yes! despite my having been basically the anti-emailer, my SP had put a box in the mail for me. a box .. of DOOM^H^H^H^Hgoodies!

on the very top of the box was a bag tied up with a tiny scrap of roving, and with a Converse All-Stars tag hanging from its handles:

i thought, hey! that’s the same roving that kim gave me some of, when i was playing with her drumcarder! what a wacky coincidence! my SP must have seen the pictures of the yarn i made out of it and figured out where the roving came from and gotten some of it… cool!

then i looked over and there was a bag of white corriedale roving, with a tiny tag stuck to it:

after i opened it up and read the card, i couldn’t help but feel i was maybe being taunted a little bit:

hrmph!

alongside that there was a really gorgeous batt of fiber — a 70/30 angora/wool blend in a really pretty colorway. it might actually be too pretty to spin.

i opened up the blue roving bag and found inside… carded batts! carded batts that looked suspiciously like the ones that came off of kim’s drum carder! WHAT AN ASTOUNDING COINCIDENCE!

i put those rovings aside and just looked at everything that was underneath them…

let’s look at that one again in slow-motion:

i think you all know what i was thinking right about then. it started with ‘holy’ and ended with a four-letter word.

so there was this one item that seemed … out of place. i started to get a little suspicion in my head.

i picked up the phone and dialed.

“kim,” i says. “kim, have you got something you’d maybe like to tell me?”

“no,” she says, sweet as pie. “why do you ask?”

“oh, no reason,” says i. “been to your post office lately?”

i no longer recall which one of us started giggling first.

so yes, it’s true: out of about 450 or so people signed up for the Secret Pal 11 gift exchange, all around the whole world … one of my best friends in the entire world, my friend kim got my name. (i’d ask what are the odds, but evidently they’re 449:1.) and i, friends neighbors and countrymen, i had not a single idea in the world it was she until she brought out the Grady Sizemore cluebat. i had, in fact, sent off notes to kim during the gift exchange, like when i dyed some sock yarn to send to my downstream SP and the day after got a box from my upstream with sock yarn in a nearly exact colorway — i sent emails going “omg, you’re not going to believe this!” and i was plotting to maybe try and meet up with my SP (who lived in ohio, so close to kim, after all!) next time i headed out that way! jeeeeeez. i’d blame insufficient coffee, except for the part where it was like three months…

but, now, without further ado: let’s dive into the goodie box!

Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud laceweight yarn, in Stream – a beautiful heathery medium blue. and at 1300 yards’ worth, enough to knit up maybe the Spring Blossoms Scarf she sent me the pattern for, earlier!

A selection of yummy teas, which is great because we now have like 8 inches of snow on the ground and I’m not exactly breaking out the margaritas over here.

sock yarn! i am not convinced kim actually has any sock yarn left in her house. i think she migrated it all westward!

Interlacements Tiny Toes yarn in a cute colorway with deep purple, clematis, navy, pale slate purple, and maroon. maybe this yarn would be a better choice for a pair of Bellatrix socks than the sole Koigu i’ve got (which i got with Bellatrix in mind, but now i think the variegated dark colors might be better than the uneven red-violet of the KPPPM). well, assuming i ever finish a pair of socks again. interlude: here’s my current sock in progress, the first (still) of my Montana Wheat socks — also from a pattern and yarn from my not-so-secret-anymore SP!

and — remember how on Monday before i got the box from kim (waaaaay back at the beginning of this blog post?) i went to Joann’s for red heart yarn? here’s why:

i know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s an about halfway done Grown Up Chucks slipper. i cast on when i was watching last week’s house, wednesday night (i missed it because there was a special on PBS instead, and i neglected to realize that i was missing house to watch it, for i am a dumbass — so i had to wait 8 days for it to show up at fox.com, but it finally did, and i got to see (SPOILER) happen, so all is well). but anyways, back to the goodie box.

