The first something new is something that I hope to repeat in the future.  Kate and I went to a Friday Night Knitting Club….yes, just like the book.  Well, nearly almost like the book.  There were knitters there and it was on a Friday night, but it was not in a knitting shop, and there were no eccentric people there, and there were no kids…so, I guess the only similarity was that there was knitting on a Friday.  But it sounded good, right?  For those who are interested, there is a new knit/crochet group that is meeting at the Panera near the train station in Wilmette at 6:30 PM on Fridays.  Guaranteed good time.

The second new thing was that I started the color work on the socks for Olivia.  Kate had given me a little kit of socks that had color work in them so that I could “test the waters” so-to-speak.  I’ve done 2 rounds so far and it is going fairly well.  My one mistake (BOOBOO, really) is that on the second round I should have knit 3 stitches across with the new color instead of 2.  Oh well.  The chevron will be a little lopsided and I’m sure that Olivia won’t notice.

Okay, got to get back to doing Hebrew morphological searches..yippee!

Until next time, that is.  I finally finished the paper that was due today (and with 15 minutes to spare before I must start work) and I must say “WHEW!”  That was a little close.  I can now safely plan to knit this morning conscious-free of any slipping of grades due to inability to manage time.  I am behind in my reading, but that can wait until later.

I’ve been kind of curious about this thing called The Rockin’ Sock Club offered by Blue Moon Fiber Arts for some time.  Every time I go to their “registration” page it is closed.  I guess you have one chance to sign up for the year long festivities that are offered.  Now that registration is open, I can take a small peek inside.

They sell sock kits, 6 per year, that include enough sock yarn for a pair with specially made yarn just for the club, the pattern for each sock, Dyer’s notes and a small plethora of other odds and ends.  It seems like a really cool thing to be apart of and considering that the designers are some well-known names I could probably get consumed by this.  Except for one thing.  the $230 fee.  If it were broken down in to $40 increments, I might get on board.  But I can’t do the $230 up front.  Too bad, so sad for me.

But as to sock yarn – they have some really, really cool skeins of yarn.  I’ve been oogling some of them for a time now and one of these days I just may purchase me one.  Of course I do have to finish the pair that I’m making, and then finish the other pair that I’m making, and then start and finish the other pair that I’ve bought yarn for first.  But it is nice to have goals, dontcha think? 

I’ll be knitting on my socks at lunch.  Toodles!

The editor of this blog would like to make a formal apology to the family of the writer’s sister, Kristin, for the inaccurate weight measurement of their youngest daughter, Gabby.  It was brought to the editor’s attention that Gabby actually weighed 17 pounds at her 6-month check-up and not the erroneous 27 as earlier reported.  Furthermore, her length was 27 inches, which placed her in the 90th percentile for “height” (we put that in quotes because at 6 months she is not yet totally vertical, so height is irrelitive).  We apologize for an duress that was caused due to this misstatement of the facts and will make every effort to ensure that the writer gets the facts straight next time.

I decided to do this Friday post a little differently.  Here are some numbers that are floating around in my head.

THREE (3)
The number of socks that I am currently knitting.  Not pairs, but socks.  One pair and then half of another pair.  I discovered yesterday (Thursday) that the PAIR that I am knitting actually fit my feet.  I have been very concerned about this and I’ll tell you why.  I am knitting them toe up and did not take into account that at the point in which I need to do the heel thingie, the foot is actually bigger in circumference that when you cast on for the toes.  So I was concerned that they would not fit, but they do.  Not only can i get them on, but you know what?  The HEEL is exactly in the right spot.  Amazing!

TWO (2)
The number of pictures that I’m going to show you of my Mom’s shawl below.  This is the Rusty Clapois, which I finished knitting at exactly 11:38 PM, December 31, 2008, which means that I get to include it in the final count of finished projects for last year (not that it matters because I only finished, like, 2 projects the entire year….).  Here are the pictures.  Enjoy.

(It must be said that my Mom was upset that I put her in direct sunlight and that it caused her to squint.  For that, I make a formal apology, although, I think the picture turned out well, and for that I don’t apologize.)

SIX (6)
The number of Bible verses that I need to do the following with: 1) translate from Hebrew into English, 2) parse all the verbs (indicate the tense, person, gender, number…), 3) do some sort of structural analysis of, 4) do some word studies of interesting words in those six verses and 5) determine 3 interesting exegetical problems and write a one page summary per topic – all to turn in by Wednesday.

NINE (9)
The number of chapters that I need to read for school.  Three are for Monday and six are for Wednesday.

