Hi,everyone, I’m still here.  I’ve been incredibly tired this week and haven’t had the motivation to post.  Saturday night was a friend of mine’s birthday so a big group of use went to a local bar where we stayed until closing time and then we moved on to a restaurant for a couple more hours.  I didn’t get to bed until almost 5am Sunday morning.  This week I’ve been babysitting my cousin, who has strep, which means getting up early and then not being able to do much during the day and that just makes me more tired.  When I’ve had a minute to spare I’ve been knitting on my blanket and I just past the halfway mark.  The decrease rows go so much faster so I’m hoping to be finished soon so I can get back to my sweater.  That’s all the crafty stuff I’ve been doing.

What I have been doing is a ton of reading.  I’m so hooked on the HBO show True Blood that I decided to read the books even though it would spoil the series.  I’ve been averaging almost one book a day, I’ve read the first five and about half of the sixth since Saturday.  Granted they are short books and they’re a little fluffy but they aren’t bad and the easy books are  just what I need after reading The Shock Doctrine for so long.

I’m also hooked on the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.  They puppies are adorable.

I’ve mentioned that I don’t get out much and I don’t see my friends very often and going out Saturday was just what I needed, especially after spending my birthday alone.  I have quite a few old friends that I haven’t seen in years and I ran in to two of them.  The first I actually stood next to for about twenty minutes before we even recognized each other, which is so weird.  The second is someone I spent a lot of time with and we parted on not the best terms, he never did recognize me (that’s what I’ve heard, at least).  It’s really strange, I haven’t seen either of them in about five or six years but I don’t look that different.  Glasses and a hair cut (I was still shaving my head the last time I saw one of them) hasn’t changed me that much.  I had a great time, though, and I really need to get out more often, I miss my friends. 

Yesterday I felted my little Dumpling Bag and I think it came out really cute.  The pattern was very easy to follow and it knit up really quick.  I had a couple problems, which were all my fault, one of my rings on the handle broke in the washing machine and I didn’t get the bottom sewed up good so it has a little hole in it (which I can fix).  I thought about lining my bag, but now I don’t think I’m going to.  It’s pretty sturdy and I think I’d have a hard time sewing a lining into the bag since it’s a strange shape.  I wouldn’t mind having another bag in a different color.

Details:

• Pattern:  Dumpling Bags by Sharon Dreifuss from the Fall 2008 Interweave Knits
• Yarn:  The brown is Lion Brand Lion Wool, the green is my handspun and the little knots are Lamb’s Pride Worsted.
• Needles:  US13/9mm
• Modifications:  None.  If I made this again I would make the handle a couple inches longer.  I think it’s a touch too short.

Here’s a close up of my embroidery.  I’m not totally happy with how it looks but it will be fine.  The bag is smaller than I thought, it’s a good size for just the things I need to carry, my wallet, lip gloss and mints, or it would make a nice little knitting bag.

I spent some of my day getting the last roving I dyed ready to sell, if I have a chance I’m going to put it on Etsy tomorrow.  It’s been so dark and cloudy lately that I can’t my pictures to come out right.  And I’m still thinking about ordering a rigid heddle loom.  If I get one it will be an Ashford thirty-two inch loom, they’re the most affordable and I’ve only seen positive reviews of them.  Too bad the price just went up on them.

I have a touch of startitis still, I can’t help casting on for little projects.  I’ve got a purple baby blanket in some very soft (and hard to knit) acrylic chenille, my Wooly Wormhead Mystery Beret, and my Dumpling Bag that I finally finished knitting.  The bag will be felted tomorrow, the embroidery is some green handspun and Lamb’s Pride Worsted.  I’m still knitting on my yoke sweater but it looks pretty much the same, still knitting on the body.  The baby blanket is just a basic diagonal garter stitch boring thing.  I had planned on making either the Mystery Blanket from Knitting Around or the Garter Stitch blanket from The Opinionated Knitter but after swatching they just didn’t work, my gauge was always too loose and it looked sloppy, I ended up having to go down to a US6 needle to get a decent fabric and this is a fairly bulky yarn. 

I do have a lot that I want to blog about I’m just not feeling very interesting today.  I think I need to start going to bed earlier. 

