and we have success..........

14 days and countless hours of knitting.

The dismount (bind off) to 1:08:18

If Costco Sold Yarn Sheep Would Need Sweaters.......

I love Costco. I love to just go in there on a Saturday morning about 11:30 when the hordes are really getting into swing. I don't know why it appeals to me so, typically I avoid a crowd like I avoid squeaky yarn but Costco draws me like a moth to a flame. Not only can you find stuff you need like shampoo, conditioner, dog food, canned tuna, and beer. It comes to you packaged in mass quantity. Not only do they sell you the big bottle of shampoo that will clean a 2 person household of heads for almost 6 months, they package it in twos. A year supply of shampoo. A can of tuna that would make enough tuna salad, hot dish, salad nicoise, and sandwiches to feed a platoon, all from one can. I will admit, I get a kick out of the big can of tuna, so much so that I've actually considered buying just because. The very best thing about Costco on a Saturday at 11:30 is human behavior at it's finest or worst depending on what school of thought you follow. I am fairly certain that some people time their Saturday Costco trip so that they can make a buffet lunch out of all the free food samples. Never before have I been elbowed for a quarter piece of a buttered english muffin, that OMG if you buy them today you get four packs for, wait for it, 6.99. Honestly I love english muffins but Costco doesn't toast them to the crispness I prefer so I normally pass buy that free sample. One time they were offering samples of a ravioli bag kit. All you need in one freezer kit to make a delicious ravioli dinner just add olive oil, you'll find that on aisle fifty make a left and go 2 blocks. The sample tray was empty and I thought oh well, I'll just buy a bag and try it, so I was going to ask the sample lady where I could find them, however I had to find her first. Well I found her alright, squated down behind her station shoving those half cooked cheese raviolis in her mouth as fast as she could. I just moved on and found them on accident. They weren't bad. Christmas is my favorite time though. This is when half of the book tables are replaced by coffee table books that if you bought one, four cinder blocks and a nice candle you could make a coffee table out of. They're huge and they sell, I've seen people walking out with five or six of the same one to give as gifts. If you wait till January you can run to a half price book store and pick them up at a steal........But dream with me for a minute what would it be like if tomorrow we all walked into Costco at 11:30 and all the goods that are normally there were replaced with pallet upon pallet of delicious yarn? All the sample ladies were handing out mini skeins of cashmere, silk, bamboo, merino, and baby alpaca? I am only speculating but I think there would be a lot of 911 calls because of puncture wounds that day............
On the Needles still: I am 3, count them 1-2-3 rows away from finishing Citron so I am off like a prom dress to finish it up and show it off to everyone tomorrow.....

why I will forever love dogs........

The other night I was sitting upstairs going like gangbusters on the Citron shawl, Quintus was laying on the floor going gangbusters on his bone and Gabby had disappeared a while before that because I had told her to lay down.

I don't know how they missed it, but D came upstairs to make some popcorn to snack on while watching the Olympics. This is not a quiet process and Quint and Gabby equally love popcorn as much as D. Everyone knows how the smell of fresh popped corn lingers in a house, really really lingers..........Gabby had clearly slept through the entire making of the corn and D eating it within 5 feet of her. I suppose an hour had gone by and I hear Gabby stomping up the steps and making a bee line for Quintus and sniffed his mouth.

I'm not sure what would have happened had she smelled any popcorn on him but I think Quintus should count his blessings.

Pictured below......all the dogs in my family belonging to my two brothers and my mom.......Everyone of them is wonderful and loved beyond measure.....

the light at the end of the row.........

"There are days, my friends, when I can't decide if what I do is making me insane or if I'm just plain insane inspite of it all......Or...that I had the makings for an insane person and this stuff has just tipped me into the category". Wendy Bernard from Knit and Tonic author of Custom Knits

I have now begun knitting the final ruffle on Citron. I did put it down for a couple days but there was some alcohol involved and the fact that I almost fell asleep working across one row, but I have sallied forth and made quite a bit of progress in the past few days to get where I am now.....540 stitches into it and 10 more rows to knit.........It's turning out beautifully and when it's done I'll post the final picture......I'm hoping that'll be Saturday night, who knows, it could take me a day or two just to bind off the stitches.

There are however some things that I have learned from this project.........


