Still Stranding

Celebration!

2009-09-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

I had a lovely time last night celebrating my great-aunt’s birthday. My parents, sister-in-law and I took Priscilla and her husband Wally to a restaurant way above the valley on Mt. Hamilton road, appropriately named “The Grandview”. And a grand view it is. It sits on the edge of the mountain, with just enough room for a short deck before the mountain dives down, and high enough up that we were looking down on the planes heading into the airport.

The internal décor looks as if it were frozen in the mid-fifties back when the building was last rebuilt after a fire swept the mountain: dark wood paneling, a cherub-crusted fountain in the corner, and artificial pine garland complete with burgundy bows for Christmas. The menu, too, is probably unchanged, but the veal piccata that I had was well prepared and the portions were ample for a very reasonable price. And, oh, the view! Sadly I didn’t think to take a picture before dark, and though my point and shoot does a pretty good job in the dark, it really doesn’t do justice to the city stretched beneath us. (Click to embiggen.)

But more impressive than the view is that Priscilla and Wally have been together since 1942. Of course, if you manage to find, and be, as nice as Priscilla and Wally are, it’s probably easy to stay together.

2009-09-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Christmas Mystery Shawl

A Time to...

2009-09-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

I know I’m not alone. No one has enough time to do everything they want/need to get done. But I will admit that there are times when its just laziness. So I hereby announce my other goal for the month of September: Finishing. I have an enormous pile of WIPS of many varieties. In the garment area there is knitting of course, but also sewing, stash cataloging, pattern writing and many more. And one of my worst piles of undone is the mending pile. So for this month I will finish one thing a day. And I mean finish. Ready to wear, publish and/or fully put away. Given the mending pile, this shouldn’t be hard if I just set my priorities.

Teal Pants.

Back to…

2009-09-01T23:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve had a few false starts at keeping a blog. And since September is the Back to… month, this seems a good time to try one more time. As is my wont of a Tuesday, I wandered into my favorite LYS today, and of course several of my favorite knitters were there. Our discussions reminded me to pull this picture out of the files.

Back to last year’s Christgiving, the theme was the sock. I made twelve pairs, one each for my cousins (more accurately the cousins on my Dad’s side), their mother (aka my aunt), their husbands and their children. There are more sock-viewing-friendly pictures in the old archive, but this post really isn’t about socks. This picture is about Green Planet Yarn, and the fabulous people that hang out there.

As you might have guessed, Green Planet has a lot of ecologically friendly yarns. Variously local, green, sustainable, and fair trade yarns have a role in the shop. Wool of course, alpaca and cotton, linen and bamboo, but also some unusual things like milk and nettle. Beth, the owner, is a second generation yarn shop owner, one of her sisters works there regularly, and her mom stops by every once in a while. The staff are always helpful and friendly to knitters of all shapes, sizes and skill levels. There's even a fabulous knit doctor who provides free consultation several days a week.

But even better than the yarn and the expertise is the big table and the diverse group of fabulous people that gather around it. The picture shows a few of them and their reaction when I brought a dozen pairs of socks to show off before doling them out to their recipients last year.

2008-11-06T23:47:00.000-08:00

Sadly,

I fell of the daily blogging routine yesterday, but I'm back again after only a day. Yay me. Today is my WIP finishing day. I managed to complete the first of the socks known here as Lemon Knice,

[lemon knice]

the sleeve for my Loop Cardigan

[loop cardi sleeve]

made progress on the Wolfpack socks

[wolfpack sock]

and, sadly, frogged the first half sleeve on my yummy cotton boucle hoodie, which still doesn't have a name (poor nameless hoodie). I loved everything about it, except that I cast on too many stitiches and then increased too often.

Sadly, I forgot to take a picture before frogging.

Actually, I didn't think to take pictures of anything for today, but I have found the camera cord so I'll try to rectify that tomorrow and update this post.

2008-11-04T23:58:00.000-08:00

And so, all that's left is the final counting. Obama has won. I liked his speech, especially that he was not using words like mandate. In fact, I've only heard one pundit type use that word at all, for which I'm very thankful. It seems that Obama may govern from the same centrist point that he started the campaign on. I'm so proud of him and of this nation. I haven't felt this hopeful since the Irish started sorting out their troubles, and it looked like Isreal and its neighbors might sort things out themselves.

On the other hand, I'm disappointed that here in California we can't eliminate prejudice and discrimination. I live in the SF bay area and many of my friends are gay and in long standing relationships. Many took the all too brief opportunity to marry. I am truly heartbroken that others feel they shouldn't be free to pursue the same kind of happiness that heteros have. I hope to wake to find that the race, which is tight, has turned around. But I fear it will not.

And so to bed.

2008-11-04T00:07:00.001-08:00

Oh dear, I almost forgot to blog at all today. (Today being defined as before I go to bed.)

There are two important things for tomorrow.

1. Vote.
2. Check out my new pattern at Knotions.com.

There should be plenty of time to do both, but if you have to choose, then go with number 1.

