JenLa

Way better than a noodle sammich!

This little guy was part of a much anticipated and well-worth-the-wait final birthday package. The box was chock full of yummy fibery goodness, the rest of which I’ll share later because…well, mainly because “La” could easily stand for “Lazy”…and I only got around to taking pictures of Mini-Moze, and only because I felt like it. I am Sloth, hear me roar! (but only when I’m up to it)

Man, is this the work of an artist, or what! She was able to extrapolate Momoze’s marking extremely accurately, having only the images in my flickr gallery to work with.

…(pinky) Hello, I am Mini-Moze

What a labor of love. Thanks Jen!

So, come Sunday we’ll have a new addition to the family…

2008 Pontiac Vibe

After driving it over eleventy hundred thousand hard miles, we’re trading in my trusty steed aka The Malibu. I’m sure gonna miss her. I LOVED that car, so fast and comfy and pretty with her bronze mist paint job and sassy little rear spoiler. But I done wore her out ass with all the shitty-commute-of-hard-driving for the last 5 years. Besides, her gas mileage is sucking me dry, not to mention the ever-increasing maintenance costs.

Time to go riding off into the sunset…

If you did something dumb, I mean REALLY stupid, which of the following attitudes would you choose to represent the incident:

OR

???

Why, yes, I did forget to take the basket of hand spun yarns off the wood stove while enjoying a nice hot fire, some Deadwood and a glass of wine. Either I’m dangerously retarded or I’m going to take the gold in the Creative De-Stashing category for 2008. Luckily it was only my early, shitty attempts at spinning that got ruined. And luckily, all of my recent spinning was stored elsewhere. (not to mention luckily I didn’t burn my house down.) Thank gourd for small favors because my recent spinning is all Mission: Possible 2008 related, and I finished my first goal, which was to spin up all in-progress spinning.

See how I made five projects look like a lot more there? The purple is a 100% wool roving that I got from Little Barn at SAFF. I bought the roving with someone in mind, but it seemed very compressed and possibly slightly felted and I didn’t think she’d enjoy spinning it after all, so I pre-drafted it and began to spin it for her. It turned out to be awesome to spin and I’m very happy with the end result. It’s a fingering weight 3 ply and it has loads of loft and squish even though it was navajo plied. The green and pink is Luxe superwash in the Petals colorway. I had such good success with the purple, I navajo plied this, too. Another three ply fingering weight, I’m FINALLY going to be able to knit socks from my hand spun! After that is the tussah I showed you last week all spun and plied. I divided each color in half, spun them onto two bobbins in the same sequence, two plied them together so like met like and got a slightly heavier than lace weight yarn-700 yards! Don’t know what I’m gonna knit yet. After that is the completion of my color spinning class from SAFF, the color of the roving was Fiesta from Gale’s Art and the close up shows how I navajo plied the leftover after two plying the pink to the other colors. The last one is the ultimate completion of the blue merino/silk from ashland bay married to the mohair/merino from a mysterious land. I still think sock monkey… And so completes my first goal of MP08.

I’ve also been owing shots of some prizes and a gift for a very long time.

I won grand prize in the Mochimochi Land Photo contest, thanks to all of your votes!

And boy, Anna does not disappoint! In addition to all of the craft books, toys and other nifty little prizes, I got a $20 certificate to use in her store and I’ve already bought this pattern. Thank you so much for all of you who voted for me and thank you very much indeed to Anna!

And Stacey sent me these:

A really long time ago. Aren’t they cool? They’re for knitting Cat Bordhi socks. Hey, Stacey thank you! I’ve been thinking about you lately, not just for those markers, but also because I broke my swift the other day and my husband used glue, wires and tape to fix it.

Remind you of anyone? Anyone’s arm, maybe?