There hasn’t been much to blog about the past two days so I didn’t bother yesterday.  I don’t have any knitting pictures (or pictures of anything else for that matter), so here’s some random stuff.

First up, my cat is sick.  A few days ago she got in a fight with a stray that had got in our back yard and she’s been sleeping a lot and limping.  I took her to the vet earlier and it looks like she got bit and the bite got infected.  The vet gave her a shot and some antibiotics and lectured me on getting her vaccinated (and know it needs done but I haven’t been able to afford it and now I have to wait until the infection is cleared up).  I’m very relieved, I was afraid that she had broke her leg and I can’t afford that.

On the knitting front, I finished clue two of my Woolly Wormhead Mystery Beret yesterday and I really like it.  I’ll have a picture Monday.  I’ve been making some good progress on the body of my sweater, I should have it done soon.  I need to buy yarn for that baby blanket I’m supposed to be making, that will have to wait until tomorrow, though.

And just to finish off the randomness, here’s a random mix of music, curtosy of 8Tracks.com (you’ll probably have to come to the webpage to see it if you’re in a feed reader).

I’m not going to talk a lot about the election, I’ll just say that I’m very happy with how it came out.  I sat here last night, glued to the TV and when Keith Olbermann called the election I started screaming, I couldn’t help it.  This morning I woke up smiling.  The only thing I’m not happy about its that someone stole my (second) yard sign last night and I was wanting to reuse it when he runs for re-election in 2012.  Guess I’ll have to get another one, I still have my shirt, at least.

Politics aside, I’ve been doing some braiding with the help of my new book, and here’s what I have so far.  There’s some knotting and loop manipulation and a couple four strand braids.  Not really much to say about this, braids are braids.  I think I’ll have some fun making different braids to use as trims or bag handles or bracelets.

I don’t really have much to say tonight.  I’m still in a bit of a daze after last night, I also stayed up much later than I should have, so I’m tired.  Won’t it be great to have a president who can speak in coherent sentences?

Lemonade later, first sweater.  I finished my yoke and moved on to the body.  I miscalculated and ended up not having enough stitches for the body after my last round of increases but I solved that quickly and moved on.  I’m not bored by the stockinette yet but knitting with the plain black yarn is not as fun as knitting with my handspun.  I love how lumpy and bumpy the yoke is, it’s just what I wanted and it really does stand out against the black.  I hope I’m as happy with the finished product as I am with it so far.

I’ve been making lemonade today.  I had about a dozen lemons, it was a nice day, and it sounded so good.  I used this recipe that was posted on Inside a Black Apple back in July and it really is the best lemonade ever, the touch of vanilla is perfect and it came out not too sweet, not too tart, but that perfect spot in between.

I’ve also been playing around with some ideas for cowls and little scarves to knit with handspun and put in the shop (I might put the the patterns up, too, for a small charge, or do a little booklet of patterns).  I realized, though, that I’m using all the cables from my Denise needle set except the very smallest one, so I have to finish one project before I can start another. 

Here in about an hour I’ll be heading out to vote and my evening will be spent watching the election returns, eating cheese cake, and, of course, drinking lemonade.  I wonder how it would taste with a splash of rum?

Payment from KnitPicks + KnitPicks having a book sale = new books for me!  There were more I wanted, but I exercised some restraint and limited it to these.  I’ve wanted The Opinionated Knitter since it came out but couldn’t justify spending $30 on it and the braiding book is one I’ve wanted for a while but kept forgetting about, I thought they would make a good birthday present for myself.  I’ve only flipped through the books but they both look excellent and I can’t wait to dive in.  The braiding book is spiral bound so it will lay flat while you’re working and has over 100 pages of general instructions on top of detailed instructions for each braid.  I think I’ll have a lot of fun with it.  And I’m needing a new warm winter sweater so a Tomten or an Aran Coat might be in order.

The KAL for the Woolly Wormhead Mystery Beret has started and I cast on and knit most of the ribbing for mine today.  I’m using the yarn that I used to knit the Urchin hat earlier this year, Urchin was too big and knit too loose so it didn’t fit.  The yarn is beautiful, if I do say so myself, so I decided to reuse it.  This is my handspun superwash worsted weight singles in a soft aqua and is spun slightly thick and thin.

