Inspiration Found

I was browsing around the magazines at Border's while Madison was here and saw the Spring Interweave Knits on the shelf. I was psyched because I saw 2 projects that I really like. Just my speed: simple, little frill, fitted, minimal.

Here is Mirabella

I am picturing this in a heathered gray, silver if you will.

And Auburn Camp Shirt


I am picturing this in a sage green or a lavender purple with some texture. This is knit with a wool silk blend so I will check out my color options.

Like I have the money for this! Every week I remind myself how expensive this year is going to be - already! I have my trip to Turkey, Madison was just here, my 40th b'day in Charleston this fall, the annual pilgrimage to York Beach right after Labor Day, I would like to see my friend in NYC again. All wonderful reasons to spend money, and not a penny will be wasted, but this is all happening in one year. When it rains it pours in my life. Never fails.

And I have so much fun stuff to look forward to! Just no eating out this year and I have made a pact with myself not buy any clothes for 6 months.

So side-tracked

Gosh, I get so side-tracked. I haven’t really been knitting in a couple of weeks mainly because I don’t have a new project to work on that excited me. I started a sweater that I am not all that thrilled with. Do you find starting a new project daunting? I have so many things I want to make I get overwhelmed with where to begin. And then finding the yarn. And then swatching.

I am so impressed and inspired by the knitting blogs I visit. Keep is going, knitters! I will back with you soon.

My niece Madison is coming to visit me today. She is flying here from Maine, all by herself, and we are going to do Washington, D.C. I love playing tourist in my hometown. I am blogging here.

And I booked my trip to Turkey! I am so excited. I am leaving on June 9 for 13 days with Rick Steves, to guy from PBS. The tour is just my speed, a little rugged, lots of walking, eating in local places, “through the back door” as Rick’s traveling style is.

Finished sweater and felted bags

As promised, some finished projects.

Here is the top down raglan. Came out great, I love the sweater and the yarn. It is a really nice fit, not bulky. And it was so easy to knit. This was my first sweater with buttonholes and they were not nearly as scary as I thought they would be. I started the holes a few inches from the neck.



And here is the after pic of the buttonhole bags I made for my cousins. (I had a before picture...somewhere. In my zeal to keep my computer free of extraneous files I must have deleted it. Ugh.) This is my second felted project and it was so very different than the french market bag. The buttonhole bag yarn is doubled so the felting took 2 wash cycles. I would guess that they shrunk about 25% during the felting process. The Lamb's Pride bulky has a fuzziness to it that I did not like in the finished bags. I have a feeling it will leave a lot of lint behind. But the bags are really cute and my cousins love them.

I fixed my laptop!

I am back among the living! I am so proud of myself, I fixed my laptop! Girls, the men in my life who know computers were so turned on by the fact that I removed the LCD. All by myself. (The directions on the Dell and Assetgenie sites were the real heroes here.) If you’re looking for a new angle, give it a try (wink wink).

After doing some trouble shooting on the Internet and talking to a few people I decided I would try to replace the LCD and see if that was the problem with monitor. After first getting a bad LCD and determining that the video card was working, I finally hit pay dirt. The replacement LCD that arrived today worked. Hallelujah! I was jumping up a down with gleeeeeeeeeeeeee.

It is such a relief to have access to the Internet at home again. I am planning my trip to Turkey so having the web when I want it, and not just at the office, makes life so much easier. It begs the question <>

So, yes, I booked my trip to Turkey. Another great moment this week. I am going with Rick Steves’ tour company. The speed of the tour, all of the warnings about each of us having to carry our own bags (meaning no infirm people or prima donnas), and the “through the back door” theme of his trips are what sold me. I have been watching Rick tromp through Europe on PBS for half my life!

I don’t leave until June, but I am thrilled that I finally have plans. I was waffling, complaining about not finding a tour company that suited me, cursing my friend who backed out of the trip last week for too long. So I finally just did it, jumped on the Internet and booked. In about 2 minutes I had dates and an itinerary. What a great weight lifted off my shoulders.

Now to find a plane ticket for under $1,200. Ugh.

I have some knitting projects to catch up on. Check back over the weekend.

Red Scarf Project update

I was so happy to finish my first Red Scarf Project scarf, all ready to squeeze the second one out before the Jan. deadline. But I just found out on the Web site that the project is closed for this year. Scarves will be accepted from Sept. 1 through Oct. 15, 2008. Oh well, I am glad the project is so successful.

Now I can start on a new project although I find starting something new daunting sometimes. So many ideas, where do I begin?

Other exciting news is that I hope to get the new LCD for my laptop today so I can try to replace it and get back online at home. I love when I can figure things out on my own -- and save myself $250!