so here’s something new:

three balls of flax roving — for making linen yarn. i’ve played with it, over at Loopy with another spinner who brought it in to play with, but i’ve never seriously tried to spin it. i’m going to have to read up on how to spin it, because you have to have wet fingers when you do, and it’s probably trickier than wool. by ‘probably’ i mean ‘i was totally impressed with myself for spinning about 2 yards of it that one time, so yeah, it’s harder than wool.’ so that should be fun!

ensuring that i will never lack for anything to spin was clearly kim’s mission when putting this box together! four braids of roving here — one purple 80/20 merino/silk, one black 80/20 merino/silk, and two extraordinary white Fleece Artist braids of 65% wool/35% silk.

one thing i forgot to take a picture of was a pattern for Cornerstone Yarns’ Sideways Garter Stitch Gloves. i’ve seen kim post pictures of those that she’s made, previously, and i’m looking forward to giving them a shot!

and finally:

handwarmers/fingerless gloves to match the hat she sent me before!

all this is on top of the last thing she sent me, which arrived right before Thanksgiving, and which i was completely shocked by: two great hardback books!

the wednesda before thanksgiving – i literally stumbled over that package while i was running out carrying my cat in his carrier to the car, to drop him off at the vet and then hit the road for holiday travelling. so when i saw it was from my SP, i grabbed it and threw it in the car as well! i didn’t have a chance to open it up for a couple of days, what with the turkey-related food coma and all, but when i did, i was quite happy. i sat down and basically read the stitch dictionary cover to cover. (it’s way more fun than reading the actual dictionary cover to cover. there are pictures!)

oh, and, for the record, it took about two minutes for kiyoshi to discover the empty box, flip it on its side, and crawl inside:

cats and boxes, man. everybody gets a present!

well, i think it goes without saying that my SP went above and beyond the call of duty with this one! thank you, kim. you have spoiled me completely rotten. :-)

the ravelry description of the tutorial remarks that it is “masterful.”

my ass.

i cast on and knit the foundation triangles easily enough — i love doing short rows, so that’s fun, and plus i can knit backwards now so it’s not completely maddening. but on the second row — i knit the instructions all the way across, and came up with… triangles, not diamonds. ???

so i figured, oh, i obviously did it wrong, ripped back, went back, started again, got the same result, reread the instructions, thought it meant that maybe you make the triangle then you go back over those triangles and add more triangles on top (thus completing the rectangles), though that was not how it looked from the pictures, tried that, … got this:

so at that point, i threw up my hands and went back to Teh Intarwebs to find a better tutorial. one that perhaps lies less…. i still like the idea of entrelac for this scarf, so i just have to find better instructions. oh well. i was really hoping to make a start on this project tonight… dang. i found this tutorial, which seems clearer, so maybe i’ll give that a shot tomorrow.

(at least in the mean time, my newfound skill at knitting backwards may help me finally, finally finish the Boring Scarf.)

in other, more successful news, i spun up and then navajo-plied about half of that braid of red roving from my SP:

it turned out pretty well, i think! it is a DK-weight, and fairly even. it looks more purple than the roving did, but i like it a lot — it turned out as a slightly violet maroon. and this amount spun up to a little over 200 yards. i’m not sure what i’m going to do with it. we’ll see how much the rest comes out to, i guess.

my Montana Wheat sock, with yarn and pattern from my SP, is also coming along nicely:

the pattern is actually very easy — and it got easier once i stopped knitting with a deathly tight gauge. (the last things i knit, two pair of Dashing, are knit out of worsted weight yarn on slightly small needles, with a tight gauge. i had a death grip on the needles most of the time i was knitting those!) the yarn is, also, absolutely magnificent. it’s soft and fuzzy and the colors are mind-blowing. it’s a little too dark to see the pattern very well, especially with my camera, but i’m pleased with it. i’m about 4 rows from starting to turn the heel. it’s weird… i might actually finish a sock some point in the near future! i’m not sure how i feel about this…

the ripple continues apace:

and just to wrap up this three-day weekend, i dyed up some sock yarn:

gotta go hang that up to drip-dry over the bathtub before i go to bed, then hopefully i can wind it up into (regular-sized!) skeins in a few days after it all dries. then maybe someone out there should watch her mailbox because i think what she needs in her life is more sock yarn…. but that is all i am going to say on that!

