Magical Mystery Shawl

IMG_1377
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

This is two colorways of Noro Silk Garden Lite. The dilemma: My opinion is that the best thing to do with any Noro yarn is usually entrelac. My opinion is also that long swathes of entrelac can be tedious to knit. To solve my problem, I decided to pretend I was a little kid with a huge box of crayons and a giant piece of graph paper. When I became hopelessly bored with garter-stitch entrelac, I'd throw in a cable, a lace square, some bobbles for embroidering later, stockinette or reverse stockinette, etc.

This was an adequate solution -- for awhile. As you can see, I made another thrilling discovery: what else looks really cool in two colorways of Noro but is even MORE tedious to knit than garter stitch entrelac? If you guessed applied twisted I-cord edging, you win the prize. This shawl took me more than a year to complete because it spent most of its edging cycle in the bottom of a dark drawer in the basement where my stash lives while I occasionally tapped my wand and hoped the edging would knit itself like a stack of House Elf hats.

No such luck. In fact, even the less-than-astute observer will note obvious signs of impatience in the last stretch of applied I-cord edging. To be fair, however, part of that had to do with yarn shortage. There are about twice as many free I-cord fringe loops on one end than there are on the other, too. I had barely enough left with which to do the planned embroidery.

I was envisioning more buttons. However, my button stash appears to have made itself helpful by taking a vacation into storage to avoid getting spilled on the floor by a cat. This is all well and good, save that it forgot to leave me its forwarding address.

The idea is that when you toss the wrap around your shoulders, it's easy to use a loop of the attached twisted I-cord as a buttonhole for one of the larger buttons, thus alleviating the need to scrounge up a shawl pin to keep from freezing your canasta off while dashing out the door because you're late (ask me how I came up with that scenario).

There are more detailed pics on my flickr account, including some toplessheadless shots of me modeling it in relatively poor light in my living room.

In other news, I'm detox dieting. This is doing admirable things for my relationship with the scale at the gym, but less-than-admirable things for my mood. As such, my biggest cheat has been diet Coke and coffee - after four days the headache wasn't abating, and I'm a weenie. So, to help a sister out, if you see me put anything near my mouth that looks like it came out of a package, contains hydrogenated oil or high-fructose corn syrup, remind me that I might as well take a syringe full of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and inject it directly into my caboose.

In other OTHER news, the spouse turns 40 on Sunday. Wish him a happy birthday if you see him, or facebook harass him if you don't. :)

The moths have swarmed and the fiber is no more. . .

08 Yarn Crawl 06
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

Yes, the guild went on yarn crawl last week.

No, there is no more yarn or fiber left anywhere in Kansas.

Yes, The Other Jo really did buy all the yarn in that basket.

No, I haven't photographed my stash yet.

Memorial Day

Sitting on a rock
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

I'm back from my five-day stint south of the (state) border. The lacy ruffled wrap was delivered to much excitement from the graduate, who also sang like an angel and delivered a valedictorian speech that rhymed.

Cheeky executed her two-at-once sock intro like a pro and was almost to the gussets by the time we came home. We saw Narnia with my cousins and I did the 3-mile track in record time yesterday with Marissa, and in not-so-record but still fun time with my mom, aunt, and uncle. I also did a respectable hill in the mud on Friday morning, considering I was extremely tempted to stay in bed. I also, however, helped my husband demolish a vegetarian superspecial (the topping combinations are at the discretion of the cook and different on every slice) at my favorite pizza place back home, so it's doubtful that the exercise did much good.

The highlight of my weekend was visiting our former city of residence and spending the day with friends. We saw a new baby (gorgeous), heard glowing tales of happiness with a new career (exciting), and laughed ourselves dizzy (if you don't believe me, look at my crossed eyes in all the pictures) with some people I would see more than once a year if life were fair.

In keeping with my rule: No pictures of people who don't read this blog will appear in this blog. So, you'll just have to take my word for it unless you see me in person, but I have some good shots of Hippie Bikerville where we were running around acting like little kids. I'll post the people-free ones this week. The one above is a teaser. We are making those faces because, just out of frame, one of our friends is brandishing a big stick at us.

That's all I'm going to say - I feel just as self-conscious going on and on about how much I adore people who are outside of the community for which this blog is written as I do trying to explain how much I like YOU people to my friends who don't knit.

Anyway... back. Well-rested and in good humor. Expect (gasp, shock) that I may turn up at UFO night tomorrow after the gym for once.

Radio Nowhere

Lace wrap detail
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

Some laciness in Artyarns sock yarn, with a ruffle added on in a brown and burgundy from our own local dying goddess Andrea at Crafty in a Good Way (heart, heart, heart).

I knit this while watching DVDs with my husband, so there are, I am afraid, a lot of mistakes of the I-just-did-that-row-of-the-repeat-twice variety. However, all of the vertical lines and centered double decreases are unbroken, so I'm hoping it doesn't look like complete hash.

The ruffle reminds me of a coral reef or sea anemone. I have half a ball of the Andrea yarn left, and it just happens to coordinate perfectly with a ball of Two Windows Dye Company (also local) that I bought at Misknits recently, so I'm halfway through making myself a tilting blocks scarf that will probably also have a big ruffle outline. Because I need another half-finished project.