Happy New Year

My home computer is down, I had a snail in my watercress salad at lunch, I saw some (freak) woman in flip-flops today…

But things are good. Once I replace my laptop monitor I will be back with pics of my new top down raglan that came out so excellent. The yarn is a great silk wool blend that has the stretchiness and body of wool but it is so light and springy.

Happy New Year!

I heart Doris Day movies

Sweater Progress

I finished the first sleeve last night. This is a really great pattern if you are looking for a
cardigan. It is easy to follow and you can alter the length and width pretty easily to fit you. And trying it on as I go is great for getting the right fit and the right sleeve length.

Movies
I watched "A Touch of Mink" last night, starring Doris Day and Cary Grant. I love Doris Day movies. She's plays the innocent young single woman from the midwest trying to make it in New York City so well. The blantant sexism is this Doris Day movie in particular was both funny and disturbing. In 2007 we look at this type of movie very differently than men and women did when the movie was made in 1962. One big shocker for me was Cathy (Day) and Mr. Shayne (Grant) going on vacation together and they weren't married. This movie straddles a lot of social mores and was probably racy when it came out. There are a lot of things that made me scratch my head, but the biggest one was the fact that she called him Mr. Shayne!

What's the point, really

Ok, fair warning, my snark is continuing today.

In today's mail I got a Christmas card from my older brother. Nice gesture, his way of reaching out (we don't really talk), it's all fine. But it wasn't in his handwriting! What's the point of sending cards if you aren't even going to sign them yourself?

As crazy as it sounds, I hope that he hired someone to sign and mail them. Because the only thing worse than that would be if his icky girlfriend did them for him.

Oh, sweetness, we need to talk...

Knitting and snark

Here's the progress on the Top Down Raglan.



This sweater is customizable: buttonholes, shaping, sleeve length, body length. I bought this yarn (Queensland Collection, Katmandu DK) when I was in Nags Head this summer, $7 a ball, and I love the color and feel. It is wool, cashmere, and silk and feels perfect for this cardigan. I am breezing along. The pattern is really easy. This is my first foray into buttonholes and they aren't nearly as scary as I thought they would be. I bind off 2 stitches and then cast them back on the next row.

I took a drive to Frederick, Md., today to poke around and do some Christmas shopping. There are some really nice stores in the downtown, art galleries, restaurants, coffee shops. Its fun to browse.

One present for me was "I Bitch, Therefore I Am." Have you seen this new theme of books and cards? The writers use images from old advertising from the 50s and 60s, mostly of women coiffed, pearled, and high-heeled, in the kitchen beeming with joy over the fact that they are cooking and cleaning for their families. They are paired with snarky, sarcastic, histerical captions. They are the funniest things EVER. And they don't get old, no matter how many times you read them. Another really funny line is by Anne Taintor. Here's one example of the snark:


It reads the tree wouldn't be the only one getting lit this year

When I was with my college friends this summer, Becky introduced us to these books. We were laughing so hard, tears rolling down our faces. The husbands didn't really get it, and the kids were perplexed at what was making all the ladies so hysterical.

Do I really need another scarf?

I have finished my open wave lace scarf, and I love it. The pattern is unique, which I always look for in a scarf, although I would not call it lace necessarily. And the colors in the yarn look pretty cool. I think I might try this pattern with a solid color yarn, it will probably look very different.

I am also working on a couple of buttonhole bags for Christmas gifts. I started the second one watching “Ugly Betty” last night and should be able to finish it by the end of the weekend.

Movies
I saw "American Gangster" last weekend to celebrate my friend's birthday. We tried to go to bowling at Lucky Strike but there was a 2 hour wait for a lane. Whatever! The movie was very good, great characters and storyline. A little violent, though. "The Kingdom" was the same: great story but pretty violent. Is it me, or are the movies getting violent again?

I always wonder where the movie producers get the cars and other paraphernalia, like office equipment, clothes, shoes, from the period of the movie. Like the late-60s and early-70s depicted in "AG." It is so important to the telling of the story.

What kind of oil are you gulping?

From Ideal Bite, a reminder of how we can all do something small for the environment.

Creating that plastic bottle of H20 you chug after a workout involves water pumping, bottling, plastic manufacturing, label printing, shipping, store refrigeration, and advertising. And that's before you drink it and throw it away.

On the sticks

This is a fun scarf I have been working on here and there. I bought this yarn (Koigu Kersti Merino Crepe) in Asheville over the summer knowing I wanted to make a scarf. I thought that would have been something along the lines of this Zig-Zag scarf, minus the color change, or something similarly diagonal. I did not really like the way the color of this yarn was working, but I did want something more daring than a straight rib because I really like this yarn and wanted to do it justice.

This pattern is called open wave lace, from The Complete Book of Knitting by Barbara Abbey. I found this book a few years ago at a used bookstore for $2.00 and it is such a great resource.

