set back up.

[1] Melissa Morgan-Oakes' two books are 2-at-a-Time Socks: Revealed Inside. . . The Secret of Knitting Two at Once on One Circular Needle Works for any Sock Pattern! (2007) and Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks (2010).

[2] Wendy D. Johnson's two sock books are Socks from the Toe Up: Essential Techniques and Patterns from Wendy Knit and Toe-Up Socks for Every Body: Adventurous Lace, Cables, and Colorwork from Wendy Knits.

Another Ductless Air Conditioner

2010-03-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

We liked the ductless air conditioner we installed in the family room in the Lancaster house so well that we installed one in the room my husband uses. We're planning on living here year-around, so being able to keep that room cool is important.

The house itself is fairly well heated and cooled, with two five-ton units. (The casita has its own three-ton system.) However, the system that cools his room also cools the walk-in closet, master bath, and master bedroom, before heading across the house to the furthest room, his. It's just never quite cool enough or warm enough, although we've done all sorts of fiddling around with the vents. So we gave up and put the ductless system in.

In addition, we're putting in a photovoltaic system, to generate electricity. What I hope will happen is that using our own electricity will cut our electric bills dramatically. What I worry will happen is that having our own electricity will sustain us after an earthquake or other problem. The system we're putting is, with batteries, should be enough to keep the house livable, although some areas may not be as comfortable as we'd like after a catastrophe. There's some magic thinking going on here, too, with my hoping that being so well-prepared will actually stave off the quake.

I've spent my entire life in California hearing that the Big One is coming just any day now and am I ready? Yes, I'm ready. Bottled water, extra kibble, medical supplies, flashlights and radios and batteries. All these decades of being ready and nothing. Perhaps the readiness is preventing what I'm ready for.

Or maybe the deep layers of rock will do what they do when they do it and it's pure coincidence that it hasn't happened yet. Somehow, this feels more likely. I can't really believe my regularly renewing my bottle water supplies has any affect on the fault line.

Weather Guilt

2010-02-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

My husband and I were watching the local weather last night and I mentioned that I hadn't really said much about our nice weather (we've had a week of beautiful clear days with highs in the low 80s). I really feel kind of guilty having such nice weather when so much of the country is getting so much snow. I don't think anyone who is snowed in needs to hear about how nice it is here. Our low temperatures have been higher than a lot of the country's high temperatures.

Our string of nice days is coming to an end, though. There's a big storm coming in off the Pacific and the leading edge showed up about noon here. The high was 79°, at about 1300, and the temperature started dropping as the first high, thin layer of cloud moved in. The sky is still blue, but it's kind of milky, not the intense blue we've had. It might actually rain tonight, although probably not much, and will be cloudy and, again, possibly rainy tomorrow. The storm is centered on Northern California and we're just getting the southern edge. It's very likely that the rain won't make it over the mountains; this is a desert because that's what usually happens.

There's a fair amount of snow on the mountains. I look out my kitchen window and see palm trees in front of the snow-capped San Jacinto mountains. I have to go out into the front yard to see San Gorgonio. I was admiring it when I went for the mail.

My spell-checker is not familiar with California place names. The names, taken from the Spanish ecclesiastical calendar and mostly saints' names, all have red underlines. The red underlines really catch the eye. I have to check the names to be sure I've spelled them right and then add them in.

Back in the Low Desert

2010-01-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

We came back down to Palm Desert on the 9th of December. It had really started getting cold in Lancaster, so I was definitely ready to bail out of there. It's mostly been in the mid- to high-70s here and I even wear shorts on the sunny days.

We skipped last winter, so it had been about fifteen months since we'd been here. The house stayed cleaner than I expected, except for the bug bodies in the bathrooms (I don't know how they get into the house and the casita, maybe from the attic through light fixtures or something). I got Merry Maids in on a panic basis on the fourteenth and they went through the whole house. My cousin came in on the sixteenth and her family came in on the weekend and the general tidiness of the house fell apart, with gifts to be wrapped and pieces of crystal and candles and holiday food and gift wrap and ribbon and stuff everywhere.

There were some problems, though. I had a gallon bottle of bleach sitting on the counter in the laundry room spring a leak and trickle out into rather pretty bleach stalactites on the counter and the wooden cabinets, with corresponding stalagmites on the tile floor. The counter is that synthetic marble stuff and the bleach etched a set of concentric rings into it, matching the bottom of the plastic bottle. The bleach also penetrated the finish on the cabinets in a couple of places, damaging the wood. It's been cleaned up and I'm ignoring the damage right now. I think I'll have to replace the entire counter, which is about six feet long, with a sink cutout, as well as one cabinet panel.

The other thing that happened because we were gone for so long was that the pump in the washing machine dried out. As a result, when I washed the first load in it, the plastic pump overheated and I melted itself into junk. This happened the evening of the third day we were back, a Friday, and I was able to schedule a repairman for Tuesday. He took one look at the puddle, centered at the front of the washer, and diagnosed the problem. Apparently, this is a fairly common problem for snowbirds.

I had had to have my Lancaster washer repaired this summer and I took the opportunity both times to ask the repairmen about front-loading washers. They both told me that front-loaders had a very high repair rate and that the repairs were very expensive. This confirms some of the stories I've heard from friends and neighbors with front-loaders. I think I'll stick with top-loaders. I know they use more water, but I have the ultra-large size and, as a result, don't wash that many loads, so I don't really feel that I'm putting the entire balance of nature into decline.

Our family visit was wonderful and the Christmas Eve dinner was absolutely perfect. Well, we forgot to make and serve the green salad, but we had enough food on the table that we didn't notice this until we were cleaning up the kitchen. It was wonderful to see my uncle and his daughter and her husband (their son and his wife, who live in Seattle, couldn't join us because they were insanely busy closing escrow on their first house and scrambling to get out of their apartment; plus, they're expecting a baby this spring).

Our visitors left the day after Christmas, much to Gordo's dismay. He had really enjoyed having six people in the house, particularly the two kids who made over him constantly. His sojourn at this house had started badly when he fell into the waterfall and strained his shoulder. He was put on crate rest for about a week, getting out just as the kids arrived. He really misses them.

I think this is enough of a data dump for now. I'll be back fairly soon to tell the tale of my reading Cryptonomicon, a book by Neal Stephenson, and to show off my latest shawl, a knit-along (KAL) project.

Oops, Sorry About That

2009-12-16T15:57:00.000-08:00

My last posting here was in early August and then, as far as anyone could tell, I just dropped off the face of the earth. I didn't, really. Instead, I discovered facebook and started posting all my news there, as well as in alt.fans.cecil-adams, leaving myself with nothing new to say here.

So, let's see. I knitted a baby blanket and an afghan, for my favorite baby and his grandmother, respectively. I've gotten pretty good at making navy bean soup in my pressure cooker. I've done a lot of reading on the Kindle DX. I discovered Woot.com and Wine.Woot.com and have spent too much money on gifts and bottles. We're down in Palm Desert (we got here a week ago) and Gordo the Wonder Collie is settling in, although he did fall into the waterfall pond on his first day here.

My beloved cousin (well, she's actually my cousin's wife, but I love her as if she were a sister, so there's no single word to describe the relationship) will be here in a couple of hours, to stay until the day after Christmas. The rest of the family will show up a little later. Her husband (the actual cousin) and their daughter get here on Sunday and their son shows up three days later. The kids' arrival dates are functions of their college and high school schedules. Her sister lives just north of us, as do his father and his sister and her husband.

I spent two hours at the supermarket earlier today, trying to fill in my pantry and have some nice fresh produce for her. I went to Stater Bros. (for the first time ever) and discovered that they have a very extensive La Brea Bakery product line. I went a little overboard and will have to do a little freezing before bedtime. Nice produce and a nice service butcher, too. There was a customer at the butcher counter looking at beef roasts and he asked to look at the other side of every roast there. I know why he was doing that, but it's excessive when it's a rib roast from the middle of the piece. Sort of like looking at both sides of a center-cut pork chop.

I'm having Christmas dinner this year for all the California members of my mother's family. That's not very many people, though. There's us, my uncle, and his two kids and their families. As I wrote above, my uncle's son has two kids. His daughter has one son, who lives in the Pacific Northwest. He and his wife won't be here because they bought a house and the escrow is closing on the 23rd or 24th, so they had to stay there. They're going to have a baby in the spring (I already bought a present on kids.woot.com). So this year there will be nine of us for dinner on Christmas Eve. I'm hoping that this becomes a family tradition, now that three households are so conveniently close.

I'm sure there's more to tell, but I've got to go put the rest of the groceries away. I'm going to light some candles to greet my cousin, too. Festive is my watchword this year.

Good News and Bad (But Improving) News

2009-08-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

First the good news. I made another batch of bean and bacon soup (recipe posted here previously), only this time I spread it out over several days. It's been so hot here that I really didn't want to make it in one session. Well, actually, it started after I soaked the beans and then didn't feel like making soup after all. Still, I was glad to find out that I could spread the process over a few days.

I picked over and soaked the beans about five days ago, freezing them after I rinsed them. Then on Saturday I sliced and fried the bacon and drained it, then put it in the fridge. This afternoon I took care of the onion and garlic, then put the peppercorns, bay leaves, onion and garlic, bacon, and beans (nuked briefly so they wouldn't be a great big bean lump) into the pressure cooker, set it, and sat down to see what was new on Facebook I'm Mary Shafer there, if you want to friend me.

It's finished cooking now and I've tasted it. It tastes pretty good, but it needs salt, of course. It's too hot to whiz with the stick blender; I don't like the idea of flinging really hot soup all over me and the kitchen. I'll add salt while I'm doing that, to be sure to get it evenly mixed. I didn't put enough in the first batch, partly because my cousin was coming and I wasn't sure how much salt she'd like.

Speaking of my cousin, we had a wonderful visit. We were so sad to see her leave. Even Gordo missed her and kept going to the guest room to look for her. He'd give me this pitiful look like "How could you let her go away?" and, of course, there was no explaining it to him. She's the one who introduced me to Starbuck's iced chai latte last year. I'm now a regular customer and it's all her fault. I don't drink coffee, so I hadn't known they sold tea. I got her back, though. I introduced her to the Kindle and loaned my Kindle 2 to her. Both she and her husband have been reading with it and they really like it. I suspect they're going to end up buying one (or, maybe, two). We're a reading family, even the people who marry in, and it passes on to the kids, too.

Now for the bad news. Gordo the Wonder Collie had to have extensive exploratory surgery on Friday. He'd managed to swallow a 3" by 3" piece of rigid plastic, as well as a bunch of smaller pieces of the same plastic and some other stuff, and this was really messing up his digestive system. We took him over to the vet after he vomited five times in the night. Collies have deep chests, which made the surgery more difficult. They cut open his stomach and pulled all the junk out of it, which took both hands, and then examined his intestines carefully for smaller pieces.

He had a small fever over the weekend, but that's gone (this is written on Monday). He's still not eating much, but he's always been a picky eater. We now have great hopes that he'll come home tomorrow, since he actually ate a little kibble today. I think he has to demonstrate that his digestive system works from end to end, as it were, the same way that people who have had surgery on their digestive tracts do.

Navy Bean and Bacon Soup

2009-07-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I created a recipe for navy bean and bacon soup, mostly because I'd soaked the beans overnight and needed to cook them right away, before they sprouted or molded or whatever soaked beans do if they don't get cooked right away. As a result, this recipe is based on what I had on hand, which was pretty much bacon (beans are good with smoked pork), onions, and garlic.

Here's the recipe. I have to tell you that this is pretty rich and filling, with so much bacon in it.

Mary's Navy Bean and Bacon Soup

One pound of navy beans, picked over and soaked in cold water for at least eight hours, drained, and rinsed.

One pound of relatively lean premium thick-sliced bacon (hickory or apple wood smoked), sliced into half-inch strips, fried until crisp, and the fat drained off.

One large yellow onion, chopped and cooked in a small amount of bacon fat until soft and translucent

One head of garlic, peeled and each clove cut in half vertically, added to the cooking onions. Do not, whatever you do, let the garlic burn, as that makes it terribly bitter and nasty. Don’t worry if the garlic doesn’t do anything more than get warm in the pan. It'll get cooked completely with the beans.

Two bay leaves.

A rounded teaspoon of whole black peppercorns. Use less if you're not wild about black pepper.

Salt to taste.

Put everything but the salt into a pressure cooker, stir, add water to cover everything by an inch or so, bring to a boil, and process for nine or ten minutes. Allow to cool naturally (do not vent). If cooking on the stove top, instead of using a pressure cooker, bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until the beans are completely soft. Remove all the bay leaves (they stay whole and they'll be easy to see.) Whiz into a puree with a stick blender. Taste and add salt as desired, stirring thoroughly between additions.

This is pretty good right out of the pan, but it’s even better the next day. If you reheat it on the stove, keep an eye on it, as it’s a thick puree and will scorch easily.

That's Embarrassing

2009-06-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

I've been busy tidying up my house, so that my cousin will be able to get to the bed in the guest room and reach the love seat in the living room and sit at the dinner table. When I thought we were going to Palm Desert, I'd bought a number of things for the house and piled them all in the guest room. And I'd been collecting cardboard boxes and bubble sheets and other packing material from all the stuff I'd bought, like new smaller clothes, in the living room. Fortunately for the sake of the house, I have to get rid off all this before my cousin arrives.

I have completely filled the recycle bin four or five times in the last two months. Once I even borrowed the recycle bin from the folks across the street and filled it up, too. Handling all this cardboard has been painful, as I've managed to give myself a number of paper cuts from it. Such cuts are more painful than dangerous, of course, but they're always on the hand, which means they hurt over and over again as I use my hands. The living room looks great now, although one end of the dining room has boxes stacked across it, to go down this fall.

I'm putting the family photos into bins to take to Palm Desert. My sole remaining uncle lives nearby and has promised to help me identify the people and estimate the dates of the photos of my maternal family. One of my cousins is a photographer (he was a newspaper photographer for years, before he drifted into management at a printing company) and he has been scanning family photos onto disk. His mother was my mom's sister; it appears that the women of the family were the custodians of the photos. We have plans to merge the two collections and distribute copies to all the cousins.

Pat and I gathered up all the books in the house and boxed them in categories. There's Knitting, Cooking, Nonfiction (mostly beading and paper crafts), Read, and Unread. The last is the embarrassing part. I've got nearly twelve cubic feet of unread books sitting in the hall. Actually, they're not all unread. Quite a number are books I really want to read again.

I also have hundreds of unread books on my Kindles. I downloaded a bunch of books when I first got the Kindle 2 in late February. My buying has really tapered off markedly. Now that I've organized my actual books, I'm probably not going to buy any more books until I've read a few cubic feet of the books I already have.

Unfortunately, I discovered that I could fill in the gaps of my silver flatware on eBay, at prices much lower than buying new. As a result I've gotten the iced tea spoons I needed but hadn't wanted to pay list price for, as well as a number of serving pieces. My pattern, Royal Danish by International Silver, came out in 1939 and is still in production. It's very popular and there are all sorts of fancy little serving pieces, like a sardine fork and a corn-on-the-cob butterer. I bought the former, purely out of curiosity, but passed on the latter. I figure any meal that includes corn on the cob is too informal to require any flatware more formal than plastic. I have now stopped looking at new flatware items on eBay. If I don't see it, I can't bid on it.

Gordo the Wonder Collie broke a Corelle bowl last night. It was sitting on the pull-out board of the microwave stand, perched on top of a box of snickerdoodles. He was after the cookies, of course, and knocked the whole pile on the floor. The bowl hit just right and shattered into hundreds of razor-sharp pieces. I was really worried that he'd step on one and cut his pads badly, but luckily he didn't. He spent the rest of the evening in his crate, first to keep him away while I cleaned up and then to make a point. He was quite chastened, but had returned to his normal ebullient self this morning.

I'd started out by first dropping a container of mushroom risotto that I was reheating for dinner. Then I knocked the tub of freeze-dried beef liver bits onto the floor and had to scramble to retrieve most of them before Gordo ate them. I don't know why we were both so clumsy last night. I remember once hearing a theory that news reporters' slips of the tongue were correlated with solar flare activity; there may be a similar astronomical influence on kitchen accidents.

I've got to finish the paper on in-flight simulation, as the deadline is looming over me. Since I'm no longer working at NASA, I have to do all the layout work that the Reports group used to do for me, like laying out and checking references. I always knew that they did a lot of hard work for authors and I'm really appreciating that again now. I've got to cut a bunch of photos out, which is really difficult, with renumbering references and captions.

Like Cool, Man

2009-05-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it's taken two return trips by the techs and 20 ft of PVC pipe, but the ductless a/c seems to be working. The system startled us by suddenly dripping a lot of water on the floor. The water spread out to be quite a large puddle, although not very deep. Just proves they did a good job when they laid the slab.

It turned out that the way our ceiling is built, they couldn't get a good downhill slope the way they originally tried. So now the drain tube goes the other way, out over the double doors from the patio. It drains into an elbow on a run of PVC that goes across above the window over the sink, around the corner, over the other window, and then drops down to nearly ground level. I'd take a photo but my kitchen counters, which you can see through the windows, are an absolute mess and I'm not going to display that to the whole world. More spring cleaning to do, of course.

As for the other problems, the technician suggested checking the second remote (my policy is to buy a second remote at the time, not wait years until the replacement is no longer available) and all the other problems went away. We're not sure if the first remote was bad or if it was the wrong remote. The remote that came with our system had been robbed out of the box and they'd brought us a substitute. The second remote was dropped off the next day and we didn't even put the batteries in it, just put it into a drawer with the paperwork.

So now the system is working perfectly. We close the doors to the family room and use it during the day and it's cool and comfortable. Meanwhile, the rest of the house stays fairly cool because we've had the windows open all night. Here in the desert, the nights get very cool; a temperature drop of 40°F is common. We use that natural cooling to get the house cool enough so that we can ride it out until it starts cooling off the next evening. With the help of a few fans, that works pretty well.

I had a panic with my Kindle the day before yesterday. It wouldn't wake up, although I did manage to turn it off completely, not just sleep it. I went to the Kindle help site and immediately found the answer. It booted up, very obligingly, and has been working just fine since. I was pretty upset, since I was in the middle of a great book. However, I have a number of regular books that I need to read, so it wouldn't have been a catastrophe if I'd had to send the Kindle for repairs. It would have been inconvenient, because my husband is a light sleeper and clicking the Kindle is much quieter than turning the page of a book. How quickly we adapt!

So all's well here, electronically and mechanically. At least for now.

My husband's little laptop is starting to act a little oddly, so I just bought him a replacement from eBay. These laptops were last manufactured about four years ago and he's not ready to change over to a newer model (he runs a dual boot, Linux and XP). I'm using an even older laptop and am on my third replacement. I'm still running W2K. I have a 1600x1200-pixel 16.1" display and I'm not ready to switch over to the letterbox-shaped displays that the newer laptops have. Fortunately, we still have a couple of replacements in reserve. We'll both have to give up eventually, I'm sure, but we'll probably manage to skip another generation before we do.

Gordo the Wonder Collie is doing well on his new medication schedule. We've reduced the doses and he's a great deal more lively. He got a floppy rhinoceros from Orvis for his birthday. He's very fond of it and takes it to bed with him at night, using it for a pillow. He also got a dog nest and an outdoor dog bed and he's using them both.

I've taken most of the photos I promised in the last posting and will be putting them up soon. I think I've found the right lace pattern for the beautiful silk and I'll be getting back to knitting. Now that it's so cool in the family room, I'm ready to knit again.

Mac the Knife

2009-05-16T14:22:00.000-07:00

We're having some unseasonably hot weather right now. Although it's really not that unseasonable because we haven't hit the local record high temperature yet. It's probably going to be 100°F at the peak, although there's a slight breeze picking up, meaning that we may get the marine layer here early.

Updated to add that we did indeed set a new record for the local high for the day, by 4°, at 99°, so far. It may get another degree or two hotter.

Anyway, we put the ductless a/c unit in on Thursday, but it's not working. There's a problem with getting the remote to work and, of course, it only works with the remote. They're coming over on Monday with a new remote and an electrician to sort everything out.

Meanwhile I'm struggling with a constant problem that has kind of gotten out of hand. I do a lot of shopping on the Internet. It's mostly because of the dog; between his epilepsy and the weather, I don't like to go off and leave him for very long at all. Shopping is no fun if you're in a panic to get back home. So UPS and FedEx and USPS keep delivering cartons of shopping to my house. I've been buying a fair amount of clothing because nothing I had would fit and that really added the boxes. The two most recent deliveries were a new HP all-in-one from Amazon and a pair of utility knives from Overstock.

I needed the utility knives because I've used up all the snap-off blades on my U-Haul box cutters. Cutting up cardboard with a dull knife is dangerous and frustrating. All these cartons that keep showing up have to be cut up and put, along with most of the packing material, into the recycle bin. I'd gotten really behind and I had cardboard boxes everywhere. My housekeeper and I made a good start two weeks ago, clearing out the stuff in the guest room. We only stopped because we ran out of space in the recycle bin. So last week I borrowed my neighbor's recycle bin and filled up both bins, but that still didn't take care of all the boxes.