Because it’s a New Year and that means it’s also the Fourth Annual JenLa Knit Blog Awards. The awards show where we make this shit up a couple hours before we hit publish. The awards show where you don’t get a vote. The awards show where if you whine, you get a demerit next year. The awards show where Jen and La forget to give out most of the awards. Shut up, it’s New Year’s Eve and we’ll chug champale if we want to. It’s also the awards show that almost didn’t happen this year. [Remind Jen to show you photos of her computer, currently in pieces.] Yet, we overcame not just our schedules and computer woes as well as our husbands clamoring for us to spend JUST ONE New Year’s Eve with them, but also a zombie apocalypse to bring you this year’s awards. OK, it wasn’t really a zombie apocalypse, it was really more like we were really, really tired and brain-dead, but still. We were going to nip this in the bud a couple years ago but the public outcry was too much for us. So in order to avoid disappointing a handful, we irritate the masses. Grab your steaming hot mug of Shutthefuckup and kindly ignore the fact that the list shrinks by approximately 20% every year.

1. If Only It Were Her Underwear Award goes to Purling Dervish for the most frequent changing of themes.

2. Designer of the Year Always a hard one, and every year it gets harder with more and more knitters bringing their talents to the designing end of it all. However, this year Anne Hanson Came close to making us give up designs by anybody else. And she designs them so fast, you’d have to be faithful only to her just to knit them all!

3. The Thanks For Making Us Look Bad Award: Amy’s Babies. Why don’t you just do everything better than us, then? FINE.

4. The Cutest Ugly Thing Ever Award: F. Pea’s Star Nose Mole. Does ugly GET any cuter? Sheesh! So what’s next? Knitted manatees or Jerusalem crickets?

5. Funnestest. The Furry Fury This blog has EVERYTHING! Humor, monkeys, singing and dancing, plus a lot of made up words. The english language only has a quarter of a million words and if you read us [like........ever] you know it’s not enough.

6. Double Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Award: Shut Up and Knit! the sweetest Cookie we ever bit into…and nibbled on…and spit back out. Oops!

7. Excellence in Knitucation Award: TECHKnitting. We’ve learned things we didn’t even know we didn’t know.

8. Best Streaming Curse: Wanderlust knits much, much envy.

9. Now Dance For Our Amusement: Uberstrickenfrau. Post more, Olga. Enough with your lame excuses about life and responsibilities, we have decreed that you shall write in a more frequent manner.

10. Blogistan’s Most Popular Book: Yarn Harlot strikes again with her run-away Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot’s Guide to the Land of Knitting. Between her book and her tour, she’s gotta be the hottest knitlebrity out there. Hell, she even has her own Wiki entry ferkreissake!

11. Jen & La’s Favorite New Book: Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Yes, it’s our award show, and if we wanna be different, then dammit, we’ll be different!

12. The Jaws, aka Fresh Blood Award goes to: Ok, wow there are one hell of a lot of new knitting blogs lately. And a bunch of them are actually good! So this year instead of deciding, we’re awarding a whole list of our faves as a way to say “Welcome to the Bloggerhood”. In no particular order:
Fumbling With Needles
Knit Devil
Uberstrickenfrau (what can we say? we. love. her)
Knits 4 Bears
Ruth

13. Best New Internet Knit Thing Ever: What do YOU think?? Ravelry. Duh

14. Longest acronym in the history of all mankind: MAMoStriLiWhUnDerInfluHomiIdWhoFaMeStiNeedaCouMoYeaToGeOvLastin Found here at Purls B4Swine.

15. Best LYS: Knitch. In addition to the awesome yarn store, knitter’s loft with kitchen, they have a bar. What ever else could you possibly want…except, maybe some cabana boys? Oh, wait. They’ve got one of those too!

16. Overshare, aka TMI, aka Poke Out My Mind’s Eye award goes to: Evil Science Chick (again) for her wonderful spinning analogy.

17. Most contageous virus wide-spread meme: The Days-Of-the-Week meme

18. Longest Picture Award: This one. Dude, Jessica called it right there in the comments.

19. Our Favorite Blog Pet Award: Chappy! Sorry, Chappy, there’s no biscuit jackpot here, but we know adoration counts with dogs.

