color (mental) blocks pt. 2 and lots of pictures

I got to a temporary sputtering stop midway through segment #4 of the Noro afghan because of some color issues. I am not sure what to do next. This is what I've got so far:

I have these beautiful ones that I was going to save for segment #5:

These are just barfy:

And these are so muted or neutral I might save them for a different project:

In the mean time I decided to do some baby stuff. This green stripey deal is for the store where I work. We had some scraps that look nice together. My plan was a hat and mittens set. It was going great until I got to the thumb and remembered why I haven't made gloves in a long time - the separations for the small digits are a pain in the ass. I doesn't help that I'm not using a pattern. I think the little dude's gonna have to get frogged. Oh well.

I love this one though, I just need another skein of the yarn and it'll be done in a day. I have an adult sized version of this that's been hibernating in my closet for about a year, but I try not to think about it.

These small hurdles have steered me back to my Shetland Triangle, which is looking great.

I really should be outside. We have had such incredible weather here - perfectly warm and still with the beautiful October light and the changing colors of autumn. This what it looks like right outside my bedroom door. Along with this view I get the sound of the creek rushing again from the rain we finally got last week. Too bad I can't post that.

And I love standing on this little path right under the apricot tree. All the yellow feels like it's beaming up at my face..

Perfect light to get a long overdue decent picture of the Clapotis.

Hey captain! Here's another picture of Roxie!

Segment #3 done!

2 more to go. I am in love with this project and I hope y'all are too because this is what I'm photographing til it's done.

I went to an unofficial 20 year (McAteer) high school reunion in San Francisco on Friday. The actual one for my graduating class sounded lame and expensive so a bunch of us friends got together and invited some others and went out to dinner and to the Uptown. A couple of people remarked that as a group we appeared unscathed by time. I said they just got us at the right moment. Like, I know 5 years ago I didn't look so hot. I also am theorizing that most people's self destructive behavior (if any) probably has leveled off by the time we're 37 or 38, if it's going to at all. But, yeah, most of us look pretty much the same. I think it's interesting that out of 14 people only three have children and only two are married. Here we are standing on Valencia Street.

At the request of one of my new friends on Ravelry, here are some pics of the dogs. Sorry they're not in knitwear, it's hard to get them to sit still. And speaking of Ravelry, I started a stripe makers' group there, if you're interested.

Ace

Roxie

Trixie

Say hello to my little friend

I dug up some of my early projects today to photograph them on the most beautiful model at my house. Meet Horatio. His origins are a bit of a mystery. I only know he was acquired in Czeckoslovaklia in the late 50's.

I'd forgotten how much I like this red stripe scarf. It's really thick and cozy because it is a giant tube. I used Elsebeth Lavold Angora and Crystal Palace Merino Frappe. Don't ask me why Rudy Giuliani is on the TV in the background. There are no republicans in my house.

This is one of my favorite scarves. It is kind of dorky in its rainbowy-ness but I will always love it because it helped through a very rough time. I did most of the knitting during a long stay at a hospital where my boyfriend was in I.C.U. I got the idea from the Cascade 220 pattern book. It is all scraps of Cascade.

This scarf is very similar in design to the red one and is the same Elsebeth Lavold yarn. It has been sitting in a shoebox, unfinished, for at least a year. It's only about a foot long.

The other end of this one is on display where I work. It is the "Beads of Earth" design from Scarf Style. It is Cascade Pima Silk and size 6/0 seed beads.

Another project from Scarf Style, "Stripes and Bobbles" also unfinished. These strips need to be sewn together side by side. I don't think I'll do that using bobbles. I didn't use the Takhi Donegal Tweed that the pattern calls for. I like that stuff but it is hell of scratchy. I instead used Khroma WW from The Fibre Company.

Since I got Horatio all decked out today I got him to show off a few peyote stitch and right-angle weave bracelets I made.

I feel like I haven't been here in ages. It's true what they say about Ravelry. I've been home sick all week so I got to spend a bunch of time there. What a wonderland it is. It's kind of funny that with the 17,000 or so users one would run into the same people multiple times while bouncing around. My name there is taniask

When self-striping yarn isn't enough

In case you hadn't noticed, I like stripes. My old friend Michael Dean used to joke about how I should open a store that sells nothing but striped clothing and call it Totally Tania.

This is how my Noro Kureyon afghan version #2 is coming along.

I liked the old one okay, but it got boring. Then I realized how much more exciting it could be if I striped the [already-self-striping] yarns together! .. And I could have more control. And more to fuss over with the color combining. I actually haven't interrupted the yarns' own color sequences as much as I normally do. I'm trying my best to just trust them. This is some real progress for me.

I've got about one foot left to go on the second segment. I realized this afghan is starting to look just like the color palettes I used to make for the Hypnogenic Screen Saver.

Last week I went to the TKGA and CGOA show/conference at the Mariott in Oakland. I took a teachers' workshop there and it was ok. Not really worth going on about. Let's just say that the most important thing I learned in that class was that I already know a whole bunch. I had more fun in the vendors' hall. A guy (named Maat, I think) from Carolina Homespun showed me how to use a drop spindle. I liked it. So I bought this one.

I got to mess around with a knitting machine at the booth of the Machine Knitters Guild of the San Francisco Bay Area. It was fun. Oh, and I won a door prize! Many of the vendors were in a jovial mood and smelled like alcohol (champagne?). I also bought some fingering weight 100% cashmere and some addi turbo US #6 lace needles for my Shetland Triangle that I started today.

The cashmere came from Argosy. It is the Zen 2-ply.

The whole transaction was very pleasant and surprisingly affordable. I would definitely buy from them again. The woman also told me about a software program called Knitware that I'd like to check out some day.

The nice thing about living in the country

Holy shit I got my Ravelry invite! I'd kind of forgotten about it because last time I checked I was number 7,000 something. My user name there is taniask. I logged in and stuff but I haven't really gotten started with it yet, nor have I explored it at all. These things (as well as loading up a flickr account) are very time consuming to do using only a dial-up connection. Yes, like I said, I'm living in the middle of nowhere.

Speaking of which, we had our Pear Festival here in Kelseyville (the bartlett pear capital) on Saturday. It is the biggest street event of the year, and it starts off with a parade! It is actually the first of three parades we have every year that come right down Main Street. Number two is at like 9 in the morning on Halloween, and it is all of the children from the local elementary schools all dressed up in their costumes. Needless to say that is hell of cute. Number three is at night time right in the beginning of December, when it is nice and freezy outside, and it is a parade of (Christmas) lights. Even the miniature horses have lights all over them. And some dogs, too. I get totally verklempt during parades. It is the marching band (in our case the Kelseyville High School Band) that does it every time. I have no idea why this is. It doesn't matter what they're playing. I am a huge dork. Here is a shot of them looking cool and bored in their black t-shirts and jeans, with beautiful Mt. Konocti in the background. I believe they were playing "25 or 6 to 4" when I took this.

WTF?!? #9: Tonight I was watching some of that "War" series on PBS. The Ken Burns documentary. Anyway at one point the narrator was talking about how the acronyms SNAFU and FUBAR had worked their way into our vocabulary. When he said what those stood for, the word "fucked" was bleeped out. I think its a little ironic that the part that people thought was offensive enough to be censored was the profanity and not the carnage. I figured maybe PBS would let that one pass, especially in its historical context.

Happy birthday Aesop! I hope you found the cream tequila you were looking for...