Yesterday afternoon I cut up another half a bin's worth. And the new utility knives really work well. The grip is very comfortable and it's easy to change blades. Plus they each came with fifty spare blades, which should last close to a lifetime. You should have seen me slashing through the carton they came in, with the razor-sharp blade making it effortless. Just call me Mac the Knife.

As soon as it cools off I'm going to go cut up enough to fill the recycle bin so it will go away on Tuesday. Then I'm going to polish off the rest, get it all out of my entry hall and living room, and never let myself get so far behind again. I don't have any real problem keeping up with the household recycling, mostly from the kitchen, just with the inundation of cartons.

Updated to add that I did get all the big cartons and the packing material into the recycle bin, with a little room left over for the kitchen stuff. The worst part was going out into the heat to transfer it from the large carton I'd put it into as I cut it up to the bin. It's not just hot, but more humid than normal. I just couldn't bear to wait until it got cooler. I've gotten a little compulsive about all this cardboard.

UPS bringeth,
USPS bringeth, and
FedEx bringeth,
But none of them taketh away.

It's Spring and my house needs attention and I'm restless. I've got another two 33-gallon bags to donate to the thrift store and I'm starting to be able to hang clothes in my closet without prying apart what already in there. I'm saving the guest room closet for when my cousin comes, in July. She'll help me be ruthless with the dressier work clothes that went in there when I outgrew them. I of course had hopes of losing weight and wearing them again, but I didn't know it wouldn't be until I'd been retired for six years and no longer had anywhere to wear them.

I will get back to knitting, I promise. I'll take photos of all the new yarn I've gotten (I have to put it away, now that it's out of its cartons) in the next couple of days and put some photos up here (and add all of them in Ravelry). I've even got two FOs to photograph and post. Plus two triangular shawls that just need blocking to be finished and a circular shawl ditto. I'm saving the circular shawl for when my cousin is here, since it's for her. After we get it blocked, we may have to shorten it. She's my height and this is supposed to be a circular shawl to keep her shoulders warm in over-cooled restaurants, not a mid-thigh-length cape. It's knit top-down in a modified fan and feather, so shortening it won't be difficult.

Long Day

2009-05-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

We had a long day today. Poor Gordo was so worn out he skipped dinner entirely. We had a ductless air conditioner and heater installed in the family room and kitchen. The installation crews got here at 0900 and left at 1950, although they did go for a quick lunch.

Our house is H-shaped, with the family room and kitchen (really all one room) on the south leg of the H, the four bedrooms and two bathrooms on the north leg, and the living and dining rooms on the crossbar. There's a covered entry on the east side and a covered patio on the west side. The way our HVAC system works, combined with the orientation of the house, the trees in the back yard, the position of the sun, the three pilot lights in the built-in double oven, and the 22-cubic foot side-by-side refrigerator, leaves the family room and kitchen warm in the summer and cool in the winter.

The ductless unit is pretty much the same as the units you see in motel rooms, except that there's a separate compressor and the unit hangs from the wall, up by the ceiling, and is operated by a remote control. Its purpose is to augment the whole-house system and, coupled with the back-up electrical generator we installed eight years ago, keep this room cool in a power outage, even in the summer. We should have put it in long ago, if you ask me. What really tipped us over the edge was the way the summer monsoons have been sneaking into the Antelope Valley. We used to have them for maybe a week or two, if we had them at all, but recently we've had them for a month or more. That humidity just kills me.

The unit also has a heat pump, just in case we lose power in the winter. Our whole-house unit runs on 230 but the ductless unit runs on 110, which is what we set the back-up generator up to provide. We could have added 230, but to do it now would require a new cross-over switch and inspections by the city and Edison, which were big hassles when we installed it originally. So we decided to leave it alone.

Gordo had to watch everything, which is why he's so tired. He spent most of the day in a crate, either in the family room or back in our bedroom, and got no naps at all. Normally, he sleeps in until about noon, frolics around the back yard for a while and then sleeps all afternoon. Not today, through. I'm pretty tired, myself, but not nearly as tired as he is.

I got some beautiful silk lace yarn in gorgeous colors. I'll take a photo and get it posted here as soon as I get organized. I think I've fallen in love with it and will never be able to give it away.

Gordo's Mother's Day Gift to Me

2009-05-10T16:38:00.000-07:00

Gordo is saving his allowance to give me the Amazon Kindle DX for Mother's Day, or so we joke. It's a good joke if you ignore that a) Gordo doesn't get an allowance, b) he has no idea what a Kindle is, c) I'm not his mother, and d) dogs really aren't that good at saving.

Wendy Johnson mentioned that Amazon was rumored to be coming out with a new Kindle this summer but that she wasn't going to wait and had bought a Kindle 2. She really likes it and says many of the same things that I did after I got mine.

The idea of an advanced model interested me greatly, so last night I surfed on over to Amazon on my Kindle 2 and discovered that they'd just made the formal announcement. I read the page, decided I really needed the larger screen, and put in a pre-order for the Kindle DX and the leather cover. It will be coming out in the summer, they say, and promise a definite delivery day as soon as they know it. Bigger screen, choice of portrait or landscape mode, more storage (3500 vs 1500 books), better graphics, native PDF display. The screen is 9.4" diagonally, compared to the Kindle 2's 6".

It looks to me as if it has one flaw, though. It doesn't have the page controls on the left side, just on the right side. I like to hold my book in my left hand and, on the Kindle, use my left thumb to change pages. This isn't a huge deal and I'll learn to live with it, but I'm sure I'll miss it sorely at first.

It's kind of funny. A few months ago, I might have looked at the Kindle DX page and thought something vague like "That's nice, I suppose" and now I'm criticizing the control layout based on the images. How I've changed since the end of February.

Update on the pressure cooker. I tried cooking potatoes for five minutes and one potato was just fine but the other one was overdone, although not as badly as the seven-minute batch had been. I had noticed a difference in the texture of the potatoes as I peeled them, so I wasn't totally surprised when they cooked up so differently. I ran over to the store about an hour ago and picked up more potatoes. These look very similar, at least on the outside, so they may cook more uniformly.

The navy bean soup turned out very well. I think it was better after sitting overnight and being reheated. I'm more than halfway through it and really enjoying it. When I bought the beans, the store had them on sale, three one-pound bags for five dollars, so I have more beans to practice with. In addition, it seems to be pretty much impossible to buy a single ham hock. I've got a recipe that uses bacon instead of ham and I picked up some thick-sliced applewood smoked bacon at the service butcher, so I may try that one next. The extra ham hocks will freeze nicely.

I really do like the pressure cooker, although I haven't cooked anything too challenging, just potatoes, beans, and rice. I've cooked a couple of boxed risottos. They're not really cooked like risottos, which requires adding the liquid gradually and stirring constantly for twenty minutes, but they're pretty tasty. They're really quick in the pressure cooker, pretty much requiring just that I react when it chirps.

Trying Again

2009-05-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

I dashed out today and got dog food (we were down to the last dishful and Gordo was looking worried), the mail, and more russet potatoes. I'm bound and determined to get this potato cooking thing to work. I mean, really, how hard can it be to cook a potato correctly? I guess I'm going to find out, aren't I?

I also picked up a pair of ham hocks and a pound of navy beans. Years and years ago, back in the early days of the HL-20, when the engineers at Langley were putting it together with little bits of time here and there, I went back there with two test pilots to fly the Differential Motion Simulator with a high-alpha cockpit display.

The reason I know it was in the early days of the HL-20 was that one of my test pilots was Bill Dana, at that time the last lifting-body (and X-15) pilot still flying research aircraft. Well, we ran into one of my friends at LaRC, one of the guys working on the HL-20 simulation, and I, of course, introduced him to Bill and Ed. His eyes got kind of wide, meeting the legendary Bill Dana. We went back to the DMS and I got a call from my friend about twenty minutes later, asking me if there was any chance that Bill might possibly be interested in flying the HL-20 sim, if only for a few minutes and entirely at his convenience, to give them suggestions. Fortunately for the HL-20, the DMS had just developed a small mechanical problem (a small hydraulic leak, I think) and we were just sitting around wondering what to do until the system came back up. So we all joined my friend and his test pilot at the HL-20 simulation and flew it for hours and a good time was had by all. To this day, my friend still thinks I'm a miracle worker, offhandedly producing a renowned lifting body pilot to fly his simulation.

So what does this have to do with ham hocks and navy beans, you ask? They're inextricably linked in my mind. Every Thursday the Langley cafeteria served navy bean soup and we were there on a Thursday and I had the soup and it was wonderful. It was a cool, damp day and the warm, succulent soup, with the grace note of smoky ham, was absolutely perfect. Warm, tasty, comfort food. So I've been making and eating navy bean soup since then. The canned stuff isn't really good enough, if you ask me, but it's quite easy to make. Pressure cookers are supposed to be wonderful for cooking beans, so I'm going to give it a try, right after I take on the potatoes again.

Then there's a Swedish yellow split pea soup, flavored with marjoram, that I made back when I was in college that I want to try again. I'd subscribed to the Time-Life Foods of the World series when I still lived in the dorm (I like to read about cooking almost as much as I like to cook) and this was one of the recipes that caught my eye. When I moved to an apartment for my senior year, this was one of the first things I cooked. It was better than I thought it would be, too. Obviously this was a while ago, in the late '60s. It was so long ago that cookbooks noted that corn tortillas could be purchased in cans at gourmet stores. This was mind-boggling to me, as I'd lived in the CA Central Valley and in SoCal since 1953 and I thought every store in town sold fresh tortillas, both corn and flour, even the 7-11 stores.

It's late afternoon here, about time for me to go start dinner. I guess I'm hungrier that I thought I was. I only meant to mention that I was ready to try again on the potatoes, but I've digressed to lifting bodies, test pilots, and a lot more about food. Hmmm....

It's Gordo's Birthday

2009-05-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

Today Gordo the Wonder Puppy is one year old. He has really grown and grown up in this year. There have been days when I thought we should have named him "May Day" but we seem to be past a lot of that.

About a month ago I ran into Gordon Fullerton and we chatted briefly. I told him I'd gotten a new smooth-coated collie puppy and named it after him. I think it kind of took him aback at first but he warmed to the idea.

Speaking of Gordo (the dog), I hadn't realized that a smooth-coated collie would shed as much, or as often, as a rough-coated collie. Nor did I realize that the shorter hair would cling so tenaciously to everything, particularly fabrics. My vacuum just wasn't picking it all up, even though it had worked perfectly for the longer hair from Gordo's rough-coated predecessors. After a lot of shopping around on the internet, I bought a Eureka model designed to pick up animal hair. It looks, and works, a lot like a Dyson, but cost less than half as much (at least, it did on Overstock.com).

I'm still doing a lot of reading on my Kindle (Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives, right now) and haven't been doing much more. I've done a little internet shopping in the last month, mostly very ordinary stuff. The one exception is the two skeins of beautiful cream silk yarn with aurora borealis sequins (Tilly Thomas Disco Lights Natural) that I picked up on eBay for an excellent price. This is an insanely luxurious yarn and I have no idea what I'm going to knit it into. Yarn like this really needs exactly the right pattern and recipient.

I bought a pressure cooker from Overstock.com and have been doing a little fiddling around with that. I'm trying to get back to more cooking "from scratch" instead of nuking something from Stouffer's. The first thing I cooked was potatoes, to slice and fry. I made a tiny mistake and cooked them for about twice as long as I should have. Fortunately I managed to pick out enough big chunks that I could actually slice and fry them, but most of them had disintegrated completely. I had entertained some thoughts of making mashed potatoes, but have decided to just toss them and buy more spuds. You can be sure that I'll cut the cooking time radically this time. I'm a quick learner.

It's finally shorts and tees time here again. I discovered that all of my shorts were at least one size too large. I have bagged them up to go to New to You, the hospital volunteers' thrift store. A lot of my tees were also too big and starting to get a little limp from being washed so many times, so I'm going through those, too. I've gotten new shorts and tees from Land's End, Dillard's, Overstock.com, and Smartbargains.com. It's actually fairly inexpensive to wear shorts and tees. Not that I wear business clothes, but I do notice the prices.

I'm actually back to the size that some of the dressier clothes, currently hanging in the guest room closet, are, but I don't think I'll get much wear out of them. They're too old to be in style but not old enough to be back in style, if you know what I mean. I still have some '70s and '80s clothes in cartons. I can't fit into them yet, but maybe by next year.... I just hope retro stays in style. If I'd had any sense I'd have gotten rid of these long ago. I guess I packed them away at the end of a season and just never went back through the boxes.

Now that I've written this down, I see that I'm actually doing some Spring cleaning. Sorting through clothes, getting on top of the dog hair problem, and so on. I love Spring, even though the season can be very windy here. It's so nice to have open windows and fresh air after having the house closed up all winter. It seems to me that Spring, more than New Year's, is the time to make resolutions and changes. Too hard to be hopeful in the dead of winter, maybe.

Birthday Cards

2009-04-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

I got a birthday card and note from my favorite niece in the whole world (she's actually my only niece, but I still recognize her superiority at being a niece). She told me that she bought herself a Kindle 2 after reading my posting on mine. She has always been a great reader, like me, which I think has made us closer over the years. I have to admit to having aided and abetted her reading habit; I would buy her books when we visited Iowa and even now we give her Amazon gift certificates.

Still, to convince her, with just a few words, to buy a Kindle 2.... Fortunately for my auntly reputation, she loves it with a passion. I am so pleased to hear that from her, since I love mine, and her, so very much.

She is a wonderful person. She's really good at dealing with people, which is a large part of her job (she's a fairly high-level manager at the hospital system of a big Midwestern university), and she's very intelligent. She got her MBA at that same university while working full time, with excellent grades. We are so proud of her and her success. She's also a wonderful aunt to her four nieces and one nephew. She graciously gives me a much-needed outlet for knitted goods, by accepting and wearing warm woolly scarves.

Maybe she'll start leaving the occasional comment here. I didn't even know she was reading.

Sad Anniversaries

2009-04-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

It will be my mother's birthday on the 24th, the second since she died. Somehow this anniversary makes me sadder than the anniversary of her death. In reaction to this, I find myself swamped in creativity or, maybe, in shopping to support creativity. I've been buying lace weight yarn like crazy. I bought three partial cones of Jaggerspun Zephyr and another three colors of cashmere-silk blend on eBay, four different colorways from Black Bunny Yarn, and two colorways of kettle-dyed yarn from Knit Picks. Then today I got a skein of Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace for the 2009 Year of Lace Spring offering.

The funny thing is, I don't know why I'm suddenly accumulating lace weight yarn. It's not in honor of my mother. I never knit a lace shawl for my mother and she wouldn't have worn it if I had. She rarely wore sweaters or jackets or coats and a lace shawl just wasn't her style at all. An afghan would have suited her, but I'm just now starting to think about knitting afghans, mostly for the new house.

There's some miscellaneous news. We're having a heat wave here. It's been in the '90s, which is unusual in April. Today we're having a lot of convective activity and there's an actual thunderstorm just north of us that has really dropped the temperature. I doubt if we'll see any precipitation, though.

Gordo went to the vet last week and he weighs 75 lbs now. He'll be one year old on May Day. He's doing very well, although he has trouble sleeping in the warm evenings. We've started leaving the slider in the bedroom open and he's doing better. His crate is right by the door and the cool air washes over him, making him more comfortable. He also seems to be eating a little better. I think he's not wild about the lamb and rice kibble, so I'm going to look for a different brand next time. Maybe I'll pick up a small bag of Canidae. My previous pair of collies liked it very much, so I can hope Gordo will, too, and that it won't make him itch.

Some time ago I got a new vacuum cleaner, a Eureka, that claims to pick up dog hair. It does and I'm really pleased. I hadn't realized how much hair Gordo had shed in the bedroom (or how much we'd tracked in) until I saw it whirling around in the vacuum cup. His hair is pretty much invisible on the silver plush, which helped conceal the quantity. The vacuum can also be used on hard floors, having a switch to turn the beater brushes off, which is really nice. My halls and bathrooms are tiled and regular vacuums just spread stuff around on them, rather than sucking it up. This vacuum came from Overstock.com and was quite reasonably priced. I looked at Dysans but couldn't find one with the hard-floor option and thought they were kind of expensive. I've had Eurekas before and liked them, so that's what I got.

At the same time I also picked up a Bissell carpet cleaner from Overstock.com. It's refurbished and has a minimal complement of accessories, but I'ver never found that I use the accessories. I probably should, now that I actually think about it, since the chair I regularly sit in is a bit grubby and could stand to have the arms cleaned, at the very least. We have the carpet cleaners come in about once a year and do everything, but with a dog it's nice to be able to tackle spots when they appear, without doing the entire house. All of my dogs have been very good about not making organic messes, being well-trained, but I swear that they would sometimes clench an entire pawful of mud to track onto the carpet on rainy days. Add in my propensity to spill Caffeine-Free Diet Coke and spot-cleaning gets important.

The third thing in my order was a pressure cooker. I've never had one, but my mom loved hers. She was a working woman for as long as I can remember and the pressure cooker let her put dinner on the table in no time. I'm more interested in keeping the kitchen cool during the summer. I'm trying to add some balance and variety to my diet and I know I'm more likely to eat food I've prepared. For example, I despise cooked bell peppers, yet a lot of companies sneak them into frozen meals, where they taint the entire dish. This is particularly true of baked pasta dishes and Mexican foods, like enchiladas. I also think the pressure cooker will let me cook smaller quantities. There's really no reason to make two big pans of cheese enchiladas or lasagna just because you're going to all that work anyway. The cooker is also touted as making excellent rice and, with special pans, steamed desserts. I'll let you know how this works out.

Birthday Just Passed

2009-04-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

My birthday was on the 9th of April and it was really good. My sweet husband had given me a Kindle 2 as an early birthday gift and I've been lost in reading. This is truly a wonderful device and I just love it. My dear cousin sent me a pound of See's chocolates. The dark chocolate Bordeaux, to be exact. I like them so much

I gave myself M'Lou Baber's new book, Double Knitting, and Iris Schreier's new Reversible Knitting. I also bought some yarn from Knit Picks for double-knitted scarves. Amazon recommended Lucy Neatby's DVD on Double Knitting and I had to have it. Actually, I had to have a couple other of her DVDs, too. So I've started on the Exchequered scarf from Knitty. I'm knitting it in Coal (black) and Asparagus (soft gray-green) Merino Style. So far, so good, although I've only just started.

Actually, there was yet another birthday gift. Somewhere along the line last year I had decided I was 62. It must have been bad arithmetic; a couple of days before I actually turned 62 I figured out that I was only 61. It didn't last long, but somehow I feel better.

Puppy-hood

2009-03-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

Some years ago[1] Purina ran ads for Puppy Chow with the jingle

Puppy Chow for a full year,
Til he's full-grown.

It had a catchy little tune that's currently chasing itself around my brain.

I know this was an ad designed to sell Puppy Chow, but it's actually not the worst advice in the world for feeding puppies. Dogs actually mature at different rates, corresponding to their size, and a year is a pretty good average for a medium-sized dog. The giant breeds may not be completely mature until they're two years old.

What brought this to my mind was that tonight, for the first time in quite a while, I had to loosen Gordo the Wonder Puppy's adjustable collar. He's ten months old now and he's still growing, but the rate has really slowed. He's getting pretty close to his adult height and weight and he's maturing mentally, too. He's markedly better behaved and much less destructive, although he's still fond of tipping over the recycling bin and picking out some box or plastic container to chew on. That's kind of OK with me, so he doesn't get into much trouble over it. He seems to prefer rawhide to cardboard these days and the tipping is getting less frequent.

I really don't know how the medications he takes for his epilepsy are affecting his growth. Epilepsy is uncommon in puppies, so the vet isn't really sure, either. We recently halved the dose of the Keppra. This has made Gordo a litle less somnolent and a little more frisky, and he hasn't had a seizure for almost two months. He also hasn't had any of the little neurological "episodes" that he'd been having. I'm really pleased with how he's doing, in fact.

Anyway, to get back to the Puppy Chow, when he was about seven months old, Nutro discontinued the lamb and rice puppy food and I started trying new brands. This was when we discovered that he's allergic to some ingredient in other foods. It's probably a protein, because allergies usually are, and it's not a grain, because he's allergic to not just one, but two, count them, two super-expensive super-premium dog foods made with no grain at all. It's also not chicken, which is really good because he loves those dried chicken breast strips as treats and inducements.

Anyway, I was having a real problem finding puppy food he could eat and I called the breeder about this. She told me that she put all her puppies on adult Nutro at six months. Well, that made life easy and now Gordo is eating adult lamb and rice food. So much for the jingle.

[1] This is my way of saying I have no idea when, although I think it was probably after about 1972, when we got our first collie. I can remember other advertising jingles, too, which says a lot about their staying power. Some of them are from the '50s and the products are long gone, but the jingle lingers on.