SEVEN HUNDRED TWELVE (712)
The number of times that I wish during the day that I could sit and knit instead of work. (This is an average.  Somtimes it is more and sometimes it is less.)

ONE BILLION (1,000,000,000)
The total number of hours that I’m going to add to my sleep deficit this semester.  (I’ll accept thatThe number could be a little high.)

TWO HUNDRED FIFTY (250) (and change)
The amount of money I’ve saved this month by not eating out.  Amazing.  I was in the habit (in the long ago year of 2008) to stop by some sort of fast-food place and “pick something up” in a hurry, but I decided that I would not do that this year.  That’s like….$3,000 a year.  Now I can seriously consider buying that MacBook that I’ve been salivating over.

ONE (1)
The number of times I called my Mom this weekend to discuss with her how to make Chili.  Since it usually takes at least 5 phone calls every time I decided to make something, even something as simple as Chili, I thought this was pretty good.

TWENTY-SEVEN (27)
The number of pounds that my niece, Gabby, weighed at her 6-month check up.  I keep telling my sister that she should be careful of what she asks for.  When Olivia was born, she was so long and skinny that Kristin kept saying, “I wish I had a chunky baby…I wanna play with some fat rolls”.  Well, now she gets to.  Also consider that Olivia barely broke 20 punds by the time she was 1.  Gabby is a sweet, quiet, and cute (even if she does look like her father) little porker girl, and I love every inch of her.  :- )

Kate gave me one of these for Christmas (go take a look - they’re really cute!) - it is a Socks for Tots kit.  Directions are given for either DPN’s or the 2-Circular method (which I know how to do) and I decided that it might be a nice challenge to do the socks on DPN’s.  Now for those of you who are not knitters (the horror!), DPN stands for Double Pointed Needles and you basically use 4-5 needles to knit something in the round, which is really just making a tube, which you can’t do on 1 straight needle.  Anyway, I had tried to “cast-on” and start the project over Christmas, but my brain must have been in a fog because I just couldn’t do it, so I waited until Kate could help.  Last Tuesday she did.  I case on and knit a couple of rounds.  After about 3 different “starts” (I’m a slow learner, hence the name of the blog) it finally clicked with me and off I went. 

As I’ve mentioned before, I occasionally knit in church.  Usually when I serve on Sundays and have to be in both services for the entire thing:  listening to a sermon the second time can be a little….uh….well, boring.  (There, I said it).  So yesterday was my day to serve and so off with me the socks went.  I was knitting happily along when I noticed that one of the needles had fallen out.  Completely.  So I tried to put it back in (which is hard to do) and gave up, frogged and started over. 

Except that I cast on too tightly, so I frogged a second time that day (I had previously frogged (in Kate’s presence) about 3 other times, so this was really the 5th time I’ve frogged the cast on).  Got past round one and then realized that I had mis-counted.  FROG.  #7.  Cast on again and it was too tight.  All I can say is GAAAAAAAAA!

I’m either too tight in my knitting (I don’t know if this is what makes me a “tight-wad”, but it might be close, or if it really means that I am too “tightly wound”, which could also be the case, or it could just be that I’m not a “loose knitter”.  Either way – you decide), or too loose and am afraid that one of the needles will pop out again.  So I think I’m going to ditch the DPN method for the more normal and rational 2-Circular method.  Learning one thing new with these socks will be enough.

I mentioned on Monday that I have this wonderful new schedule that should keep me on task this semester and help me lead a more balanced life.  Well, it sucks!  I’m all ready off schedule and it happened on Monday, the first day.  ARG!  I am 5 chapters behind in reading for one class, plus I had planned to start one of the papers this week, but that’s not going to happen.  You know what my problem is?  I’ve narrowed down all the options to this one factor:  I love to sleep.  So when I had planned to get up yesterday morning and read for an hour before I went to work I actually got up at 4:30 and changed my alarm time allowing me to sleep for another hour.  I really loved that hour of sleep, but now I’m be hind in the “schedule”.  Schedule, shmedule.  I’d rather sleep!

It has been 12 whole days now since I finished the Rusty Clapotis (which, by the way someone thinks sounds like a venereal disease to which I can only say: thanks a lot!  I’m sure my MOM appreciates that! besides which it is a FRENCH word and is pronounced NOTHING like what you’re thinking…so there!) and it has been 12 whole days of absolutely NO knitting desire. None.  And knitting is something that I usually have on the brain, so I’m not sure what is wrong with me.  Here are my theories:

1. It took me so long to finish the Rusty Clapotis that I am actually burned out on knitting.  While this is a strong possibility, it is not the most likely because knitting has been an obsession for the last 3 years and I don’t think obsessions just simply vanish overnight.
2. The thought of picking up on (1) mittens on which I’m stuck or (2) socks that are knit with yarn finer than that which I knit the Rusty Clapotis just makes me sick to the stomach.  This doesn’t seem likely either, since I’m actually excited about wearing my first pair of hand knit socks.
3. There is a phenomena out there in space called The Black Hole of Knitting and it has actually sucked me into its vortex and swipped out all desire to knit.  This one seems the most plausible.

