Valentine Happy

I'm eating a heart shaped chocolate chip cookie that my one true love baked me. I could dig out and scan the snap shot that goes with this story, but, I think I'll just get straight to the words.


February 13, 1986 while I was watching "Cheers" a tiny pop occurred. It was the pool of water my son had been swimming in for the last 8 and three quarter months deciding to burst forth. I knew then that I would be having my baby on Valentines Day... you can't go more than 24 hours with your "water broke".

It was raining Cats and Dogs all night long. So much so that my Mom thought that she might not be able to drive to the hospital to visit, the streets were flooded.

20 long hours later I pushed out Evan and completed our family.

The rain we have had this week has brought back memories of that night and the following days.

Valentines Day has never been quite the same since.


I've been knitting a new BSJ. pictures soon.

a couch kid thank-you knitting story

One of my long term (we don't like to say "old") knitting students is Dyan. She is a teacher in a community school. It's the kind of school that kids go to when they have committed a crime or otherwise gotten themselves kicked out of regular school. When they come to Dyan she confronts them (and their parents) with their transgressions and usually makes them cry. The other thing she makes them do is knit. All of them have to knit, even the boys who seem to like knitting better than the girls.

The classroom has a lounge area with a couple of couches. You can imagine that those couches get a lot of abuse.

I replaced my living room couch recently and donated it to Dyan's class. The reverse side of the drawing had a "thank-you" from each of Dyan's kids and as you can see one of them has mad drawing skillz too!

oh BTW, that floral couch you see in the drawing was replaced with two leather chairs...much different.

Closed mid way

Here is the intarsia sign in mid knit.

See all the little yarn balls? There is a little spaghetti tangle in between the balls and the knitting. I ignore it and press on with the chart.

I charted this project by first doing a gauge swatch (5 sts per inch) then I printed up graph paper in my gauge using this web page. I made the text on Microsoft Publisher, laid it under the graph paper on my light box and traced out the chart. You can see where I made some adjustments with a red pen.

My hubster loves to find stuff leaning against a dumpster and carts it home. I usually think he's bonkers for doing it. But when he brought home the big light box I did the happy dance...it made the job easy.

Intarsia LOVE

I mentioned in my last post that I took a class called "learning to love intarsia". I don't know if I LOVE it. But, I wanted to try it out right away. This is half of a sign that I am making for the shop. I want it to be a surprise for Debbie. (shhh don't tell)

You can guess that the other side will say "closed".
If you can ignore the tangled mess of yarn that is unavoidable. You might love intarsia too!
Now I will chart the other side and cast on soon.

Trade Show N Tell

This will be a long post with lots of pictures.

Debbie, Karen and I went to the TNNA (The National Needlearts Assoc.) trade show in San Diego. We stayed for four days.

We stayed in a Sheraton high rise hotel. The first 11 floors were the parking lot. This picture looks un-scary. But, that corridor seemed quite snug and it was ELEVEN... curvy ...swooping...tightly turned...floors to the place where we had to park. Karen was our driving hero.


We ate many of our meals in a cute retro-rock-n-roll restaurant called Mary-Jane's. The wait staff was young and tattoo cute. The food was terrific. In this pic you can see that Debbie and I had a TV dinner. It was a little salad, spaghetti and brownie in an aluminum foil tray. Kitchy but delicious.

We took classes from Knitting Rock Stars.
This is Cat Bordhi in a class covering the book "New Pathways For Sock Knitters" I think no one would dissagree that this woman is a genius. She is also generous and funny and a great teacher. Cat gave me a few tips on teaching the Mobius cast-on too!. She said we should all try knitting standing up occasionally for our health. You might want to try it! We got gifts of yarn and a pair of Addi Turbos in this class.

This is Stefanie Japel. (the last name rhymes with apple) Her class was all about knitting a fitted sweater from the top down. It's her specialty. She is young and pretty and very nice. I enjoyed this class except for the fact that the two people sitting next to me chatted the entire time.