An Early Birthday Present

2009-03-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

OK, this time I did drop off the surface of the earth for a week. On Tuesday, the 24th, FedEx delivered a Kindle 2 into my hands. This is a wonderful toy, which I have stuffed with over 100 books (mostly from Baen.com). I have done virtually nothing but play with it. My husband, who gave it to me, is patiently waiting for my infatuation to diminish enough that I'll let him read a book from it.

I have always loved the printed word. I was raised in a household of people who read all the time and I started with being read to and, in first grade, switched to reading myself. This was literally true; when I started first grade my father would read the paper to me and about halfway through the school year I started reading it to him. I haven't stopped reading since then.

Along with reading went book buying, but not, unfortunately, book disposal. I have many, many shelves of books at both houses, as well as a lot of cartons of books at both. I cling to my books, which I do re-read, as if book publication were going to stop tomorrow and I'd have to spend the rest of my life with only the books I have on hand. This is silly, of course. I actually did manage to give the Lancaster Friends of the Library two cubic yards (eighteen cubic feet) of books about four years ago and I've trained myself to give them some magazines after I've read them. This is a major behavioral change and I'm fairly proud of myself for making it.

However, it hasn't been enough. That's why I'm so pleased with the Kindle 2. It's small, light, easy to read, and doesn't need any bookshelf space at all. I just copied the eighty or so books I'd downloaded from Baen.com to a single CD (81 MB on a standard 700-MB CD). It's less than a quarter-inch wide, put in a minimum-sized jewel box.

The Kindle 2 is great for regular text books, but it's not designed for books with photos and figures and graphs, like knitting books. The Kindle 2 has sixteen shades of gray, compared to the Kindle 1's four shades, but that's gray, not color. That works just fine for covers, but it would be really inadequate for knitting books. This isn't just my opinion; books like that don't come in Kindle versions. I've actually bought four real books since the Kindle arrived. Two of these were about knitting (one was about color work) and two were about bread and pastry. I sure wish I'd known I was getting a Kindle, though, because I wouldn't have bought the seven-volume boxed set of Sookie Stackhouse paperbacks the week before.

Some of you are probably familiar with how the Kindle works, but that's not going to stop me from explaining it. Included in the cost of the book is use of a 3G network (Sprint, I think). Buy a Kindle version of a book from Amazon and it delivers it over the network pretty much instantaneously. E-books from other sources, like Baen, can be mailed directly to the Kindle, via Amazon or they can be downloaded to a computer and mailed from there. I've chosen the second method so that I can back the e-books up on CD. I think that I've bought eternal download rights from Baen, but I don't know that for sure. I know I've bought eternal download rights from Amazon, because they suggest using those rights to "archive" books when my Kindle gets too full (it holds 1500 average-sized books). I can also plug my Kindle into a USB 2 port on my computer and transfer e-books directly. However, my laptop doesn't have USB 2, so that's not an option at this time. My husband's computer has it, so the possibility is there. It's just that the mailing procedure works really well.

If you mail an e-book that's not of the two Kindle formats (.mobi and .prc) Amazon will convert it. There's a ten-cent charge (billed after thirty e-books, so there's no flood of dime charges), which seems pretty reasonable to me. I've been mailing e-books in those two formats, so I haven't been charged for mailing them, though.

Baen has a very clever scheme going with their e-books. At least, I think it's clever and I know they make money on it. The first one or two books in a series are free. Just download and mail to the Kindle (or read them on your computer; a number of formats are available). Then, once you're absolutely hooked on the series, the subsequent books cost $6 each, which is very reasonable. Remember, there's no shipping to pay. Some older e-books are $5 and bundled e-books are $4, so the e-books are economical.

On Amazon the e-books are no more than $9.95 for new hardbounds. When the book becomes available in paperback (usually $7.99 list price these days), the cost of the e-book drops to be less than the cover price, I think. At least the few I've looked at work that way. I can't claim to have looked at the comparative prices of many books and e-books, so I don't really know what the actual Amazon policy is. I will say, though, that I expect to recoup the cost of the device with the savings on the e-books fairly soon, like less than a year.

I also expect to give a lot of books to the Friends, since I will no longer need them. I've got two sets of some of my favorite series, for example, so that I could re-read them at either house without having to pack them and transport them twice a year. These are all in paperback, because I'm fond of them, but not at hardbound prices. Mostly, though, I only buy one copy and end up packing and transporting several (four or five, at least) cartons each way. Now all I'll have to do is take my Kindle 2 and the back-up CD. That will make changing houses a lot easier and reduce the strain on my back and knees.

I'll still have a box or two of knitting books, though. Knitting books are heavier that regular books, because they're printed on glossy paper. On the other hand, they're usually thinner, even though the pages are larger. The latest David Weber book is about 2" thick but it's an unusual knitting book that's over ½" thick.

I don't want you to think I love my Kindle 2 for purely practical reasons like saving shelf space. There's a lot more to it than that. It's just plain cute and fun. It's so light and the ergonomics are really well thought out. It works well with my habit of holding a book in my left hand, as the "next page" and "previous page" buttons are right under my thumb (they haven't ignored people who hold books in their right hands; there's a "next page" button on the right side, too). The screen isn't back-lit, meaning that I need a little book light to read it in bed, but I find back-lit screens to be tiring after a while.

Let's see, what other functions does it have that might be interesting? It can be used to shop directly from Amazon, and not just for e-books. Actually, it'll go anywhere on the Web, although the small screen size makes reading pages that aren't designed for it a bit difficult. You can subscribe to newspapers and magazines through Amazon. The list of magazines is kind of short, but that probably won't last. Amazon will send sample chapters from their books free. These are usually the first couple of chapters.

The battery charge life is astounding, particularly if the net is turned off (like cell phones, it checks in with the cell tower regularly and that can eat battery life in a fringe area). The charging cord is very clever, as it's both the USB cord and a regular electric cord (the far end is a little transformer that the USB cord plugs into). It charges quickly from the wall (I haven't tried USB charging). There are six font sizes to choose from. It'll read the book aloud, although rather oddly. I don't like being read to, though, so I don't really care if it's a little odd.

I bought a Patagonia padded cover for mine, but I don't like it because the zippers don't move easily and the little straps make a funny bump under my hand. So I've ordered a leather cover that just flips open. The additional warranty I bought promises one complete replacement if the device is totaled by owner/operator error. However, it can be dropped and still survive (some of the drop tests are shown on the Amazon page. I like to read in the bathtub, so this coverage makes me more confident, although I've never dropped a book in the tub in all my years of reading there.

I didn't realize I had so much to write about the Kindle 2 and e-books and regular books. I should have known, though, because reading and, therefore, books are such an important part of my life.

Itchy

2009-02-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

No, not itchy yarn. Itchy hair. I got my hair cut this afternoon and it's driving me crazy. The short little ends (shaping the back and neckline take a lot of snipping) have caught in the ballerina neckline of my shirt and keep digging in.

I'd go change into a different shirt, hoping that all the loose hair has left my head and is now captive in my shirt, but I just did an amazing amount of laundry and the only people things not yet washed are my nightgown and the sheets. I even washed the load of microfiber cloths, which have to be washed separately, and the new red-purple bath mats (which produced two lint filters full of lint and still aren't dry). I feel so virtuous to have done so much laundry, although I still need to run a load for the covers on Gordo's crate pads.

Usually I take a bath and change clothes right away, as soon as I get home, but I got distracted and now it's so late I'm not sure my hair will be dry before I go to bed. I have a lot of hair and it only dries quickly if it's about two inches long at the most. Back when I was in college, I wore it in a pixie cut, with blonde frosting, but now I wear it about four inches at the crown, in what used to be called an artichoke cut (turn an artichoke upside down and ignore the stem to get the idea). No frosting, just gray and silver for "highlights". I stopped coloring my hair on my sixtieth birthday because I'd gotten tired of the constant need to get the roots colored.

I'm going to post this and then go brush my hair over the sink again (for the third time) and put on my nightgown. One load of laundry for the people tomorrow, one for Gordo, and a load of dishes and then everything in the house will be clean and we'll start getting it all dirty again.

No end in sight on laundry and dishes, ever.

Updated about an hour after posting: I brushed Gordo quite thoroughly, much to his dismay. I got a lot of hair off him, both undercoat and guard hairs. Smooth coated collies shed as much as do rough coated collies, only the hair is about a third or a quarter the length and a lot harder to get off the furniture, particularly furniture upholstered in Ultrasuede. Then I went in and brushed my hair again, took off the itchy shirt, and am now comfortable in my nightgown.

I got into the habit of changing the sheets on the bed on Saturday, back when I worked, and I've kept it, here in Lancaster. Down at the Palm Desert house my cleaners, who come on Wednesday, change the sheets for me. But I still feel as if I should be doing something on Saturday. Old habits die hard.

Miscellaneous News

2009-02-18T18:40:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd update everyone on what's going on here. Not that it's a lot, but there are a few little things I've written about earlier.

The crown that I thought would be cemented a day or two ago still isn't here. I finally called and asked about it; I'm sorry to say that the mother of the lab guy passed away and everything has been delayed. However, I have a really good temporary on the tooth, so I'm not in too much of a hurry. I would like to be done with all this, but another week or two isn't going to make a big difference in the long run.

Gordo the Wonder Puppy is doing well. He hasn't had a seizure for a month and he seems to be less drugged than he was when he started on the Keppra. This latter is a mixed blessing; he's recently learned to tip the recycling bin over and fish out something interesting to drag into the family room and dismember. On the other hand, he's sleeping through the night, which has greatly improved my sleep.

My Rainbow Argosy Afghan is about 80% done. Well, maybe not so much, since I dropped a stitch about eight rows back and am tinking back to that point, two rows at a time. I can't just drop the stitches near the error and re-knit, because there's a yarnover in every other row and I don't have enough yarn to make it. Very annoying, as there's also a new ball of yarn joined in the the rows that have to come out.

Anyway, here's a photo of it at about 70% done.

And here's a close-up to show you the pattern and how the variegation works out.

This yarn is really soft and puffy. The afghan is going to be nice and warm. I do like Lorna's Laces yarns. I got a skein of Helen's Lace, which is 50/50 merino and silk. It's a big skein, maybe six ounces, 1200 yards (three-quarters of a mile), and beautifully dyed. I also got a shawl pattern for it. Unfortunately, I've got a number of projects that I absolutely must complete before I start another big lace project. It doesn't help that I have four other lace wraps that I really want to knit and another six or eight that I have in mind.

Out of the Blue

2009-02-16T15:38:00.000-08:00

I got a very interesting phone call last week and it really was a thrill. It's kind of complicated, so I'll have to start with some background.

Back in 1991 a couple of guys I worked with doing in-flight simulation were Technical Chairman and a Session Chair, respectively, at the AIAA Simulation Science Conference, which was held at the same time and place as the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control and Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conferences. My husband and I always went to these conferences, which are in August. The guys wanted me to write a paper about in-flight simulation at Dryden. There were two reasons for this, that I'd been managing the in-flight simulation at Dryden for years and that it wouldn't look like an advertisement, since Dryden used the various aircraft, rather than providing the service. I guess I need to mention that the conference TC was the USAF manager of their in-flight simulators and the Session Chair was the department head of the company that operated those aircraft and a couple of their own. You can see where them writing such a paper might not look entirely neutral on the subject.

So I wrote the paper. It took a lot of research and I spent a lot of time up at the Ames Research Center, going through fiches and reading old, old papers. I blew a lot of them back and would have a heavy box to carry back on the KingAir on every trip. I went around and interviewed past and present research test pilots and engineers and generally had a good time, but it was harder to write this paper than it was to turn out a more focused paper on some flight test results. I also spent a lot of time picking out photos so the paper wouldn't be just text.

I gave the paper at the conference (it was in New Orleans that year) and the room was full to overflowing and engineers came up afterward to tell me how much they'd liked it, engineers I knew and respected. As a result, I decided it was a pretty good paper. AIAA couldn't publish it as a journal paper because it was way too long and there was no good way I could cut it down, so I was kind of stuck, looking for a more widely distributed publication method. I happened to talk to Dick Hallion, who was working as a historian for the Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratory at the time, about the paper (he'd liked it) and he suggested I try the Journal of the American Aviation Historians Society. Dick had written a very good history of Dryden some years before this, which was when I'd gotten to know him.

So I sent it to the AAHS and they were very happy to publish it for me. I made a few small changes and we sent it off, with a stack of photos, and got back copies of the magazine some time later. They did a beautiful job printing the paper, because they used glossy paper and photos were important to them.

You can read the TM version of the paper, In-Flight Simulation Studies at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, here. It's not very technical and it may be interesting.

OK, that's the background. You can see why I said that you needed it to understand what happened last week.

Dick Hallion is back working for NASA as a historian again. The agency is putting together a four-volume series on NACA/NASA aeronautics research history, aimed at letting the young engineers learn about all the stuff that has been done in aeronautics over the years. Three of the volumes are about aerodynamics and wind tunnels and the fourth volume is about handling and flying qualities and topics like that. At least, I think that's how Dick described it. I may be wrong, though. Dick is in charge of this effort (I think he's a contractor, not that it matters) and he'd remembered my paper all these years and thinks it should be included.

So he called me up to ask me if I'd like to bring it up to date for inclusion in this, because he thinks it's important to include the topic and I'd already written such a good paper, he thought. This is a form of profession immortality, in its way. I'll be a contractor to NASA and I think I'll be able to use the Dryden library and photo lab, as well as having access to the pilots and researchers. So far as I know, there hasn't been a lot of in-flight simulation studies at Dryden since I wrote the paper. Handling and flying qualities research has really dropped off the charts for funding these days, as has aeronautics, at least at NASA (and, I think, the USAF). Aeronautics has kind of been the red-headed step child at NASA once the Space program really started sucking up the funding.

And I get a copy of the four-volume set, too. Plus they pay me, although not a huge amount.

Something New & Yard Work

2009-02-10T16:58:00.000-08:00

I did something I never thought I'd do. I ordered the DVD of the entire first season of a TV show, The Big Bang Theory. I really don't watch much TV, but I like this show. My goddaughter, who was then majoring in physics at Penn State, recommended it to me at about the second show, but we didn't get around to watching it until late last year. Now that we've discovered it, I had to have the first season. It's really a funny show.

Hard-science guys with little or no idea about social interactions; where I have seen that before? Why, could it be at UCLA, where I was an engineering student? Or at NASA Dryden, where I was an engineer for most of my career? Or both?

We're having the trees trimmed today and tomorrow. We have three big forty-year-plus fruitless mulberries and they have to be "laced" every couple of years to reduce the sail loading when the wind blows. We also have a Chinese pistache that's nearly as big and a beautiful liquidamber beside the driveway that needed a little trimming, nothing as drastic as the mulberries.

My pomegranate bush needed to be cut back severely, though, since it sets fruit on newer growth. It's down to about four trunks now, instead of a dozen. I only had about a dozen fruit on it last year, if that many. It may not produce much this year, but I should get a bumper crop the next year. If the school kids leave me enough, I'll juice them and make jelly. Messy, but gratifying. Making this jelly is a family tradition dating back almost fifty years. I cheat and use bottled pomegranate juice from the supermarket when I don't have fresh fruit available. I posted the recipe here earlier.

The junipers on the other side of the driveway had encroached quite fiercely and we cut them back about three feet, maybe more. They really look ugly now, but they'll grow back. We've created some nice humus under there, I noticed. I asked the trimmers to cut the ivy and Virginia creeper in the back yard back to the ground. Both had really gotten out of hand and were taking over. They're going to move my Madame Galen scarlet trumpet creeper around to the back yard so I can see it from the windows (which are almost all on the back of the house). I'm not really razing all the plant life at the house, although it may sound like it. I'm just tidying up stuff that has needed attention for a while. I'd kind of coasted on some of this but I suddenly got tired of the overgrown vines and the narrowed driveway and the clutter.

This is the same team that's going to transplant my big Mediterranean clumping fan palm from here in Lancaster to the front yard of our house in Palm Desert. We left a big space for it when we landscaped down there. It's outgrown the place I have it in here and needs to be moved somewhere. It was a gift from a very dear friend, a guy who went to college with my husband and worked at Dryden for many years. He has since died, so the palm is very dear to me.

Here's the Mediterranean clumping fan palm from the south. To give you an idea of its size, the block front of the raised bed is about 26". You can see some of the Virginia creeper on the left side of the photo, growing into the palm. These three photos were taken in September, which is why the creeper still has its leaves. Right now it's just a bundle of light brown stems and really ugly.

Here's a photo from the southeast, with the trunk of the Chinese pistache on the right side. You can see Virginia creeper on both sides. The stuff really spreads.

And this photo is from the north. The grass-like plant that you can see arching on the right is a volunteer clump of pampas grass. The neighbors on the other side of the wall had pampas grass against their side of the wall and it seeded freely. Pampas grass is nasty to deal with. It's very hard to kill and the leaves are exceeding sharp. It'll cut bare hands readily. This little clump is going away tomorrow, along with all that Virginia creeper you can see.

Gordo the Wonder Puppy has greatly enjoyed having the tree trimmers over. They are very obliging with pats and attention and have flapping pants cuffs to chase. He had to come into the house because I decided he was a bit of a tripping menace, chasing cuffs and boot laces. I think the crew was relieved to see him go. I would have been. It was really funny to see him take in the changes in the back yard after the team knocked off for the day. The ivy is down off the little metal shed in heaps and some of the privets have vanished.

Gordo went to the vet to have his blood levels of his epilepsy meds checked. He's up to 68 pounds, at 9.5 months. He's supposed to weigh about 75 pounds when he's fully grown, but I'm beginning to think he may be a little heavier. He'll still fit on my lap, as long as I have the hassock under my legs to extend my lap enough. He napped briefly on my lap this afternoon, having been worn out by all the excitement and getting up early. He's definitely still a puppy.

Latest News about Gordo the Wonder Puppy

2009-02-05T20:17:00.001-08:00

About a week ago we started Gordo on another drug, Keppra, for his epilepsy. This is in addition to the Phenobarbital and the potassium bromide. It actually seems to have controlled the seizures that were slipping through the first two drugs, but it also seems to have really upset his digestive system. His appetite has really gone away and he has been producing very soft stools, which are a real nuisance to pick up off the lawn. He also seems to be really uncomfortable and doesn't like to have him tummy touched, which is new for him.

Today we took him over to the vet to discuss this whole thing. They took blood to check the Phenobarbital and potassium bromide levels and examined him, poking at his tummy and listening to various places. The vet told me to take him off the Keppra for a while, to see if the problem clears up. And they gave me probiota paste and capsules.

The probiota paste, which has all kinds of beneficial digestive bacteria in it, comes in a tube about half the size of a caulk tube, like you use around sinks and tubs and stuff. I dialed up the 5-ml dose, convinced Gordo to let me put the end into his mouth, and squeezed the stuff onto his tongue. He promptly spat the entire dose of beige paste out, right onto my white jeans. Then he sniffed it, licked it off, and started looking for more.

Now I wonder what's going to happen with the next dose. I know I won't be wearing white jeans again. Khaki pants, maybe.

I Haven't Dropped Off The Surface Of The Earth

2009-01-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

It's been more than two months since I last posted something here, although I've been updating afca regularly. There's isn't a lot of news, except about Gordo the Collie Puppy and his epilepsy. I did a little knitting and will update that soon, with photos.

Meanwhile, about the Wonder Puppy....

We've been titrating his dosages of Phenobarbital and potassium bromide and seem to be getting satisfactory blood levels. The number of seizures has dropped significantly. Last week we bit the bullet and sent him down to West Los Angeles to have an MRI and a spinal tap, just to be absolutely certain that there was nothing obvious causing the problem. Apparently, onset of epilepsy in a puppy is uncommon, particularly when there's so much trouble controlling it. They didn't find anything, but we did get a nifty DVD and I can assure you that, despite how he sometimes acts, Gordo does indeed have a brain.

Our vet has been consulting with a neurologist (vets specialize these days, just as do MDs). The neurologist suggested a new drug to add to the other two, so our vet called in a prescription to my pharmacy. This is human medication, too, and is very expensive for the uninsured, like Gordo. My pharmacy called me three times, just to make sure I knew how much it cost. We haven't started him on this, yet, because he seems to be doing better without it right now. We'll see.

Gordo's Latest Surprise

2008-11-28T18:21:00.000-08:00

Gordo shocked and startled us last month by having an epileptic seizure. We took him to the vet right away and he was put on phenobarbital. He had a couple more seizures, one in the middle of the night. We raced him to the emergency vet clinic at about 0330 in the morning on Saturday and they kept him until Monday morning. Then we took him to the substitute vet (our vet was away at a conference). He's now on KBr (potassium bromide) and we're phasing out the phenobarbital. The KBr is easier on his body, particularly his liver, and doesn't make him so drowsy. He hasn't had any more seizures since.

