skittermagoo!

Alphabet soup!

Since I don't have any knitting pics to show you yet today, and also since I haven't gotten around to finishing my "100 things about", I give you this:

A - Age: 35.
B - Band listening to right now: Bauhaus.
C - Career future: Probably what I'm doing now: Research Scientist.
D - Dad's name: Richard (Dick). Also Gary (stepdad)
E - Easiest person to talk to: Kelly.
F - Favorite song: Ack! I can't pick just one!
G - Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms: Bears. Definitely bears.
H - Hometown: Dallas, TX.
I - Instruments: As in musical? None. But I would love to learn drums and xylophone!
J - Job: Research Scientist.
K - Kids: 2 cats, Abby and Cloey.
L - Longest car ride ever: Dallas to Central PA -- three days in a U-Haul, blech.
M - Mom's name: Tracy.
N - Number of people you’ve slept with: enough.
O - Ohhhh?
P - Phobia[s]: Spiders. Clowns. Ventriloquist dummies. Sharks.
Q - Quote: "Quit crying or I'll give you a reason to cry!" -- my mother
R - Reason to smile: It's a long weekend!
S - Song you sang last: Changes (David Bowie)
T - Time you wake up: 6:30am on weekdays, on weekends around 8-9am.
V - Vegetable you hate: Brussels Sprouts.
W - Worst habit: Impatience.
X - X-rays you've had: foot, hand, chest.
Y - Yummy food: Chocolate, the darker the better.
Z - Zodiac sign: Pisces

My cat prefers cotton . . .

I finished the back of Tricot tonight! Yay!!

Well, Cloey approves, even though much blocking is needed to tame the curly edges . . .

and she's thinking hard about what to do next, a sleeve, or the front . . .

Or maybe she's just thinking about how to get me to give her some catnip.

Tried to get Abby to join in the Kodak moment, but she's having a bad hair day, poor thing!

The back of Tricot was kind of a slow go, at least in my instant-gratification-loving mind -- of course, this is only my first sweater (it's in a race with Green Tea Three), so maybe I'm just naive. Anyway, I'm hoping that the front will at least seem a little quicker, now that I have the intarsia down and all. BUT, I don't think I can bring myself to cast on for the front (or a sleeve?) tonight; my brain is too dead from a long day at work! So, I'm off to work a bit on Green Tea Three, which is still in the mindless no-increases-no-decreases stage! Whee!

Soft as a bunny . . .

I went to see my mom yesterday (well, actually, I went to deliver my old iMac to her, since we just got new comptuers and she was in dire need of something not completely obsolete), and she presented me with this:

Yep, it's 100% angora, and it's quite possibly the softest thing I've ever laid fingers on! So soft that I can barely feel it. I have no idea how long it's been in my mom's stash, but I suspect from the appearance of the labels that it's been a long, long time. It may well have been in my grandmother's stash before that. Here is a closeup of the label (front and back):

Hell, I think the labels are cool, never mind the bunny yarn!

I'm really not sure what I'll do with it . . . there's not much there (5 balls of 10g each; no clue as to the yardage), and I don't think I want it to be anything that lives too close to my face -- I've already had bunny hair in both eyes, both nostrils, and my throat, too. This stuff SHEDS!

In any case, my mom rocks for a) finding it in her collection and b) giving it to me. She loses points for packrattedness (she hasn't knit since I was a small child!), but in this case since it benefits me I won't hold that against her.

In other news, lots of progress made on both Green Tea Three and Tricot this weekend, but I won't put up any pics for now . . . it's just more of the same.

No Grumpy No More!

Ok, the grumpy mood has passed, yay! I just spent a nice several hours rooted to one spot on the couch, working on my Tricot, which was enough to chase the stress part of my bad mood away. Then, I checked my email and found this waiting for me:

It's a photo of my friend Audrey's new baby, Alex (well, ok, he's a month old now) wearing the Umbilical Cord Hat that I made for him!! This was one of my very first projects after I learned to knit back in February, and it was the first item I ever made as a gift. How cool is that?!

No more knit time for me tonight . . . the other reason I was grumpy (I think) was pure exhaustion, so it's off to bed with my bad self.

Grrrrrumpy!

No inclination to post much just now, because I'm grumpy! No reason, but I don't want to do much of anything. I should post some pictures, and update my links, and maybe even post the bio that I've been promising for a while now, but i just don't seem to have the get-up-n-go to do it right now.

I think I'll just go and sit and knit and maybe the mood will pass. Let's hope so, anyway!

Progress!

I finally have pictures to share!! Yay!

Here's the back of Tricot, so far . . . I'm not too far from starting the armhole shaping. I'm loving the way the Cotton Ease I'm using knits up -- it's very soft, and I like the way it has just a bit of a sheen.

The white bits are actually a bit wider than they look, but I can't get them to stop curling under for their photo op.

And here's the back of T3, which is finished.

A funny angle, because the only place I could find to spread it out was on my cozy chair. So I'm thinking if it doesn't fit or looks bad, I can always keep knitting and make a slipcover, ha! The red isn't a vein, really (that would be scary), it's just the yarn I used as a marker for the row before my armhole decreases. Yes, this is the marker to which I had to rip four times. See why I marked it?

And finally, a picture of Abby (who has only been seen once here before). This is the best photo I have of her since she was a kitten!

New banner!