pretty easy pattern so far (she says, all of two and a half inches in). i think the next real challenge will be trying to remember how many repeats i’ve done of the wheat head patterny bit, while knitting on this as a transit sock. man, the yarn is spectacular!

as modeled by my sun bear:

first, a pattern for Montana Wheat Socks and a wonderful skein of hand-dyed sock yarn from another indie dyer, Mountain Colors. the yarn is Bearfoot in Winter Sky, a beautiful blend of dark blues and purple, in superwash wool, mohair, and nylon.

next is a 50g sliver of Fleece Artist Blue Faced Leicester, in a bright undyed white, which — i know a bunch of you heathens are looking at me funny right about now — is a specific breed of sheep whose wool is legendary to spin. i’ve heard a lot about it but have not had the opportunity to try it myself, though i had wanted to — so now i can! i would no doubt have already broken it out of its braid were it not for…

third is a huge braid of 70/30 merino wool/silk roving (or top. i always get the two of them confused.), in a great reddish purple blend — the silk is undyed white and it is really luminous. i pretty much immediately plonked my butt down on the comfy chair with my louët and started spinning:

and finally, my SP knit me a really cute hat!!!

i don’t know what the pattern is (hey, you try googling “knit seed stitch hat” and see what you come up with!) but it’s really cute, and it’s knit out of the softest wool/alpaca blend. when i first got it (in between cuddling it — ask D.) i was initially a little sad because it wasn’t cold enough to wear it, but today i swear i saw snow in the headlights of an idling car while walking home from the L after work tonight, and i was certainly freezing my $%^& off wearing just my little black hoodie (which was FINE when i left for work in the 55°F morning, but not so much in the 38°F evening!), so you never know — it might get broken out a little earlier than i had thought!

and, even more belatedly — i seem to never have blogged about my last gift from my SP!!! (Sorry! :( ) i got a tiny box in the mail a little while ago, and opened it up to discover the most ridiculously cute stitch markers ever:

yes, it’s true: i have tiny cheese wedge stitch markers! they’re fantastic. and each wedge is smaller than a dime! so cute. i was honestly thinking about buying myself a second set just to have more of them. actually, these are part of what prompted me to pick my clapotis back up — an excuse to use my cute new stitch markers. and you know, that time, i finally finished it! so maybe they are the good luck stitch markers of project completion.

and there you have it! my SP is spoiling me rotten. :) i’ve really got to get finished with the Anti-Baudelaires so i can cast on one of these sock yarns! (i made a mistake on the A-B’s today, on the el on the way home from work — i got confused, or something, who knows really, but i twisted the cables two rows early. i haven’t even knitted back around yet, so i could go tink back and fix it, but … is it really the spirit of the Anti-Baudelaires to fix mistakes? i think it’s sort of anti-Anti-Baudelaires. and yet, a really short cable twist followed by a really long cable twist are going to look pretty dippy. i feel conflicted. i swore not to fix mistakes, but . . . that was really sort of predicated on not making any, you know what i mean? maybe i’ll put these aside temporarily and cast on another pair of socks anyways, just to go do something different for a little while. what do you think, O Humble Peanut Gallery?)

it’s good to be in french class again. i keep having weird mini-epiphanies as some bit of vocabulary that i’d forgotten pops back into my head. on the down side, i’ve lost command of what the tenses of verbs (beyond présent and passé composé) are called and what they’re used for. i can still use them if i don’t think about it, but hell if i can tell you what the imparfait is for or how to form it. okay, okay, i know what conditionnel is for, but only because the name makes it pretty obvious. still, it’s a little bit strange sometimes, dredging through my head like this.