20. Stupidest Pet Trick We’re Still Waiting to See Award: The Chicken Goddess shampoos her chickens. No, really. For fun. Still waiting for that video, though..

21. Home Away from Home Award: Purling Oaks, where we feel like we could just drop in, have a cup of tea and absorb all the comforts and warmth.

22. Most Inappropriate Name Award: Turtlegirl. Have you seen how much stuff she knitted this year? There’s definitely steady, but no slow here.

23. Twice as Nice Award: Two Black Sheep. Lola and Ava-knitting/blogging/swearing sisters trying to keep the blog a secret from their Mom. Lola even got knocked up just to distract her.

24. Spinning Technical: Tie! Abby’s Yarns and Spinning Spider Jenny make that whole twisting hairs into yarn thing seem so easy-and fun!

25. The Hawkeye Award: Carol of Knit & Run spotted a tiny (but ubercool) write-up about us in a small (but incredibly tasteful, in our humble opinion) crafting magazine.

26. Queen of Socks It’s not just the profusion of socks, but the variety and beauty that edge Debi out in front. And get a load of her maincures du jour!

27. Best Podcast Award: Is a tie this year between Sticks & String and Stash & Burn! Not only do they both have content continuity (is that redundant?) but they stick with the fiber and and we LOVE that. Their voices are pleasant (La especially likes David’s aussie accent). Both ‘casts have interesting interview, introduce us to new yarns, books, techniques and other yummy fibery subjects. S & B’s dedication to greener knitting and S & S’s thought-compelling essays are just a few of the reasons you all should be listening too!

28. KAL of the Year: Knit From Your Stash 2007. ALL the cool kids were doing it!

29. I Think I’m Turning Japanese Award: You can’t knit just one of Anna’s designs over at Mochimochi Land.

30. Give ‘Til It Bleeds Award: Sarkasmo donates blood. Her own blood. Like, from inside her body! How’s that iron, Sarkasmo?

31. Cutest Couple Award: Red Dog Knits Scrappy and Gangles. Plus, they have the coolest mom evar. Take us on a laundry basket ride, Kristi!

32. We’re Gonna Need a Step Ladder to Reach the Bar You Set Award: Farm Witch for living off the grid, farming yarn while making the earth more livable and for her beautiful creations.

33. Realest: Big Alice, who gives you the bad along with the good. No pretense of perfection, and we’re grateful for her special dose of humanity in a polished up world.

34. Most Popular Pattern: Monkey. They might have even been more popular than last year’s Jaywalkers, but we’re not betting the farm on it just yet.

35. Give Us Somma That Award: Norma, just a wee little shot of your energy, please? Your drive? Your convictions? Kthanks.

36. Blogudrama of the Year: Oh, let’s not drag THAT up again, please. In fact, we’ll just be eliminating the Best Buns award this year, too.

37. Scared the Crap Out of Us Award: Peeve went MIA for a really long time. Oh sure, she CLAIMS life and other stuff got in the way. We suppose her reasons were all good and acceptable, but we worry, you know. Welcome back!

38. The Pacific Sardine Award: aka How Many Knitters Can La Fit Under Her Teeny Tiny Roof goes to The First Official Gathering of the Anti Social Knitters Group (A.S.K. for short), supervised by Saber, Trixie & Sassy and those in attendance:
Zoe
Susan
Betty
Wen
Andria
Madge
Marie
Lyssa
Monica
Michelle & Maya
Wendy

39. Biggest Yarn Craze: This was a toughy! On the one hand, the sock yarn nobody can keep in stock would definitely be Smooshy, but for pure luxury, hands-down, sea silk made anyone with even a vague budget cap on their yarn buying sea green with envy…Though we predict that Woolmeise, will sure be a contender next year. You all are buying up so quickly we can’t get our hands on a single skank!

