A Little Yarn On The Side

Remember these? I made them for Andy for Valentine's Day this year. Not that they were done by Valentine's Day or anything, but that's what they were for. While I was gone, Andy finished my gift. It's a needle storage box! Complete with a pullout tray. I had him make it really tall because I've never really rounded up all my straight needles and I thought the results might be truly frightening. And they probably would be if there were ever a point in time when I didn't have 15+ WIPS going....See? I have all those WIPS purely for health reasons......

This might lead you to think I have Knitter's ADD....and you'd probably be right, of course...but THIS TIME I do have an excuse! The lovely lady who loaned us her condo last week refused to take any money for it, so I wanted to knit her a scarf, but have frogged the first two attempts. I thought she was in Arizona until sometime in later April, but it turns out she has returned early, and I want to have a gift for her when I return her keys & everything. So, yesterday I dug these out of the stash, and with size 8 needles to speed things along, I've been knitting and beading like a mad woman. The cats seem to have forgiven me and have been lending their moral support Or perhaps they just know that I am the bigger softie on tummy-rubs. And I swear that having the Kauni cardigan bogged down in the gold & orange colors has nothing to do with this.......

There's nothing like a little winter vacation to give your knitting meaning. Surrounded by this: knitting seems almost mandatory. The Kauni cardigan is almost ready for armholes a secret project is 95% done, the stamped cross stitch baby blanket sucked up several hours and looks pretty much like it did in the last picture (am I missing some important information about a stitchery space/time continuum or what?), and because the best thing to do when one has 5 quilts in process already is to start another one..... And I am happy to report that it only took one block with tree-alignment issues to figure out that all the blocks would need to have all the trees GOING THE SAME DIRECTION. I have given up on the possibility of figuring things out ahead of time , and am now just aiming for "Before it becomes necessary to bury it in the back yard." Progress is progress. Someone likes the new quilt, but isn't speaking to me just yet. Apparently he wouldn't even play tape ...

Only for a week, but the sweater and I are heading to McCall for a few days. No computers, no internet, just wool and snow and fabric (the sewing machine is coming along too). The gift bags aren't, as one is finished: and the others are just waiting for handles: Overall I'm pleased with them, but while these are actually more useful than these, I still like these better. Are wine bags that would have trouble holding bottles of wine really so bad????? I haven't told my sidekick I'm leaving him for a few days. It will be interesting to see if he gives Andy the 4:00 AM wakeup treatment while I'm gone, or if that privilege is reserved only for the Most Favored Human. Frankly, I'm willing to share that status--especially as Theo caught the time change more easily than I did.....

Tonight I decided to check out upcoming events at the Egyptian Theater--one of Boise's few independent theaters and the only one listed as an historic landmark--because it always seems to have really great events. Last month we went to see a couple silent movies as a fundraiser for the Treasure Valley Youth Symphony, and we've been to several lectures there. I was surprised to see that on March 18, the THIRD ANNUAL Fly Fishing Tour will be held there. Now I might be easily impressed, but how many hobbies have their own film festival? Andy does woodworking, and they certainly don't have a film festival (although that might actually be because there are few titles the wood working world could use that couldn't be misappropriated by the porn industry). I knit, and while the knitting world has its own social networking site and our own conventions, I don't know of a single film about knitting. (You can bet, though, that if we did have a film festival, we would leave so...

Two days ago, I was bored with knitting. Not knitting itself--just everything I was knitting. The lace scarf was disappointing, the Warm Up America blocks were boring AND not using up stash, the January Aran was scaring me with its threat of steeks, and I had restarted the Kauni cardigan for the fourth time using the alternating colors on every-other row and while it wasn't rolling I just wasn't crazy about the way it was looking I was SOOOOO close to ripping it back...but then I discovered that what I had initially read as 3 inches of ribbing was only 3 centimenters, and after ripping back about 6 rows I decided to plunge ahead. There are a lot of steps between bored & obsessed, and other knitters might be able to visit them. I, on the other hand.... Did you notice the lack of content on yesterday's post? That's because I can't type while knitting. I am OBSESSED with this sweater. I LOVE IT!!! If the wool weren't so darn scratchy I would sleep wit...