Here’s what I did this weekend.  After having a crappy night Friday I went to see Barack Obama speak at a high school football stadium Saturday night.  We got there at 3pm and the line was already a quarter mile long.  They started letting us in at 6pm and the speakers started at about 9pm.  It was really worth the wait.  We saw our Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, our Attorney General who is running for governor, Jay Nixon, and our Senator Claire McCaskill along with Michelle and Barack Obama.  It was so fun, the crowd was huge, I heard it was twice what they expected, the official count was 40,000 people inside and about a thousand outside.  The line was over a mile long when they started letting people into the stadium.  We were about twenty yards from the stage, off to the side a little, and we filled an entire football field standing shoulder to shoulder plus the bleachers were full.  We got home a little after midnight and I was tired and sore but really glad I went, it totally made up for the bad day I had Friday.  Anyway, I took almost 200 pictures and just dumped most of them onto Flickr so you can see them here.

Today is the perfect fall day.  It’s warm but not hot, sunny with little poofy clouds, the leaves have all turned orange and are falling off the trees.  This is my favorite type of day.  It’s just beautiful.

My cousin, in her Darth Vader costume

Today hasn’t been the best day.  I overslept, again, and then I spent most of the rest of the day either taking a shower or trying to make it through the 500 or so unread posts in Google Reader that I woke up to.  I went to my cousin’s house to see Daisie’s costume and then ate some pizza and now I’m back with my knitting at the computer.  It’s not my ideal Halloween (or birthday, yeah, that’s today,too) but it isn’t like I have anything else to choose from.  You would think that with all the nothing I have to do today that I could manage to photograph my yarn I spun yesterday but I didn’t.  It rained this morning and everything was wet all day so I couldn’t get outside to do it, that will have to wait until Monday.  I’m seriously contemplating just breaking into the bottle of rum I have stashed away and curling up in bed with my booze, knitting, and Dr.Who for the evening.  At least I have tomorrow to look forward to, I’m going to see Barack Obama speak.

These are the rolags I carded yesterday.  I spun them up today and the yarn is now soaking in the bathroom sink, I’ll try to get a picture of it tomorrow.  These pictures just don’t show how much sparkle and all the subtle colors in the rolags.  There is a warm orange, copper, shades of brown and flecks of green, orange, purple, blue, red and gold sparkle, plus the natural colored soy silk.

You can see some of the color here, there’s a bit of green in the upper right corner and I can see a few flecks red.  I’m still not completely used to the hand cards.  I’ve been watching this YouTube video over and over, it’s the best description of how to use hand cards that I’ve found. 

I’m all distracted today.  I’ve been doing my annual day before Halloween watching of Sleepy Hollow (on Halloween I watch Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and the phone won’t quit ringing.  We had the same robo call three times by 9am (thanks NRA!) and two more from the RNC, my cousin came by, people kept calling for my dad, it’s just been nuts.  Sleepy Hollow is 105 minutes, according to IMDB, and it took almost three hours to watch it.  And now I’m running behind schedule and I have a ton of things I need to do by 5pm so I need to go do them.  Happy Halloween.

Juliet is finally done!  This little sweater seemed to take a lot longer to knit than it should have, but I did knit it twice, so that accounts for some of the time.  I hate trying to take pictures of myself, it would have looked much better if I didn’t have to mess with a tripod and self timer and all that, the sweater looks much better in person, but out of about ten pictures I took this is the best.  I’m still not entirely happy with the fit, I almost could have gone down one more size and been okay, but I like how it looks and it feels good.  I think I’d like to have another cardigan kind of like this but in a lighter weight cotton for summer.

The Details:

• Pattern:  Juliet by Zephyr Style
• Yarn:  Lion Brand Wool Ease Chunky.  Not my favorite yarn but the sweater only cost me $15 to knit.
• The Buttons:  Cheap wood buttons that I already had.
• Needles:  US10.5/6.5mm
• Modifications:  I made the garter stitch section of my sweater come down below the chest and I did a couple extra lace repeats on the bottom.

I’m off to do some reading (and knitting on my yoked sweater).  I spent a big chunk of my day (when I wasn’t trying to fix my modem, long story) carding rolags that I plan on spinning tomorrow.  They’re very sparkly and I’ll show them off tomorrow.