Scarf It Up

In a fit of total insanity, I decided some time in November it would be a good idea to give fiber gifts. I have a lot to show, but until the gifts are actually distributed, I have to piece and parcel out the FO. So, here are the six scarves I created for The Things' teachers and principals.

I made two Kata Felicity Scarves from Mindful Knits. The burgundy one was made of 1.5 skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Sport on size 8 needles. The blue one is made of a half a skein of Knit Picks Merino/Silk fingering weight and was hand dyed. I used size 8 needles on that too. I was afraid the Merino Silk would roll if I made the scarf by the pattern, so I did this one in garter stitch.

The dropped stitch scarf is made of 1 skein of hand dyed Patons Merino Wool with size 9 needles. The thing really grew during the washing and blocking. It wound up being 8" x 70".



The Fern Bank scarf was basically lifted straight off the pages on Barbara Walker's Treasury, vl. 1. It's also made of 1.5 skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Sport on size 8 needles. Yes, I have a love affair with that yarn.

Branching Out from Knitty. Also of BSA sport, in charcoal. Took about 2 skeins for this one, on size 8 needles. I decided to make two sides and graft at the center so the vines would travel up on both sides. I liked the symmetry.

And, basic block weave pattern in 2.5 skeins of ONline Linie 157 Tessa. It's a superwash, and not the softest yarn I've ever worked with, but it blocked up rather nicely.

And, there's still more to be shown, after the gifting is over.

Note to self: start the fiber gifts earlier next time....like December 26.

One Tough Cookie

It's been a while, and it's not all my lazy fault....REALLY! I have a lot of fiber stuff to talk about, actually, but that's not the main topic of conversation at the McD house these days. Tonight, MUC has his Cub Scouts banquet, and Necropolis informed me earlier in the week that I was volunteered to create 4 trophy style awards. I have to ruminate on these kinds of things, so while I was ruminate and marinating ideas, Necropolis decided to up the chaos factor a bit.

That, my friends, is what was, until Wednesday morning, Necropolis' mode of transportation. Now, it's an expensive piece of twisted metal. Luckily for everyone concerned, Necropolis had no life threatening injuries. He did get a trip to the ER, and he's still got some nagging spinal, knee and kidney issues. He thinks he's going to work tomorrow. I think he's scrambled his brains in the wreck. He couldn't even tolerate an hour at church yesterday, and he thinks he'll manage at work?

So, here it is the day before the banquet, and I finally get an idea.

The Cookies and neckerchief are made of polymer clay and painted with acrylics. The 'chips' are formed a la Van Gogh, with a little impasto technique, straight from the tube.

If I'm Talking, You Should Be Taking Notes.

On Ravelry, I started a group called Into the Labyrknit. It's short description says: Do you use labyrinths, candles, prayer beads, and of course, knitting or crocheting as tools for meditation and spiritual enlightenment? Share your ways to find peace and mindfulness in the journey. Primarily a Christian group, all faiths are welcome.

At any rate, there hasn't been a lot of chatter in the group, so it's mostly been me posting things. The other day, I got a request from one of the members of the group (CoffeeYarn) if I minded being quoted in her blog. I told her, have at it, and I was glad that someone was enjoying what I posted. Truthfully, at this point, what I'm posting is more what I like, since I'm not really getting a lot of feedback. Apparently, my post about Advent hit home with a her though.
In my mind, and I posted some of this yesterday, Advent is about waiting. One of my posts to the group said this.

In my life, Advent is the perfect example of being mindful and
meditating.
We are expected to wait and prepare. We reflect and open our
hearts.

What can you hear if you listen with your
heart?

I then realized that I spend a lot of time on the group talking about being mindful, which is really a Buddhist concept. That doesn't mean it can't have applications elsewhere, and I wondered if the group really knew what I was talking about, so I posted this for the next day's meditation (liberally lifted from beliefnet.com).

To understand mindfulness, imagine yourself doing something very simple,
something that doesn't arouse a compelling interest--like, say, eating an apple.
You probably eat your apple not paying attention to how it smells, how it
tastes, or how it feels in your hand. Because of the ways we're conditioned, we
don't usually notice the quality of our attention. Done this way, eating the
apple is not a fulfilling experience.

So you blame the apple. You might think, if only I had a banana, I'd be
happy. So you get a banana, but eat it the same way, and still there's not a
lot of fulfillment. And then you think, if only I had a mango--and go to
great expense and some difficulty getting a mango. But it's the same thing
all over again. We don't pay attention to what we have or what we're doing.
As a result, we seek more and more intensity of stimulation to try to
rectify what seems unfulfilling.