Gordo goes over next week to have blood drawn, so we can see what the KBr level is. If it's good enough, we may be able to pack up and go to Palm Desert. We have a very good vet down there and our local vet is very confident that he can hand the case off without any great concern. Apparently, epilepsy is fairly common in dogs and controlling it is well-understood.

If the blood levels aren't good enough, we'll have to go back in another ten days and do it all again. By then he'll be off the phenobarbital completely and we'll be hoping that the KBr will do the job. That'll get us out of town around Christmas. We're already into the time of year that we have to plan our trip around the weather. We have to go over three passes to get to the Low Desert, although one of them, Banning Pass, is too low for snow but does sometime have fierce winds.

This will be Gordo's first long car trip since he came from Simi Valley. I'm hoping it isn't too stressful for him, because stress can bring on a seizure. He seems to deal very well with new experiences, though, so he may well take the whole thing in stride and have no problems.

I, on the other hand, will be panicking once we get down there, as my office is absolutely not puppy proof. I'm going to have to pick a lot of stuff up before I can let him in there. He doesn't seem inclined to take books off shelves, but the yarn is at real risk. He loves balls of yarn even better than he loves his stuffed toys. Soft, good mouth feel, the excitement of the chase--what more could a puppy want?

The Dangers of Puppy Ownership

2008-11-09T16:03:00.000-08:00

I've got a very garish black eye, sort of, thanks to Gordo. We were playing around on the patio and he thunked my right cheekbone with the top of his hard little head. I didn't realize that it had bruised until the checker at the supermarket asked me how I got my black eye.

During the night it spread up under my eye, to the bottom lid. Gravity, I assume. It's also run down my cheek a bit. The only part that hurts is where the original bruise was; all the rest is just colorful. I'm fairly pale and thin skinned, so bruises really show up on me.

Gordo has finally stopped trying to chew on my watch, which he did by grabbing my entire wrist. My lower arm was quite blue and purple, to the point that the nurse at my doctor's office asked me what I'd been up to. Fortunately, no one seems to think that my dear husband is abusive toward me, so there are no funny looks or anything. Some years ago I had some eye surgery, to raise a droopy eyelid and remove the bags under my eyes (the first was necessary and the second was vanity, which I actually have very little of, but the baggy eyes really bugged me). Naturally I bruised from this. Vividly. Luridly. I had a sales clerk give me the phone number for the Spousal Abuse shelter, telling me I didn't have to put up with being abused. She was kind of embarrassed when I told her it was surgery, not abuse, but I told her she was doing exactly the right thing and should keep on doing it.

The bruising was so bad, and leaving so slowly, that I went to a cosmetologist and learned how to use concealing makeup. After she did a complete concealment job (and taught me how to do it myself, as well as selling me everything I needed), I went over to show my oral surgeon. He was absolutely astonished by the difference, which I too thought was pretty amazing. Everyone in the office, including some of the patients, had to come look, too. The surgeon started referring patients who had oral surgery that bruised to the cosmetologist (I'd brought a handful of her cards with me), which those patients found very helpful.

Now, this isn't a history of my bruising, but I was just reminded of it after Gordo got me. He gave me a split lip, too, but it didn't bruise. We were both reaching for the same toy, which is why my lip was down at his level. Fortunately, that was after I'd been to the oral surgeon and had two bottom front teeth extracted. Otherwise all that keeping my mouth open would have been very painful with a split lip. I go in on Wednesday and get my new crowns cemented. I'll also get the flipper (temporary partial plate) to wear during the entire dental implant process. Because we spend the winter in the Low Desert, the process will take longer than it normally would, probably at least a year.

So keep an eye on those hard puppy heads, OK?

Update To The Update

2008-10-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

OK, so I went in today to get some cavities filled. Guess what? Right, another crown prep instead. And I'm going to have yet another on the 30th.

I know why I'm suddenly having all this trouble with my teeth. Last summer I was put on a medication that dries my mouth out really badly. This condition is called xerostoma, which means "dry mouth". When your mouth is dry, cavity bacteria run rampant all over your mouth, burrowing in wherever they can find enamel. Mostly it's at the gum line, around the outside.

My much-beloved and extremely sympathetic husband, who just had a root canal, has been wonderful support for me. Even Gordo the Collie has helped, by sleeping on my lap when I get home from the dentist's office. No, it's not very practical, because he weighs 45 lb now and is 22 in. at the shoulder, and I've just barely got enough lap to hold him, but it's very comforting.

Gordo's having problems with food allergies and is very itchy. Poor little guy. We got this great leave-in lotion that I spread where he's chewing and it gives him a lot of relief. I'm in the gradual change-over of food sequence, putting him on lamb and rice. We've got a couple more days to go and then he loses his chicken treats, rawhide chewies, pigskin chewies, and other delights. Fortunately, they make lamb and rice dog biscuits, but I suspect he won't be wild about the change. However, if he'll just stop itching, we'll be able to add the treats back in and find out what's safe for him.

Update On The Busy Week

2008-10-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

I went to the dentist this morning for the crown prep and first it turned into a crown prep and filling and then, after some drilling, it turned into two crown preps. The second tooth was right by the first and was crooked (it's a family characteristic), which is probably why it had the cavity. Fortunately, the first prep had gone very quickly and so did the second. I didn't even need more anesthetic, it was so quick.

It's a really pretty day here. Not terribly hot, mid 80's, and quite calm. The Santa Anas are blowing and we always get clear, calm weather from them.

Busy Week This Week

2008-10-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

Well, my week started on Sunday, getting a new toilet installed. It's a Kohler toilet that only uses 1.6 gallons, compared to the original toilet that used 6 or 7 gallons. As it was being installed, I was doing laundry and I noticed water running down the side of the water heater. We looked and the pipes were so corroded that it was a wonder that any water was going the right way. I spent the afternoon doing as much laundry as I could and going to the supermarket.

Monday I went over and had the first crown prep done and then came home to meet the plumber. He agreed immediately that we needed a new water heater and we scheduled it for Tuesday afternoon. He cut the insulation jacket off to be sure we had the right size (50 gallons) and that set the water hiding in the fiberglass free. By this morning it was really wet and messy in the garage.

So this morning I had to take my husband by the blood lab for a test first thing (fasting test, you know how that works). The guy is installing the new water heater as I write. The corner of the garage is sodden. There's no other word for it but that. Fortunately the wallboard around the water heater base is purely for looks and the 2x4 frame provided the real structural strength.

It turns out that the old water heater was installed in 1980, making it 28 years old. Apparently this is beyond geriatric for water heaters, which have a normal lifetime of about a dozen years. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really think much about my water heater. It just sits there in the corner of the garage, working away. I try to drain it once a year, but I suspect I really only manage about once every three years.

So we're about to have hot water again and I'm going to get the laundry finished, hopefully today. You see, I have an appointment for my third crown prep tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm hoping it goes as well as yesterday's did and I can get the laundry put away, etc.

Then on Thursday I have another dentist's appointment, to fill some cavities. The crowns won't be back from the lab for another couple-three weeks, so I'll have some time off until it's time to glue them on. A year or two back, I got a crown replaced and when we tried the new crown on, it was such a perfect fit it wouldn't come off after the trial fitting. Of course the dentist didn't want to do anything extreme to it so it took some time before it finally popped of. Then I nearly swallowed it. What a farce that was. Funny now, but not so funny at the time.

I'm almost done with the central section of the dramatic stole I'm knitting for a friend. I've taken so long to get even this far that I'm going to give her the Forget-Me-Not Shawl just to tide her over. The shawl has been finished except for blocking for literally months, so I've got to get myself in gear right now. I got a new blocking set, with wires and pins, etc, from Overstock.com for about $20 (I'm a member of their club and get an additional 5% discount and free postage). This shawl is vastly oversized compared to the original pattern, because I read it wrong.

Abut five minutes ago I got my copy of It Itches by Franklin Habit. Wonderful book. So much truth in it, too. I recommend it highly. I've only read the cartoons, not the essays, because I want to get this published before I get distracted by something else.

Gordo Gets A Surprise

2008-10-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

This afternoon the mobile dog groomer parked in front of our house and Gordo got bathed and groomed. This was quite a surprise to him, I think. The groomer said he was very obliging, except when it was time to clip his nails and trim the hair between his toes. Although he protested, he didn't used his new adult teeth or anything, which was a great relief to me.

He got a snappy Hallowe'en bandanna, too. He looks very dashing in it and hasn't yet tried to remove it.

He was five months old on Wednesday, 1 Oct. He's really maturing; he lost his last two baby teeth (OK, deciduous teeth) on Sunday. They were the two upper canines, which were very pointy long teeth. Now he has only shiny new adult teeth. He had to grow a bunch of muzzle to hold them all. I think I should probably be brushing his teeth, at least according to the pet shops and dog supply catalogs. The next time we go to the vet I'll ask about that.

It's cloudy today, with more predicted for the weekend. As soon as I can get some good snapshots of him out in the back yard I'll post them.

No-Roll Stockinette Scarf

2008-09-28T16:04:00.000-07:00

This is my pattern for a no-roll stockinette scarf. The latest version is made of Debby Bliss Cashmerino Astrakhan, which is a very textured yarn. There's no point in wasting a pattern on it and I prefer stockinette to garter stitch.

The pattern is more a recipe than a pattern. Pick your yarn and select the recommended size needles. If you know you're a tight or a loose knitter, adjust the size accordingly.

You want a nice firm fabric with some drape to it, not too loose (it won't keep the wearer warm) and not too tight (it won't drape around the wearer). I make my scarves about seven inches wide and seven feet long, because I'm knitting them for Iowans, South Dakotans, and Pennsylvanians.

Compute how many stitches it takes to make eight inches (look on the ball label) and subtract 10%. Cast this number of stitches on, using any cast-on method you like.

Bottom border:
Knit six rows (three garter ridges on each side), slipping the first stitch purlwise, with the yarn in front.

Body:

Slip the first stitch purlwise with yarn in front, knit 4, purl to 5 stitches before the end, knit 5.
Slip the first stitch purlwise with yarn in front, knit to end of row.

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until the scarf is about five stockinette rows shorter than the final length you want, or until you're almost out of yarn.

Top border:
Knit six rows (three garter ridges on each side), slipping the first stitch purlwise, with the yarn in front.

Bind off, using a method that doesn't cause the end to flare. I like the knit two together, knit one, knit two together bind-off that Cat Bordhi uses for her Moebius scarves.

Weave in ends, wash gently, roll in dry towels (or spin in washer), and pat out into shape. Let dry, out of the sun.

Shawls, Gordo, and Dog Food

2008-09-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

I met a bunch of knitters and crocheters at the Lancaster Panera today and managed to get the ends sewn in for two shawls and one scarf. One of the shawls was made with only two skeins, though, so I can't take much credit on that one. I have two more shawls to go, one with four joins and one with seven. The first is black and I didn't think the light was good enough there to mess with and I just couldn't face doing the second.

Gordo went over on Monday for neutering and repair of his umbilical hernia. Because they had to do two separate tasks, they anesthetized him fairly deeply. We went over and picked him up at 5:00 pm and he was pretty groggy. He came home and wobbled around a bit before lying down. He looked so miserable and was whimpering so pitifully that I picked him up and put him on my lap. He promptly went to sleep, with nary a peep, and slept the sleep of the just for almost four hours. I just held my poor 35.5-lb baby, shifting him occasionally so that my various body parts wouldn't go to sleep.

He perked up a bit when he could finally have water and a light dinner, but went to sleep fairly easily. Now, a week later, he's quite back to normal. He hasn't really needed the awkward Elizabethan collar at all, as he's shown no inclination to lick the incisions. The prickly metal stitched might have something to do with that.

Speaking of dogs and just having fed mine dinner, it's interesting what the current trends in dog food are. I feed what's called superpremium food, because it greatly reduces the amount of waste that the dog produces and I have to pick up. The latest thing is no-grain foods. The position of those who formulate these foods is that dogs didn't evolve eating grain, which is pretty hard to argue with, except that they've lived with people for over 10,000 years and they have to have had the occasional bread crust during all those millennia. The foods do have carbohydrates, like sweet potatoes, fruit, and other vegetables. They also seem to have a variety of meats and meat meals, not just one kind.

Gordo definitely prefers one brand, Evo, over the other, BG, that he's tried. This kind of ruined my idea of puppies being willing to eat everything they can get in their mouth. However, he has, in the last ten minutes, proven that he'll eat aluminum foil and Stouffer's boxes, so I don't think he's all that picky.

So I, being so insensitive to my puppy's tastes (he's only a dog, what's wrong with the stuff they sell at the supermarket), just went by the feed store and picked up a big bag of chicken etc EVO. I only got a few coins back from the $50 I tendered. Fortunately, the superpremium foods are of such high quality that the dog actually eats less for the same number of calories, making this bag last longer than a similarly sized bag of the more common foods. I have checked this out myself, reading feeding tables on every bag of food I've seen. One of the things I discovered doing this was that IAMS cut its serving sizes when they started selling in supermarkets. There was no reformulation of the food to go with the smaller sizes, though.

Gordo and Clyde Nap Together

2008-09-14T21:05:00.001-07:00

Gordo and Clyde
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Gordo got a new stuffed animal yesterday. It's an orangutan we've named Clyde. Clyde has three noisemakers: a duck-call in his belly and two squeakers, one in each leg. He also has long arms and Velcro on his hands, so I can stick them together and drape him around Gordo's neck.

As you can see in the photo, Clyde is quite large, although he isn't very heavy. Gordo can just pick him up but has to be careful not to step on trailing arms or legs.

Gordo has become very fond of Clyde and has brought him to me to play fetch any number of times. The last time I tossed Clyde Gordo carried him back but laid down instead of giving him back to me. Gordo then fell asleep on Clyde's arm, as you see, and I couldn't resist taking snapshots. It's almost 2100, well past Gordo's bed time. He falls asleep easily after the sun goes down.

Gordo goes to the vet tomorrow for surgery to repair his umbilical hernia and neutering. He'll also get his rabies shot so that we can get his license from Los Angeles County. I think we'll register him with Riverside County, too, so that we'll be covered in Palm Desert. He was chipped right after we brought him home, of course.

I stopped at the pet shop today and bought him a larger collar and leash, as he has nearly outgrown the first set. That set is quite narrow, made from ca. 3/8-in. webbing, and now looks too fragile as he has grown so much. The new collar and leash are wider, made of ca. 3/4-in. webbing, and are more proportionate. It'll be interesting to see what happens when we hang the license disk on the collar. I don't think he'll like it.

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog

2008-09-09T17:30:00.001-07:00

Last night Gordo was sitting on my lap and he discovered the keyboard of my laptop. The flash washed out the monitor or you'd be able to see that he was reading alt.fans.cecil-adams on Usenet.

I can tell that Gordo's days as a lap dog are numbered. We went to the vet this morning, to have the blood drawn for his pre-surgery lab work, and he weighs 32 lb. He's 19.5 in. tall at the shoulder (adult male collies are 24-26 in. at the shoulder). Most of his height is in his legs. It's going to be a close race to see whether he gets too heavy for me to lift or he gets too leggy to fit on my lap.

Here's another photo. Doesn't he look older in this one? Usually he looks very puppy-like in photos, but there are a few angles at which he looks older. He's only four months and one week old, so he is still a puppy and usually looks it.

Here's one of his four-month birthday presents. It's a magenta tiger, with squeaker, and he's very attached to it. It started with a round ball, about an inch in diameter, on a cloth tape for a tail. It took Gordo about ten minutes to remove the ball. He has subsequently removed most of the cloth tape. It's just visible here; it's the light spot in the center of the back, toward the bottom.

Gordo got an extremely charming sea turtle from his cat cousins in Iowa last week and fell in love with it. He carries it around everywhere and sometimes naps using it as a pillow. The next time he does so and I can reach the camera I'll take a photo. It's really cute.

The cat cousins also gave him a stump with three squeaky squirrels in it that we haven't let him have yet. We're waiting until he gets bored with the current plushy toys (or until he wears them out completely) to give him the stump, which is really great. Too many toys can be confusing to a puppy. Plus, the family room floor is already pretty much paved with dog plushies, rawhide chewies, pig skin rolls, and squeaky latex hippos and frogs. Not that we spoil our dogs or anything, of course.

Gordo Grows

2008-08-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

Look at those long legs and big feet. Gordo had a growth spurt on Sunday and Monday and added an inch of height, I think, all in the legs. He was kind of inert on Monday, except for twice polishing his dish so clean that it was a good mirror. I gave him a little extra for dinner and he didn't even pause, but just ate it down.

Another view of the legs. His muzzle is more readily visible here and its increased length is easy to see. He has to grow muzzle because he's got to fit about twice as many adult teeth into it as he had baby teeth in his little puppy muzzle. He's teething right now and there's just not enough in the world to chew on. The family room floor is an obstacle course of rawhide and pigskin and nylon chewies. He also has a couple of freezable canvas chew bones that seem to give him some relief.

There's the muzzle and nose close up. You can just see the pale spot on his black nose, on the left just above the nostril. I think that's related to his being a merle.

We went to the vet yesterday (Tuesday) to get his last puppy booster shot. He has graduated from the little tabletop scale to the big floor scale, as he now weighs 30.5 lb. That's twice what he weighed when we got him. We also made appointments for his pre-anesthesia blood workup and for the surgery, which will combine neutering and repairing his umbilical hernia. He's almost four months old, meaning that Los Angeles County wants him licensed soon. He'll need his rabies vaccination certificate and his neutering certificate to get his license.

The trip to the vet and the vaccination really wore Gordo out, coming as they did on the heels of the growth spurt. He spent most of the day sleeping, only reviving after dinner. By bedtime he was his usual perky self, racing around the back yard and harassing his beach ball.

Forget-Me-Not Shawl

2008-08-12T22:01:00.001-07:00

Forget-Me-Not Shawl
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's the latest photo of my Forget-Me-Not Shawl. The pattern, like the yarn, is from Elann. The yarn is a fingering weight yarn made from soybeans. They use what's left from making tofu, which is, based on the recommended acid dyes, protein. This yarn only comes in the cream color you see here. It's intended as a base yarn for hand dyeing. I really like this yarn and I've ordered a bag (ten skeins) of it for another lace project.

I've finished 114 rows, comprising the setup and three repeats of the first pattern. I'm going to add another repeat of this pattern before going on to the three repeats of the second pattern. I'm adding the repeat because the shawl is 66" wide when made with six repeats and I'm making it for someone who is taller than average and would look better in a larger version. The original six-repeat version calls for five skeins of yarn. I bought six and I think that's exactly how much I'll need for the seven-repeat version. However, if I'm wrong it'll be OK, since I bought the additional bag.

Edited to add: According to the triangular shawl progress calculator, I'm about 30% done. The person I was making this for expressed a burning passion for brighter colors, so this shawl has a new recipient. She's shorter and more slender than is the original recipient, so I'm knitting it to the pattern, not larger.

Gordo helps me by grabbing any piece of the shawl or yarn he can reach and pulling on it. His long puppy canines are very good at snagging the yarn. Fortunately, I'm fairly quick and he doesn't get very far with it. So far all the snags have smoothed out very nicely. I'm glad it's resilient yarn in fingering weight and not a more delicate fiber in lace weight.

Gordo and the Purple Hippo Squeakie

2008-08-05T20:11:00.001-07:00

Gordo
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's Gordo, three months and four days old. He weighs 22 lb and is a lot taller. Notice that the tail, legs, and nose have grown quite a bit. He won't fit through a couple of his favorite shortcuts any more, which surprises him.

He's got a lovely nature, very amiable, and is a joy to have around. He's figured out the house-training business completely. He's an intelligent little fellow and has picked up several commands. He has a burning passion for shoelaces but no longer unties my husband's laces, after a few admonitions. However, my friend Pat's laces are fair game.

We took him over for his next-to-last puppy shot today. It doesn't seem to have slowed him down a bit. He's been bouncing around all afternoon, except for an hour or so. I went out to run a few errands and he went into his crate for a nap. Amazing how a short nap will re-energize a puppy. When I got home, he was ready to go for another four or five hours.

The sun has set now and so has the puppy. He's definitely diurnal. Perhaps puppies run on sunlight and puppy kibble....

A Little Explanation About Collies

2008-07-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

This whole collie story is kind of complicated and now that we finally have our collie, I can set the story down in an orderly way. There are five collies involved, all sable and white or sable merle and white, and all male.

The first collie was the rough-coated collie puppy who died shortly after he was born, about two months ago. I mentioned him here before.

The second collie was Dakota, the three-year-old rough male who had decided he didn't like going to dog shows. His breeder decided to try one more show season to finish his championship in the conformation ring (he was halfway there already). However, it took her almost a month to decide this, while we waited in Palm Desert in a very hot June. On the other hand, we were there to have company from New Jersey that we wouldn't have had in Lancaster.

The third collie, from the second breeder, in Simi Valley, was another rough puppy, but the breeder's daughter decided she wanted him if he was of good enough quality. She's married to another collie breeder in the Midwest. He was, so off he went.