On a completely different note, I was downtown shopping today after my volunteering gig at the American Art Museum and saw a shockingly ugly cross dresser. It was like your father put on a pretty turquoise flouncy skirt, matching sleeveless blouse, the sneakers he wears when he mows the grass, your mother's ugliest pink lipstick, his handbag, and he's ready for a day downtown. If you want to dress like a woman put some effort into it please! Besides my freight, I had a very good shopping day.

NYC Weekend

I tried out the newest cheap bus to NYC, DC2NY this weekend. It was comfortable, only $40 round trip, the stop is a block from my office parking garage, so it all worked out beautifully.

My friend Del moved to Conn. for a new job so I went to go see him for about 24 hours. We had a blast tooling around the city. I think I finally figured out the subway which is such a bonus. We hit the Metropolitan Museum and the roof deck where there is some art and drinks! And a great view. We had dinner at an African restaurant in Harlem that night. He was thrilled to see so many Africans around, being from Nigeria and all.

On Sunday we did not get a very early start so it was a little rushed. We stumbled upon Artie's Delicatessen in the upper West Side for some breakfast and then rushed around the Natural History Museum for about an hour before having to get back down to Penn Station so I could catch the bus back.

New York is such a wonderful place. Activity abounds, and the culture of the people who live there is amazing. So much fun. We are already planning my next trip when we will explore Soho, Tribeca, and Greenwich Village.

Why do I get such pleasure from throwing away his toothbrush?

I broke up with Doug this week. We weren’t going in the same direction so I had to end it. He wanted a casual relationship dressed in a serious relationship’s clothing. Kind of strange, actually, that was a first for me. Nice guy, he just needs a little time to get his new life formed. I told him pretty much right off that I am looking to get married. Not to him necessarily, but that is the goal. Casual if fun, but I am done with it. No hard feelings.

But I get such pleasure in throwing away the toothbrush. Wonder why?

Gift knitting

I am planning on making some felted bags for Christmas gifts this year. My experiment with the French Market bag was a success this summer so I will continue felting. There are so many neat things out there including these flower embellishments. People are so clever. I am always amazed and inspired.

This time I am going to try the Buttonhole Bag from Mason Dixon Knitting. Here is some yarn I bought when I was in vacation in the Outer Banks a few weeks ago. I like the heathered colors, I think that will give the solid felted fabric some depth and interest.

K-Mart ad sends the wrong message

Have you seen the back-to-school ad from K-Mart? The little girl is going to do well in the new school year because her clothes look so good. The little boy is going to do well because he has a backpack for all of his books.

What’s up with that? These messages of materialism and girls needing to look the right way to do well in life start so early. It is very discouraging.

It is still summer, people

Why is it that the first time the temperature drops below 70 degrees in this city everyone pulls out their winter clothes? It makes me laugh, every summer. I saw dark jackets, sweaters over long sleeve shirts, and what could have been wool pants on the bus this morning. Don’t worry people, was have a lot of 90 degree days ahead of us!

I am back from my vacation to Asheville and the Outer Banks (N.C). I had a wonderful time, saw so much great fine art and crafts, bought pottery and jewelry and a quirky painting in Asheville. Relaxed on the beach and saw some beautiful scenery on the Outer Banks. The 1,863 miles of driving was worth it. But you won’t see me behind the wheel for a little while. I love my car, but we have had enough together time.

I also did some yarn shopping, at Yarn Paradise in the Biltmore Village in Asheville, and I stumbled across this neat little yarn shop in Manteo, in the Outer Banks, called Kimbeeba. I found some nice (read: cheap) felting yarn there for some Christmas presents I am going to make.

My test of the mini clapotis is a success I think. So successful that I am considering making the full size version. Is it too much red, though, at full-size?

Summer Vacation 2007

My solo adventure to North Carolina starts Thursday morning. I will be on the road by 6 AM to reach Asheville by mid-afternoon. Part of the trip will be on the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway which starts in northern Virginia and goes all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains. I will have plenty of music to listen to and David Sedaris’s books on CD to keep me entertained. I do not do well on long car trips so I think this will be my biggest challenge. I get bored and antsy holed up in a car for too long.

I am keeping myself free most of the time to explore the city of Asheville but I have booked a half-day whitewater rafting trip on the Nantahala River and I found a couple of yoga studios. My first stop Friday is a massage to unkink after the long drive, I expect it to take 8+ hours. Asheville is home to the Biltmore Estate, home of the Vanderbilts, and I am feeling more of an obligation to visit than any desire so that will be Plan B on Sunday. It looks interesting for a couple of hours which does not justify the $40 admission fee. I think I am going to have the most fun wandering around visiting the shops and art galleries and trying all of the different restaurants I have been reading about in downtown.