So, are you being mindful of YOUR
apple?

The last thing I did was to challenge the group. I challenged them to bring some mindfulness to their knitting/crocheting/spinning (after all, it is a fiber site). I gave them some loose instructions to do the following on Monday afternoon:

I've spent a good deal of time considering the season of Advent, which is big on reflection and anticipation. So, I've come up with an easy, short term project that I want everyone to experiment with, no matter what you're working on.

Here's the plan. We're all going to continue working on whatever projects we currently have going. Work at your
normal pace, doing your normal fiber thing. The only "new" thing you're going to add is a couple of mantra type words.

For any knit stitches, the word you use, either mentally or verbally, if you like, is
"wait". If you crochet, I think a single crochet should work for this.

For any purl stitches, the word is "listen". If you crochet, perhaps double crochet may work for this.

For spinners. If you single treadle, use "wait". If you double treadle, use "listen".

Do this for some time. When you feel so led, come back here and let us know how this worked for you. Tell us how you used it, how you learned, what you learned, how it guided you, etc. Also, good and/or not-so-good responses are acceptable. The whole point of this is to see what works and what doesn't.

I haven't heard any responses from the group just yet, but it's early. I can tell you what I've found so far. I almost get hypnotised saying "wait". That is until one of The Things come tearing through the room wanting something. But still, there does seem to be some basis to this. So, if you're reading this, I challenge you as well. If you don't have fiber or knitting or whatever, choose a really mundane chore...washing the dishes, sweeping, mopping..something with repetitive movement like that. See if it keeps you centered and in the moment as well.

A Little Fiber Is Good for You

I've been knitting relentlessly. Ceaselessly. Tirelessly.

Okay, not so much the last one. I still need copious amounts of sleep. But I have been knitting a lot, when I haven't been playing with my brand new toy. (No, it's NOT a personal product, Dr. Lucy.) I'll show you more of the toy on another post. Today is for fiber.

I knitted these Noro hats some time ago, but just got around to washing and blocking.

Because knitting and washing and blocking is infinitely more enjoyable than spending the day after Thanksgiving in Atlanta with Necropolis and The Things doing Christmas shopping. You can not imagine the horror that was my life that day. All I can say was by the end, on the ride home, I could do a very lifelike and realistic version of Madeline Khan from Clue. "Yes, I did it, I killed Yvette. I hated her, so much... That... it... it... flam - flames. Flames, on the side of my face, heathing... breathle - , heathing breaths. Heathing breath... "

So, unless it's online, it won't be bought by me, except for some toy purchases for The Things as it gets closer to Christmas. We've (read: I) have also decided that we're actually going to observe Advent as it is intended this year. That means Christmas will be observed, well, on Christmas. Not before. No rushing around. We will take our time getting there. We will reflect and enjoy the journey. And, to be even more off the beaten path, we're forgoing traditional ornaments. I'll putting the lights on the tree to night, but after that, every night, after lighting the advent wreath, The Things will put a few origami peace cranes on the tree each night. We may string some popcorn as well. I'll put up the nativity, but that's about it. At Christmas, that is, December 25...THAT'S when we'll celebrate. And, we'll get 12 Days of it, all the way to Epiphany.

This is a shot of our Advent wreath we made a church yesterday.

Eat Me!

Eat us, hey, it's Thanksgiving day

Eat us, we make a nice buffet

We lost the race with Farmer Ed

Eat us 'cause we're good and dead

White man or red man

From East, North, or South

Chop off our legs And put 'em in your mouth

Eat me!

Sauteed or barbecued

Eat me!

We once were pets, but now we're food

We won't stay fresh for very long

So eat us before we finish this song

Eat us before we finish this song

- lyrics from Addams Family Values

Just a brief sharing of my weird and demented sense of humor. It’s one of my favorite parts of the movie, second only to Joan Cusack’s evil villain monologue at the end of the movie (My parents, Sharon and Dave. Generous, doting, or were they? All I ever wanted was a Ballerina Barbie. In her pretty pink tutu. My Birthday: I was 10, and do you know what they got me? MALIBU. Barbie.)

Anyway Turkey Day is fast approaching, and I’m still knitting like a freakin’ fiend. I’m actually making decent progress, but I’m waiting on the blocking wires I purchased to arrive before I take pictures. So, I’ll leave you with the Things latest offering. The art teacher at one of my schools was doing this with one of the grade levels, and I thought it was just too cute. She was gracious enough to send home some clay with me and let me bring them back to be fired in the kiln. I think the boys did a great job. And, yeah, since I'm basically an art geek, I made one, too.