Amber's Foam Head modeling my wrap
Originally uploaded by knitjoknit

This is for a relative who is graduating this weekend. Therefore, I have extra excuse to go home for Memorial Day and give it to her in person. I am also...

a) going to visit my grandma (hooray!)
b) teaching Cheekyknits how to knit a sock
c) probably playing tennis with my dad and
d) driving down south to have lunch and run around with some friends and former coworkers I nevah get to see, with the exception of one who's ditching us. (Long story.)

But... before that, I am going to see The Cure. Because I have the best husband in the universe.

And for that, dear friends, you must forgive me for being a crummy president and missing my first meeting tomorrow.

I'll make it up to you after I'm done rocking out.

Where I've been

Jo Minor licking a greasy piece of dead pig, just to gross me out
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

I actually have finished knitting projects. Or, I could entertain myself and take some pictures of my gallery of UFOs (horrifying). But instead, I'll settle for yet another picture of my evil twin sticking something disgusting in her mouth.

More later - Jo actually took what I hope are pretty good shots of a lace wrap I just finished blocking as a gift for a cousin who's graduating next weekend.

And in other news, I have a new cell phone number. E-mail me if you think you're someone who needs to have it.

KITH me, I'm awake

Knitting in the Heartland wrapped up Sunday night, and I'm just now returning to the land of the living. I've got a lot of housework catching up to do (not to mention knitting catching up to do), but at least my living room no longer looks like this:

Stefanie teaching "Fitted Knits Techniques"
in her ravelry T-shirt
Originally uploaded by tjstein

It was a ton of fun hanging out with Stefanie, and I heard good things from the people taking her classes. She is more beautiful than her photos, she is smart, she is hilarious, and she is a class act all around. I wish she could have stayed longer and taken the Grand Kansas City Yarn Shop Tour, but, alas, it was not to be. Fortunately, Amber stays open late on Friday nights, AND she's down the street from Blue Koi, so we got to drop in on our way to Crispy Tofu with Awesome Sauce.


Everybody who's in the guild is going to get tired of me chanting these names, but I don't care. They deserve to be remembered in song: Sandra, Holly, Christine, Jo. While Teri and I were stumbling around sleep-deprived and walking into walls, these ladies were taking care of business. If you're going to head up a committee, the supposed ideal situation is to have people who, when you say "jump," they say, "how high?" On the contrary, these ladies, when we said "jump," they said "Yeah, lamebrain, I just set a pole vault record while you had your thumb in your eye." They were unbelievable - including Christine, who is getting married in two weeks. Who gets involved in planning a knitting conference two weeks before her wedding? A rock star, that's who.


Also... Teri? The woman is a machine. We met at 8 a.m. Friday and did not stop until late Sunday night. Picking up stuff (and people), running errands, making phone calls, going to the airport during rush hour -- and she still found time to do Mom Stuff like attend parent-teacher conferences while I was home muttering to my very slow printer and rocking back and forth over my sixth cup of coffee.

Needless to say... my job? Other than stashing stuff in my living room, driving people crazy by pelting them with checklists, and going to Kinko's at 2 a.m.? Easy peasy. Everybody else was amazing.

The conference itself was fantastic. It's so exciting to me to see other people geeked out about knitting, so of course KITH was a blast. The market was full of beautiful stuff, people were whipping out projects left right and center, and I heard all kinds of conversational buzz about learning new techniques. Stefanie's publisher generously sent us 50 copies of "Fitted Knits" to give away for classes and the book signing, which was just awesome. Nobody else scrimped on the freebies, either - we had to have extra door prize drawings because our donors were so generous -- and if you've heard a rumor that you won a prize that you weren't around to claim, don't worry. We have a list, we have your contact information, and we will track you down and give you your goodies (much as I might like to keep them).



Also, I got to team-teach a class with The Other Jo, which was an adrenalin rush and a learning experience. I'd definitely do that again!! (It was also encouraging that when Teri and I dropped by the morning guild meeting to stash some stuff back in the cabinet, two people waved their finished class projects at me! Yay!)


We also got to meet The Most Well-Dressed Baby in the Universe, AND we know now why Stefanie is so sweet and so much fun - it's genetic. Stefanie's mom and in-laws took turns Mazie-wrangling and they were all lovely people.


We really have a fantastic knitting geek scene in Kansas City and I feel so fortunate to be part of it. I was just as excited to introduce Stefanie to all the local knitters and yarn pushersvendors we have here as I was to introduce Stefanie to them. I honestly kept forgetting that she was just here for the weekend, and, as you can see, we drove her back bearing all the marks of someone who has moved into our treehouse for keeps:

(Yes, that's a MisKnits T-shirt, Happy Feet from MisKnits, a circ from The Studio, and the first sock she says she's knit in 5 years. On her lap is one of Carmen's sock bags, which have become a ubiquitous sock knitting accessory in KC. The moral of the story? Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated. Even if you're a Best of Interweave Readers' Choice Nominee.

KITH market haul

KITH market haul
Originally uploaded by sonnetstitches

My memory is a little hazy, but I appear to have gone yarn shopping this weekend. Clearly, sleep deprivation didn't cloud all areas of my judgment, because I picked up some good stuff.

More later. Despite several days of living on coffee and Advil, I had a great time this weekend. Teri and I are doing photo consolidation and I want to wait until I can type in complete sentences before doing my real post-KITH post. All the gushing I need to do about the fabulousness of the vendors, teachers, event organizers, army of volunteers, and, of course, Stefanie, will be better if it's coherent.