So now that I’ve established what the problem is, I need to figure out how to get out of it.  I perused a knitting catalog/magazine last night and that sparked nothing.  I logged onto Ravelry this morning and still nothing.  I have a pair of Socks in a Box sitting on my dresser and I’ve been ignoring it (and they are really cute socks too – they’ll be perfect for Olivia and they would introduce me to stranded color work where you knit with 2 colors on the same row to form a pattern which is something that I’ve never done before) so even the spark of a new and challenging project gives me nothing to work with.

PLEASE, SOMEONE HELP PULL ME OUT OF THIS BLACK HOLE OF KNITTING BEFORE I GO CRAZY!

Now, onto other things.  School starts this week and I’ve actually done something that I’ve never done before.  I’ve actually put together a schedule.  Imagine that.  A schedule of tasks/readings/projects/papers and other things that I need to get done.  AND SCHOOL HASN’T EVEN STARTED YET!  We’re talking a VERY detailed schedule, which so far I have kept (being only 8:10 on the first day of The Schedule) and am actually very excited to implement.  There are only 2 problems that I can foresee.  1.  Being in the vortex of The Black Hole of Knitting, I did not schedule any knitting time (except for the Tuesday Yarn Lunch here on campus during which I don’t actully have to knit but I still go for the support).  This could pose a big problem when, and if, I ever emerge from The Black Hole of Knitting.  But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.  The second potential problem is that I have not really allowed for eating in the schedule.  Now for some of you who know me may realize that there is some *storage* that could be lived off of in case of emergency.  I’m actually all for that.  However (and this is a big one), I love to eat and so I don’t really see the storage thing being implemented very well.  So this is one area that I need to work out on the schedule.  (I probably have to also go to the grocery store since I’m out of just about everything, but that’s another story and it is not currently on the schedule, so I’ll have to worry about that another day.)

So there it is.  My life in a nut shell.  Thanks for participating.

I’ve been entirely swamped at work lately, which is why I haven’t updated my blog.  It has been nothing but rush, rush, rush since Christmas.  First I got sick and then when I finally recovered enough to think I had the SSMO to finish.  (Now that the SSMO is finished, I want to give it its proper name: The Rusty Clapotis.)  I knit about 14 inches in 2 days, which is an astronomical amount of knitting for me.  (Sadly, since I finished The Rusty Clapotis I have had no desire to knit.  I think I’m on knitting overload.)  Once back my waking hours have been spent with work.  My glorious programming (and cushy) job has been busy, busy, busy.  I am just now at a point where I can breathe.  So I find myself tonight watching an episode of Pushing Daisies (ABC) and writing this blog.

I want to let you all know about a book that I just finished reading*.  It is called Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill and is absolutely fabulous.  It is about a woman who is stolen from Africa in the mid-18th century, sold into slavery in South Carolina, escapes and works for the British during the Revolutionary War, is set free in Nova Scotia and then ends up moving to Sierra Leone as a free woman.  Then she goes to England to work with the abolitionists.  It is a sweeping epic with a lot of history and is extremely well researched; besides the fact that it is a very touching and moving story.  I highly recommend.

So school starts next week and I don’t know if I am ready.  I’m taking 2 classes, one is what Trinity calles a “Quad A” and will end the week before spring break.  Which means that the first 9 weeks will be extremely intense and the second 9 weeks will be more comfortable.  Sigh.  Plugging right along.  The storm begins next week.

I’m working this weekend because I want to (and because I have projects due) but so far, today has been a wonderful day.  My brain is finally coming to grips with the fact that the SSMO no longer looms precariously on the edge of things that must get done (because it is, in fact done) but has not yet settled on what to knit next.  I have to say that upon reviewing the pictures of my Mom wearing the SSMO that this is indeed the finest piece of knitting that I have produced.  And that makes me feel good.  I’m actually going to leave work behind for the afternoon, take a 1.5 hour drive and go play with my Godson, who just turned 6.  But never fear, I’ll be back at work tomorrow in a vain attempt to finish the project that I have due.  Toodles!