JenLa

Nu Shooz

After listening to episode #11 of The Diva Knitting Podcast, I suddenly remembered that I had been in search of the perfect hand-knit socks shoes, and have been for the last year or so. Now, see-through shoes are just not my kind of thing. Pink, brown and black plaid faux converse? Emphatically yes! Transparent clogs? Yeah, not so much. I also needed them to be comfortable enough to be able to spend the day in doing a lot of walking and standing around for, say…a day at Disneyland, yet stylish enough to wear to work, and they have to be durable, because I’m hard on shoes. So, when we received the Almost-Free-Our-Shoe-Sale-Is-That-Good flyer from my favorite “we have shoes that’ll fit Fred Flintstone” specialty shoe store the very same day our economic stimulation rebate check hit our account, I took that as a sign…”La must buy shoes today”.

Never one to tempt fate, that’s exactly what I did. I bought 4 to be exact, a pair of Propet Mary Jane Walkers and a pair of Propet Tampa Walkers. Being ever-generous, I allowed the DH to buy 2 shoes…one for each foot. It was a VERY good day.

Then last Sunday, me and two of my favorite, hoars (deliberate creative spelling so I don’t want any lip from you members of the grammar gestapo, and you know who you are) indulged in some spontaneous retail therapy. It was my job to gather everyone, it was Andria’s job to be on time, and it was Michelle’s job to decide where we were going and make sure they were open. Play close attention to this last part, cuz guess what?

Yep, you guessed it. Closed. And this was the store that I KNEW had the addi lace needles I wanted and the sweater seaming helper thingies I so desperately needed. And they have alpaca sock yarn. You know, all the shit I need right. now.

No Lone-Arranger Badge for YOU missy!

So, instead we had to go to another yarn store. One even FURTHER behind the Orange curtain. One whose clientele could be considered “Stepfordish” and who drive cars sporting such license plates as…

And we did find Jen’s most favorite yarn of all time, Malabrigo lace, which we all bought skeins in different colorways. I bought one skein. one, uno. single. solitary. skein. Which may or may not be turned into a small shawlette or a certain type of scarfisimo. Of course, to date, no picture of it has been taken. Too lazy.

On our way back to the freeway we all giggled our asses off when we found this…

Because we’re 12, and that shit’s funny.

Some time this summer the DH and I are going on vacation to an undisclosed destination. I will, over the course of the next 5 weeks, be leaving clues as to the actual location. All you have to do is deduce WHAT country we will be visiting to be qualified to win. If you guess the exact city, your name will be entered twice. YOU CAN ONLY ENTER ONCE, so make your guess an educated one. There will be additional clues posted over at Fibercrack’d so you may want to visit often. Now, there are 4 people, Jen, Stacey, Carolyn & Cheryl who already know the country that we’ll be visiting. BUT, if those 3 of those 4 people (Carolyn already knows) can come up with the correct city we’re going to, your name will be entered into the drawing.

Email your entry to Contest! by midnight Pacific time on July 4, 2008. Please include your Blog URL, Ravelry ID and your name in the body of the email. Please do not leave your contest entry in the comments section. Why would you want someone else to benefit from your cranial calisthenic? And again, only entry per person, please. (But feel free to comment on other parts of this post if you so desire…)

1. Our destination is one to which the DH and I have never been.

2. The country to which we are traveling was once a part of the ancient Roman Empire, and contains ancient Roman artifacts and ruins.

3. Our all-expense-paid trip was a direct result of Slowknitter’s aka Hairburner’s (pike blog more) professional efforts on our behalf.

4. We will be maxing out our luggage allowance for this 7-day excursion.

Now for the part I’m sure you all are most interested in, the prize(s). A 110g/560yrd skein of super exclusive (ha!) sock yarn from Dizzy Blonde by La

sneak peek

Also, the prize package will include set of hand-made stitch markers, plus a souvenir whatnot/whatev from where we’re going. More prizes may or may not be added to the prize package.

Don’t forget to head on over to Fibercrack’d and pick up your bonus clues!