Whaddya think?

The kitten in the pint glass makes me laugh . . . my husband found the picture (I have no idea where), and made the graphic for me. I just couldn't help using it to replace the original skittermagoo banner, which was starting to bore me. I'm sure I will be tweaking it again soon, now that I know how!

OK, I'm off to Stitch 'n Bitch soon, so I will have some actual pictures to post later tonight!

ABCD . . . OCD

Okay, so it's totally obsessive-compulsive on my part, but the latent librarian in me had to go ahead and alphabetize my links (on the left). It really was bugging me.

(incidentally, I really was a librarian at one time!)

Happy Friday!

TGIF, yeah?

No picture of Tricot today . . . just look at the last picture and imagine the same thing but with shaping! I misread the pattern and knit 6.5 inches instead of 6.5cm before starting the shaping -- duh! And here I am, one of the biggest proponents of the U.S. just switching to the metric system already. I guess I just wasn't paying attention . . .

Anyway, I ripped out almost half of what I had, and re-did with the darts. So now I'm pretty much back to the length I previously had! Grrr. It's all good, though, and I'm hoping to get a LOT more knitting done this weekend. AND I have Stitch n Bitch on Sunday! Yay!!

More tricot goodness!

Here she is so far (hopefully the photo looks ok on your monitor; it looks a little washed out and indistinct on mine):

I've got about 6 inches done, and am going to go a little farther than the prescribed 6.5 inches before starting the decreases for darts . . . I'd rather it end up on the long side than the short side, after all!

Hopefully I'll get to the fun decreasing part tonight . . . I'm hoping for some serious quality knitting time for the first time in several days!

In other not-so-interesting, but rantworthy news, I got an email from Parking Services at work today telling me that I have an outstanding citation . . . on a car I don't own!!! Yep, they gave me a ticket on a car I don't drive, in a lot for which I don't even know the location! On a day that I was at work, having parked my OWN car in the lot for which I have a valid permit. Which I PAY for. Of course I marched right down there and tried to remedy the situation . . . they ended up making me fill out a form to appeal the citation! Appeal! It's not even my freaking car! And it turns out that their records were screwed up; they had me "in the system" as having a Ford Mustang (the car that got the ticket) instead of the actual car I drive. But even though it is their fault, *I* am the one who has to appeal. Grrrrrr. I would ask "can you believe that?", but yes, yes I can.

Tricotlicious!

Ok, so here's a pic of what I have done so far on Tricot:

It's only about 1.5" (3-4cm), but it entailed a steep-ish learning curve! I've finally got the color changes down pretty much, but keeping the 3 skeins of yarn out of a huge tangley mess is another story . . . I've embarked on a sort of system that reminds me of rotating players in volleyball (finish one color . . . ROTATE! . . . next color). So far, so good. I'm planning on doing a lot more on this over the weekend, so stay tuned!

Happy Thursday!

Won't post my tricot progress picture, as it would no doubt bore the pants off all who witness it . . . basically I got through casting-on last night and that's it before I fell into a sleep coma.

Tonight is SURVIVOR, yay, and I'm also TiVo-ing the Friends finale. I'm planning to do a whole lot of TV watching and tricot knitting over the weekend, not the least of which so that I can show some actual *interesting* pictures! ;)

Intarsiaphobia begone!

Woohoo! I did intarsia!

The diagonal color change was intentional ;)
And doesn't it look like some sort of swatch-torture victim, pinned to my bulletin board by its hands and feet? It was the only way I could get a good picture.

Okay, so up until now I've been *terrified* of intarsia; it looks so hard, I thought I'd never be able to do it. I never thought I'd even want to do it. Then I saw tricot, and changed my tune (actually, I decided to knit tricot, then only after printing the pattern, carrying pattern in my purse for a week, laying pattern on dining table for three days did I actually READ the pattern and realize that if I wanted to knit it, I would have to do intarsia). I even thought about ways to do the pattern without doing actual intarsia.

And then I realized that for the past couple of months (as long as I've been knitting), I've been able to conquer all the challenges I've encountered, and they have been many (even socks!). Other than intarsia, I haven't really been psyched out by much of anything, knittingwise. SO, I decided to bite the bullet and try it, with scrap yarn instead of the yarn I bought for tricot (thus the yellow and green above).

And ya know what? With only one false start, I got it! It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. So there, intarsia! I'm not 'fraid of you anymore! Hah!

Argh and double argh!

I'm finding that my wireless web connection on my new computer is not fast enough (?) to upload pics, etc here . . . I have to plug directly into ethernet. Not a huge tragedy, but I had visions of sitting on my couch, knitting and blogging and posting pics, lala. Not sure what the deal is, but grrrrr.

And in other arghs, I just found updated T3 instructions that Stephanie got from the designer . . . looks like I have to rip out the back of T3 down to the armhole shaping and redo it. Grrrrrr again. I think with this I will wait and do the front before frogging almost 1/3 of the back. The back is on a spare needle, so it can marinate for a while.

Ok, so I'm off to the gym and then I'm going to come home and KNIT! Yay!

Ribbity-ribbit

Here's Cloey helping me frog a few rows (again) on my T3 sweater last night:

This was the third time I had to rip out the same 4 rows . . . mainly due to my apparent inability to read the pattern! It's all good now; I'm hopefully going to finish the back today! Yay!