the Akamai Knitter

I finally made it home on Tuesday night. The flight home took over 10 exhausting hours and I’m still recovering.

The cats have reacquainted themselves with me after being surprised by my return. It seems Pressie really missed me and managed to lose some weight and luster while I was gone. She seems to be bouncing back now that I’m home, but I’m keeping a close eye on her.

I did manage to get some knitting done during the long flight and I’ll be back with that and more next week. Until then I hope you’ll enjoy this picture I took of an iris outside of the Red Lobster back in Altoona.

Happy Friday everyone! Enjoy your weekend!

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Kung Hee Fat Choy! It’s a new year everyone and this time it’s my year. That’s right, I’m a rat and proud of it.

In celebration of this special year, I received a tiny little rat figurine.

The piece of paper you see with him is full of cute little tidbits of information. For example, my flower is the Peony and that means “dignified like a king”. Does this mean I’m like royalty?

It also says:

“You will have many chances. Do not miss them. But if you are too proud and lose your presence of mind, or get lost in an indecent life, and you’ll lose your fortune immediately.”

Hrm. Now I’m worried about having an indecent stash. ;-)

In our family there are a few traditions that we practice every year. There’s the red paper we buy from China Town and put near the doorways to bring in good luck. This one says, “good health throughout your household.” Good health is always a good thing.

Before we put up the new paper on New Year’s Eve, we burn the old paper to burn away any bad luck from the previous year. This is always an adventure as I’m more then a little afraid of fire.

There’s also a frenzy to clean the house to sweep away the bad luck. This has to be done on the eve of the new year as there’s no cleaning done on the first day of the year. That supposedly sweeps away any good luck.

Another must do for our Chinese New Year celebration is Chinese food.

There’s the traditional Jai that we have every year, Mongolian Beef, and Salted Fish Fried Rice. Delicious! And no, I didn’t cook a single dish. I’m a disaster in the kitchen. :)

Another thing I like to do for New Year’s Eve is finish a project. So I started another felted fish. I was able to get the knitting done, but not the felting. Hopefully this won’t mean that my year will be filled with only partially finished items.

On New Year’s Day, I started a new project in the hopes that my year will be filled with beautiful and joyous projects. More on that another time, I need to felt a fish.

May your New Year be filled with good health and beautifully joyous projects too!

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Here we are at the eve of another new year. As I look ahead at another year filled with friends and fibery goodness, I thought I’d take a moment also look back to see if I managed to accomplish some of this past year’s resolutions.

To refresh your memory these were my goals:

1. Get over my sweater fear and knit a few. I really need to get off my lazy ass and my comfort zones and just dive in. I have enough yarn for one sweater. I just need to get rid of the mental block in my head that I can’t do this.
2. Spin more and with specific projects in mind. I’ve already started doing this, but I want to keep it up.
3. Knit with what I spin. I have yet to knit with what I’ve spun except for one afghan block. This is just plain silly. I must stop this kind of silliness.
4. Lose weight. I’ve been slowly losing weight this past year and I’d like to keep it up by going for regular walks and cutting down on my snacking. I think if my body were at a more acceptable weight I’d be more inclined to knit sweaters for myself too.
5. Get my Christmas presents out on time. I was really bad this year and I feel really badly about it. I had them all knitted up I just didn’t get them wrapped and mailed in time. Shame on me.
6. Buy more yarn. I’m really hard on myself when I buy yarn. I agonized over every purchase like I’m bleeding money when in fact I’m not. I don’t have a terribly big stash and I do use what I buy. I need to stop with the guilt trips whenever I buy yarn. (I do need to go easy on the sock yarn though. My sock yarn bin is huge. I need to go on a sock yarn diet.Oh and I have huge amounts of laceweight.)
7. Be more patient and kind to myself. I find that the courtesies that I unthinkingly extend to others rarely get extended to myself by myself. So I need to start being more courteous to myself by being more tolerant as well as being patient and kind.

Let’s start at the beginning.

1. While I didn’t knit a lot of sweaters, I did manage to get over my sweater fear. Hopefully 2008 will bring more sweaters into my wardrobe.
2. I did start a spinning project with a specific goal in mind. Unfortunately, I didn’t even come close to finishing it. Maybe I’ll have better luck in the future.
3. I did start a project out of my own handspun. Even though I didn’t finish it, I feel like I’ve accomplished that goal.
4. Ha! Let’s not even go there. :)
5. Again. Ha! But I have joined a support group this time around to help me be better prepared for next Christmas. I’ll get it right one of these years.
6. Oooh. This was a hard one. Needless to say, mission accomplished.
7. My perspective has changed from when I set this goal for myself. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to be demanding of oneself. It’s great to challenge yourself to new heights as long as you don’t abuse yourself to the point where it becomes counterproductive.