*Love is… Im & Cookie who gave me today’s title. Thanks!

~~~If you plan to dye yarn all weekend, temps will be above 100
~~~If you plan to have a fun day at the beach, it will rain.
~~~If you plan to take your dog to the vet to finally get the snip snip, HE will invariably come down with a case of colitis AND a skin rash, both having to be treated BEFORE the surgery can be done.
~~~If you plan to have company over, the offspring will chose that day to shave his head.
~~~If you plan to open a new fiber-based business, you will find a vagillion little details that must be seen to before you can finally hang out your shingle.
~~~If you plan to run a guessing-game type contest before you leave for the very vacation the contest is about, and if you plan to award a prize at the end of that game, part of said prize being hand-dyed yarn from you very own yarn line, that very same yarn that was to be dyed in the 100+ weather in a shameless attempt to introduce your new fiber-based business, your BFF/blog partner will launch an awesome new, VERY addictive Rubbernecking group over on ravelry, so that the blog goes neglected for over a week because you NOR your best friend can tear themselves away from the train wrecks.

and lastly…

~~~If you eat too many beets the night before, you will pee pink that next morning.

oh! And you’d be living my life.

Still knitting, still dyeing, (still rubbernecking) still gathering “clues” for the game/contest which I hope to launch on Tuesday, wool willing. In the meantime, here’s some eye candy. I don’t know who the genius was behind these spots, but they’re friggin’ brilliant! Thanks, Pacalaga, Satan (or was it Marie?) for the linky.

Stats:

Pattern: Winged it:
Toe-Up
Magic Cast-On
Encroachment Heel
2 x 2 ribbed

Needles: Size 2 [2.75mm] 32″ addi lace (LOVE!)

Yarn: 1 ball Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Multijacquard [100g/462yds]

Thoughts: I was going to do the Kaylee Socks as a tribute knit to Monkey Toes, but the yarn wasn’t right for the pattern. Besides, I think I want to knit those socks for me. Yeah, I’m selfish that way. Instead, I did a simple 2×2 ribbing. I’m LOVING how quick and nice these socks turned out. Hell, I was even able to overlook that fakeisle crap in the colorway. What made my day on these socks? 2 words. Magic Loop. WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME MAGIC LOOP WAS TEH SHIT??1! OMG. So fast. So flowy. SO workin’ it! Yup, no more octopus wrestling for me…well, except for when I’m doing Rometard events.

So that does it for Goal #9: Knit self-striping socks for SIL Sophia. Woo! They’ve been mailed, and hopefully in my SIL’s hot little Denver hands any day now.

Next up? Extending the shaft (teehee) of these:

Self Felting Roman Socks of Love

They felted up just like I had hoped. In fact, they felted up so well that the leg is now too short, and the damned socks keep sinking into his shoes. Too smart for my own damn good I tells ya. Thank wool I was still able to get a hank of the Inca Alpaca in the correct colorway! Time for me to cut into my knit for the first time. YIKES!!!!!

I also need to give some love to my stalled Central Park Hoodie, which is languishing at 85% done: Hood’s knit, and all that’s left is the button band, the weaving and the sewing, and then the wearing. I’m sure hoping to get off my ass and get it done for our exciting vacation at the end of June. Shhhh, the three of you who already know about it. I’m going to run contest soon. If needs be, bribery/blackmail could be involved to keep youse quiet. Here’s my initial offer…a little sampling if you will.

Stats:

Pattern: Kriya Yoga Mat Bag (Ravelry link) or direct .pdf download.

Needles: US 8 (5.0 mm)

Yarn: Cascade 220 Wool, 1 skein pink, 1 skein brown (most of both skeins was used)

Mods: Erm. No, I guess not.

Thoughts: Combining cabling and stranded color work isn’t hard, per se, but it’s a little like learning to drive a stick shift. You know how to do the things, but putting them all together at once feels a little confusing at first. It flowed into a very simple rhythm after a short period of time, though. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about colored cable work and am definitely pleased with this, so I’m sure that there is more of this type of knitting in the future. My little swatch even got some use.