1. I will knit till I fall asleep, quite literally in the middle of a row


2. I have a stopwatch on my cell phone which is how I learned just how long it took me to purl across a row


3. I grunt when counting


4. I'm looking forward to the next Winter Olympics....


5. Never underestimate Mr. Browns desire to eat things I leave behind.


6. I'm pretty sure I've gone on a nutty but everyone seems to enjoy it





on a side note......I am going to make another one of these shawls.....I've been carrying around this lace weight alpaca making people touch it.....some understand others......well lets say some people give me a wider berth than usual.

nutty

15:18:36

Are you wondering what that means? It means that I am at a point in the Citron Shawl that it takes me 15:18:36 minutes/seconds/milliseconds? to knit across a row. However I have hope that I will make the deadline of the torch going out and it will be bound off, blocked, and packaged by that time, especially if the rumor I heard is true and that they are not intending to ever extinguish the torch at Olympic Park. In that case, I will be triumphant in the goal set before me. If not, well, it won't be the first time I said to myself, 'you dumb a#$ what the hell were you thinking?' Definitely won't be the last!

However, here is the progress thus far. I believe I am in the 300's as far as current stitch count, that's for the ruching and will inevitably be cut in half in the next couple rows, then the staggered decreases, which for whatever reason is when people decide to talk to me. I'm thinking of having a necklace made that can be flipped around to say 'Speak' and the other side will say 'counting'. The trouble will come in trying to remember to flip it, or answering more question about what the heck my necklace means and blah blah blah.........I still like the idea of it so Nicola, keep that in mind. Nicola makes jewelry, knitting notions, dog tags etc. They are all wonderful, I've ordered a few things from her and never been disappointed. So again, here's the shawl, I took this outside yesterday because the weather here has been amazing. Really, my cherry trees that normally don't bloom till March are all budded out and a few pink flowers are showing. It was 63 degrees as I drove home today so I'm pretty sure if this holds through the weekend my back yard is going to be awash in pink flowers.

This year for Christmas the dogs bought me the page a day calendar 'Never not knitting' by Stephanie Pearl McPhee, today's quote was this....

"In her book Folk Mittens Marcia Lewandowski reports that in 18th century Finland, knitting became such a phenomenon that the town of Nadendad actually went so far as to forbid public knitting, claiming it was shameful and shouldn't be done in public." Well I figure I'd be jailed for sure in 18th Century Finland......my friends however also commented on the quote going so far as to imply not only would I be in jail, I'd be on death row. :) Oh well, maybe I could knit a red carpet to walk down. I'm pretty sure that death row in a knitting prison is room full of moths shredding fresh roving, hand dye's, wool blends and the such and my head exploding trying to save it all. I imagine it would be like the time I brought home a box of tennis balls for Gabby, you know the one who loves L-O-V-E-S her balls, and dumped them all over the floor. Pretty sure if I hadn't picked them all up my poor girl would have stroked. Well I'm off to work on my Knitting Olympic project that is so focus driven that I can't even watch the Olympics while I'm doing it and as I take another drink from my delicious glass of Heff I will send out a toast to the Canadians for even making a rumor of a never ending torch possible and it will for the next 8 days be my dream come true!

Citius Altius Fortius

This is serious business.........I thought maybe to calm my pre-cast on knitter jitters I would open a bottle of Chardonnay that I picked up at the store a while ago.

Yes that's blood you see, the cork screw caught me as I was trying to take the cork off of it. However I didn't notice the blood until after I had handled the skein of yarn and had to unwind a couple yards of it, set it on the table while I went to wash my hands, came back to see Quintus smacking his lips, apparently he has a taste for lace weight yarn. I love you Quintus, but if you develop a taste for wool, we're going to have a conversation. So, I would have taken a picture of the ruined yarn but the only way anyone is going to see it is a vet x-ray or tomorrow afternoon and those are two roads I'm not willing to travel tonight.

To add insult to injury, the wine sucked and I dumped it down the drain. Anyway, here I am ready to rock and roll. Started reading through the pattern and decided I'm already screwed but I'll fake it till it makes sense. The upside is that if I royally screw this up I bought 2 extra skeins of the knit picks Gloss Lace because I wanted to make sure that I had enough. As D. would say, typical.

I had to break out the headgear and reading glasses because I couldn't see the stitches that I had cast on.

I dumped the crappy wine and went with my tried and true knitting drink.

Bottoms up Knitters, let the Knitting Olympics begin.

May your yarn knit true

May your stitches stay straight

The colors not pool

The swift not break

We're off to knit

For 17 days

by the time it's done

we'll need another 28 (at the Betty)

Oh yes....one more thing...