“csi: miami” premiere last night: sincerely very meh. i think we should get more BOOM! in a season premiere, you know? i feel a little let down.

been working a fair amount. breaking the rules because i have to work from home to take care of stuff. oh well. some days are more irritating than others. someday, someday i can stop screwing around with piddly shit (like this pile of scripts i’ve been messing with, lately) and do something useful again. i have hopes, anyways. oh, and also new minion wasy starts next week: muahahahahahahahahahahahaha! minion! fetch me my coffee!!

have reverted to using the blue line to commute. last week i gave it a trial run, as i’d heard they’d completed the slow zone restoration between division and grand. they did! lovely new cement ties holding the tracks in (they look very funny, like they’re coated in whiteout, in the dingy nastiness of the filthy division stop), and not only have i not had to wait long for a train to arrive, i have been able to board easily, and gotten downtown in good time — about 25 minutes door to door. no doubt i am tempting fate by making this post, but still, after all the endless kvetching, i figure the cta deserves a little love when they quit screwing up quite so much. (i feel a little bad now about telling my new downstairs neighbor, who moved in about three weeks ago, that the blue line was unusable. hopefully he decided i was merely cynical due to accumulated years of disgust, and not actually an idiot.)

got some work done on my clapotis this weekend. i had a couple free hours (shock!) and decided that, dammit, it’s been languishing on the needles for far too long and i’m sort of sick of looking at it sitting there in the basket, and besides, i want to wear it, for pete’s sake. so it’s about, i think, halfway done now. maybe a little more. mohair-heavy yarn on addi turbos == mistake. it’s extremely slippery and sort of annoying to knit with, because the loops won’t stay still. but i finally picked up some speed with the pattern, and after zipping along for a couple of hours i got at least a quarter of it done on sunday, and another couple of rows last night as i was sacked out in front of Horatio and Friends’ Mystery Hour, and while i won’t give any guarantees of a date of completion, i think it’s actually possible that i might finish it at some point in recorded history. so that’s nice.

the baudelaires are still sitting in the Naughty Project Punishment Corner, as i have yet to recover from the realisation that i’m going to have to rip out and reknit the whole first sock because i knit it all wonky. i keep thinking that i should just finish them, but then i get sort of bitter about the impending frogging, and all the work i’ve put into them to have netted basically 1/2 a sock now. and of course i can’t start any new socks until i finish them, because i’m a one-pair-at-a-time girl, so … that probably explains the clapotis progress. maybe i’ll finish the clapotis and then go back and finally finish my MS3, and by that time (which will easily be the year 2045) i can finish the baudelaires. :)

hm, what else? oh! i got a fantastic pressie from my SP11 the other day. by “the other day” i actually mean a week and a half ago, but, you know… bizzy. the pictures are up on flickr but i haven’t had time to write a coherent post. i actually started using them on my clapotis, replacing some of my boring stitch markers, and i’m feeling pretty good about myself because i’ve only knitted them into the fabric about three times so far (which is pretty good for me using fancy stitch markers). also: cheese! how can you go wrong? so that’s pretty awesome. perhaps it is actually the stitch markers which are to blame for my clapotis progress this weekend? hmm…

they extended the road construction on my block another few weeks. they have been ripping Le Moyne St. to pieces since june — by which i mean the entire north side of the street was ripped up, dug out, and a water main replaced, and every day they dig it up and then fill it up again with gravel at the end of the day, so it’s been gravel since july. the practical implication of this is of course that there is no parking there during the day, so that’s annoying. i keep violating my personal sartorial restriction against sweatpants in public as i have to go get out of bed and move the car at 6:30AM — on the bright side, at least no one else is awake to see me. they claim that they will be done soon, and in fact today they have huge cement trucks out there doing their little cement truck thing, so that’s sort of interesting, except for the fact that if they fill the holes up with cement, they’ll be huge potholes by may, and if they don’t, they’re going to have to resurface the asphalt, and really, you know, given all that has transpired since then i really feel more than ever that they could honestly have given us more than one day’s notice they were going to be doing this all summer (and autumn) long. stupid water department.