40. Raving For Rovings Awards: Though you can always count on BFL being popular, Cormo seems to be the spinning fiber of the moment. It’s Corriedale. It’s Merino. It’s Cormo! [We hereby predict Shetland for 2008. That's foreshadowing, folks.] And while there are any number of awesome roving clubs out there, luxury abounds at Wooly Wonka Fibers and there are colors you will dream of all night long at Electric Sheep. But Jen was several times thwarted this year from getting her hands on some Funky Carolina.

41. Everyone’s a Comedian Award: LOLcats. Incessantly duplicated, almost never replicated. Hysterically funny at that URL. Every knitting blog’s a wannabe. Oops, we might be bleeding into Biggest Irritation Award territory here…..

42. Al Swearengen Award for Excellence in Swearing: Lizard Smells, the curser formerly known as Cheap Ass Knitter wins, as predicted by…um… us, last year. Insider what?

43. Best Effin’ Oh of the Year Award: Autumn Rose. We shall live vicariously through CK, Claudia and Deb.

44. Most Missed: Lauren. Sneef!

45. Knotion of the Year: Go Knit Pouches. We got ours from Spinning Yarns Online.

46. Pusher of the Year: Loopy Ewe. You can’t resist the pull of her tractor beam, don’t even try.

47. Blue Fairy Award: Rabbitch , for becoming a Real, Live Yarn Person. No, seriously! Go Look. She didn’t even have to stop telling lies.

48. Best Comment We Got Award: Heather cracked us up and demonstrated a deep sense of kindred spirit with her comment here.

49. Robert Altman Award: For all the highly complex and irritating dramas she was involved with this year, Claudia should get a studio deal.

50. Secretly Famous Award: Famous Steve is so secretly famous, even he doesn’t know what he’s famous for.

51. Picture Perfect Award for best photography goes to Cara, hands down! I mean, really. Who doesn’t have a set of her gorgeous greeting cards? Well you should get one…or ten!

52. Best Non-Knitting Blog: Ugly Overload. Try it each morning before coffee.

53. Harnessing the Power of the Knitter Award: Norma and the Red Scarf Project. So successful it’s almost too successful.

54. Shortest Meet-up in Knitting History Happened over some fish tacos and Bug chasing between House La and House Pacalaga, and lasted all of about 2 hours. One of La’s favorite brief moments of ‘07.

55. Religious Moments in Knitting Award: Thank you sweet Wool Gods for Thy bounty that is Addi Lace Needles. We give thanks for their pointy gloriousness, their smooth-ed jointyness. Thy comfort is in our hands. Thou cleaveth not the plies of the yarn, but scoopeth them in divine perfection. The lovingly crafted stitches Thou clingest not. Addi Lace Needles, Answer to Our Knitting Prayers. May all blasphemers and profaners against Thy perfection burn in everlasting Hell. Amen.

2007 sucked less. It was weird, but not as horrible as 06. At the end of it all, we probably both feel a little out of touch with the rest of you, but right now it’s a whole new year! While the future may be uncertain, knitting and blog friends are definite. And although not a lot has been happening on the blog lately, it doesn’t mean there’s not a lot happening. There’s lots to tell, which is a good way for a new year to begin if you have a blog. Thank you to all our readers, lurkers, commentors and linkers. You’re all a part of our lives and we’d feel so lonely without you.

Happy New Year from Jen and La!

For 2 wonderful years of my life, not going to say actually when, but it was back when shoulderpads were in, and disco wasn’t, I lived in England, stationed at the now-closed RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge bases located in Suffolk County. I fell in love. Not with a man, (though that’s where I met my ex, TOTAL mistake) but with a people that are friendly and full of life (who talk pretty cool too), a culture so similar yet so different from my own; a country rich with history and tradition that I often look back on those days with such fondness and longing, I almost get homesick.

Some day I’ll get back there. In the meantime I have the wonderful knitblogs from the UK to give me my Anglofix. Hell, I think this is one of the reasons why I’ve been drawn to so many UK Knitbloggers. This is how I came to “know” the wonderful Susoolu.