It figures.

I saw this test, and thought I'd take it to see what happened. Here's the result.

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Dishcloth Cotton.You are a very hard worker, most at home when you're at home. You are thrifty and seemingly born to clean. You are considered to be a Plain Jane, but you are too practical to notice.
Take this quiz!

Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away

That’s my favorite Rolling Stones song. What does it have to do with the post? Not a lot. I heard the song on the radio, and it’s in my head now.

I am around. I’m knitting like a fiend for the holidays. Chances are, if you’re friend or family expecting a gift from me, it’s probably going to be something knitted, assuming I don’t run out of time. I’ve gotten quite a bit done, and I’ll be taking better photos and showing them here. Some are of my own design, some are patterns. The pictures shown are of the scarf pattern “Branching Out” from knitty.com. It’s fairly safe to show on the blog, since it’s probably going to Things 1 and 2’s teachers.

Hopefully, I’ll get more done over the weekend. Look for more progress.

NaNoBlah Blah Blah

I don’t know why I thought doing NaNoBloMo was a good move for me. Who am I kidding. I can’t half remember what day it is, and before I know it, the day is gone and the last think I want to do is get up just to post to the blog. And, for me, it would be more NaNoBlahBlahBlahMo, since the pressure of daily posts makes everything but total inanities run fleeing from my brain. Of course, the argument could be made that what I write in here is total inanities anyway. Can’t argue with that.

At any rate, I thought I’d devote this to why I need a better camera. Or, more correctly, just imagine what I could do with the proper equipment (and training, but that’s another issue).

Recently, our fair Garden City had an airshow, and part of MUC’s scout stuff was to attend this. We decided to make it a family day, and all of us tagged along. GLB and I just roamed around and took pictures when the scouting got too tedious.

We also have a much older digital point and shoot that sucks all the energy from 2 AA batteries in about 10 pictures, and MUC has claimed it as his own. He thought he was just too much, being there with his own camera. He took some photos of his own, and I loaded them to Flickr for the sake of argument. He thinks he’s hot stuff now. These are his.

This one is my favorite. I know it's probably a fluke that GLB's in the pic at the far left, but I think it's just a really cool shot.

An Evening With Harry and Jack

Halloween has come and gone, and the boys (all three of them) had a jolly good time. In some ways, I miss the days when I decided the costumes the boys, yet it's always fun with my kids. This year, they were pretty 'normal' in their choices, but we did it our way. GLB decided to be Harry Potter, and he's complete with a 2/3rds complete scarf. There's some interesting pinning going on under that scarf. If it weren't such a dull knit, I probably would have finished. Or maybe not.


MUC has talked about Captain Jack Sparrow for months now. He stuck it through, and we did it our way, complete with beard and drawn-on mustache. And khol around the eyes. He enjoyed it so much, I found him in front of the bathroom mirror tonight, reapplying his facial hair with my good eye pencils.


Necropolis enjoys scaring the snot out of the neighborhood children, so he gets candy duty while I tour the neighborhood with the boys. We made it a quick night, all in all, but have a boatload of candy that will probably last us until next summer.

NaNoBloMo and Me

NaNoBloMo is a challenge to blog every day for the month of November. Somewhere, somehow, in some maggoty part of my brain, I thought this was a good idea.

I signed up.

And, I missed blogging on the very 1st day.

So goes Jenni P McD and Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Kermit had it right....

It's not that easy being green;

Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.

When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold...

or something much more colorful like that.

It's not easy being green.

It seems you blend in with so many other ord'nary things.

And people tend to pass you over 'cause

not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water or stars in the sky.

But green's the color of Spring.

And green can be cool and friendly-like.

And green can be big like an ocean, or important like a mountain,

or tall like a tree.

When green is all there is to be

It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?

Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful!

And I think it's what I want to be.


Kermit had it right….

It’s not easy being green.

This past weekend, MUC and I got back into the swing of the letterboxing gig. It was really great to get out and see folks at the “It’s Not Easy Being Green” event at Folly Beach, SC. Drgdlg put on a really nice, low key event with plenty of boxes to keep us busy.

Personally, I’m still a bit of a mixed bag regarding my feelings for the whole thing. Not because of the event, but due to my own abilities and performances. It was a real testament to what I *can’t* do right now. My mind was no where near being able to focus enough to sort the boxes by geographical area, much less work on any codes (there were a couple of those). If it weren’t for the very uncharacteristic laidback graces of Eidolon, I don’t know if we’d have boxed at all.