I just signed up for the 'Knitting Olympics' on http://www.yarnharlot.com/ peruse the rules and then pray for me..............I have 17 days to finish a project doing something that I have never done to completion....a shawl in a half circle.........

laying it all on the line for a gold medal......to post on this blog

I'm trying to get Marcy to sign up but she says it depends on if her daughter will finish a current project for her or not........

some people might say.....

that I'm impulsive

my mom says I have all the 'joy' genes in the family

I was voted by my co-workers the 'most likely to go off topic' (which is probably true but it's only because I'm thinking about 4 topics at a time and they all run together....)

That I'm a spur of the moment type of girl and I go where the spirit moves me. Well it's really not so much 'spirit' as it's something shiny or sparkly. It's entirely possible that during the week preceding the So Much Yarn annual inventory sale I lost my freaking mind and have yet to recover the part that manages reason and check book balances. Oh well, it's yarn, as I was saying to my mom, it could be some high end drug, I think the cost would even out to be the same when all is said and done.

Truthfully I feel like I'm in an old western movie and I'm holed up in the local Saloon (for the sake of argument though lets say that the saloon is a yarn shop) So here I am holed up in the local yarn shop in a standoff, armed only with my knitting notions and a size 8 circular needle. What am I surrounded by? Yarn of course. Yarn that taunts me, whispering to me through the swinging doors of the 'yarn shop' saying 'knit me, you know you want to, just do it.' 'Squeeze me, you know you like how tightly I'm twisted, the way I bounce back', 'touch me, I'm softer than the rest of them', 'I'm hand dyed, you can't do better than that' and then the cashmere enters, the standoff ends as I'm smothered in the silky softness of yarn so wonderful you're afraid to knit with it lest you screw it up royally and, gasp, have to cut it and start over.

The yarn is right though, I do want to, I need to, knit it. It's what calms me, focuses me, generates ideas in me, but it's quite possible, that I've crossed the line and will forever be ferred to as "you know Carmel the Crazy Knitting lady? I heard she tied up her husband once with a ball of acrylic from _____________(insert local craft store here) because he suggested that maybe she had too much yarn....." *note: Where I typed 'ball' of acrylic, I almost typed 'skein' and we all know that acrylic, the kind you use to hush your enemies, doesn't come in a 'skein'* Anyway, lets look at what I've done lately that could constitute me going from Carmel who knits beautiful things to Carmel the Crazy (not a bad title but it doesn't exude confidence in people when they first meet me, unless your a Scottish Warrior painted blue going into Battle against the bloody British in which case I'm pretty sure Carmel the Crazy is the one you want on your side)

1. I joined the Blue Moon Fiber Arts, Sox that Rock Club. This means that I'm going to get a new skein of sock yarn plus two patterns, plus some extra doo dads every two months. SWEET! The yarn that I receive is a colorway that won't be released until next year nor will the patterns created for the specific yarn. This was very cool until I flipped over my Yarn Harlot page a day calendar and saw a little tip suggesting what I do in number 2.

2. Go through your sock yarn, pull out 12 skeins, match them up with 12 patterns, put in ziploc bags and kapowie you have your own sock of the month club, for the next 3.5 years. Because I had well beyond 12 skeins of sock yarn. It's quite possibly the best sock yarn collection west of the Cascades. I'm not snobby about it, I buy because a color 'whispers' at me vs. staying loyal to a brand.

3. I have a list that I put into an excel spreadsheet that is so long when I printed it I felt dizzy, of projects that are in progress, waiting to be finished, waiting to be knit, and waiting to find yarn for.

I can honestly say the smartest thing I did this month was decide not to attend the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma and instead send Marcy with a list and a limit of 4 skeins of sock yarn to purchase. She only found two for me, she did quite well for herself though, it's possible she's passed out in her bed right now with a cool cloth on her forehead trying to remember where she blacked out and came too.......here is what she found for me. Valentino and Boysenberry by Blue Moon, excellent! I'll add it to my own personal sock of the month club.

This, pictured below, is a skein of emergency sock yarn, part of my first Sox that Rock Club kit. Drool all you want people this color will be available to you January 2011, until then it's all mine :) and whoever else belongs to the Sox that Rock Club......

This, well this was an impulse by of the worst sort, I went to the 'fabric' store with the intention of buying fabric, not stuff to make 'fabric' well I came home with a pillow round and yarn, no fabric in site. Now it's going to be the Multnomah Shawl by Kate Flagg, you can find it on Ravelry. It's lovely.

So, now it's getting late and I have to go and crawl through the yarn that's next to the bed and pick up the Afghan that I'm working on for a friend, one that I've ripped out twice and actually ripped to the begining and started a whole new pattern, but I'm happy with it now......

Good Night All

Cheers

and

if you see wool hanging from me, feel free to pull it off.........