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Remember when I mentioned getting stuck rubbernecking in the drama threads on Ravelry? For a short time after that they seemed to subside, which was nice because I got a lot of gardening done. Well, they’re back and they’re bigger and better (worse) than ever. I know it’s sort of idiotic to read those things, but I’m coming to terms with it. I love gossip and drama when they have nothing to do with me. There, I’ve admitted it. I don’t participate, I just lurk and secretly pick sides and sneer and snort to myself about the ridiculousness of it all. I was speaking to a friend about this and she feels the same way-as long as it doesn’t touch her, she likes to watch it from the sidelines. We got to talking about how much of it there is lately (a seemingly inordinate amount, but not as much as some other fora, I suppose.), how to find it (You know the person who deals with all the big trouble? Read all their posts.), and how wouldn’t it be nice if there was some central collection place for those of us who like to silently read up on the latest dramatic offerings like cheap pulp fiction. Admit it. You do it, too. I know that when there are 40 voices and 602 readers that there are a lot of people doing it besides me. So I got to thinking that we need a Ravlery Rubberneckers Group for staying abreast of the latest melodramatic offerings from the amateur actors, devising RavDrama drinking games and to discuss the basics of surviving the marathon reading required. This was a joke, but I get closer to actually doing it with every passing hour. EDIT: I did it. Join, you know you wanna.

I started my new job, which was basically the same job but a new location and more working, but might be morphing into an actual new job. I expect to be very busy for the next couple weeks at least. I’d like to call it yarn money, but the lack of knitting time and abundance of stash and queued up projects really probably means it won’t result in yarn collecting. Or at least, that’s what I thought until I caught wind of a new yarn shop IN. MY. TOWN. This may not mean much to you, but we don’t even have a liquor store here, only one grocery store, one fast food restaurant and a whole lotta farms. I will make time to install myself in it and report back.

Meanwhile, I’m stitching away productively on the Wank It! and soon I’ll be beginning Moroccan Days/Arabian Nights. Just the process of choosing yarn and beads has been epic so I can only imagine what I’ll be putting myself through with the execution. Another “Jen takes the hard route for the sake of a wild idea” project. There’s also a little Hyrna Hergobar in the very near future-and that is one that I’ve been absolutely dying to knit ever since I saw Claudia’s. It’s one of those things that has stayed with me, haunting me all this time. I keep changing my mind about the yarn, though, so it’s anyone’s guess right now what it’s going to look like. I’m more excited about my upcoming projects than I’ve been in a long time.

v.2.0

Pattern: Clamber(Ravel It!) by Moi!

Yarn: Misti International Misti Alpaca Sport, (Less than) 1 ball -146 yds

Needles: US 4 Addi Lace 16″ circs

Notes:

Back in Feburary I made a hat for my mom’s birthday. The hat was just the initial downpayment for a scarf-hat set that she proclaimed dire need for because she and my dad were going on an Alaskan cruise. I had decided early on that I wanted to make her the Irish Hiking Scarf, the beauty of it’s simplicity and sturdiness a perfect match for my mom’s own personality and style. Well, I didn’t really like any of the hats others have designed to compliment the scarf, so I decided to take it upon myself to design one of my own. My first attempt?

…Less than stellar, I have to admit. It was quite snug, and the woman does NOT have a huge melon. Then there’s the unfinished-looking rag-tag looking edge. So it was back to the designing board, where I came up with this…

…with which I am quite happy. Tickled actually. It made a for a beautiful set, and Mom was so thrilled she was speechless, and if you knew my mother, you’d know that’s saying something…well, actually…she wasn’t saying anything, hence speechless. Anyhow…I even caught a peek of her trying it all on again from the trunk of her car as dad was finishing packing up to go home. She wore it home. In California…in upper-70-degree Southern California weather. Yeah, I think she liked it.

The pattern is free and available on Ravelry (see where it says “Ravel It”? click there), as well as on the Dizzy Blonde Designs page at Fibercrack’d, you know, for those of you who have been hiding under a rock and are not on Ravelry. Just click the button below and it’ll take you right to it.