This was my second class with Sally Melville. She gave out fabulous notes so I could refer to them later. The class was called "Learn to Love Intarsia" I did learn a lot and I think I will make an intarsia sweater for the shop and teach others to love it too! She pulled out sweaters that are pictured in her book, the one that is on the cover of her "Color" book is spectacularly beautiful.

On Saturday we began walking the miles of booths in the convention center. Every booth (they don't allow photography) full of beautiful yarn! There was lots of fondling and ooohhs and aaahhhs. Some of the folks there had non-yarn items. Bags, Buttons and Baubles. Oh ya...I'd say 1/3 of the vendors were needlepoint purveyors.


I did sneek one picture inside the convention center. This is (right to left) Mary-Heather, Jess and Casey of Ravelry fame. I was less of a ninny than last year in which I gushed shamelessly. They are shy and sweet and it was cool to see them.









I was wearing a Ravelry t-shirt that Jess noticed.



Here she is posing with Karen and I.








It was an exhausting four days. We ate well. Learn a lot. Saw kaboodles of YARN. After getting up at 5:30am every day and walking miles, we got a bottle of wine and took a soak in the hotel hot tub




It took half a dozen attempts to get this cute shot of us pool side.


That ends the tale of my time at Yarn-a-palooza!

It's like Butta!

Ok, my hair looks a little kooky.

This is a great cowl made from one skein of the buttery soft Malabrigo worsted weight. The pattern is quick, easy and pretty. It is called Tamarind Cowl and you can find it here. I used the magic loop method to knit it with my rosewood circular needles that Debbie gave me for Christmas. Started it last night and finished this morning.

I love the Malabrigo, I get itchy pretty easily and this yarn is on my neck and not a teensiest bit of the itch. It's warm, yummy soft and covers the turkey neck too! What's not to like? Go get yourself some!

New Year Shenanigans

Happy 2009!

I will start with the knitting content. As we put away the Christmas decorations I am taking breaks to add a little to the Clapotis. It has been a pretty easy project and I can't wait to be finished with it. I love the Ice Queen cowl/smoke ring that I finished and will take a picture of it with someone wearing it and will post that later.














Now on to the fun we had in S.F.

Our friend Cody really knows how to throw a party. When he has one at New Years we always try to be there. I think the first one that we went to was over a decade ago. This year was a blast.


Cody (wearing the entrelac beanie) rents this warehouse space in South San Francisco and has, over the years, turned it into a fabulous home. He calls it The Cabana. The bedroom is behind that window and there is a TV/lounge room just past those black curtains.

He works in catering so feeding a small crowd is no big deal. The food was fabulous!

Cody and his friends are a creative artistic bunch. Most of them go to Burning Man and have a zest for life like no other group of people that I have ever met.



So, this guy pulled up with the Photo Boof. It's just like the photo booths that we had when we were kids. You go in and push a button and it takes four pictures of you.











The guy that designed the Photo Boof has it rigged to a computer and a projector. It shot a "screensaver" like progression of the pictures it took onto this white truck/van. (that's my silhouette)



Also in front of Cody's place was the "Yat Tub" (think yacht) Another free thinker....he turned this little boat into a jacuzzi! Uh, no I didn't go in. But I did check the water temp, it was nice and hot!

The party went on through the night and into the morning. I took pictures, but, photos of people dancing just don't look as bloggable as you might think. Justin the DJ played the best music. there were balloons and champagne at midnight and a parade of the most interesting attire.

I like going to S.F. it reminds me that there is is more beyond my tract home.
I would say that there is only one down side to this little visit. The Cabana is hard to heat and is down right COLD.

Kip took this picture of me all bundled up in front of my laptop. I was googling a question that came up. What is the different between Cannelloni and Manicotti? If you are wondering too, just click on the link and find out.

We are home now and all caught up on our lost sleep.


I am filled with the usual New Year desire to clean out drawers and organize my life. I call it New Year Nesting.
2008 has been a crazy year...good and bad to the extreme.
I hope that Peace will break out all over the place and prosperity will blossom and cozy up to us all.