CarmelKnits, etc.

14 days and countless hours of knitting. The dismount (bind off) to 1:08:18

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...

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 wonderf...

"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 literal...

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 'S...

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 alread...

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........

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 i...