this weekend shall also be very bizzy: saturday is the company’s 25th anniversary party, and i’m very excited: it’s going to be held on the trading floor, in the pits! i’ve never been down to the trading floor. i’ve never even seen it from the viewing gallery, because that’s closed except to tour groups now, so even though i work there i can’t just go strolling in and look. of course it won’t be the same seeing it with, you know, a party going on instead of floor trading, but at least i can see what it looks like. then sunday i’m heading up to the illinois railway museum with a friend to visit it before they stop running trains for the season, and then i have the white sox season closer. then it’s five whole months until baseball again. :( the world series doesn’t count… i mean, go cleveland! and all, but, … meh. i still blame kenny williams, and also the ban on mark buehrle’s tarp sliding in the rain. all the bad luck stems from that ban! rescind the slip ‘n slide ban! save the 2008 season!

oh yes:

okay, that’s it for now. gotta run go get ready for work now. also, i think somewhere in this hubbub i forgot to pay my gas bill. i wonder where i put it…

yesterday, as i wandered home from the bus, eyeing the slightly ominous clouds overhead (and mindful of the morning’s forecast calling for rain, which prompted me to take my umbrella to work), i paused to check my mailbox, whereupon i spotted:

(Side note: what is up with the post office correcting the zip code on the return address?? I mean, it didn’t get returned… How strange!)

so it was actually very good that i had taken my umbrella to work, you see, because if i hadn’t taken it, it would have rained, all over my fantastic goodies from my SP!

inside, i opened it up to find a whole bunch of cool stuff:

first off is the Fiber Trends Spring Blossoms Shawl pattern, which is a really lovely pattern and looks like it should be a relaxing pattern to knit up.

on top of the pattern (so you can actually see them on my white table…) are two braids of really incredibly soft white roving. i’m not sure what the fiber is, but it’s very soft! there might have been a little snuggling. i’m just saying.

then there’s a skein of Twinkle Toes handpainted sock yarn in the ‘Ocean’ colorway, from Joslyn’s Fiber Farm in wisconsin. it’s a superwash wool/mohair/nylon blend, so it’s soft and just the tiniest bit fuzzy. check out the colors:

i really like the colors on that! i’m not sure what pattern to knit up with it, but i did pick up two sock patterns that the Midwest Fiber Fair back a few weeks ago that i haven’t had a chance to play with, yet, so … who knows? (also, let me just say that today i finally figured out why i haven’t been able to take halfway decent photos of dark-colored yarns — which was a real issue for me while trying to upload my stash to Ravelry. i have apparently had the white balance set to something-other-than-neutral since, well, i don’t actually know how long, but it’s possible that it was since my last big road trip. which was in 2005. sooo….. never mind my being a dumbass, let’s all celebrate the fact that i was able to take photos of this yarn (at long last) where it looked dark blue like it is, and not bright sky blue, which it emphatically is not.)

and last, treats for my sweet tooth: licorice gumdrops and dark chocolate! i’ve never seen Crows before, but they rock. it’s like a whole box of black jellybeans, just for me! this chocolate bar is actually kind of cool, too; rather than giving you one big bar of chocolate, inside the packaging are five smaller individual bars, each of which is just exactly the right amount of chocolate — not too much and not too little. yum!

so there you have it! the first official post o’squee. thanks to my awesome SP for such a thoughtful gift, and i can’t wait to get started with these goodies!

so here’s the haul:

12 skeins of Berroco Peruvia, in a colorway called Cayenne. it’s actually a chocolatey brown with some red and green elements. i plan to make a sweater from it, perhaps an Ariann. (This was the big impulse buy of the day. Hey, it was discounted, and there’s no way I could have gotten 12 skeins of the same dye lot from my LYS…)

3 skeins of Valley Yarns Northampton in Chocolate, and 1 ball of Valley Yarns Valley Superwash in Rose. I plan to make a matching hat and scarf out of these, to match my new midlength pink wool boucle winter coat that I found on sale for absurd% off a week ago.

2 skeins of handpainted sock yarn from Shelridge Farm, in Ontario. For socks. For that is what I do with sock yarn.