The fourth collie was a two-year-old rough male with an overbite and a bit of a history. He, however, developed collie nose and the breeder decided to give him to a friend who had known him for some time. She didn't feel comfortable about him coming to me in the desert, as she couldn't give her usual guarantees of good health.

So, after deciding that I didn't really want a puppy, even though they're precious and adorable, and even after preferring rough-coated collies (like Lassie), I changed my mind yet again and ended up with the fifth collie, a smooth-coated puppy. We've had him for nine days. He's grown so much you can see the difference from day to day. He's very smart and is figuring out the house-training business very well. We just love him.

Gordo Comes Home

2008-07-11T17:51:00.001-07:00

gordo10
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

This is Gordo, my new puppy. He's a smooth-coated collie and is 10.5 weeks old. He's a little sweetheart and we just love him. He weighs 15.2 lb, which is about a fifth of his adult weight.

He came yesterday and has made himself quite at home. He spends a fair amount of the day sleeping, naturally. He keeps me running, I tell you.

The wire in the foreground is the ground wire for the electrical panel we added on when we installed an emergency generator. The generator burns natural gas (or propane) and will run almost everything in the house.

The escrow closed on my mom's house, a week ago. That's a real weight off my shoulders, although in a way I was very sorry to see it sold. They wanted to do an EFT, Electronic Funds Transfer, but I refused that option. I wanted to hold the check in my hands, not just see an account balance change.

I spent a little money on yarn to celebrate the sale. I'd take some photos, but Gordo is a little unreliable around yarn. Actually, he's quite reliable, but I don't like what I can rely on him to do, which is to put it in his mouth, carry it around triumphantly, and then lie down and chew on it. That's bad for the yarn and, if he swallows it, possibly worse for the puppy.

Here's Dakota

2008-06-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is Dakota, the collie that is coming to live with us fairly soon. Isn't he handsome?

Sad Puppy News & Good Collie News

2008-05-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry to have to tell you that a sable and white male puppy was born as part of the litter I was talking about, but he was very small and didn't breathe right and died within a day of his birth. The other five puppies were all, every one, female. I'd never even seen this puppy and I didn't hear about his death until two days later, but I just feel so terrible I can't find words to describe it. I think all the (human) deaths in the family have made me really sensitive on the subject.

Anyway, the breeder asked me again if we really had to have a puppy, not an older dog. We talked it over and I called her back to discuss the matter. She has a lovely (six points toward a championship in the conformation ring) sable merle and white rough-coated male collie she's looking for a home for. He's three years old and, she says, an absolute sweetie who would love to be the only dog of doting owners. He's been lying around her house, being adorable but not earning his keep, because he retired himself from the show ring after deciding that he absolutely did not like dog shows any more at all whatsoever. Part of the deal is that we'll keep him unaltered for a while, in case she decides she wants to use him in her breeding program. As soon as the breeder can get away from the puppies (she's having to supplement their feeding, as the dam didn't have enough milk), she'll bring him over and make sure we all like each other. Then he's ours.

And--I'm crossing my fingers here--it appears we've sold my mother's house. As soon as I sign the paperwork that's coming tomorrow and get it back (what would we do without Fedex?), the house goes into escrow. It's an FHA loan, too, which means a forty-five day escrow. Now you and I both know that houses can fall out of escrow for a zillion reasons, but I think we can safely let ourselves be a little optimistic here.

Hot Puppy Love

2008-04-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Have I got news! I talked to the Collie Club of America representative in Hesperia (less than an hour east of Lancaster) and one of her dams is going to have five puppies on Cinco de Mayo. As soon as she knows what they are she'll give me a call. If there's a sable and white male, he's mine, all mine! OK, ours, all ours!

His name will be Gordo, named after Charles Gordon "Gordo" Fullerton, NASA astronaut and now a Dryden research test pilot. He and his wife live two streets over from us and they have also had collies. The previous two collies were named after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Before that, I was using names from "Macbeth".

If we don't get a sable and white male from that litter, her friend has a sable dam about to have puppies, so there's a second chance. And the third chance is the representative's second dam.

I talked to her for about half an hour and gave her several references. One of them, Sheri Moss, is the top gun in working collies. Another, the breeder I got Donal and Malcolm from, is a good friend of the representative. That was a real relief to both of us. Good, careful breeders don't like to send their babies home with just anyone, you know. I was all prepared with even more references, like vets, but it's OK.

I'm so excited. I can hardly wait.

I've Got the Blahs

2008-04-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

As the title says, I've got the blahs. I'm not knitting, I'm not baking, and I didn't even take my recyclables out for today's pickup.

It occurs to me, however, that I'm not baking because I don't really like lean breads that have been baked in such a hot oven that they have little charred spots on the crust. That is to say, artisan bread. I mean, I'm not even that wild about baguettes (although I'll make an exception for several baguette sandwiches I've had in my life--jambon in Paris, brie and onion in Snowmass, and Serrano ham and avocado in Santiago, Chile). But that's what I've been trying to bake. Or not.

Meanwhile, I've got a Tupperware bowl full of bread dough out in my casita fridge. I'm afraid to throw it away. I know it's not going to ooze out of the bin and chase me around the kitchen, but I saw "The Blob" at an impressionable age....

No, I think it's time to try sourdough. A friend from afca has sent me starters, so I'm all set. Yes, sourdough is a lean bread (flour, water, salt, yeast in the form of starter), but it's a lot different from baguettes. It doesn't go stale in four hours, for example.

Just think of me when you hear a news story that starts "A retired NASA engineer in Palm Desert was found smothered by bread dough", OK?

Late Spring Is Here

2008-04-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

It's late spring, maybe early summer, here in the Coachella Valley. The jasmine (which is think is Carolina jessamine; it's not star jasmine) is covered with fragrant blooms and the white gardenias are blooming robustly. We have a jasmine vine out by the outer door (that opens into the courtyard) and another by the front door, so visitors are greeted with sweetness.

It's been fairly cool here, in the 80's, until yesterday. Today the high is predicted to be 102° and we've had the a/c on since lunch. I just hope it'll cool down enough to open the windows at bedtime. I'd rather sleep with open windows than with the a/c.

The struggle with the halogen reading lamp is finally over. The first bulbs I bought were the right shape and voltage, but the base pins were too wide. I don't like bayonet mount bulbs anyway and this didn't make me like them any better. I put my husband to work combing the Web to find the right bulb. First, though, we measured the pins carefully. He not only came up with them but found them for $2 each. Great deal, except the site had a minimum $10 S&H fee. So he ordered two of them. That brought the price down to about what the supermarket charges.

I stole the replacement halogen reading lamp he'd bought as a stop gap. It wasn't a great substitute, because the arm is shorter than the original one and it only has an on-off switch, not a dimmer. These made it not very good as a bed-side lamp. However, they're not a problem for a chair-side lamp, so it's now perched right beside the chair in my office. I expect it to be a great knitting lamp.

A Death In Our Family

2008-03-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

My much beloved father-in-law passed away, peacefully and painlessly, at about 5:00 am today. He was the last of our four parents and his death brings back all the pain of the other deaths, as well as its own pain.

He was a wonderful, kind, loving, intelligent man and he'll be sorely missed by his family.

One Fewer of the Greatest Generation Soon, Apparently

2008-03-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

We got a call from my husband's sister-in-law in Iowa. His father, at 96, is doing very poorly and may not last through the night. This will be the last of our parents to die.

I've been struggling with the first anniversary of my mother's death, too. I may not be here much for a while.

More Lace Yarn

2008-03-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

This is all Knit Picks lace weight yarn. It's very inexpensive compared to a lot of others. This is heathery yarn and the colors are a bit light. The skein in the middle is actually very greeny-gray and the other two skeins are darker. I have twelve skeins of this, or at least twenty-four shawls.

This is Knit Pick merino lace weight. It's hand dyed (but not hand-painted, which is an important distinction). It's a very nice yarn and I like some of the colors very much. For some reason, totally unknown to me, I have thirty-eight skeins of this. I had forty, but I knitted the Angel Lace Shawl from two of them.

This is the Knit Picks 70% alpaca, 30% silk lace weight yarn. It's finer than the all-merino yarn above it. It makes a very pretty scarf, like the Forest Canopy Scarf I knitted from two skeins of this in turquoises. I currently have eighteen skeins of this.

I also have four skeins of a beautiful teal alpaca heather lace weight from Knit Picks. And I have four skeins (100 g, 880 yd) of their lace weight merino Bare, in natural.

I probably have more Knit Picks lace weight yarn than I really need.

Here's the lace weight yarn bin. It's a twelve-gallon bin from Costco and except for the apricot cotton at the back, the tangerine skein center front, the alpaca in the left corner, and the hand-painted Morehouse Farms merino in the bag and to its right, this entire bin is filled with Knit Picks lace-weight yarn.

I'm considering making about half of it available for trade or purchase on Ravelry. I've already sold about twenty skeins of yarn there. If anyone sees anything they'd like here, let me know.

The First of the Burst

2008-03-13T16:41:00.001-07:00

DSC01096
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

This is the Elann Baby Lace yarn that starting my buying binge. The photo is a little fuzzy, but I'll go back and correct that . I bought four balls of each color. The balls have 663 yd, meaning that there's over half a shawl per ball. I just bought ten shawls, at least.

I also found my camera, as is exceptionally obvious. I'd filled up the memory card and had to download all the photos on it to CD-ROM before I could take any photos. I forgot my other memory cards and will have to get them when we run back up to Lancaster.

Down In The Low Desert

2008-03-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

We got back to Palm Desert a week ago and it's been unseasonably warm here. It was 85° today. The lemon and the clementine are absolutely covered with buds and blossoms and that whole corner of the back yard smells heavenly. The clementine is also covered with orange fruit, but they've been on the tree too long and they're kind of dry. The lemon, which did poorly after the hard freeze, has exactly two lemons on it. I expect a lot more this year.

I've got three shawls and a scarf to block and about a dozen boxes of books to put away and I've been buying lace yarn and fingering weight yarn and Aran weight yarn. I don't know quite how it happened, but I bought four skeins of five different Elann Baby Lace colors. That's at least ten shawls. That wouldn't be so bad, except that the twenty new skeins are sitting on a twelve-gallon bin full of lace yarn and there's six skeins of Zephyr Wool-Silk (three shawls) on the way. I also bought three shawl patterns to go with the Zephyr. All I have to do is hold off from starting another shawl before I get the blocking and unpacking undone. That may be very difficult as knitting shawls is sort of addictive.

I got a copy holder from Office Depot to hold the lace charts. I've been fiddling around with markers and correction tape and magnets. Right now I think I like the copy holder best for knitting here, particularly on long repeats. I think I prefer highlighter pens and multiple copies (a lace book, to use the proper name) for shorter repeats.

The repeat on the Dramatic Shawl is 80 rows, for example, and the copy holder really works well. I've just finished the half-way row in the third repeat. Photos will follow as soon as I find my camera. I know it's here someplace and I think it's in a knitting bag. I'll also take photos of all the lace weight yarn on hand.

Two Projects: One Done and One Frogged Back to the Initial Slip Knot

2008-03-04T17:27:00.001-08:00

The finished project is the Faina's Scarf, which I've finished knitting. I still have to wash it and put a fringe on it. It's a difficult color to photograph well, so I'll wait for daylight as soon as it's done.

The Project that got frogged back to the initial slip knots was the Dramatic Stole. This was going to have five panels taken from the Faina's Scarf pattern, connected with large panels of Rayon Bouclé and edged and fringed with Incredible ribbon yarn. However, the bamboo yarn used for the patterned panels demonstrated its propensity to sagging and stretching after only two panels were finished. Here's a photo of one of them:

Yesterday I pulled back the seed stitch border and bind-off on one of the panels and started to knit more of pattern, but I just couldn't get the chart and the knitting to agree. I knitted about a quarter of the pattern three times and the pattern just was not working. The diagonals weren't, mostly. So I decided that I'd screwed up the pattern when I knitted the original panels. There was nothing to do but to frog them both completely, which I did. Then I discovered I had the chart upside down and there was nothing wrong with my knitting.

This morning I finished loading the van and we drove down to Palm Desert. Mostly I loaded yarn and clothes, as my friend Pat and her husband had taken the heavier stuff, like books and kitchen things, down on Sunday. I've got the van about half empty already and I should be knitting some Drama tomorrow. I'm too tired to wrestle with it today, after making such a dumb mistake yesterday.

I just love my Palm Desert house. It's so bright and cheery that it makes me very happy to walk though it. I don't know quite where all the yarn is going to go. I keep looking at the walk-in closet in the casita, but I'm trying hard to keep the guest room just for guests and not use it for hobby materials storage.

To make the storage problem worse, I mostly knit lace shawls and scarves. Neither project uses much yarn, so finishing one up doesn't even make a dent in my yarn stash.

Library Dedication

2008-02-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

On 2 February the Friends of the Lancaster Library dedicated their bookstore within the library to my mother's memory. Here's the photo of her, a small plaque explaining why, and the official Los Angeles County Library System sign.

This was at the annual meeting and they also installed their officers and had a great speaker, a local author who has sold one of his books to be a movie. A lot of my mom's friends and fellow volunteers were there and everyone said wonderful things about my mom, even the speaker who had only met her once, some years ago, and had remembered her very well for her efficiency and her kindness. He writes a column in the local newspaper and, it turns out, mentioned my mom in his column after the dedication. I haven't seen it yet, but one of the volunteers saved it for me and is going to drop it by later today.

I said a few words about her love of reading and of books and how important the volunteers and the library were to her. Everyone seemed to like what I said and they laughed at my little jokes and nodded in agreement with what I said.

Here's a close-up of the official sign, made to match all the other official signs throughout the entire county system:

And here's the photo of my mom, taken at an angle so that the flash wouldn't reflect off the glass and ruin the picture:
Isn't that a pretty frame that they picked out? I'm very impressed with it.

Another Finished Lace Shawl

2008-02-22T18:53:00.000-08:00

Here it is, the beautiful Angel Lace Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark. It's knitted from two skeins of KnitPicks Gossamer in Caribbean. This yarn is 100% merino wool, 440 yd (a quarter of a mile) per 50-gram skein. This shawl used almost exactly two skeins, half a mile; I don't think there's more than two yards left over. As I was binding off, I was starting to wonder if I'd make it. Not that it would have been the end of the world or anything, since I have another half a mile in the same dye lot. It just would have been a nuisance.

In this photo the texture of the lace is a lot easier to see. Of course, that will all vanish with blocking, but it's pretty. It's just that to retain it, I'd have to make the shawl about twice as large and never wash it. That's not practical.

I'll get it blocked in the next couple of weeks, along with the two other shawls that are waiting to be blocked, and put up photos of all three of them in their final glory. Two of them are for me, the only ones I've kept of the eight lace shawls I've knitted so far. I hadn't realized I'd given so many away until I just counted them up right now.

Here are two close-up photos, showing the angels and their wings. They also show the colors of the yarn.

I've had the pattern and the yarn for a while, although they weren't intended for each other. What inspired me to get both out and start knitting was seeing a beautiful version, knitted in variegated blues, on Wendy's site. You can see it here, just as I did. In other words, it's all Wendy's fault.

I looked at that and said to myself, "Self, you've got that pattern and you've got an entire bin of lace-weight yarn, so what's stopping you?" My self replied "Nothing, but it won't look just like that because there's no yarn just like that in the bin." (My self is fond of pointing out the obvious.) So I picked out an interesting yarn and started knitting. I pulled the first version back because I had the wrong size needles, but it still went very quickly. I was going to give it to a friend, but decided to keep it for myself instead. I'm not sure how fond the friend is of chartreuse, which is a color about which most people have strong opinions

De Source For Denise

2008-02-21T12:56:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that I use Denise needles, particularly for Moebius scarves, and really like them. In all my tidying up and sorting of needles, I discovered that I've lost one US 11 tip. I've looked in every project bag, turned my knitting accessories bin upside down, and moved furniture looking for this tip. It's gone.

When I took Cat Bordhi's suggestion and bought the Denise needles and long cables for Moebius scarves, I looked all over the net and asked several people for recommendations. Based on this, I bought everything Denise made from The Patchwork Frog all at once. I got the basic set, the companion cable set, the three long cables, and the US 15 and 19 tips. The transaction was quick and graceful and the shipping was practically instantaneous (although this wasn't exactly surprising, as we're on opposite sides of Los Angeles County). The needles were all I expected and more and everyone was happy.

Then I lost the tip. The Denise company doesn't sell the individual pairs of tips separately, I discovered. What to do? Remembering how well the original purchase had gone, I sent a forlorn yet hopeful e-mail to The Patchwork Frog. She replied immediately, offering to take a pair of tips out of one of the sets she had in stock and send it to me, while ordering a replacement from the company. Doing this means that she now has a set in stock that she can't sell until the replacement tips arrive. She's willing to do that, rather than make me wait for the replacement tips to get to her.

That's a lot of stock to tie up for a $4 pair of tips and she doesn't know me at all. We had one transaction ages ago, is all. Yet she's more than willing to go to such lengths for me. Folks, this is what customer service is all about. Let's reward it and shop at The Patchwork Frog.

I'm just a customer, by the way, and have no other relationship with her. She, I, and over nine million people live in this county, so we're not what anyone would call neighbors, even. I've never met her in person and probably never will, but I recommend her highly.

Sorting Needles

2008-02-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

I've been tidying up my rolling bin full of knitting needles and other accessories. I got pretty much everything but the needles done and finally gave in to the inevitable. I have too many needles. I had too many before my mom died and I inherited hers. I'll probably still buy more needles for specific projects.

Among the circular needles my mom had were two with metal cables. Fans of Elizabeth Zimmerman may recall her writing about the first time she saw and, briefly, used a circular needle. That needle had a braided metal cable, as I recall, and one strand of the braid had broken and would snag the yarn, but still the needle was regarded as a wonderful tool that EZ wanted. My mom's two needles are in extremely good condition, a beautiful bit of knitting history.

She also had some 14" plastic single-point needles in US 2 or 3, which probably date from the '40s. A lot of knitting back then used much lighter yarns and much higher stitch counts than we do now. I think of worsted weight as being pretty standard for sweaters, but then it was sport or fingering weight.

She kept up with the times, though. There are a lot of larger needles, including circulars. I remember using a one-piece nylon circular in about a US 13 to knit a top-down raglan sweater in coral Spinnerin Frostlon. It had a vee neck and was a perfect color match to a straight skirt I had. That was when I was in high school. I also remember knitting a lace shell in avocado at about the same time.

My mom knitted a lot of slippers from a pattern popular in the '50s. They used a US10½ needle and two strands of worsted weight yarn in the adult size. Smaller sizes used lighter yarn and smaller needles. They were really simple and I, too, knitted a fair number of them. I could probably reconstruct the pattern without much effort. Anyway, she still had three or four pairs of 10-inch US 10½ needles, the ones we used for these.

Obviously there's been a lot of nostalgia involved in this needle sorting. It's been thirteen months since she died and I still miss her acutely. The probate closed last week, incidentally. It had been complicated by one particular asset that we had a little trouble getting transferred or it would have been done last year.

Another reason I have too many needles is that I have a personal quirk that I like to have complete sets of things that come in sets. I bought the larger tips and longer cables that weren't included in the KnitPicks Options and Harmony sets, for example, and I'll probably finish out the 16" circular needle set one of these days (I'm missing US 6, 7, and 9, which were out of stock earlier). I also really like sets that come with nifty storage systems for all the components, like the Options interchangeable circular needles. Fortunately my quirk is controllable and I can limit it to inexpensive sets. About the most expensive knitting set I have is the Weldon's Magazine facsimile set, all twelve volumes of it, and I bought at least half of those as Interweave Press brought them out.

The Dramatic Stole Is On My Mind

2008-02-11T15:54:00.000-08:00

It's kept me awake a couple of nights, fretting about it. My friend J. picked up some Lion Brand Incredible yarn in the Rainbow colorway when our local Hancock Fabrics closed up. She wanted a Dramatic Stole and she's exactly the right person to wear one. She's tall and carries herself beautifully. Drama becomes her.

I, being a knitter who is always looking for projects, said I knit a dramatic stole for her and we went to the new LYS and picked out some Blue Heron Rayon Loop in Blueberry, which is a very nice boucle. I haven't knitted much boucle, so this promised to be an interesting experience. And the colors are so luscious. Boucle knits up into a unique fabric in garter stitch. It's too loopy to knit into fancy stitches, as they won't show.

For a textural contrast, we chose Yarn Place Vivace (bamboo) in Purple Rain. Believe the promise of the yarn in the skein, as you pick it up and feel its soft slinkiness. It truly is soft and it has that wonderful heavy drape of rayon and silk. It also holds a stitch nicely.

So here's the total collection.

My first thought was symmetric stripes in random widths starting at the center back, sort of like the spreading zone in the middle of the Atlantic. I tried that, starting with the Vivace and following with the Rayon Loop, but it really didn't work. The Vivace needed more of a pattern and the gauges were just too different.