2008-11-02T22:41:00.000-08:00

A Complete Absence

Of self-control that is.

I did not work on the things I should have today. OK, I did manage to finish a pair of socks for Christgiving, my extended family’s hybrid holiday. And I did cast on for the last pair that needs to be started. So far so good. But I also cast on for an EZ workshop hat AND a new sweater.

The goal for this year was finish two – cast on one. I did decide that could be modified for the socks which I decided should be one-for-one. So, OK that’s really only two cast on. So even if I count the Crossovers scarf I made for my LYS yesterday, I’m three finished projects behind. And since I decided not to count the scarf since it was a “job”, I can’t really justify the start.

What I did not do today: clean the refrigerator, finish the shelves in the closet, or find the cord for the camera. So there will be no pictures today. I’d hoped to start a new “Sunday Swatch” feature for my blog, but though the swatch is spectacular (hence the cast-on sweater), I won’t try to convince you of that without a picture.

Ah well, at least I can claim two days of consecutive blogging. That’s all for now, I’m going to do a couple of rows on Dad’s afghan and go to bed.

2008-11-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

Take Two

OK, I haven't posted anything in most of a year. Let's try this again. It seems approriate since it's NaPoBloMo.

Two years and two weeks ago, I took up knitting. I’d crocheted for years and really enjoyed it, but I’d never really gotten into knitting, though I’d taught myself years before. About a year before I’d discovered the difference between chap yarn and really great yarn. One Sunday morning I was at my local yarn shop, Knitting Arts (now sadly closed), picking yarn for a crocheted sweater that I had designed in my head. The knitting doctor, Gunilla, and I were the only ones there early that morning,. She was helping me pick the colors and heckling me good naturedly to learn to knit.

I told her I could, but it was slow and boring. But she wouldn’t give up and cajoled me into taking her sock class. Eventually I gave in and bought a couple of extra skeins of yarn to do a pair of socks. That turns out to have changed at least two years of my life.

[sock picture coming soon – when I find the cable for my camera]

It’s not that I really liked knitting those socks, and I probably would have quit again, but one day a woman came into the shop with the beginning of an entrelac blanket made from Rowan’s Big Wool. It was so cool, the texture was rich combined with the color. I oohed. I aahed. And when Gunilla said she could teach me, and that there was a free class that weekend, I was hooked. I took that class and it’s been hard to separate me from my needles ever since.

Gunilla has become a friend, and is now the knit doctor at a second LYS, Green Planet Yarns. She has taught me enormously, and I can now occasionally return the favor.

In two days or so my first pattern to be submitted to an on-line knitting magazine, Knotions, is going to be published. The owner of Green Planet Yarns asked me to do a sample of my scarf so she can display it in her shop. For now, a preview picture.

[Sharkey’s Crossover Scarf pic coming].

Two. It's a very good number.

The long overdue Vienna pics

2008-02-10T00:03:00.000-08:00

At long last, I spent a few minutes and figured out how to post pictures, no it's not hard, I was just dreading having trouble and got myself all bolluxed up. (Is that how you spell bolluxed?)

Anyway, here is my fingerless glove at the UN in Vienna, you can get a sense of the size of the flag circle from the picture. My hand is covering the fountain that stands in the center of the circle. I don't know that this picture would look much different in summer than in winter since it doesn't look like they have much by way of foliage in the Vienna Internation Center itself.

And since you couldn't really see the glove itself in the previous picture. Here is a shot of the right glove inside the building at a fountain in one of the hallways off the main lobby.

The pattern is pretty cool and I love the saturation of the colors in the Mountain Colors Bearfoot yarn that I used.

Specs on the gloves:
Pattern: Marnie Maclean's Lake Park Gloves
Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Eureka
Needles: Sox Sticks Size 1

I did come up with a great trick when I was making the fingers (I suppose we call them fingerless gloves even though they really have fingers because fingertipless gloves is just too big a mouthful and/or too long to spell for non-Germans). This pattern, and it seems from a brief survey many patterns, tells you to start making the fingers at the pinky, casting on a couple of extra stitches for the space between the fingers. It's pretty easy until you try to pick up those two stitches for the ring finger. I must have tried about five or six times before I got it, and then I ended up with gaps. The gappiness must be a common problem, because the patterns all tell you to use the tail of the yarn you attach to start the finger to close it up. So when I cast on the extra stitches for the ring finger (between the ring and middle fingers), I took a needle and ran a bit of waste yarn through the cast on stitches before I worked them. Voila, it was a breeze to pick up those stitches for the middle finger. Better yet - No gap at all.

Two last pictures before I call it a night, and close the last bit over my now long gone trip to Vienna:
The main hall in the building I worked in which again was decked out in flags, this time of all the IAEA partners,

and second the Nobel prize medallion in its case by the elevator.

A month has passed ...

2007-12-27T14:40:00.001-08:00

since I managed to post anything. Part of that is probably that I've been having trouble with communications, but most of that is surely Christmas. But now the presents are either done or officially late, so I'm going to try and take a moment or two regularly to post here and I hope to get at least a handful of pictures posted before the holiday.