And finally, 2 skeins of Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino, handpainted in shades of burgundy-purple, which I quite liked for maybe making a pair of Bellatrix.

And finally, I picked up some goodies for a friend, and then I also took advantage of the opportunity to shop for my SP11 spoilee, and picked up several things that I hope he or she might enjoy. So that kind of takes the edge off in terms of having to shop for yarn to put in the presents. Oh, I probably will still shop for more yarn, but I’m feeling pretty impressed with my bargaintacularity. Also, this leaves me more time to come up with ideas for things to make myself for the gift boxes.

Last, I will leave you with more yarn:

Knitpicks Felici yarn in Hummingbird, which I knew I needed some of as soon as I saw Kim’s socks made from Felici, because what I really need in life is more sock yarn to knit up.

And a picture of the skeins I’ve most recently handspun:

On the top is 191 yards of the Cherry Blossom Border Leicester/mohair top that I got at the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair. I Navajo-plied it to try and retain the color changes. And on the bottom is 318 yards of 2-ply, from Brown Sheep mill ends roving which I carded at Kim’s house and then she sent me home with the batts, and I then spun up on my Babe Production Wheel.

]]> http://ziggurat.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1271 0 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1263 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1263#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:22:08 +0000 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=1263 Hiya, new SP! I’m looking forward to this exchange! I had to skip out on SP10 due to time constraints so now I’m all eager. :)

Follow the jump if you’re either my SP, or just really want to read a bunch about my taste in yarn…

p.s. a shortcut to the SP11 category on the blog, if you don’t want to read the rest of my yammering on: http://ziggurat.org/blog/?cat=79.

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I haven’t discovered anything I really hated, though I didn’t really enjoy working with eyelash yarn on my Kitty Pi, mostly because it kept frigging getting tangled all the time.. I don’t really like fibers without any give (like cotton), because my hands and wrists get pained easily so it’s a little easier with wools. I don’t hate acrylic as a species; in fact, given that one of my current WIPs is a huge crocheted afghan, I have to say that Caron Simply Soft is a life (or at least wallet) saver. (Simply Soft is great. If you are shy of acrylic because of Red Heart Super Saver, seriously, go fondle a skein of this at JoAnn’s Fabrics. Nice stuff! And it makes a whole afghan an affordable project for me, so no complaints there either. That said, I do have a whole copier-paper box full of Red Heart Super Saver. Hey, they were $0.25 per skein at a garage sale a couple weeks ago. And I like afghans. I’m thinking ahead to the long, cold winter ahead, and my poorly insulated flat!) Don’t really have any use for funfur or stick-outy eyelash or weird yarns like that. I don’t really like the look of ribbon yarns. I like single/roving style yarns. I like bamboo. Dunno what else! I’m not really too terribly picky, I guess.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
Well, there’s a little of this, and a little of that. I’ve been idly contemplating trying to make myself a knockoff of one of those swanky Lantern Moon needle cases, for putting my circs in, but I’m actually very lazy about sewing, and so I haven’t made it past the “oh, zippers are hard” part of the plan. :)

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
I’ve been knitting for about two years or so. I learned when I was a kid from my grandmother, but gave it up promptly after that vacation, and didn’t pick it up again for 20 years. I learned again from Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ‘n Bitch, and a little help from my friend Kim. I knit Continental (more or less; sometimes I throw left-handedly). I really want to learn to knit backwards, so I can finish this stupid garter stitch scarf that I don’t like working on because it’s so boring and I have to turn it all the freaking time. I don’t do colorwork, or fitted clothing really, and I only recently took up lace, so depending on how you define it, I guess I’m probably intermediate.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
Yes, yes, and yes.

