OK, so I’m going on an assumption (hopefully that won’t be a problem!) that Dulaan will happen again in 2008.  So I knit this up the other night,

another yurt hat
and it gave me a cramp! doubled bartlet on 10′s! at least it should be warm.

Here’s the top,

quick decreases, then a couple even rounds towards the icord

Ooooh, oooh! Looks like the picture thing is working! Thanks Mel and Jennifer! Chris also sent me some good info…I’ll get to that too.

So I bought this last weekend or so,

To put in these

Does anybody know anything about putting yarn in direct contact with the cedar? Hoping to keep the stash safe!

zuzu…what’s she doing?

waiting for Gracie, so she can assault her!

they are playing!

where does one end and the other begin?

So I started the week at the dentist. What do you think of their decor in the bathroom?

i’ll tell you where i’m ending the week soon!

Six items for Dulaan, 5 hats and a neck thingy

do you think the label there tells a person how they can wear this?

the coffee swap for Caffeinated Knitter…here’s hoping she likes it!

Sedona is another lovely place! Loads of red rocks everywhere. Again with Pink Jeep, but this time actually in the jeep! Went to the Honanki Ruins, part of the Coconino National Forest. More native art on rocks! These were pictographs (if I’m remembering right).

flute player, the guide said shakuhaci style, but googling this gives me Japanese style flutes

me with some trainmates from Dallas, notice the ‘clan shield’ (the pale circle) on the wall behind

Also note that I just about always wore those binoculars…they were a mother’s day gift from DS! He’s such a good kid! There are also some darker red figures to the right of the clan shield. The guide said they think these were something like clan symbols, or perhaps ‘addresses’.

There were some interesting names for the rock formations…

the mouse and the muffin!

picnic lunch spot!

Then it was off for a 4-wheelin’ jeep ride. Since I wasn’t part of a couple for this trip, I got to sit up front with the driver. This may have given me a cushier ride. We were up and down over lots of dry riverbed rocks!

the jeep behind us

Saw

mistletoe, a parasite, now why would anybody want to kiss under that?

prickly pear flowers, and, um, from experience elsewhere…just because you think you’ve rubbed all the spines off of that luscious fruit, well, that doesn’t mean you have! Ouch!

I’ll spare you the picture of the petrified pack rat dung. I have a whole collection of scat pics from this trip! Bear, elk, moose, coyote, bison, some unidentified pic from the desert, pack rat, raven, but I somehow missed getting the shot of condor guano!

Killed the last bit of time for the day before going back to the train in town, where they took us to Tlaquepaque (say T-lockey-pockey), an upscale shopping area. Some absoultely georgeous stuff, way and hugely out of my price range (oh, those Maximo Laura woven tapestries I liked? ~$3000!). Actually, I don’t remember how much, but expensive! And lovely! I bought a couple post cards! And a hugely overpriced frozen coffee drink.

Sedona has a thing for pigs, excuse me, javelinas

they were all over the place with different decorations

I love using up the odds and ends, and think this will be super warm.

three strands on the outside, something boucle-ey, Bartlett, another rustic wool

You can see where I ran out of one thing and merged into another…which I think is ok. Lined with Blizzard. And a fast knit, 11′s on the liner, 13′s outside.

We got 6+ inches of new snow this morning! At least half of it seems to be gone by the end of the day,

this pear tree should be dead, i think there is one inch of live cambium, it is hollow, partly rotten, we’ve hacked off the top 15 feet, but it still produces pears!

I called my isp. The had me do something called a power cycle, where you shut off the computer, unplug the modem, turn the computer back on after a minute, plug the modem back in, and !voila! it is all working as it should. Go figure.

Remember the yarn ball from the berroco chinchilla/mohair color card? Along with a skein of Chinchilla Bulky and some odd mohair from my stash, it became this, Dulaan item #5.

dulaan #5

Intended as a neck warmer that can be pulled up as a head and/or face cover. Came out rather large, but the consensus at LYS is that it is good.

warm the air you’re breathing

ds liked it on his head, i was surprised it stayed on

do rag for Gracie?