Since I was in Vienna when last I wrote, I'll report that it does not in fact rain every day there. Thursday was entirely dry. Hooray! I also had time that evening to go a yarn shop briefly. Through the good offices of Ravelry I found a place near a subway station and headed out. I found the shop only a few minutes before it closed but the owners, a man and a woman, stayed and helped me. They spoke no English and my fiber-related German is abysmal, but we managed fairly well.

The shop was tiny, smaller than my living room with an L-shaped counter that separated me from petting the yarn myself. Nonetheless, I enjoyed chatting with them about the similarities and differences in knitting practices in California and Austria. They told me that there are no producers of fiber in Austria, most of there stock was either from Germany or Italy. Sadly, none of it matched my current quest and since most of the brands they carry are available in the Bay Area at similar prices (despite the current exchange rate), so I bought only a few skeins of memento/gift yarn. For myself, I acquired a few skeins of Lang Seide (silk) in shades of rose that I think I'll use for gloves and a hat (or scarf) and couple of varigated skeins in fall colors. The latter are sadly acrylic, but the colors were so pretty and the owners so helpful that I decided it was worth the fairly small cost.

Better even than yarn shopping was waiting for me "am Graben", the main shopping street in the old part of Vienna. They turned the Christmas lights on! I had heard for years about how wonderful Vienna is a Christmas time and indeed it was. The lights are just incredible, the main street has incredible swags and chandeliers of lights looking very much like you might see Strauss himself wandering down the street. On the side streets, the displays are more modern with each having a different theme. There were traditional stars in white in some, snow flurries of little lights, or red bells, shooting stars or packages in others. Though the shops all close at six the streets were filled with people, mostly German-speaking, wandering downtown enjoying the season, the roasted chestnuts, potato puffs and Gluehwein (traditional mulled wine). I'm pretty sure I snacked with a fair number of folks from the Austrian ski team. Being in Vienna during the Christmas season had been one of the things on my life list and I wasn't disappointed.

I think I'll wrap it up for now, I promise I'll make it back in less than a month for the next post.

Now coming to you from Vienna

2007-11-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

Just in case one of the few of you who have found me here decided to check -

I've been in Vienna now for four days and it has confirmed my all experience in Austria: it rains.

Every day. I suspect that might not really be true, but today marks my 10th day in Austria (over 25 years or so) and I have been rained on every day.

That said, I'm really enjoying my trip so far. The IAEA offices are located inside the UN center. I was both excited and proud to get a UN badge as a "delegate" and I got a lump in my throat as I walked through the circle of flags in the center courtyard going to the building where my meetings are being held. At the same time, I feel a bit embarrassed that I hardly recognize any of the flags. The diversity here is amazing and though I'm fairly well traveled, my history feels a bit parochial here. The cafeteria (which serves a terrific selection of lunch options) is a fascinating babble (or is that Babel). It probably seats 400 or more, and though English is spoken at a fair number of the tables, I've heard snippets of languages I doubt I've ever heard before. I'm here for three more days yet, but already I'm hoping for the opportunity to return.

Not much news on the knitting front. By the time I got out on Saturday the shops were already closed (at noon) and they are closed Sunday. Work has kept me too busy to go hunting for a not-so LYS, but I've located a couple thanks to Google, Mapquest and my subway map so I haven't given up hope.

In the meantime, I was right in thinking I could do just about one glove on the flight over. Unfortunately, it was mostly the first glove, so I've had to keep my hands in my pockets. The second glove is almost half done, so we'll see if I get it done before I leave. Even if I don't I'll be sure to get a picture of at least one glove somewhere suitable.

That's all for now.
Bis bald.

(And I didn't even have to go back and make any corrections from this German keyboard.)

Welcome to me

2007-11-04T17:47:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about setting up a blog for quite a while, but for some reason tonight seems like the time to do it. This will blog will primarily be about knitting with some crocheting; music, language, engineering and poetry are also likely to appear at some point.

One of the main reasons for doing this now is that I have visited about 20 more-or-less Local Yarn Shops in San Francisco Bay Area over the last month or so and I though it would be interesting to make a few notes while I still remember what I found. More about that later as I'm hoping to finish short posts regularly instead of waiting until I have enough time for a comprehensive treatise (though I will try to be comprehensible).

I am a notorious starter, my current fiber-related WIP number somewhere above 15. In addition, I'm finishing a bathroom remodel and have started redoing my back patio. One of my motivations in putting this blog together is to try to embarrass myself into finishing something now and then.

The other reason I wanted to start this is to set up a place where I can keep track of the many interesting bloggers and web sites I enjoy visiting, and to document ideas for more projects. I'm hoping that having a place to write them down will mean that I don't actually buy fiber and cast on.

That's it for now, it's time to figure out where I dropped a stitch. (Hmm, I bet that's why it seemed like a good idea to take a knitting break)