MUC and I have boxed quite a bit with Eidolon, Artemis and the Hitchhiker puppies, and we know what we’re getting into. It usually involves moving at the crack of dawn, hustling all day long, solving issues and clues on the fly, debating and re-debating, no eating (unless it’s along on the trail), and ends with a flashlight at the last boxes. We’re exhausted, filthy, inky messes with lots of stamps to show for our efforts.

This weekend, either Eidolon was in a particularly gracious mood or was ill, because we were practically sedate and leisurely all day long. MUC and I didn’t get there until almost noon, and basically announced to Eidolon we were going to ride his coattails. And we did. After lunch. I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened. We also stopped and let the puppies play at the dog park (which was freakin’ huge, by the way).

We did a little boxing after dark, but it was a guided tour type thing by drgdlg, with Paw Paw and Granny, hawkeye and Jdog, as well as Buttercup and Johnny Quest along for the journey. Other than a brief encounter with an after hours park nazi and MUC’s momentary scary spill, the evening was tame as well.

Most stayed for the weekend, but MUC and I came on home, getting back to Chez McD by about 2 a.m. And, yeah, we were exhausted, inky messes, but not quite so many stamps as I’m used to having at the end of the day.

The day after was rather unpleasant, but Dr. Rheumo finally came over with some pain meds, so it was at least tolerable. It’s also what prompted my late night trip home. We had considered staying the night, but after deciding my pain threshold was just too unpredictable these days, I didn’t want to be away from home if I really needed to medicate myself.

All this, and I forgot my POS camera. So, I’ll leave you with this image instead.

Namaste

Namaste ( pronounced nah-mah-STAY) is the word used at the end of each yoga lesson. It’s a benediction of sorts, and roughly translates to “the divine in me recognizes the divine in you”. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not so much into what Necropolis calls the “woo-woo” of yoga, but I like saying that word at the end of each class with my fellow students. It has sort of a binding moment that is difficult to explain. When I made my newest pattern, a yoga mat bag, it seemed right, somehow, to name it Namaste. So I did. Mine is a bit unusual, in that I purposefully made the stretch of the lattice work for me, so the bag is actually smaller than the mat. It stretches to its correct size quite easily. That also means that it takes less yarn to make that the other mat bag patterns I’ve seen. I made mine in Noro Kureon, with which I have sort of a love/hate thing going. I do love the colors. I’m not so crazy about the sticks, stems and leaves I have to clean out of the stuff. You can find the pattern for Namaste Yoga Mat Bag on my Six Degrees site and listed on Ravelry, as well as my Easy Peasy yoga socks.

Now….back to all that knitting I put off, not to mention the long list of Christmas knitting (ARGH!)

Why My Kids Are the Most Awesome On the Planet

Necropolis and I have always encouraged our children to be themselves and have not restricted them to gender stereotypes. If one of our children chose to take ballet or said they wanted to study fashion, we would encourage and support them.

Our children, however, have other ideas.

They are two of the roughest, tumblest, dirtiest boys imaginable. They are of the scraped knees, frogs in the pocket, swinging from the rafters variety. And, that's quite alright as well. Hard on the washing machine, but quite okay.

It's the time of year when the toy commercials are really hitting hard, and GLB and MUC are starting to really sit up and take notice. It's strange how they focus on this, since Santa is quite selective in what he brings, and we tell family and friends to go light on the toys. Our children are very fortunate in what they have, so we don't encourage excess. At any rate, while watching these commercials, the boys often gag and vehemently disdain any "girl" toys. My Little Pony, Barbies, Bratz (which, quite frankly, scare me), and others of that ilk are very like to provoke a resounding "OH, GROSS!" from the kid quarter. I feel it is my obligation and duty as parent to tease them unmercifully. I still have a couple of my childhood Barbies, a carry case, as well as several outfits. They've been in the garage, in storage all this time, but I keep threatening to get them out for the boys to play with every time they start gagging at a Barbie commercial. Tonight, MUC called my bluff.

And, I called his.

I went, at great risk of life and limb, and found the case, cleaned it off, and offered it (with a strong admonition that it was OLD) to the boys. They DOVE into it. And hour and a half later, I'm typing this blog entry, and they're still playing with the dolls. I know this is probably a one time event. They'll lose interest, and I'll put the Barbies back. But, it does my heart proud to know my kids just don't care. Just like they don't care about color, or gender, or how much money some one's parents have.

Oh, and someday, when they bring home a date, I've got proof of this night.