On Saturday, juju (bad juju! she needs to put up a post saying she’s busy!) and I visited Ellen at her shop, Purl Diva. I was after some nice sport/dk for the wind turbine hat. Here’s what I came home with,

That’s ambrosia in light blue from knit one crochet too, brown sock yarn from Cherry Tree Hill that I will double, and taj mahal from ggh. These are not my favorite colors, but this is intended for a man that I don’t know much about. Other people do like the colors, so I’m going with them. I knit up a swatch for gauge,

getting 6 sts/inch with the fingering doubled and found that i like the colors together!

I decided on silvery and gray for the turbines, in Inca alpaca and Dale Tiur, respectively, from Water St. Yarns in Hallowell. They are knitting well to this gauge. The navy strip is some taj mahal I had in the stash. It is a bit looser than the other gauge, but will be good on a smaller needle for the liner. I’m intending to use only a bit of green (also taj mahal) as trees. The Ambrosia is loose too, but does well doubled. The white is Silja sock yarn. This idea has gone from a purely graphic color work idea (like the pirate hat) to more of a picture hat. I really don’t like picture sweaters, so am not entirely positive about this. Now that I have a swatch, I’ll make up some graph paper and sketch it out.

My son’s friend was here as I finished up the fuschia/orange pirate hat. He is a very enthusiastic kid. “Awesome! Can you make me one for my birthday later this month?” He wants green. I told him he needed another color. No hesitation there, yellow. In my mind I’m cringing and cringing, but I ask, “like the Packers?” knowing full well that a 10 year old boy doesn’t usually think in terms of “spruce” or “sage” or “olive”. YUP. So, here it is,

Folks have been putting up pics of critter feet, what do you think of these?

can you say “snow balls”
They were so bad that dh put the dogs in the shower and ran warm water over their legs.

Guess what it is doing out there right now? Snowing! I thought it was just flurries, and it surely isn’t “serious” snow, but it has left a good covering on everything. Lucia is tired of winter pics, so I’ll try to put up some of dh’s pics of interesting rare Maine plants. He said I could… now can I consider this public outreach and charge it to work????

okay…let’s try again. Smart me thought, oh, I’ll just scan that picture, but the magazine hit some key and the whole post disappeared!!!

Here is Dulaan #4,

Made of 1 strand Bartlett and one of Classic Elite Bravo in Lupine. Cast on 48 with #11, k2p2 about 4 inches, purl a round, switch to #13, p2k2 about 4 inches (but I went on 5 inches), p a round. Switch to stockinette, 2 rounds even, then double decreases in 4 sections, like the father daughter hat. But the decreases happened pretty quickly, so I started putting 2 rounds even between decreases, which made the top pointy! Finished with an I cord. Here’s a shot of it in progress,

This was my break from all this gray,

one sleeve done!

Look what came!

the G Rocks is bd present for G!

G was over last night with Sid. The girls were pooped!

tired Gracie

We looked through some old pattern magazines.

a lot of gray! but seriously, I’m glad he’s just a L tall

G has a friend that wants a bobbly sweater…and I had just seen this, in a Dutch pattern book called Neveda, we think from 1979.

which seriously reminds me of the artemis of ephesus statue. But G declared it likely perfect for this person. I shudder!

Is it cold? Yup. And promising to be colder. The river is tidal up to about a mile north of Augusta (that’s 35 or so miles from the ocean), and there are several bridges here, so the ice gets quite broken up.

ice piled up by the east side boat landing, you can almost see the light reflecting through the ice here

We went for a walk out behind the airport this morning. Not much stops that wind as it reaches us from the western mountains (western of Maine!). Gracie managed to be on the left of both of these pictures. It is difficult to photograph black animals, even more so when they are always moving, and also against the snow!