5. What’s your favorite scent?
Vanilla, I guess. Though I have to say that lately I’ve found myself intrigued by coconut. I am at a loss to explain why, but it’s probably The Body Shop‘s fault somehow.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
Eh. I don’t eat much candy. I always liked butterscotch disks, and English toffee though. I like licorice, so I’m the only person around who ever eats the black jelly beans (and I will steal them, as though there is some sort of competition, when in reality, I’m the only one who doesn’t throw them away). I like chocolate. Then again, who doesn’t like chocolate? I mean, what are the odds there on me saying I like chocolate? Sky blue, water wet, traffic sucks, chocolate good.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I do spin! I have two wheels now (a Babe Production wheel, and a Louët S15), which really overstates my skill. I recently took up crocheting for the sole purpose of joining this ripple-along, which means I can pretty much chain and dc (and a couple other things but not really). I make soap, occasionally rubber stamp things like greeting cards, occasionally paint a little, I collect fountain pens. I recently bought several dyes to try handpainting rovings for spinning. I’ve only done it once, but so far, so good. And I like baking and cooking. I’m trying to teach myself Indian cooking, because I love curries. And fresh hot homemade naan is the best!

I used to have a 1973 Ford Mach 1 Mustang that my dad and I were restoring, but then the garage was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, taking the car with it, and I haven’t had the heart to really think about it much since (I wanted that car pretty much since I knew how to say the word “car,” so it was pretty upsetting when that happened). I recently repaired my car with a shoelace. I’m still taking auto technology (“shop”) classes at community college, though; I don’t expect I’ll ever get ASE certified (because that requires two full years’ employment to sit the exams) or really do car repairs for money, but you never know. I always wanted to rebuild a vintage VW bug, so maybe someday I’ll actually do it? Anyways, it’s fun. Also, it cracks me up to knit during car class lectures.

This isn’t really a craft, per se, but I’m a pretty big Chicago White Sox fan, and I go to a bunch of baseball games. You’ll probably see a bunch of talking (read: complaining) about them over the next couple of months…

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
I like many different sorts of music. Except new country, and acid jazz. And boring faux-jazz Muzak. I don’t think I’m alone in saying Muzak sucks. Oh, I also really dislike bad alternative. Staind, I’m looking at you. — A pretty decent reflection of my taste in music can be found on my last.fm page. It’s not everything; it obviously doesn’t count things I only have on LP or the number of times I listen to things on my cd changer instead of on the computer, only MP3s, but hey, you can’t have anonymous computerized systems automatically track everything you do, right?

So far this year, I’ve seen the following bands live: Scissor Sisters, Modest Mouse, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire (twice), and Steely Dan. Shut up, I love Steely Dan!

9. What’s your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can’t stand?
I like more saturated colors, like royal blue instead of pastel blue. I like orange, and purple, and blue. Maybe not all at the same time. (Or maybe so. You know. I’m flexible.)

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
Single, two cats, one of whom is smart and evil, and the other who is ridiculously cute and dumber than a box of rocks. I’m serious. The rocks found the food dish before he did.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
Scarves, hats, definitely (Chicago winters taught me it’s better to look stupid and be warm than to be cold and also look stupid because my idiot self didn’t wear a damn hat.). Mittens, qualified yes (I usually prefer gloves). Ponchos… isn’t that trend dead yet?? (That’s a no.)

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
Well, by number, it’s socks. I knit socks on the bus and train on my way to work and school, and when I go places I have to stand in lines (grocery store, post office). And at baseball games, lately. I usually knit them on circs because it’s pretty traumatic when you drop a needle and have to wait until the end of an inning to ask the person under whose seat it rolled to let you grope around on the ground underneath them (and just hoping no one steps on it in the meantime), but, DPNs are okay. Once you get started. At first, though, they make me want to commit needlecide. (I don’t know how you murder needles, but I have to cast on another toe-up sock shortly and it might make me figure it out.) I am really liking my MS3 though, once I figured out I have to mask off the entire pattern except the row I’m actively working on, plus tick it off on the chart when I’m done. And the lifelines. The lifelines are key (though they started getting much less use once I figured out the chart-masking thing). I might do another shawl after I finish this one.

13. What are you knitting right now?
Um, a pair of Baudelaire socks (with yarn from my SP9!), a Clapotis, a Mystery Stole 3 (even though it’s no longer a mystery). And innumerable hibernating WIPs I am steadfastly ignoring for various reasons. And I’m crocheting a ripple afghan.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
Yeah! They’re the best.

