Steeking!

Sewing them by hand this time:



This one is done:



Ugly back side



I hope to start assembling tonight.

Cleaning out closets

Going to Goodwill - the cat was hanging out with me, so we played "hand attack"

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Random but tasty

Curry chicken salad - tasty in pitas, my nine year old liked it

Ingredients
1/2 cup mayonnaise
6 tablespoons plain nonfat yogurt
2 1/4 teaspoons red curry paste
1 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
3 cups finely diced chicken (about 3 boneless skinless breads poached)
3/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 red bell pepper chopped
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2-3 teaspoons brown sugar

Preparation
Whisk mayonnaise, yogurt, sugar and curries in medium bowl. Mix in chicken, peppers, nuts and green onions. Season chicken salad to taste with salt and pepper.

And I'm working fingerless gloves pics soon.

Kinda broken

Ever have one of those days where the grown up part of your brain comes unhooked? You know, the part that makes you persist in work activities or chores just stops working and all you want to do is sit around? I'm blaming it on the heatwave - it's just been disgusting - but I think I just break every so often and wallow with my medulla.
Anyway here's a picture of the finished socks - I like them but I couldn't knit last night I was so tired.

Back

We went to Gatlinburg for vacation. We hiked (12 miles, my knees think I'm too old for that) and rode horses and went to Dollywood and saw fireworks and now we're all really tired.
Here are the socks I did on the trip and some nature shots while I wait for the bread to cool for dinner:

Chroma

Looking at the Ravelry boards, one sees that Chroma is a love it or hate it kind of thing. I love it, but I think appropriate use is important to maintaining the love. It's thick and thin, it felts if you look at it funny, it occasionally has big honkin' hairs in it. (All singles have that thick and thin thing I find). My only real complaint is the knots in the balls. Having to pull out lots of yarn to match up colors seems like a waste and hassle.
But the felting, that intrigues me. In the back of my mind I'm working up lined felted slippers and a felted vest.




Mmmmmm Lollipop ...

Well, that's interesting

Tonight I made the mistake of leaving a can of refried beans our on the counter, which the cat ate half of.

I wonder if beans give cats gas?

On a less totally disgusting note, here's the front of the stained glass pullover, which most assuredly does not have gas:

That's more like it

Happy fathers day!
We went to a AAA baseball game last night






And to see Super 8 today. I liked the movie, but that could just bey generational thing there.
Started on the back of Stained Glass again, much better



Gag, so not a hand model.
Hope everyone had a nice weekend.

Man, I HATE FLYING ANTS

5 nights a week my spouse and I go running and do 3 miles. We've adjusted to the dogs, the light, the HEAT (yes even running in 94 degree heat doesn't bother me that much any more) but in the summer, when it rains, all these flying ants come out. And we've had a bit of a drought until last night, so we're talking an ant plague of biblical proportions. Up your nose, in your mouth, in your hair, into your shirt, catching in your throat, getting in your eyes (and when stressed, ants secrete acid, isn't that just awesome in your eye???) GAGH. Disgusting.

What's not disgusting - I'm going on a finishing campaign. No new projects until I clean out that basket and I have ideas for socks and cardigans and mittens galore.

So, first down, the Green Mtn Spinnery Stained Glass pullover. Looking at it now, I think I stalled out because the color repeats were so nicely spaced on the sleeves, but when I got to the body, the repeats were cut in half and I wasn't as happy and really not sure about putting the whole thing together. So I think I'm going to take out the body and make the front and back as flat pieces so the color intervals will be more like the sleeves and then I'll be happy. It's much too nice yarn and such a great pattern and I was so happy with those sleeves, I can short change it by not having the color intervals look right.

I'll post pics later to show you what I mean. After finishing this one, I want to get Kinsale done, which I love but damn that's a lot of knitting and my god I started it in Feb of 2010. Maybe I could wear the dumb thing this fall??

Damask is done

And blocking:






Of course the cat goes and sits on it - as my spouse pointed out "isn't that wet? That can't feel good".
And the beads. ...

Shawl

I like this pattern (Damask) because it's both pretty and speeds up as you go.