Even that little bit of knitting with bamboo yarn had kind of hooked me, so I'd gone back to my LYS and picked up three balls of SWTC Bamboo, which is DK weight, and restarted Faina's Scarf[1]. I got about halfway though it and had an idea for the Dramatic Stole. I decided to make lace panels in the Faina's Scarf pattern in Vivace and join them with garter-stitch panels in the Rayon Loop. I've knitted two lace panels. The panels are about 11" by 22", although I can change the size a fair amount.

Here's a close-up of one of the panels. I should point out that this pattern is copyright Fibertrends, so I won't be showing the whole thing in loving detail or anything.

And here's a close-up of the other.

Chevrons and diamonds, to summarize. You can probably just see that there's a chain selvedge on the side of the panel. I'm going to knit a Rayon Loop panel, picking up the selvedge stitches, to join these panels. There will be five lace panels and six boucle panels. Then I'll edge the whole thing with Incredible, in a knitted-on i-cord, and add the Incredible fringe. That should be dramatic enough, even for her.

[1] More about the Faina's Scarf soon. I need to take photos in good light because the yarn is all blues and lavender, which doesn't photograph well in poor light. The colors are beautiful and I want them to show up in all their glory.

Another New Scarf

2008-02-03T13:28:00.001-08:00

I started another quick scarf, after buying three balls of SWTC Bamboo yarn from my LYS. This isn't a very good photo, partly because the yarn is very shiny (and soft) and partly because it's been cloudy here. These are also difficult colors for the digital camera. The yarn is variegated from a light lavender to a medium teal via light green blue. The colors are actually very pretty and not all faded out, the way they look in both these photos.

The colors are a little better here. The pattern is Faina's Scarf, from Fibertrends. This is at the end of the first chart, the increase at one end.

See the pretty seed stitch border? it's also got a slipped-stitch selvedge that is visible along the left side. While this is lace, it's not very lacy, which sounds contradictory, but isn't. I started this scarf once before in red Lion Brand Microspun, which is very nice yarn, but was way too heavy for this scarf. The Bamboo, which is DK weight, is really a bit too heavy, too, but it's a lot closer. The pattern wanted sport weight, but I didn't have anything really pretty in sport weight.

I'm actually almost done with the second body repeat, but it's too cloudy to get a better photo. As soon as it clears up I'll snap a photo to show it off in its true colors.

Starting Clapotis Again

2008-01-28T16:56:00.000-08:00

For the third time I've finished the increase section of Clapotis. The yarn is holding up well, better than I am. I'm not very happy with the edges on this, but I keep telling myself no one will notice. For once, I think that's an accurate assessment. Usually it's just trying to avoid pulling the whole thing back and starting over.

Here's the first photo, of the set-up and increase sections. No dropped stitches yet (the first one will be in six rows). I've got twelve pattern repeats, instead of the called-for sixteen. The version I just pulled back had all sixteen but it was going to be too wide for the amount of yarn I have.

Here's a close-up photo showing the twisted stitches on each side of the soon-to-be dropped stitches. These twisted stitches (knit through the back loop) are a little firmer than the regular knit stitch and will help the piece hold its shape.

And here's a photo of what happened when I unpinned the tip of the triangle. It's stockinette stitch and it promptly rolled itself up. Dropping the stitches reduces the rolling quite a bit, though.

Rain, Rain, Hang Around

2008-01-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

It's been raining all evening, a slow, steady rain. I hope this is what they're getting in the burned off areas, as it's not heavy enough to get the hillsides moving. I think Los Angeles has had about an inch of rain and we've had a quarter or a third of an inch.

It's been snowing heavily at the Grapevine since 1100, according to the TV reporters, and I-5 is quite firmly closed in both directions. The CHP was running escorts for a while, but as the snowfall got heavier and the day wore on they gave that up and shut the whole thing down. Those big heavy tractor-trailers that fill half the road were slipping and sliding and who knows what the people in SUVs were doing.

The Grapevine is at about 4200' and the snow level is somewhat below that. We're at 2356' and it's 40°F here and dropping. This is the kind of night when you go to sleep to the pitter-patter of rain on the roof and wake up to a very quiet neighborhood, with every sound hushed by the snow on the ground. I used to like snow days when I worked, but not any more. I ran all my errands early this week, partly in the hope that doing so would stave off the snow. It's sort of like washing the car to get it to rain, I guess, only backward.

I've finished all the setup and increase rows on Clapotis and actually dropped the first stitch, which is a little short ladder. As soon as I get enough stitches dropped to make it interesting, I'll put up a photo. Right now it just looks like a variegated triangle in stockinette stitch. I have great hopes for it, but I have to admit it's a little unimpressive so far.

Rain and Snow and Knitting

2008-01-21T12:04:00.000-08:00

The weather predictors are really confused about what's going to happen here the next week or so. First they were predicting rain today and tomorrow, with snow maybe down as low as 2000 ft on Thursday (Lancaster is at 2360 or so), then they made that prediction kind of blurry because it looked like a cut-off low (occluded front being the other name for the phenomenon). Now they're saying something about part of it spinning off and coming here, with the rest to follow more slowly. I hardly know what to expect.

However, I can say that it's chilly and cloudy and windy here today. I went out and brought three loads of firewood around from the far side of the house onto the patio, so that I won't have to go out into the rain for it. I also checked the rain gauge to be sure it was clean and empty.

I'm ready. Let water fall out of the sky, I'll be sitting in front of a nice fire, knitting, reading Usenet, and surfing blogs. This is the SoCal version of real winter weather, like the rest of the country has been having.

Edited to add : If you've got markers on your knitting, you'll spend a lot less time getting up to retrieve the bouncy little rascals if you slip them purlwise instead of knitwise. I'm fond of the markers shaped like little rubber o-rings and it's amazing how far they can bounce after an energetic launch. I'm re-knitting my Clapotis, from scarf size to wrap size, meaning I have seventeen markers, one every six stitches.

Progress

2008-01-16T19:10:00.001-08:00

Here's the latest picture of my Angel Lace Shawl. I've added one more pattern motif repeat (ten rows) since I snapped this. Just for orientation, the center top of the shawl is at the center top of the photo. In this photo I had about a quarter of the first ball of yarn left, meaning I was about 3/8ths done.

Another photo of the shawl, from slightly further back. In this photo the center of the top of the shawl is slightly left of the bottom of the photo. The tip of the triangle is at the upper right of the photo. I need a longer cable on my circular needle to lay the shawl out in its proper shape.

Now it may seem that I haven't made much progress on my shawl since I last reported and I really haven't. I had something else to do. My dear niece, The Best Niece In The World or TBNITW (not that I'm biased or anything), sent me some beautiful hand-painted rayon chenille yarn. This part of it hadn't traveled well and I hadn't treated it carefully enough when I took it out of the box and looked at it. Chenille has so much twist in it that this yarn had really snarled itself up, with only a little help. So I found an end and untangled. And untangled. And untangled.

Isn't this beautiful hand-painted yarn? The colors remind me very much of turquoise and amethyst. I have no idea what I'm going to knit from it, except that it needs to be knit fairly firmly in a pattern stitch to prevent worming. Here's a closer look.

And here it is, untangled and wound into a nice firm ball slightly bigger than a baseball.

TBNITW sent more than just one kind of hand-painted chenille, so I'll share more photos as soon as I take them. She has wonderful taste, but what else would you expect from TBNITW?

So Quiet!

2008-01-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

You wouldn't believe how long it takes to accumulate enough dirty dishes to run the new dishwasher with a clear conscience when there's only two people and Stouffer's meals are not uncommon. I finally managed to gather together six bowls, three plates, a bunch of flat ware, and the glass carousel from my microwave, plus the two Stouffer's trays, and call it a light load.

Well, the new dishwasher is a real success. It's so quiet, which is really important because our family room, where we actually live, and our kitchen are really just one big room. Running the previous dishwasher meant turning up the TV and speaking more loudly. Not so with the new one. It's rated at 47 db and they mean it. When it was being installed, I could see all the soundproofing wrapping around the tub. Impressive.

The dishes got nice and clean, including the microwave carousel that had baked-on macaroni and cheese (yes, Stouffer's). The dishwasher also has all kinds of fancy gadgets to hold stuff and "power scour" dirty pans, but I haven't tried them out yet. I guess I need to do some real cooking to test out all the features.

If anyone wonders, it's a Whirlpool GU2700, in black, from Lowe's. I have a similar dishwasher from GE in my Palm Desert house, installed by the builder. It's not the Profile, but the next best. I like it, too. I just like Whirlpool better.

I'm still knitting away on my Angel Lace Shawl. I've gotten beyond the point I'd reached on the US 5 needles. I'd pop in a photo but it doesn't look any different, really. Maybe a bit bigger, but that's about all.

Great Knitting Site

2008-01-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

I was looking around the web for how to do the Portuguese purl, which I'd seen mentioned a while ago on someone's blog, and I found a great knitting site. It's KnittingHelp.com and it has an incredible number of instructional knitting videos. There are well over a hundred knitting videos, ranging from casting on to short rows and turning heels. There are also free patterns for a variety of projects. The knitter who created this site, Amy Finlay, also has a DVD that has all the site videos on it.

I found the Portuguese purl stitch on YouTube and it's not something I intend to switch to. I'm perfectly happy being a right-handed yarn thrower, so the Portuguese purl doesn't offer me any advantage.

A Finished Lace Shawl, A Re-Started Lace Shawl

2008-01-07T15:45:00.000-08:00

I finished my Flower Lace Shawl two days ago. That is to say, I finished knitting it. I haven't woven in the ends yet. Once I do, I'll wash and block it. I'm thinking of taking it down to Palm Desert to block because I have a big, out of the way casita bedroom that's just perfect for blocking. It has a ceiling fan to speed drying, too.

Here's a close-up of the rolling border. The points, which will be pinned out flat in the blocking, are quite visible. Since the bind off is completely rolled up and invisible, I'll just say that I did a very even, uniform bind off that I'm very proud of. I did it all in one sitting, beginning to end, which contributed to the evenness. The bind off I use on almost everything (not scarves in bulky yarn, though) is the Flexible Bind Off that Cat Bordhi and Evelyn Clark recommend. It's very easy (k1, *k1, slip the left needle into the front of the two stitches and knit together, repeat from * to the end of the row). It's flexible, as the name promises, and attractive.

And here's a close-up showing the Flower Motif.

This is the Angel Lace Shawl. I'd started it on US4 needles (the first version was the subject of a posting here, with photos). However, I felt that the fabric was just too tight at that gauge, so I switched to US 6 needles. Here's where I've gotten back to. The stitch marker shows where the body motifs start. These triangular shawls are typically knit with the pattern set-up, multiple repeats of the body motifs, and an edging. In this pattern, the first twenty rows are the set-up, the body motifs are ten stitches by ten rows, and the edging is sixteen rows deep.

Here's a close-up, showing the angel with wings. The head is just left of center.

When I picked this yarn out, I didn't realize that it had quite so much chartreuse or that the chartreuse was so vivid. It looks quite different in the skein. I've gotten used to it now and I like it, but when I was knitting the first version I was a little worried about it.

Edited to add that my new dishwasher gets installed tomorrow morning (Tuesday, 9 Jan). I'm ready for it to be here. Amazing how nice it is to put dirty dishes into the machine and get clean dishes out.

Rejoice, For That Which Was Lost Is Found

2008-01-04T10:27:00.000-08:00

My lace shawl book was shipped from Elann, so the inevitable happened. I found my copy.

This came at a good time, as I decided that my Angel Wings Shawl needs to be frogged and re-knit on larger needles. Right now I'm used US 4s, but I think I'll try 5s or 6s. I'll finish up the Floral Lace Shawl and then start over on the Angel Wings Shawl.

In The Absence Of The Pattern

2008-01-01T19:20:00.000-08:00

Since I can't finish my Floral Lace Shawl until the new copy of the pattern arrives, I decided to start another. I know I've got other projects I should be working on, but lace shawls are just plain addictive.

Here it is, Evelyn Clark's Angel Lace Shawl, knit in Knit Picks Gossamer in Caribbean, from my stash. It's the first time I've used this 100% merino lace weight yarn. I like it much more than I liked the KP Shimmer, probably because it's about twice the diameter. The Shimmer makes a beautiful sheer shawl but drives me crazy. The Gossamer is a lot easier for me to knit with.

In this photo I've finished the first chart (center back, twenty rows) and four repeats of the second chart (body pattern, ten rows). It may be that the colors in this yarn are a little too contrasty for lace, but I like them.

Here's a closer photo, where you may be able to see the angels' heads and wings:

This shawl is a lot solider than most of the other lace shawls I've knitted. I assume that it'll be warmer as a result, but I'm not sure it's going to stretch as much when blocked. I have a mile of this color lot, but I will probably only use two skeins, half a mile, 880 yd. The pattern calls for 550 yd, but the resulting shawl is only 28" by 56". That seems a little skosh to me, so I'll probably use both skeins and have my shawl come out a little larger.

As soon as the replacement pattern arrives I'll finish the Floral Lace Shawl. This time I'm going to measure both before and after blocking.

The Year Has Taken A Sudden Downturn

2007-12-31T16:57:00.000-08:00

I've already mentioned that I lost the book with the instructions for the Floral Lace Shawl I'm knitting.

The next thing to happen was that last night (Sunday) I loaded up my dishwasher just chock full of dirty dishes and flatware, turned it on, and all it did was make a funny noise. It's not pumping water in at the beginning of the wash cycle. I went over to Lowe's (after going to the local appliance dealer I've always dealt with and discovering that they only sell new appliances by special order and think I should go to Lowe's for just one item) and bought a new dishwasher. A fancy quiet dishwasher with adjustable top shelf and fold-down prongs, plus all sorts of hold-downs for stuff on the top shelf. I didn't get the old dishwasher fixed because it's about 25 years old and it's time to let go.

Now I'm wondering if these things come in threes and, if so, what's next.

I hope I didn't jinx myself by looking over the washer and dryer I'm considering. I think they'll be a reasonable height when stacked. On the other hand, there's a spiffy clothes-folding surface to put on top if they're side by side, as well as pedestals with drawers to hold all the laundry soap, fabric softener, etc. At extra cost, of course, as is the stacking kit, which I think is just a plastic square that fits down over the top of the washer, with depressions to hold the feet of the dryer.

On the other hand, it's our 37th wedding anniversary today

That's Silly

2007-12-30T17:07:00.001-08:00

I've been knitting away like crazy on my Floral Lace Shawl. I've finished the 18th repeat of the body pattern. After making a few measurements I decided that I'd only do one more repeat of the pattern. Rather than the last couple of pattern rows, I have to knit transition rows and the scalloped border. However, I can't find the book with the transition row and border patterns. I've looked everywhere for it. I threw away a stack of recyclable catalogs over a foot high and put about a dozen other knitting and cook books back in the bookcase.

My husband even helped me with this thrash, pulling out magazines and putting them aside for me. He also dragged the stack of stuff to the recycle bin. After about an hour of looking, he suggested that I just buy another copy. I went to Elann and did so. Now I'll probably find the first copy, albeit somewhere odd. In any event, the new one may be here by Friday.

Lace Shawls And Blocking

2007-12-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be interesting to show before and after blocking photos of the lace Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl, to show how much it stretches and how much flatter and lacier it looks after blocking.

This is the before photo:

And this is the after photo. See how much bigger the yarnovers are and how flat it is? It's a lot less dense and the shawl really grew.

I'm still working on the Floral Lace Shawl; I'm somewhere between 2/3rds and 4/5ths of the way to being done. That is to say, I'm nearly at the end of the fourth ball of yarn but I don't know whether I'm going to use five balls or six. I think I may have to go to the next longer cable (Knit Pick Options Harmony interchangeable circular needles) before I go much further. The current one is getting kind of crowded. I meant to measure the christening shawl before and after blocking, to help me estimate how big I wanted to make the current shawl, but I totally forgot. Since this shawl is for me, I'll probably use up all the yarn. I don't think there's much I can make with just one skein of it, as they're fairly small.

I mentioned the whatever I'm knitting for what's-her-name earlier. I'm sorry to say I seem to have mis-measured the gauge swatch and have to frog nearly six inches of 2x2 ribbing, 440 stitches per row on circular needles. It seems to have come out about 150% bigger than I thought it would. If I'd kept going, it was going to be the heaviest and warmest scarf knitted in the history of the world, including the Dr. Who scarves that are such perennial favorites. I'm going to abandon this for a while and make an entirely different whatever for someone else. Fortunately, I have enough ~~victims~~ friends and relatives in colder climates that finding someone else won't be too hard.

If you look here you can see the next lace shawl I'm going to knit (this won't be the next thing I knit, just the next shawl). I got the pattern in November, from Elann, and I've got several choices of yarn in my stash. I'm thinking that blue, rather like Wendy's, might be nice. I married into an entire family of blue-eyed Iowans, mostly with brown hair, so I buy a fair amount of yarn in colors that will look good on them. I've also got some lovely natural (cream) merino from Knit Picks in both lace and fingering weight, but I think a mildly variegated yarn will look really good in this pattern.

Baby Shower Time

2007-12-24T20:43:00.001-08:00

Saturday I went to a baby shower and took the Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl with me. It's going to South Dakota to wait until March, when my dear friend's first grandbaby will be born.

The Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl is knitted in Knit Picks Bare Merino/Silk Fingering Weight yarn from Sivia Harding's pattern. It's the second Diamond Fantasy Shawl I've knitted; the first was for my friend, the baby's grandmother.

This is a close-up to show off the diamonds.

This is a tassel I made with the same yarn, with a braided strand, to wrap the tissue-paper package. It's going to be a cat toy now that the shower is over. Pretty day, wasn't it? Calm, which matters in the cold-winter High Desert.

And here is the shadow of the shawl on my brick-on-sand sidewalk. I noticed the shadow as I was zipping back into the house to wrap the shawl, put on my shoes, and race to the shower.

The shower was a lot of fun and I even won a prize for guessing closest on how big mommy's waist was. The food was so good that I ate too much and could hardly bear to make dinner for my husband.

Holidays and Hurrying Around

2007-12-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

The holidays are upon us and my life has gotten a bit odd. It's not exactly because of the holidays, though. My friend Pat's daughter, the mother-to-be for whom I've been knitting, is here for Christmas. What she doesn't know, but her mom and I know, is that there's a surprise baby shower for her on Saturday. Pat and I have been racing around town, shopping, running various errands, and trying to decide on our shower presents.

I had no problem picking out a gift, as a long discussion of the excellence of the baby swing convinced me immediately that nothing else would do. When I showed Pat the one I'd selected from Amazon, she decided to send another item in the collection, too. After intense discussion, we decided to send them to her daughter's home, denying ourselves the chance to see them in real life. However, we did have the diaper bags (a two-bag set) sent here. I'll tuck the sheets and descriptions from Amazon into the respective bags and she'll have something to unwrap and be surprised by. This whole thing has consumed more time than I thought it could, mostly on selecting the proper color and pattern.

We also spent a day getting our new toilets installed. This house was built in 1972 and I, in my youth and foolishness, put in two Harvest Gold bathrooms. When we bought the first house in Palm Desert we had Kohler Wellworth low-flow toilets. These were the first low-flow toilets we'd seen and liked. The second Palm Desert house had them, too, and now our Lancaster house has them. In white. Plain, glowing white. I'm a quick learner. Next I'm going to replace the Harvest Gold lavatory sinks, rendering one of my bathrooms into a white bathroom (except for the gold tile around the shower). I'll still have the Harvest Gold bathtub, though. I understand they can be painted or powdercoated or something, for a lot less than they can be replaced.

To add insult to injury, my dishwasher is making an odd noise and not getting the dishes as clean as I'd like. It's the second dishwasher we've had since '72, so it's not as if we didn't get our money's worth out of it. However, the expensive soundproofed dishwasher in the Palm Desert house has spoiled me. I'm going to try to hold out on this for a while though. Ditto on the washer (which doesn't always seem to spin well enough) and the dryer (which seems to have lost some of the intermediate heat settings). They're both quite aged and I knew this day would come. I'd just hoped it wouldn't come for every appliance in the house all at once.

I've been knitting like a fiend, between all these digressions. I finished my BIL's scarf last night and the what-not for what's-her-name is coming along nicely. As soon as I finish that, I can go back to my brightly colored shawl.

There's an excellent chance that the probate for my mom's estate will close this month. There hasn't been much action on the house, as my realtor expected, but we hope to see more action in February.

An FO At Last

2007-12-13T17:13:00.001-08:00

I have finally finished my pretty Bigfoot Shawl from Wrapped In Comfort by Alison Jeppson Hyde. It's knitted in Knit Picks Gloss, which is a fingering-weight blend of 70% merino wool and 30% silk. This is a very robust yarn; I ended up re-knitting about three inches of this shawl about four times and the yarn stood up to it very well, looking just as good the last time I knitted it as it did the first.