After 3 full days in Asheville I jump back in the car for another 8 hour drive, due east, to Nags Head in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Ahhh, the beach. To me nothing is more relaxing than a chair and an umbrella on the sandy shore. Everyone in this area (Washington, DC) goes to the Outer Banks but I have never been.

My biggest angst last night after finishing all of my laundry and burning some CDs was what knitting projects to bring. I am still plodding along with the ballerina wrap sweater, I am mid-sleeve-#2, so I am definitely bringing that. But I want to bring something else. I swatched some sock yarn I bought last year for a possible go at the mini-Clapotis reworked by Yarn Dreams. It’s a possibility. I like the colors, vibrant for a winter scarf.

When it rains it pours

This week has been a whirlwind of social activities. When it rains it pours! Does that happen to you? I met Kani, from IntellectConnect, on Monday at the Four Courts; dinner at David Greggory with my friend Linda who was here from Florida for a few days; Wed. I bailed on MeetUp; Thurs. is yoga night. Tomorrow I volunteer and then go to the Walters with Christina. Sunday I am meeting Young Dave, finally, for a beer.

The Highlight

The trip to Gettysburg last Saturday with the Capital Hiking Club was so much fun. Our guide, Larry, was a wealth of information. And there were other Civil War buffs/experts on the hike who added even more information.

All of the people in our group were so pleasant and easy to talk to. Ages ranged from 10 to 70-ish, men, woman, singles, couples. In the end I am so glad I went alone. I had invited the Craiglist girls but no one ended up signing up. That group is getting on my nerves, but more about that later. If I had been with people I knew, I don’t think I would have mingled. So alone can be better.

And I even got a date out of it! Bonus. I was totally not expecting that.

Tonight I am off to Sears to buy a new garbage disposal. My glamorous life!

Knitting

I posted the before and after dimensions and pictures of the French Market Bag to Flickr (see the box in the right column). I would say it shrunk about 25% in the felting process in the washing machine. I have a feeling it won’t shrink so much when hand-felted. But I need to do some experimenting.

First Felted Bag

Knitting

Here’s my finished French Market Bag. Isn’t is cool? I am really excited about this felting thang. I am thinking Christmas presents.

Here’s the before picture so you can see how much is shrunk. Pretty dramatic.

When I was in RI last week I used my mother’s washing machine to perform my first felting experiment. I would say it was a success. I feared that the two purples that I chose were too subtle next to each other but they aren’t at all in the finished piece.

While this whole thing was easy to knit and the felting is cool, the shape of this bag is not going to be that useful for me I don’t think. The sides aren’t really that high and the straps aren’t long enough.

But next time I will know how to alter the pattern. I also think the next time I will hand felt which will give me more control. The washing machine was pretty rough and I left it in about 8 minutes, a little longer than I had wanted, but I got distracted watching “What Not to Wear.”

Love that show. And the few episodes I caught when I was getting my fill of cable TV at my parents house featured very willing and cooperative participants. Sometimes they are awful, kicking and screaming through every step, from new clothes, to hair, to makeup. Jeez, they are making you over, have fun with it.

Dating

Well, I think I am inadvertently online dating again.

In my daily scouring I regularly saw a post on Craigslist for Seeking Intellectually Curious Who Love Fine Arts? Have you seen it?

So I click on the above mentioned post to find intellectconnect.com, a new free online dating and friending site. I questioned whether I was smart enough for these potential dates. But I jumped in (I think the FREE was the hook I needed), created a profile, and then kind of forgot about it. Until I got a response a couple of weeks ago from a man who seems charming, nice, looking for friends, likes cultural pursuits, lives nearby in Woodley Park. So we are meeting next week for a beer.

I say inadvertently because this past spring when Gabriel just simply stopped calling and returning my calls, after a year of dating, I decided to take a break. So my focus has been on meeting people to do things with, like hiking, museums, going out to dinner, all the things you do with a boyfriend but without the complications of actually having to consider another person. (Yikes that sounds selfish. But you get my point.)

So I met that group of women on Craigslist and I have become involved in MeetInDC and meetup.com, and a few other things. And it’s all coming together, the work is paying off and I am meeting some new people and have some fun things on my calendar.

Like tomorrow I am going to Gettysburg with the Capital Hiking Club. I have never been to a Civil War site – shame on me, living in the South and all. I don’t know anyone on the trip, but that’s part of the adventure. I have an introverted personality so I have to force myself to do social things by myself. This will be a good exercise for me.

Just for laughs, I recently trolled around match.com, the old stompin’ ground, and all I saw were the same old faces, reading the same old profiles (“I am comfortable in a jean and a tux,” “I SCUBA dive and climb mountains, all in the same day,” “Looking for my soul mate as long as she looks like a super model”) so I give up on the online dating scene.

I had fun over the many years on match, met tons of men, went out on tons of dates, but I am done with that.