I don’t think I’ll be making any resolutions for next year. After awhile, the resolutions I made this year began to feel more like a burden then a motivation.

Instead, I will start the new year with a completely clean slate, clear of mind.

Happy New Year!

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Does anyone remember this?

I started that way back in January. That’s right. January. I finished the knitting in February, but I could not get myself to sew the inner lining to the body of the hat. It was just a heinous chore that I couldn’t bring myself to do.

But last week my wonderful friend Veronica graciously came to my rescue and did it for me. So now, at last, we have a finished hat.

Pattern: We Call Them Pirates

Source: Hello Yarn

Yarn: Knit Picks Telemark

Needles: size 3US needles (2 circs)

Started: January 18, 2007

Finished: July 7, 2007

No modifications were made.

I had a ball making this hat. Fair Isle is such a fun technique.

The obligatory inside shot.

And here’s a shot of the inside lining. Look at what a wonderful sewing job Veronica did! (Thanks so much, Veronica!)

There is some non-knitting news. I didn’t get much knitting done in the past couple of days because I pretty much wrecked my hands while getting some furniture put together. I finally have a decent chest of drawers. I’ve been doing without for the past year or so. You don’t want to know where I’ve been putting my clothes. As for the night stand? Ha! Let me tell you about the nightstand.

I started assembling the nightstand and remember, I am no carpenter. I thought I was doing so well. Up until I tried to put the drawers in. Now this was one of the last steps. The bottom two drawers went in smooth as silk, but. But…

… I apparently I put one piece in the wrong way and what was supposed to be a 3-drawer night stand is now a 2-drawer night stand. Basically, there’s no way the third drawer will fit into what is now a tiny space of glaring failure.

I’d take pictures, but I’m still too pissed off about it. I’ll probably put the drawer front over the mistake to cover up the ugliness. I swear the directions were too vague for inexperienced me to have known which way to put the damn sleeper thingamajig in right.

Assembling the chest of drawers went much smoother, even if it did take over 4 hours. It’s a 5-drawer piece and there were a lot of screws to drill in. Mistakes were made, but they were easily corrected. My hands basically felt and feel like mush, but it was worth it.

Despite the nightstand fiasco, I’m very proud of the job we did. The chest of drawers is functioning as it should and I find it amazing that we were able to do it considering our lack of wood working skills.

And the nightstand? Well, I can live with the mistake as soon as I make it pleasing to the eye. I don’t really *need* 3 drawers. There are worse things that could happen in life then a deformed nightstand.

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Earlier this month a friend asked me to test knit a pattern for her. Despite my best intentions of a speedy start, I only got around to starting them this weekend. So while I watched Deja Vu and The Devil Wears Prada (both excellent movies), I got busy with my first project as a test knitter.

Despite my dislike for the yarn, I’m really enjoying the Periwinkle Sock Pattern. It has just the right amount of lace to keep me interested, yet it’s easily memorized so that I can easily work on them with my attention divided. Even though I switched to a size 2.0mm needle from a size 2.5mm after 4 repeats, this sock is a winner as the fit is fantastic.

Speaking of needles, did you all see that Knitpicks has started carrying size 2.25mm needles? I am so elated that I even forked over the money for their pricey shipping to Hawaii. I figured out that even with the shipping the needles would come out to about $7 a pop, since I bought 4 pairs. That still makes them a better buy then Addi Turbos.

I do have a question for all of you, have you ever tried Lisa Souza’s sock yarn? What does it compare to? I have been suffering from some serious sock yarn lust lately, but I’d like to make some informed decisions before I take the plunge. I’m trying to stay away from too many impulse buys, but who knows how long that will last.

Also, I read the new book by the Yarn Harlot over the weekend and I absolutely loved it. She really knows the depths of passion and the overwhelming obsession we knitters have and I was so sad when the book ended. I wished it were a never ending story.

I wanted to run out to show all my non-knitting friends excerpts of the book so they could understand me. This is what I what I have been trying to say all these years, people! How I wish I had a quarter of her writing talent. Maybe I’ll just buy extra copies of the book as presents for my muggle friends. I’m sure they’ll all be extraordinarily delighted with my thoughtfulness.

When I mentioned this idea to Quincy, he kinda gave me a look. Hrm. What do you think he’s trying to say?

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