The pattern called for three balls of Gloss but I used an extra three-quarters of a ball. This was the result of my decision to knit until the shawl was 16" long unstretched. At the end of the third ball the shawl was 16" long somewhat stretched, but that seemed just a little skosh to me, so I knitted on. The pattern calls for 16" in length, no other description, which is why I had two options. Of course, it was easy to decide to press on after three balls because I had, with my usual caution, bought an extra ball. This leaves me with more orphan balls that I probably need, but it avoids that nasty sinking feeling you get when you're out of yarn but not out of pattern.

Here's a not very good photo of the pattern, a variant of Fan and Feather. This is some of the part that got knitted four times. The yarn looks pretty good, with good stitch definition and shine, even after all that abuse. Knitting with black yarn can be a challenge, particularly for older eyes. I used the screen on my laptop to check my knitting.

So now I've got to block this circular shawl. That's going to be a first for me. I've looked around a little on the Web, as well as checking some books, for tips and hints. I have those rubber floor tiles I use for blocking, plus a zillion T pins and several tape measures. I'm not exactly sure how I should pin out the neckline. I mean, I know it's round, but what's the right diameter? I'm pretty sure this will become easy to see when I get right down to it.

So now all I've got left for my imperative Christmas knitting is a scarf made from Knit Picks Panache for my brother in law. This is such luscious yarn, 40% superfine alpaca, 20% cashmere, 20% silk, and 20% superfine merino. I just love knitting scarves from such luxurious fibers for my brother- and sister-in-law, both of whom I love dearly.

Here's a photo, one I've posted before, just to save readers the effort of paging back through previous posts to find it.

It's a little darker blue than this, not quite navy blue, though. The color is named Dusk.

And the last photo, just because I like the colors so much, is of the triangular shawl I'm knitting for myself. I won't be doing much with it until the blue scarf is done and the BIL and SIL scarves are on their way to Iowa.

This is very relaxing to knit. That may be because the pattern is quite straightforward and the colors are sort of unpredictable. I'd never dream of giving this shawl to anyone else because the colors are so vivid, even gaudy. And, of course, I have the option of frogging the whole thing back and knitting wristlets from it, more in accordance with the plan of the yarn's creator. It's sock yarn, but I don't knit socks.

One last item--I'm beginning to suspect that I may get a washer and dryer for Christmas. The washer doesn't always spin the clothes dry and the dryer seems to be stuck on really hot. We're going to go over to Lowe's and look at the Whirlpool front-loading washers and matching dryers. This isn't exactly what I was hoping Santa would bring me, but at least it's not coal.

What's New On The Knitting Front

2007-12-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start out with the knitting for the March baby, my dear friend's first grandbaby.

First is the christening shawl. Traditionally this is worn by the baby at the christening and then, decades later, by the bride at the baby's wedding. Well, the baby isn't a baby at the wedding, of course, but you know what I mean. We don't know whether the baby is a boy or a girl, so I have to write very generally until March.

This shawl, knitted from the Diamond Fantasy Shawl pattern, is finished, with the yarn ends woven in but not clipped. It needs to be washed and dressed (blocked, dressed--I use the terms interchangeably for lace; everything else gets blocked). I got a blocking wire set just for shawls and I think I'll use them for this shawl. The yarn (Knit Picks Bare merino and silk fingering weight) is very nice and I think it will block beautifully.

A close-up, to show the diamonds.

Next is hand-painted Ultra Superwash Merino in worsted weight, from Karen Jorden (sharing.etsy.com). She's one of my favorite dyers as she has a wonderful eye for bright colors.
This yarn (five skeins) was custom-dyed for the March baby. This green is one of the mother's favorite colors and it's safely neutral. I haven't decided on a pattern yet, but I'm considering a ripple afghan pattern. I could make another Argosy baby blanket, I suppose, but I feel as if I should try something new. Be adventurous or something. We'll see.

And here's a slightly lighter version of the same color, in fingering weight. We didn't want to make the two exactly the same. Too matchy-matchy. This will become a shawl for the baby's mother. Like the worsted weight, this is just beautiful yarn. I really look forward to knitting with them.

Now, some knitting for grown-ups in Iowa. This is the start of a scarf for my brother-in-law. It's Knit Picks Panache in Dusk (the alpaca, cashmere, silk, and superfine merino yarn is discontinued, I'm sorry to say). The pattern is the Yarn Harlot's One Line Hand-spun Scarf, which is beautiful indeed in hand-spun yarn, and pretty good in regular yarn.

And this is a close-up of the garter-stitch scarf, knitted in hand-painted brushed Suri alpaca, for my sister-in-law. This yarn is so light and ethereal, it's just amazing how warm it is. The scarf, which is about nine inches wide and over six feet long, took only one and a half balls of yarn.

Here's a bigger photo, showing a section of it. I think the colors are just beautiful and I was ever so slightly tempted to keep this beauty, except that I've never worn a scarf for warmth in my entire life. Instead, I've threatened my husband with a throw knitted from this yarn, to keep him warm. He's not sure if I'm serious or if I'm kidding. Neither am I.

And here's the ball of yarn. It's one of those yarns that you want to cuddle and pet the ball, because it's so soft and nice.

And finally we get to some yarn for me. This is Claudia's fingering weight merino, hand-painted in the Tropicana color way. Yes, the colors are as bright as they look in the photo. Most people use this yarn for socks. Not me. I have six skeins of it.

I'm making a triangular shawl with it. Here's a photo of about half of it. It's too big to lie flat on the needle cable, so I bunched half of it up and spread out the other half. Bright, isn't it?

Here's a close-up, showing the pattern.

And here's another, closer close-up.

This shawl is knitted in the flower motif from this book:

This is a wonderful book by an exceedingly talented designer. I have many of her lace shawl patterns from Fiber Trends and various magazines and books. This book shows how to knit a triangular shawl in four different motifs, either singly or combined, and add a scalloped edging.
With this book a knitter will understand triangular shawl construction and be able to go much further, designing original lace shawls with a wide variety of lace patterns. I highly recommend it.

Busy Day Yesterday

2007-12-06T17:54:00.000-08:00

I spent most of yesterday running around the Antelope Valley. My friend and I went down to Trader Joe's and bought a few things and then we went to my current favorite real supermarket and shopped until we couldn't get anything more in the cart. It wasn't terribly expensive, although we both hit the service deli. I love the service deli and would probably buy half a pound of everything they sell, if not more, if I didn't control myself. I'd bought a bunch of different breads at TJ's, so I didn't even rampage through the service bakery. I was so proud of my self control.

The one extravagance I bought was two quarts of heavy whipping cream and two big tubs of sour cream. I have an experiment in mind for these. I want to see if I can make butter from the sour cream, with or without the sweet cream. European butter is made from cultured (sour) cream and it has a richer, deeper taste than American butter made from sweet cream. So I'll be making a mess out in the kitchen experimenting. I'll probably end up baking bread, too, so I have something to put the butter on.

Then in the afternoon, I went to the doctor. My appointment was for 1415 and I was inside in only a few minutes. That was a relief because this practice specializes in pediatric and allergy medicine and children are seething pits of contagious disease. OK, that's an exaggeration, but ask any parent with a child in day care, pre-school, or grade school. Children may not all be good at sharing toys, but they're all wonderfully unselfish about sharing germs. That's not all bad, because childhood diseases can be a lot less harmful in childhood than in adulthood. Anyway, I was glad to get out of the waiting room.

It took a while to get through the visit, because they were really busy, but it turns out I have a sinus infection that I've probably had for over a month. Since I'd had it so long, I got antibiotics. I've forgotten the name and I'm too lazy to go look, but I have to say they are huge bright blue pills that are awesomely bitter. I hope there's a children's version that's better tasting.

There was good news, too. I've lost thirteen pounds on the Knitting Diet. This was measured on a set of scales I've been weighed on before, in approximately the same amount and type of clothing, so I think it's fairly accurate. I know it's not a huge amount, but I put the weight on slowly, so I'm not averse to taking it off equally slowly.

Then I went to my pharmacy and got the antibiotics and nose spray. I got home at about 1630, which was a little longer than I expected it to take but everyone was really busy. I got a lot of knitting done (a flower motif lace shawl from Evelyn A. Clark's new book, knitted in very bright Claudia hand-painted fingering weight merino), though. I started on the antibiotics right away and went to bed early. I slept late, too, but I feel a lot better. The achy brow and cheeks aren't nearly so achy.

Yesterday was really a nice day for running all these little errands. It got up to 70° F, which isn't bad for early December. It didn't last, though. The wind is blowing pretty hard now. Last night at bedtime it was only gusting occasionally. They say we're going to get some rain at 0300 or so, which I believe. The front of the storm, the wind and some clouds, have made that pretty evident. It's supposed to rain Friday and Saturday and we might even get a little snow on Saturday evening. They'll get snow in the ski resorts for sure. It's already snowing in the Sierra Nevada, which is where much of SoCal gets its drinking water.

It's Raining All Over SoCal

2007-11-30T12:35:00.000-08:00

What a dismal gloomy day we're having. It started raining at about 0845 and it's still raining almost five hours later. It's not a hard rain, so there's a good chance a lot of it will soak in instead of running off. Fortunately the storm is coming up from the south and west, so there's no chance of snow for us down here, although it's snowing and sticking at the mountain resorts. The storm is dumping snow on the Four Corners area, in particular my birthplace, Durango, CO.

This is all supposed to go away by tomorrow and we'll have a pretty, if cool, day for the UCLA-USC game. If USC (boo, hiss) wins, they'll go to the Rose Bowl. If UCLA (go, Bruins) wins and if Arizona State later loses, then UCLA will go to the Rose Bowl. Since I bleed Bruin blue and gold, you can tell where my heart is. USC is my second favorite, though. (I'm somewhat less partisan about football than basketball.)

The weather may affect the game, though, because it's being played in an outdoor stadium with natural grass. They've gotten about a half-inch of rain down there, which shouldn't affect the field too much, but if it keeps raining the field may get soft. Neither team is very accustomed to soggy fields.

Speaking of soggy fields, did anyone else see this week's Monday Night Football game, where the field was all but under water? On one kick, the ball came down and stuck in the ground. It didn't bounce at all. It was just standing there, right where it hit, pointy end embedded in the glop. All the yard lines and hash marked were washed away, too. I love watching football games played in real weather, particularly pro games. There was a fairly recent game in a driving snow storm (at Lambeau Field, maybe?), so heavy you couldn't see the far side of the field, and another in such thick fog you couldn't even see that far. Now that's football.

Last night I washed and dried a rollerball pen with a load of medium-colored clothes, mostly cotton knits. What a mess! The dryer drum had a lot of black streaks and my clothes were almost all spotted and streaked and smudged with black ink. The dryer cleaned up pretty well, so that I could dry the load in the washer. I gave up about then and didn't even try to re-wash the stained load. I'm going to do that as soon as I post this. Fortunately, a lot of the load was nightgowns and briefs, so the world won't end if they end up with a few gray splotches. However, one of the victims was one of my favorite U-2 (airplane, not band) tees and I'm a little worried about it.

I've once again put aside my Bigfoot Shawl for another project. I got two balls of Suri Dream handpainted in Rose Quartz in my recent order from Knit Picks. The box showed up on Tuesday and I managed to resist until last night (Thursday), but I caved in and started a scarf. This yarn is just beautiful. It's really soft and so light, but still warm. The colors are very good, too. The scarf is just garter stitch with slipped-stitch selvages, 24 stitches on US 11 needles. It's about 8 in. wide and I've got about 24 in. knitted already. I've weighed the ball of yarn a couple of times and I think I'm getting about an inch of scarf per gram. I'm thinking that I should order another ball of yarn and make two six-foot scarves. I'll try to get a reasonable photo tomorrow if it's sunny enough.

I Had A Dream

2007-11-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

Or maybe a nightmare. About knitting. I rarely remember my dreams but this one was special. I share them even less often, too, but I figured this one would amuse knitters and their friends. I think it's funny now, but it wasn't at the time.

I'm knitting the Bigfoot Shawl in black fingering weight Gloss. The pattern is a variant of feather and fan and has a whole bunch of *k1, yo* on the first row. There's something I occasionally do on the purl row back that doesn't catch the k1 right, so that on the third or fourth row the weight of the shawl pulls the stitches apart and makes a big hole (yo, k1, yo, after all). This is pretty easy to pick up, just reknit the center stitch and then pick up the other two, but it's annoying and I keep doing it. It's happened not just on this shawl but on two others, too.

Anyway, about the dream. I dreamed that I was knitting away on this shawl (except that it had morphed into a triangular shawl) and it pulled apart right where I was knitting. Then I started tugging on the edges and the stitches started popping apart all over the shawl. My beautiful lace shawl was falling apart and there wasn't anything I could do to stop it. And each time it happened it made a most unyarnlike "pop" sound. I was horrified and panicky. Pop, pop, pop!

Then I woke up, with this vivid image still in my mind. It was all I could do not to hop out of bed in the middle of the night and hurry to my knitting to see how it looked. When I did pick my knitting up later, I checked it over very carefully and tugged gently on the edge to see what would happen. Fortunately, nothing did.

Christening Shawl Finished

2007-11-25T17:04:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I finished the christening shawl that I started on 15 November. It took eleven days and I was doing a lot of other things during that time. I've woven in the ends, but I haven't washed and dressed it yet. I'm washing the baby blanket I finished ages ago, so that I can mail it off to baby Josh. I've only got one good place for drying large pieces and the blanket gets to use it first. The christening shawl won't be needed until March, after all.

I didn't take any photos today because it was quite overcast here. I hope that tomorrow will be clearer so that I can snap a few photos in the undressed state. This shawl looks a lot nicer and more like the finished product than most lace I've knitted. I don't remember the previous Diamond Fantasy Shawl looking so good, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it's probably the yarn and the gauge. Don't be fooled, it really does need dressing but I've got a lot better idea how it's going to look than usual.

I'm back to knitting the Bigfoot Shawl. I think I've only got a few more repeats to knit on it. I think it might look good with a toggle catch right at the neckline, so I've got to look through a few jewelry supply catalogs soon.

I joined the Year Of Lace 2008 club. It's four lace wrap projects in luxury yarns dyed in special colors using new patterns. The patterns are said to be restricted to club members until 2010 and the yarn colors won't be repeated. Not that I care about either bit of exclusiveness, to tell the truth. I guess it's supposed to make people feel more special somehow. I joined mostly to get myself over my dislike for lace weight yarn, on the theory that I'll have spent so much money on the club that I have to knit the wraps up. We'll see how well that works.

Photo Time

2007-11-18T16:43:00.001-08:00

Ta-DA!

Forest Canopy Shawl II
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

This is the Forest Canopy Shawl II, knitted from Knit Picks Shimmer, in Turquoise Splendor. I took this photo in the hope that everyone can see how light and airy it is, moving in the very faint breeze. As I've said before, I'm not fond of knitting with lace weight yarn, but it does make beautiful, delicate, gossamer lace.

Here's another photo, that shows a little more detail.

There's half a mile (880 yd) and 100 grams (3.5 oz) of yarn in this shawl. It took a while to knit, but that was mostly because I was working on other projects at the same time.

This shawl has gone to the friend it was knitted for and she loves it. It was a total surprise and she had no idea at all that I'd made it for her. I love surprising someone so totally. The blues in the yarn make her eyes look so blue it's almost startling.

Here's a photo of the unblocked lace, taken while I was knitting it.

And here are two close-up photos after blocking:

Isn't it amazing how much difference blocking makes?

This is the Sivia Harding Diamond Fantasy Shawl II that I started a couple of days ago. This is about a third done, but I should put it aside and work on other projects. This shawl is to be a christening shawl for my friend Pat's impending grandchild. The baby is due in March, so I have a little time left. Considering that I knitted a third of the shawl in two days, though, it might not affect the other projects much if I just went ahead and finished it.

I think this is one of the most beautiful lace patterns I've seen and I really enjoy knitting it. The yarn is Knit Picks Bare Merino/Silk Fingering Weight yarn and the shawl will take less than two skeins (each 440 yd, 100 gm). This is beautiful yarn. It's so soft and has such good stitch definition. The fabric has a beautiful hand, with the supple weight of silk.

Here's a close-up photo. I just wish there were some way to transmit the feel of this.

Here's the main project that I've put aside to work on the Diamond Fantasy Shawl II. It's the Bigfoot Shawl from Wrapped In Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls, by Alison Jeppson Hyde. It's knitted from the same merino and silk yarn, only in black. When it's dyed, Knit Picks calls it Gloss.

It's a circular shawl, which means that the rows are really long. The pattern is a variation of Feather and Fan, which I like, and this shawl is going to be so nice. It's soft and cuddly and just the thing to wear around one's shoulders when it's a bit cool or drafty. I'm knitting it for my cousin's wife. She finds restaurants very uncomfortable in the summer, when she's dressed up and the air conditioning is set to keep men in wool suits cool. This should look dressy enough, with the silk in the yarn. At least, I hope it does.

Now photos of a trio of scarves. The first is a modified version of the Dragon Scales Scarf, knitted in Classic Elite Posh (70% silk, 30% cashmere) in Merlot.

Then there's the Breezy Scarf, knitted from my own pattern in Lang Breeze (merino and nylon) in Orchid.

This is a big scarf, about nine inches wide and over six feet long. It's for our niece in Iowa City. It get cold in Iowa so I get to knit warm scarves for everyone.

And last, but certainly not least, is Reggie the alligator scarf from Morehouse Farm. He came out of the blocking wondrously soft and merino-y. I think I'm going to send him to our goddaughter at Penn State.

Another Shawl and Three Scarves Finished and Blocked

2007-11-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I blocked the turquoise Forest Canopy Shawl I've been knitting off and on for a couple of months. It's absolutely amazing how different lace looks after blocking. The yarn is Knit Picks turquoise Shimmer, 70% alpaca and 30% silk lace weight yarn. I used two skeins, totaling 100 grams and half a mile (880 yd). I find lace weight yarn irritating to knit with, but as I knitted I got more used to it and less irritated. The yarn produced a good-looking shawl.

I also washed and pat-blocked Reggie the alligator scarf, the dragon scales scarf, and the big fluffy cream and orchid scarf. Reggie got a lot softer after washing (Morehouse Farm merino) and the other two stayed about the same. The dragon scales scarf is merlot Classic Elite Posh in cashmere and silk and the big fluffy scarf is orchid Lang Breeze in merino and nylon.

I got a new lace book from Elann that I highly recommend to every lace knitter. It's Knitting Lace Triangles by Evelyn A. Clark. Ms Clark is one of my favorite shawl designers and I have most of her Fiber Trend lace shawl patterns. I'm not the only one who likes her work; Elann is having a lot of trouble keeping the book in stock. Essentially, this book shows the lace knitter how to knit a triangular shawl using one or more of four basic patterns and a scalloped edging with or without beads. Of course, after knitting one or more of these shawls and understanding the basic technique, the knitter can substitute any lace pattern.

I have a list of projects that I absolutely, positively must knit before I start any other projects. The list comprises a circular shawl for my cousin (over half done), two stoles for my neighbor (one just started), a christening shawl, a baby blanket, and a lace shawl. The christening shawl and baby blanket have to be done by March and the two stoles should be done before the New Year. I can sneak a few scarves and other little projects in, of course, but nothing big.

I'll take photos of everything today or tomorrow, including the yarn for the planned projects, and post them all. With links to the patterns, where available, even. Ravelry has raised my standards for how much information should be included. I can't wait for it to go public so I can just link to the projects there, instead of repeating it here. I don't know when it's going public but I do know that they're issuing invitations very quickly these days. Sign up at ravelry.com. I'm digitalknitter there.

Echoing Emptiness

2007-10-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

My mother's house is empty. There's one telephone, one telephone book, a note pad, and pen, all in the living room. Everything else is gone. The rooms echo, the house is empty, and I'm bereft.

Life, however, goes on and so must I. The recommended painter hasn't returned a single one of my messages, so I'll find another tomorrow. I've got things to mail, yarn to order, projects to knit, and packing to start.

I hate being the grown-up.

Launch Hold

2007-10-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

We went into a launch hold at T-:35, when the guy with the truck called and told us his truck had a problem. He's quite sure that they can fix it today and we can move everything tomorrow. However, he's going to call us back as soon as he knows, at which point I'll reschedule everyone.

Meanwhile, my friend, her husband, and I cleared more out in the garage, putting all the tools into my dad's WW II footlocker and getting rid of some other stuff. We also got the washer and dryer moved to the house next door, so that's taken care of. My friends took a big carton to the thrift store and I took a box of 24 pairs of glasses to Lenscrafters for the Lions. Then we came back here and changed all the batteries in the various remote sensors for our security system (cathedral ceilings and no way to wire them directly). They've just left, on their way to Lowe's to get some grout for my mom's house. He's one of those guys who can do anything.