We also ran a 5k this morning and between shaving off about 7 minutes from last years time and hitting the magic age of 40, I came in first in my age group.
See what sticking with something for a year can do?
Of course now the guys want to do a triathlon ....

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

Does anyone else remember those books? My brother gave me some when I was 8 or so (I think) and I LOVED them.
Anyway, a friend at work has been working on a sweater for about 2 years now. It's just one of those cursed projects, we've all had them. It's a semi-tailored pattern but she's doing it in handspun and kidsilk haze, so gauge and fit and torque are all in play. She's been very brave and persistent and when it's done, she'll love it because the thing is LOVELY.
But today she brought it to my office and asked if I would help sew it together because easing in the sleeves is going to be hard.
So, I feel like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who took people's unruly kids and kept them at her farm for a couple weeks until they learned a couple life lessons and started to be nicer.
I think I can teach this sweater to behave.
I'll post a picture of this very pretty, rather badly behaved girl a little later.

Back from vacation

So, I hope everyone had a nice holiday. We went to Gatlinburg



We went whitewater rafting - the little one is now large enough to do class 3 rapids. No pictures of that (duh).
We hiked the Alum Cave Trail. That's 6400+ ft and 10+ miles round trip. We have one tough 9 year old.
That night we rode the gondola up the hill so my husband and I could live our childhood dream of riding theAlpine slide.





At the top there were other things to do, such air gun shooting at Zeke's shack and even an iceskating rink:






So the next day we went to Clingman's Dome:






And after that, because we're old and our knees and feet can only deal with so much hiking we went to the best amusement park in TN.



One of my readers is laughing me right now - you know who you are, satellite-dish-gazebo-TN-native - but it was a ton of fun. And the little one's first roller coasters.
Not happy unless we're over doing it, we rounded off our day at Hill Billy Golf:





Mini golf is always fun. More so with disused farm equpiment.
Random wrap up, our hotel:

From the top floor

View out our balcony

Some kid

The pool at the hotel (big hit with the kids)

In TN you can apparently travel north and south at the same time.

Needs buttons

But it has buttons, you say?  Did a bad job of lining them up and am not convinced I like them, so we'll see.
I like it, though.
Have a nice long weekend, everyone.

Getting close to done with my boring sweater

I"ll take a picture later tonight.  I've also started a shawl, which has 4 whole rows done, not good camera fodder.

So, random thought.
It seems to me that there's a turn of phrase, more prevalent down south, where people refer to their or another's significant other as "my Mary" or "his Mary".  I found this was bothering me on some minor level and I wondered why.  I think it's as a northerner, I would never presume to own every aspect of another person, even a spouse.  My husband, my mom, my son, all have existences of their own, independent of every connection to me, so I would only call them mine by role, not mine in synecdochical whole.  I find doing so sort of weirdly presumptuous.

Okay, back to knitting,like I said, random.

Soccer is over for the year

And yikes was it hot this weekend. Anyway, it's been a while since I posted soccer pictures, so here's our kid with his amazing hippy hair:

Working on this boring sweater

Rosa Rugosa - I love the pattern but it's not great copy for blogging:




But I have a pattern now for a shawl to make out of some lovely Malibrigo sock a nice person gave me for my birthday. The pattern was also a gift - yay. That will be nice to take pictures of. And make.
We have a couple big doings this weekend - our final soccer tournament of this year and LA Noir to play.
Oh, if you live in Atlanta and are looking for a yummy lunch, try Local Three - Todd Mussman and friends. Yes, we took a day off today.

New yarn and stuff

More news at 11...

So very tired

It's been a long week.
So I took Indy out to the back porch before dinner. He's a good kitty - pretty patient.















I hope to finish those lined mittens this weekend so I can move on.
Have nice weekend, everyone.

Knitting at practice

And listening to Jane Eyre. How bad can life be? I really like these mittens. Entrelac is fun but just as you get sick of it, you're done and move on to straight knitting. The lining will keep the embroidery from snagging. They're a labor of love. I think I'll write this one up with some mix and match colorways - one idea is a fawn grey with cherry branches and pale pink lining ....