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
I’m doing my MS3 on my first pair of straight bamboo needles, and I really like them because they’re so lightweight. (I just wish they were slightly pointier.) My sock needles are either Brittany (wood) or bamboo DPNs, except for one pair of 00 stainless steel ones I just bought recently for no apparent reason since I have no sock yarn that requires 00 needles, or they’re Addi or Inox 16″ circs. I prefer circs for heavier things (like my Clapotis), because my wrists can’t support a lot of weight for long, like on straight needles. I have a lot of aluminum straights, though the heavier ones are annoying.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
Yep to both! I’m totally spoiled.

17. How old is your oldest UFO?
Well, I have exactly one (mostly) complete Fibre Trends Felted Clog (to be) that was going to be a Christmas gift last year… it didn’t really go according to plan, obviously! I also have a very boring bouclé shawl that I haven’t touched in … well, probably a year. I have a sock that’s been languishing at the heel flap stage for ages, because it’s turning out too small but I was unwilling to rip it back, which really just makes me an idiot because it’s holding a pair of my nice Inox sock circs hostage until I do!

18. What is your favorite holiday?
I don’t really have one. I’m not very fond of Thanksgiving, because a few years ago I fell and broke my wrist, and had surgery on it the day before Thanksgiving, and spent all of the holiday miserable and watching the clock until I could take more vicodin. I’m pretty much still holding a grudge against Thanksgiving. I like pumpkin pie, though.

19. Is there anything that you collect?
Cat fur, evidently. Um, I’ve got a pretty decent sized music collection, both LPs and CDs, and a number of DVDs. I try not to acquire a lot of stuff, because I have a smallish flat and I like it not to be cluttered.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
I have no subscriptions… see above re: fear of clutter! Though, I have toyed with the idea of subscribing to Interweave Knits. I have thus far denied myself that subscription because I have a tendency to bring magazines home, put them on a shelf, and never read them. (See the most recent issue of Doctor Who Magazine. I know I put it around here someplace…)

I don’t know about patterns. I tend to be a sort of seat-of-the-pants knitter, mostly because it’s very easy to do that with socks. I have a few sweaters I might like to knit, but I’m not really eager to commit myself to a big project until I finish up with my Clapotis and my MS3. If I was going to, though, I’m intrigued by Wicked and a few other things.

As for other things… I saw someone the other day who posted to her blog about using a CD spindle case to hold balls of yarn. I am tempted to ask all the guys at work if they have any, and if they do, to save them for me! It just sounds like such a good idea. And I don’t have any empty spindles of my own, darn it!

Yesterday my damn cat stole my row counter! I only have two of them, and they were both in use, until Kiyoshi stole one yesterday. He steals anything tubular (lip balm tubes, pens, … row counters!), and I can’t find the freaking row counter anywhere. I looked under everything, and no luck. So, I am now giving serious consideration to buying 10 of the things next time I go to JoAnn’s fabrics just to make sure he won’t steal all of them. Damn cat! I want my row counter back!! He’s lucky he’s cute.

21. Are there any new techniques you’d like to learn?
I’d like to learn to knit a toe-up sock where the toe doesn’t look kinda pathetic, but that’ll probably come with practice. — I’d like to learn about how to alter sweater patterns to make things fit better. I’d like to work more on lace things, though I’m not exactly sure what I’d do with a bunch of finished lace shawls, other than maybe give them away to people.

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
Yep. :) I wear a US size 9.5/10, UK 8, European 42.

23. When is your birthday?
Not until January! Man, was I mad when I was growing up about having a birthday in the middle of the winter. I never got to have pool parties or go-kart parties! I still resent January.

24. Are you on Ravelry? If so, what’s your ID?
I am! It’s so neat! I’m niqui. BTW, if you’re not on Ravelry, but you’d still like to see my yarn stash and projects pages, let me know and I’ll post some screenshots. Once I figure out how to take screenshots, anyways. I always forget which keys to hit! :-)

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