Great Progress In Probate

2007-10-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks as if we're very near to closing probate. We're past the 60 days after notice to creditors, we've transferred everything that needs transferring, and we're going to wind it up now. Because we didn't get the house sold, it will just be put in my name until it gets sold. There'll only be one remaining thing, which is income tax returns. My mom died on 15 January, so we have to file a return for her in 2008. The lawyer has to file a return for her estate, from when she died to when probate ended. In both cases there will be a small refund or payment, but nothing much.

We've really made progress with the house. My friend and I got everything we could out of the house and into the garage on Wednesday. All that was left in the house was the bedroom set, a dresser, a cedar chest, a couch, a love seat, and a dinette table. Oh, and the solid maple hutch. On Thursday a team of cleaners came in and did a wonderful job cleaning it. I asked the cleaners if either of them would like the bedroom set and one accepted. Encouraged by that, I asked if either wanted a queen hide-a-bed and the other one did. That really makes my life easier and I'm glad to see the bedroom set go to a good home.

The guy with the stake-bed truck (with tailgate lift) and his helper will show up at my house Monday and load up the hide-a-bed. We'll take that over to my mom's house and unload it. Then we'll load up the couch and love seat and a bunch of boxes and take the boxes to the storage space and the furniture over here. Then back to my mom's house for all the rest of it, except the bedroom set and hide-a-bed, and over to the storage space to drop it off. Then we pick up the last furniture and take it to the cleaner's house at about noon. Then my friend and I go home and collapse. I don't know what the mover and his helper do.

I'm going to send my mom's cedar chest to my goddaughter in New Jersey, so I have to get a mover to handle that. I'm going to go through my cedar chest and dig out a bunch of crocheted doilies, etc, that my grandmother made and gave my mom and me. These go well with my cousin's decor (and don't go with mine at all). I'll pack all that into the cedar chest and ship it.

I'm finally going to take the paint chips over on Monday and pick the paint color. I've left a message for the painter. The current weather makes it likely that he'll want to paint it fairly soon. We've got a cut-off low with enough moisture in it to make painting exteriors a bit chancy, so a nice little one-day interior job should be convenient for him. As soon as the paint goes on the walls, the house goes on the market and I go to Palm Desert.

Well, we're not going quite as quickly as that implies. I've got to pack up some stuff here first, including yarn (the rest of my knitting stuff is always packed in a rolling crate), knitting books, and other books. I have to take a bunch of clothes down, too. My summer clothes here in Lancaster double as my winter clothes in Palm Desert. I remember commenting to a fellow shopper in Palm Desert on Christmas Eve 2005 that it was wonderful to live somewhere that wearing shorts and sandals that day was a good idea. I also have a limited number of dressy clothes, mostly that slinky rayon and Lycra fabric, and that has to go each way each time, too. And I have to pack my twelve pairs of sandals.

I'm almost back where I was when I ripped back the Bigfoot Shawl. I've got some new yarn to knit a stole for a friend and I've done a little swatching on that. I'll get some photos soon to show you what I'm thinking of. The yarns are Lion Brand Incredible bulky ribbon yarn, Yarnplace Vivace DK banana, and Blue Heron Rayon Loop heavy worsted. I think I'm going to do chunks of garter in the rayon loop, blocks of netting-like lace in the Vivace, and narrow garter stripes in the ribbon. I'll also use the ribbon for long heavy fringes. This friend needs a stole with drama.

New Mini-van

2007-10-20T09:57:00.001-07:00

New Mini-van
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here it is. It got here at 1506 Friday.

Mini-Van News

2007-10-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

The mini-van is back from the Toyota shop, all fixed, and Mobility Works is cleaning it up for delivery. It should be here by mid-afternoon. I've got to clear off the data card in my camera so I'll have room for lots and lots of photos. Today is a beautiful day, calm, cool, and sunny so the photos should come out well. We're supposed to have high winds again tomorrow but by then the new van will be safely tucked into the garage.

We're members of a rare breed here in SoCal; we have a two-car garage with two cars in it. The rareness of this breed in caused by geology. A lot of California is on or near an earthquake fault so our houses tend to be built on slabs. Slab floors pretty much rule out basements. However, we still have the stuff that people with basements fill them with. It has to go somewhere and that's out in the garage. Pretty soon the garage is full of stuff and the cars are parked on the driveway. Fortunately, even up here in the High Desert, the weather is moderate enough that this isn't a problem. We usually don't have enough humidity to have frost or even dew, for example.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2007-10-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything here recently because I was hoping to have some good news and avoiding some bad news. I still don't have the first, but I've accepted the latter, so I can actually write about it.

It's the Bigfoot Shawl. I had made an error and frogged one pattern repeat and reknitted it at about the eighth pattern repeat, which was a bunch of rows back. I'd managed to miss a yarn over and, therefore, multiple stitches in subsequent rows, so when I reknitted it I didn't really have enough yarn and the entire repeat was tight for six rows. I'd told myself it would come out in the blocking, that no one would notice, that it was OK, but it was preying on my mind and the day before yesterday I frogged 36 rows (averaging 346 stitches). I am not a happy knitter right now.

I must say that the yarn Knit Picks Gloss, has held up beautifully in the face of this abuse. I put a Options Harmony US 4 needle onto the longest cable and picked up the stitches of a purl row after ripping back. The yarn cooperated with this, not running or anything. The live stitches just sat there, ready to slip onto the sharp little needle. The yarn is 70% merino and 30% silk, so this probably isn't too surprising.

The good news I'd hoped to share was the delivery of the modified mini-van. It was supposed to come up early this week, but the wind was so bad we had them hold off. The old van had gotten sand-blasted in the Dryden parking lot about four days after we'd gotten it, so we're kind of jumpy about too much wind and a new vehicle. You may have seen the news stories about the big multi-vehicle, multi-fatality crash on SR-14 here Tuesday, caused by a terrible dust storm. The wind was gusting up to 50 mph here on Tuesday and Wednesday. They were going to bring it up today, which is a beautiful cool, calm day, but the ABS light came on, so they took it to Keys Toyota (Toyota problems get fixed by Toyota, modification problems get fixed by Mobility Works) and it looks as if we'll get it tomorrow afternoon.

I went by Tuesday and rented a 10' x 7.5' storage space and I'm going to get the moving guys in on Monday, 29 Oct. I have a queen hide-a-bed here at my house to go to a local charity. It'll be replaced by the couch and loveseat from my mom's house. The rest of the furniture from her house (a queen bedroom set and some other pieces), plus a whole bunch of boxed stuff, will go to the storage space. There's also a solid rock maple hutch that's stopping at the storage space for a while, before going to live with my friend. Once the house is empty, I'll get the painter in and the house will go onto the market.

I picked up paint chips from Frazee Paint on Monday. They gave me an entire swatch book, too, and there are some beautiful colors in it. I love some of the accent colors, but not for a house I'm trying to sell. I'm inclined to paint the entire interior in Swiss Coffee, which is the color of our Palm Desert house and will be the color of our Lancaster house. It's a very popular warm off-white that I really like. However, I have to see how it looks with the drapes before I decide.

It's actually been a busy week; in addition to all this stuff I had a routine doctor's appointment yesterday and a mammogram today. Then tomorrow I go to the ophthalmologist for my yearly exam. Plus I need to meet with the cleaner and painter for estimates. I'm trying to get the cleaner in at the end of next week.

I also tried out my new six-quart crock pot from Overstock.com. I got a really nice chuck roast at Albertson's and bought it on the spur of the moment. Normally I plan my grocery shopping so that I don't have to run all over the store but not this time. Once I got the roast I had to go back and get the vegetables. It came out really well and I was pleased. Cool-weather food....

Bigfoot Shawl

2007-10-08T19:00:00.001-07:00

Bigfoot Shawl
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

As you can see, I'm making some progress. I've finished ten repeats of the four-row body pattern. I'm almost to the end of the second ball of yarn, which means I'm at least half done. The pattern call for continuing until it's 16 in. long but that seems just a bit too short to me. I've been playing around with a tape measure and I think I want to go longer.

Notice how the edge is scalloping itself. There's no need to add a border; instead just a plain bind-off works just fine. I picked up a great bind-off from Cat Bordhi, in her Moebius Scarf patterns. It's very simple, you just knit two stitches together, return the new stitch to the left needle, knit two together, repeat. I like it because it's loose but it doesn't distort the fabric.

This yarn, Knit Picks Gloss (70% merino, 30% silk) is a real pleasure to work with. As you can see, it's got really nice stitch definition. I'm waiting on the undyed version to be back in stock, which is predicted for 22 Oct. I'm going to knit a christening shawl for my friend's grandchild, who will arrive in the spring. (I'm also going to make a more practical superwash baby blanket.) I already have some Knit Picks natural 100% merino fingering weight yarn for the christening shawl but the silk really makes a difference. Since this shawl is, traditionally, used for the baptism and then put away until the child marries, at which time the bride wears it, the subtle shine from the silk will be nice.

What A Week It's Been

2007-10-05T19:08:00.000-07:00

I went over Friday and signed all the paperwork to list my mom's house. The only thing we didn't do is set the date we'd begin. My realtor, Jane, who used to be my neighbor, came by the house on Saturday and agreed with me that it wasn't ready yet.

On Monday we cleared out the master bedroom and both bathrooms completely. The bedroom set (queen bed, dresser, nightstands) is still in there, which Jane says is OK because it'll show people how big the bedroom is. Apparently, people have trouble estimating the size of empty rooms. I think this set is going to go to one of the sisters who clean my house in Palm Desert.

We got kind of a late start because we had to go by the bank and get my signature medallion certified so I could cash in one of my mom's IRAs, since I was the beneficiary. The medallion certification guarantees that I'm really who I say I am and promises that the bank will cover any losses if it turns out I'm not, so they don't just hand these out at random. We'd had a raging hassle over this Friday, but I figured out what the bank really wanted and it just sailed through.

Then Tuesday my friend and I finished clearing out the guest room. It's still got a daybed, a dresser, and my mom's cedar chest in it, but the dresser and chest are empty. We also packed up the last of the kitchen stuff and made a run to the thrift store. We had about ten boxes of stuff for them. They were getting ready for their fall sale the next day, so we just put everything in the conex out back. My friend and I both noticed that some of the stuff they were taking into the shop for the sale was stuff we'd brought over earlier.

Wednesday my husband and I went over to the dentist. We both had crowns to have cemented and I had two fillings. It wasn't particularly painful for either of us, but we were there for almost three hours. It might have gone faster if my crown hadn't been such a perfect fit. The cementing process starts with a trial fitting and bite checking. Well, my crown wouldn't come off. It was made to fit my tooth and fit it did. My dentist ended up doing the adjustments in place and then tried for at least five minutes, maybe more, to get it out. When it did finally pop off, it bounced off the tip of my tongue toward the back of my mouth. I wasn't in any real danger of swallowing it, fortunately. Needless to say, we didn't do any more trial fittings; the next time it was in my mouth it had cement on it. It's perfect.

Thursday our new van was supposed to be delivered, but there was a problem with getting the running boards. They were damaged in shipping, with a deep scratch through the gel coat, and there was no way they could be used. So they've been re-ordered and we're just waiting on them arriving and getting painted. My friend went over to the house and moved all the cartons of books for the Friends of the Library out to the garage. She also moved about three-fourths of the cartons of stuff we're taking to our Palm Desert house (mostly kitchen stuff and books) out there too. Meanwhile, I started organizing stuff here to go to Palm Desert, mostly books. I'm ignoring the yarn for now.

She got a call from her husband, at about 1730, that his car wouldn't start and would she please come down and get him. He works near Burbank Airport. She put their dinner into the fridge and went down and got him. He went down with a co-worker this morning and figured out what the problem is. Tomorrow they're going to get a hitch for her pickup and go down and get the car. Not that she needed any more excitement in her life, because she's on the board for the public parks in the unincorporated area west of town and they're having a book sale tomorrow. Apparently the county employees can't actually sell the books and take the money, so the board members have to do that, something it would have been helpful to know before Thursday.

Today, Friday, was a very successful day. We started by loading the books for the Friends into my van. Then two guys from the thrift store showed up and took away the two filing cabinets, microwave oven, microwave stand, and two vacuum cleaners. To save them making a second trip and, more importantly, to save them from having to lift the heavy console TV into a Suburban-type van, we ended up moving all the boxes of books into my friend's pick-up and putting the TV in my van. The ramp really helped with that. I followed them over to the shop and they unloaded the TV and I visited with the workers for a bit and then went home. I was so pleased to get these big things out of the house and garage and over to the shop. My friend and I would have really struggled with them.

Next one of the afternoon volunteer workers, who had been a very good friend of my mom's, came by on her way to the shop and picked up the five boxes of things for the homeless shelter (my mom had been collecting this, like towels too worn to sell but still good enough to use, from the donations to the thrift shop). We also had a big black garbage bag full of large RubberMaid, Tupperware, and other storage containers for her daughter-in-law, who is a serious baker and can use these large containers for flour, etc. I also had a few little things for her, mementos of my mother. Between all these visitors we managed to finish clearing up the office. There's a few pieces of furniture in there, which we'll move on Monday.

My friend has graciously agreed to take the daybed, the drop-leaf table, the end table, two living-room lamps, the rock-maple hutch, and two paintings by my father's youngest sister. She has also taken a number of other things. She knew and liked my parents and will remember them both when she uses these things. Her daughter, her only child, also knew my parents and also will remember them fondly. I just can't say how much it means to me that she's taking these things.

Anyway, we finished up the day by taking fourteen cartons of books over to the library, where we were met by the president of the Friends. He and one of the library guards unloaded the cartons onto carts and whisked them away. The librarians will go through the boxes and take any books they want for the collection and then the Friends will take the rest to sell, either in the bookshop they've named after my mom or at their semi-annual sales. My husband and I buy books on science and other non-fictional topics that we don't always keep. We pack these books, frequently the newest books on the subject, in a marked box and they, I'm told, always get added to the collection. I think this says something rather sad about the funding for our county library system, that they have to rely on donated books in such important areas.

It is just amazing how much progress we've made. For so long it seemed as if we weren't making any progress at all, no matter how hard we worked and how much we took away or packed up. Now all at once it's almost empty. We have another day, at the most, and then I'll get the cleaners in. Following that, the entire interior has to be painted, except (maybe) the kitchen. Then it goes on the market, probably in about a week. And there it will probably sit for ages, until some investor buys it and turns it into 8A housing, like what happened after the last real estate bust we had in the Antelope Valley.

I decided to send some people, mostly family, photos of my parents. They had a great portrait done by a very talented local photographer about ten years ago and I was able to get her to make prints for me. I kind of underestimated my list and had to call her this afternoon and order a few more prints. They'll be ready in about two weeks. I bought a box of those stiff photo mailers and I've been tracking down mailing addresses. I'll start mailing them once I get them all.

I'm still knitting away on my Bigfoot Shawl. I'll get a photo over the weekend.

More About the Bigfoot Shawl

2007-09-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

The body is a modified feather and fan, as is the yoke, as Stephanie noticed. Instead of just one row with all the yarn overs and decreases, followed by three plain rows, this version of the pattern has one row with all the yarn overs and half of the decreases and another row with the other half of the decreases, with two plain rows.

I've got to warn you about the book, maybe. If you don't want to knit top-down circular shawls, don't buy the book. That's all it has. I love them. Stoles usually take a certain effort to keep in place, like bent arms, a knot, or a pin, but circular shawls stay in place naturally. It's a lot the same as Faroe shawls.

I also really like the yarn. It's very soft and has extremely good stitch definition. It's not at all splitty, which is important when knitting lace with pointy needles. Of course I haven't blocked it yet.

Me make a gauge swatch and actually block it? Surely you jest. The closest I ever get to that for things like shawls and scarves is to pin out a section, still on the needles, after I'm a fair way through. (I'm not nearly so casual when knitting something that has to fit, though.)

I finally got around to really looking at the box of books from Zooba and discovered that they'd made a small error. I originally thought I had one cookbook and nine mysteries, which didn't seem quite right, but when I looked more closely I had one cookbook, eight mysteries, and a novel about Munchausen by proxy. This was a bit of a surprise, because that's not something I'm particularly interested in. It turns out that I had ordered two cookbooks and eight mysteries.

I've bought quite a few books from Zooba and this is the first error they've made. I wish I could say as much about some of the other on-line merchants I deal with. I fired off a quick e-mail and they mailed the cookbook yesterday (Saturday) and are giving me the novel (I think this translates as "it's easier and cheaper to write off the book than to go through the hassle of getting it back"). I'll probably give the novel to the Friends of the Library.

Bigfoot Shawl

2007-09-29T18:50:00.001-07:00

Bigfoot Shawl
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

OK, I admit it, I started another shawl yesterday. This is the Bigfoot Shawl, from Wrapped In Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls. It's so much fun! It's knitted in Knit Picks Gloss (70/30 merino and silk fingering weight) in black. I have two more rows of the yoke to knit. I'm knitting it with US 8 needles, the new Options Harmony needles from Knit Picks, which are really good for lace.

It's intended to be a practical little shawl for my cousin, who finds many restaurants to be so over-air-conditioned as to be intolerable when dressed for a night on the town. That's why it's black and silky. She's like me (and a lot of other women), she doesn't need a big arrow, which a triangular shawl is, pointing at her bottom. This shawl is circular and won't be doing any vulgar pointing.

Yes, I will finish the Forest Canopy Shawl in the exasperating lace weight yarn. I don't have to have it done until Christmas, though, so I'm going to sneak this quick little shawl in now.

Breezy Scarf

2007-09-27T19:47:00.001-07:00

Breezy Scarf
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

This scarf is finished. It's 9 in. wide and well over 6 ft long (I haven't measured it). I don't know whether I'm going to wait to send it to Iowa until I have several more scarves to go with it or just send it on now. It's really too warm for such a heavy scarf, so I'll probably wait.

I've got yellow yarn, just like this, for another similar scarf, as well as superfine (baby) alpaca in both purple and rose and alpaca, cashmere, silk, merino blend in both blue and black, for winter scarves. Working with such luxurious yarns is a real delight, and making just a scarf avoids bankruptcy.

Today was a real reading jackpot between USPS and UPS. The letter carrier brought me a carton of ten books (one crockpot cookbook and nine mysteries) from Zooba and UPS brought me one book (1634: The Bavarian Crisis, an alternate history book and the newest in a series) from Amazon. I'd been waiting impatiently for the 1634 book and I'm really happy it's here.

Speaking of reading and of knitting, I've figured out a good way to read while knitting. Baen Books offers a wide variety of free books for download, many by authors I really like. It's easy to download one and read it on my laptop as I knit. Of course, this only works for simple knitting.

Fat-Yarn Scarf Time!

2007-09-21T14:12:00.001-07:00

Breeze Scarf
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

I mentioned earlier that I'd ordered some chunky and bulky yarn for scarves and I was going to abandon the lace-weight yarn and US 5 needles of the Forest Canopy Shawl II for scarves when the orders arrived.

Well, the first order, from Elann, arrived yesterday at about 1130. It was opened and the yarn, Lang Breeze Color, in Orchid, was being petted at roughly 1131. By 1145 I'd dug the never-before-used 8-mm (US 11) Brittany birch 10" needles out of the bottom of my knitting equipment crate, gotten a new Diet Coke, snagged something to eat, and settled down to knit.

I started with a triangular tip in stockinette, with garter-stitch border, but decided I really didn't want to spend my time knitting all that stockinette, so I carefully frogged that and just cast on 28 stitches. That's 1 stitch on each side for the chain selvedge (see it in the photo? looks nice, doesn't it?), 1 stitch for garter stitch on each side, and 24 stitches for the 3-1 traveling rib. This is a variation on a scarf I made for my goddaughter, which had a 5-1 traveling rib. Well, it may not be an actual traveling rib because the stitches don't cross, but I've always heard it called a traveling rib.

I should have used 2 stitches on each side for garter stitch, as the edges are rolling slightly, but it's not too bad and I'm not going to frog over a foot of scarf to fix it. Roving yarns don't hold up well to a lot of frogging and re-knitting, in my experience. This one might, but I'd rather not risk it.

Anyway, by about 1600 all the first ball of yarn was knitted up and I started taking photos for the blog and Ravelry. In addition, I photographed all the yarn in the order (five colors of Elann Baby Silk and Baby Cashmere, for the circular shawls in a new book, Wrapped In Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls) and the yarn from three stash bins. Then I spent hours putting titles and descriptions on the photos at Flickr and then filling in the data for Ravelry.

As I rummaged through the bins of yarn, it occurred to me that rather than knitting tops from sport-weight cotton yarn, with small needles, I could knit lace, with larger needles. Or knit with two strands, as worsted weight. So now I'm looking at my stash quite differently. Particularly at the Classic Elite Avignon, which is tussah silk and Pima cotton and a lovely yarn. And looking through my shawl patterns, particularly the ones that accommodate various yarn sizes.

I should get this scarf finished about when the Knit Picks orders arrive. The first order is mostly the new Harmony wooden needle tips and the second is fat yarn. They've both been shipped and will probably show up early next week, a couple of days apart. I might even have some time to work on the shawl, which is now over half done, before I throw myself back into the scarf jungle.