Weren’t we supposed to finish this by the end of 2008??

T is for Tardy

As in I am late in finishing this.

U is for Unfinished Objects

I have two, both sweaters for DH… one for his birthday last January, and one for this year’s birthday at the end of the month.

Last night I started on the sleeve for the lopi sweater (last year’s birthday sweater). My gauge swatch on this lied and I wasn’t paying attention as I went up the body… It will be a snugger sweater than he’s used to. Usually he gets a 50 inch sweater, I’m hoping this will block out to 48 (it’s measuring now at 46).

Oops, did you see that mistake? I decided to leave it.

Only two blue stitches between the gray in this row versus three. Eh.

V is for Vag1na ornament

On a knitting friend’s tree… a milkweed pod all decorated up. When she received it, her girls declared “oh look, a vag1na!”, and thus it became…

W is for Wafer thin new camera!

New
Old

W is also for Website! The new dot gov site I’m building at work. The sortable table code on this page is a thing of beauty! (this page was put up as a trial… there are a couple of mistakes that need fixing….)

X is for Xmas

Glad it’s over, eh? And did you know the X is for the Greek X (or Chi)? I learned this just this morning!

Y is for Yankee and Yikes and Yarn

I think I might be a yankee (as in northeasterner, versus the NYC ball team fan…).

Yikes, I have a lot of yarn… (link to all the stash pics…)

Z is for Zuzu (and Gracie of course)

Zuzu has the red collar, Gracie has the blue one… they are doing their “paws up for treaties” trick…

Z is also for Zastruga, which I see occasionally where we walk the dogs… but not this day,

My other Rhinebeck purchase, It Itches, signed by Franklin! Who is so photogenic. Whereas I am not (you only generally see the good pictures). I was perhaps following the advice from a mammography visit a couple years ago where the technician said to “love the camera”, and not just for her pictures for that day, but because it helps keep those neck wrinkles from showing up…. Note to self: don’t lift your chin so high, it makes you look piggy nosed!

I told Franklin I thought maybe he thought I was some sort of weird blog stalker because he never responded when I told him the dream of mine he was in… he chuckled. And since you know you want to know… Here it is,

I go to his house (which was one of my old houses). He says “Oh good, you’re here, you can help me choose a watch”. And then we sat around in some living room looking at a watch catalog and discussing the merits of watches with faces, where you feel that time is continuous and circular versus digital watches, where you feel that time is linear and has a beginning and an end. We may also have been knitting. There were a few other people there too. After a bit, a rather snarky woman (his roommate) comes into the room and declares “OK, all of you, out now”. (DOLORES??) So I gather up my things, and realizing I can be careless, I look in the couch cushions and also under the couch. Where, when I lift the couch skirt, Lo! and Behold! There is a row of neatly stacked hand knit socks, maybe 3 or 4 pairs high and maybe 10 or 15 wide, all with color work like Latvian socks… and the aroma of lanolin came wafting out from under the couch.

I don’t think he really is a big sock knitter, so I don’t know where that came from. Maybe they were Dolores’s.

We are still without a usable PC at home. Wah Wah Wah. So this is just a quick post and I hope to catch up on some blog reading soon! My last Rhinebeck purchase is not photo-worthy, a couple of dye packets for another dyeing experiment.

Because I have been suffering from lack of internet access and you’ll get these posts as I can make them…..

Finally met Cathy-Cate (who is short!)

I may have only purchased one skein of yarn, but I came home with three… the blue was something I won over at Lucia’s a while back, and the white was a gift from Cathy-Cate… some super soft Wisconsin spun alpaca and angora. I’m thinking it needs to be a hat. Thank you both!

Everywhere on Saturday we saw the February Lady Sweater, some were better than others… Ms Fiberfish was wearing one, and I told her I wanted to take lots of photos of them… I concede defeat… she took more pictures than I did (love the little friendly competition)! I think I only took 10 or so photos.

The other sweaters of note on Saturday were the tangled yoke cardigan, which I would say was the second most common sweater at the fair that day, and the Tilted Duster (both from the Fall 2007 Interweave Knits). Gotta say, when that issue of IK came out, all I could think of with that cover photo was giant purple vagina. It looks much better knit up than it did on the magazine cover. (and why can I put the word for certain female parts in the blog, but not for similar male parts??)

While talking with Juno (who I’ve only met before briefly) about how wonderful it was that there were all these tall women at the fair, I nearly kinneared a photo of this goldish sweater that was next to me, then its wearer turned around…
(don’t embiggen, very fuzzy). Oh, says I, it’s you, and here I just wanted a photo of the color of your sweater….

Finally met in the flesh (with some of us stuffing our faces) Sandy and Norma

I wish I took more photos of what people were wearing! You can see them all, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the not so beautiful, (and some of the fuzzy because I was sneaking most of these photos) here. Just so you know, I’m getting an S post out of this flickr set…

Updates around here… the pc is still in trouble. We tried to install a new hard drive, having determined that the virus/trojan was just too big and bad to hassle with. And something isn’t reading/working so we need expert help. Other things are moving along in a positive direction.

Isn’t it handy that I’m behind in the abc-along? I am tired and have lost my mind about what I wanted to post…

I went out with Lucia and Miss B

who clearly wanted this bunny…

Saw some sheep,

those are the biggest, hairiest balls I have ever seen

Got a much-needed hug,

mel and me

Purchased a single skein of yarn,

Met a bunch of people, kinneared lots of photos, and overall had a great time. And you’ll be seeing more about it all… hope you don’t mind!

So we all think we know what purl means,

But we had the dictionary on the table the other day, and here’s what it has to tell us…

purl(1) [Cf. Sw. porla, purl, ripple, gurgle.] To flow with curling or rippling motions, as a shallow stream among or over stones or other obstructions; flow with a murmuring sound, as such a stream does; hence, to pass in a manner or with a sound likened to this (as, “The words…purled out of Miss Foster’s mouth like a bright spring out of the moss”: Arnold Bennett’s “Great Man,” xii.).

There’s a second and third definition, and since typing dictionary definitions isn’t exactly my idea of a hopping time, here’s a scan (with image!)… Check it out, what we all know is buried at the end of definition #2.

So I want to talk like definition #1, but I think I’ll need some of definition #3 to do so!

P is also for premonish

Which is like admonish, except you do it beforehand…

guess who’s coming to central Maine?!?!?!

Maria Muldaur! She’ll be at Slate’s on Monday night!!!!
(so I’m listening to her now…) Her new cd (I did type album, such an anachronism… me, not the albums) is called “Yes We can”. Guess who she’s going to vote for?

speaking of anachronisms

google is offering up its old search engine. I googled myself from back then, and there’s only one entry, me, getting told I was wrong about something I posted on a listserve about homebrewing. Something about whether or not the F.X. Matt brewery (now not even called that, poor Frances Xavier…) brewed the specialty beers (like Sam Adams) or just stored them.

A few years back when I googled my name it was mostly not me, but rather some politician from Canada. Now it’s much me again, from work related things. Nice to know there aren’t too many folks with my name around…

evening sky

The sky was really beautiful last night… we had bats flitting about too, but the pics with them are really fuzzy!

And the view at the same time looking down to the house, where dinner was waiting…

Oops! I hit publish… but I guess I’d better… dinner is ready. No wait, it isn’t cooked. Fire on the grill and the fish isn’t done. … It’s in the broiler now. Guess we’ll be cleaning out the grill this weekend!

some doggy pics to entertain you

Which is which?

Gracie (left) and Zuzu (right) (above and below!)

I need to work on my skills around taking pictures of my dogs, so they don’t get all foreshortened and end up looking like hairy crocodiles,