A few weeks ago we entered into a Hostage Exchange Agreement, and as usual, I dragged my feet, and hers arrived before I ever had a chance to mail mine out.

H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H! Hipknits 100% Cashmere

I’m divided between knitting with this and lining the outside of my pillow with it. Considering if I did the latter, chances are that it’ll get all drooled over, so I guess I’d better knit it up, it’s safer. I’m thinking Frosted Flowers and Leaves, but I’m not married to it. Maybe I’ll do my own, using traditional Shetland Lace patterns and techniques.

This book is amazing too! It goes into the history of the Shetland Lace Hap Shawl, and some of the vintage footage is remarkable. Though, I will have to say, some of the color combinations are pretty damned eye-gouging. Still I’m really enjoying this books, and I’ve barely thumbed through it.

Thanks Soo! As soon as your postal workers are done striking my sorely-lacking-in-cashmere-and-bookage hostage will be on it’s way. I wonder if I could mail myself there while I’m at it!

So, it looks like this package arrived just in time! This morning, Stacey informed me that 2008 will be the Year of Lace. Unselfishly I have decided not to join the club, but to allow that space for someone more deserving. Ok, ok…OKAY! I’m not joining because: a) So not a joiner, except for when I am; b) Way too fucking cheap (ie. WOW sock yarn club), though I must say, $240 isn’t all that bad, but $240 would buy a lot of interior paint. and c) I’ve easily got enough laceweight for 5 full-size shawls, which is at least a years-worth of knitting right there: Beefields Shawl, FF&L/Somekinda Shetland Lace Shawl, Twinings Stole and 2 others TBD at some later date, so thanks, but I’m all full-up.

That doesn’t mean the rest of you can’t join! And I’ll be knitting lace along with you all the way, or at least until I get completely burned out on lace which, knowing me, is within the realm of possibility, if only just a smidge. Shut up

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! Jared gave me exactly what I wanted. [Deep red! Love!]

Well, vacation was nice. Too short, as is always the case. There was ever-changing weather, family, a wedding, drinking, sight seeing, a tiny bit of knitting, more frogging and NO yarn stores, blogger visits or knitting related activities. Therefore, I will not make you sit through my vacation slides. I’m trying like hell to catch up on emails, blogs and other stuff and I don’t feel like getting back into the swing of it just yet. The farm mat was a hit. The niece liked it, but I think the adults loved it. My husband got some action shots of it being played with-I’ll show you when I get them from him. I did finish something in Massachusetts, though. It wasn’t the Bee Fields shawl, which I ripped out completely due to reasons I’d better not discuss. It’s back to where it was, though, I re-knitted through the first repeat of the 2nd chart, which is about where I was when I ripped. What I did finish [and wore for my birthday] was this:

Specs: Wing Top, by Kate Gilbert
Pattern: Interweave Knits-Summer 2007
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy, 5 balls in 012 purple
Needles: US 4, Addi Lace
Mods/Comments: The only mod was the yarn sub and some minor adjustments to get row gauge. In these pictures, the sweater has not been washed, just steam ironed. I can’t wait to see what it’s like with a proper blocking. I am wearing a strapless bra under it. This one, in fact, just a much larger version. After wearing the sweater all day, I thought I was having some loosening/sagging around the bust area, but it turned out that the scarf was slipping from the loop and tightening that up made it all fine again, to the point I wore it out to a club that night. It might need to be secured into that loop to prevent that from happening, but I’ll wait until I do a proper wet blocking to decide. The back and front are similar and then the back ends in a loop that comes over the left shoulder, the front strap continues to be knit into the scarf shape, is looped through the back loop and draped over the neck. I like it and I got numerous compliments about it the day I wore it. The flowing shape is pretty forgiving, too.

And now I’ve come back to an unbearable heat wave which is sucking away my will to live. If you need me, I’ll be copying Ouashita: