Inspiration

There's a lot of inspiration out there lately. Ever since we dyed yarn with kool-aid a while back, I'm seeing all kinds of great color mixes in nature that make me want to spend the whole day in the kitchen. I'm going to have to do a green and yellow skein, based on a tree that I saw whose leaves were beginning to turn. It was gorgeous. I also want to do something with colors that remind me of the ocean (this after being in Martha's Vineyard last weekend with the other stinky bitches). It's so beautiful out there right now. I live in a suburb that has a lot of farms, conservation land, and other wooded areas. We have a carpet of beautiful leaves on our lawn and driveway (though I'm sure the neighbors don't necessarily appreciate us leaving them there). I bring my dog to conservation land in Stow, MA, and yesterday and today there were tons of dogs and their people out enjoying the good weather. Oscar played and swam with them for quite a while. It's his favorite thing to do. And I LOVE watching him enjoying himself. Afterwards I went apple picking with a friend, and all the different shades of apples gave me more ideas for color combinations. We bought a bunch of Golden Delicious and Mutsus, and I also bought a pumpkin, some cider, and some warm cider doughnuts. Yum. It was the perfect way to take advantage of one of the last temperate days of the year.

I'm also inspired by my lovely fellow knitters to both write more regularly on this blog and to pick up the pace with my knitting. I've been pathetically slow with it since the beginning of the summer. I just finished the gusset on the second sock of my first pair of socks, and am hoping that I'll cruise through the rest of the sock so I can finally move on to other projects. It will be tough to figure out the order of my upcoming projects. I have to make those wrist bands for my nephew. I found a pattern for knit yarmulkes and I want to make a bunch of them for the men in the family, since last year I gave all the ladies hats. I have more gorgeous sock yarn to use, and of course I still have the yarn waiting to be knitted up into Tempting, Sizzle, and the Somewhat Cowl. Oh, and I also promised my son a pair of "red sox." It would have been nice if he'd had them to wear tonight for the last night of the AL series. Recipients of intended gifts from me will just have to be patient! We'll see how late I can stay up tonight watching the game. Hopefully I'll be able to knit and watch at the same time. Lately I've been making a lot of mistakes if I'm not paying exacting attention to what I'm doing, so we'll see. I'm hoping for good outcomes for my knitting and for the Red Sox!

Budding knitters

I made a little progress on my second sock this week. I would have done more, but I ended up teaching several children how to cast on and do the knit stitch. I was at my sister's house knitting before dinner Thursday (Rosh Hashanah), and all the kids were fascinated and wanted to learn. The youngest was a 5 year old (my neice), who had a lot of trouble, but tons of enthusiasm (though I have to say it got old taking the knots out that she made in my yarn). There were also 2 9 year olds, a boy (my nephew) and a girl (a friend of the family), and a 16 year old (my oldest neice). Everyone was really excited when they saw what they could make by knitting. I had my Stitch N Bitch book with me (the first one), so they all looked through at the color pictures of the projects in the book and got excited about doing one project or another. Of course, the 16 year old picked up the techniques quickest. She wants to make a blanket, though I suggested something smaller for her first project. My nephew asked me to make him a wristband. We decided I would use my orange and red koolaid died yarn with navy for his initials. I'm going to try intarsia for that. His wrist is tiny though. We'll see how it comes out.

We also this week planned a knitting weekend in Martha's Vineyard. I'm taking 4 of my stinkers from Wednesday night SnB, and we're going to knit in our pjs while we drink margaritas! I'm so excited! We might also die some more yarn, and of course we'll drive around the island, have seafood, check out the beach, maybe shop, eat, and eat some more. It'll be awesome. We're all psyched, so now it's just a matter of waiting for that weekend to get here. Yayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'll try harder

Clearly this isn't going to come easy for me. Maybe with effort and time, it will get easier to do this more regularly.

So. Three months later. Sadly it's been a pretty unproductive summer, knitting-wise. I thought I would get a ton of knitting done on my business trips to Hong Kong/China and Indiana, but I ended up not knitting at all (despite carrying all my knitting paraphrenalia with me everywhere). I finally finished my first sock and have started the ribbing at the top of the second. I'm excited to wear these, and then to make more with all the other sock yarn I've bought over the summer.

I did make some great yarn acquisitions over the summer. As mentioned above, I got some more hand-dyed merino-tencel sock yarn to work with for my next pair of socks. I also got some dyeable yarn, and went wild with Kool-aid with my SnB stinkers dyeing the hell out of it. I ended up with gorgeous yarn, and unfortunately, a migraine. Now I know to wear a mask next time so I don't get high off the chemicals in that shit. But it was soooo much fun! I still have one more skein of yarn to dye on my own. I want to do green and blue variegated. We'll see how it turns out.

Alsooooo, I bought some worsted-weight yarn made from the hair of Samoyed dogs from Seven Sammys, processed by http://www.stillrivermill.com/. It's beautiful, and is supposed to develop a fuzzy halo after being knit up and with continued wear. I'm a sucker for quirky stuff like this. I also bought some silk/bamboo blue yarn with slight green flecks and some black bamboo yarn in a store in Hong Kong. I met some women there from the local SnB group. It was great to travel halfway around the world and have a ready-made, welcoming community to meet up with.

So, having just packed my twins off for their freshman year of college at UMass Amherst, I find that I will have some free time. I'm looking forward to catching up on all the knitting I was supposed to do over the summer, and to hopefully blogging here more regularly.

Like I said, I'll try. No guarantees.

a virgin blogger

I finally have a blog! No need to feel sorry for me anymore!

The requisite bit about me...

I am in love with my dog, Oscar. I also love my husband, Steve, and my kids, John, and Jenny, but Oscar comes first. He's the baby. (And he's a great kisser, too!)

I live in suburban Boston and work in Brookline. It's a long commute, but part of it winds by small lakes, farms, farm stands, conservation land, and even sometimes horses, sheep, and cows, so I don't mind it. And it's always better when Oscar is along for the ride. He comes to work with my sometimes and only slightly reduces my productivity.

I am also a new-ish knitter. I learned about a year ago, and so far I've knit lots of hats, a sweater, some bags, and some wrist warmers. I love it but still have A LOT to learn. It helps that I knit with friends on Monday night and then other friends on Wednesday night. My gurus take my questions.

My works-in-progress are the Sophie bag and a pair of basic ankle socks using this gorgeous yarn from Mind's Eye in Cambridge. I'm getting ready to start working on Tempting for my daughter and Sizzle for me.

OK. So I'm not the wittiest writer. I'll work on it.