slowknitter

First up: The KFYS Yarn Fairy page.

I’ve dedicated a page (look up. See the tab? Click there) For the yarn fairy crap. There are quite a few non-bloggy type people who are doing KFYS as well as blog owners. If you want to be on a list shoot me an email (on the yarn fairy page) and I’ll put you up. Next contest for yarn will be last week in January.

It’s the first week of the new year and I am still trying to write about my trip to Houston.

That’s right. I am about to show you crap that is a few weeks old. I’m not sure what happened to my blogging mojo, but if someone finds it would you put on it’s pants, put it in a cab and send it home? Or better yet, likker it up (if it’s not already), ask it the password and then feel free to go ahead and blog away.

This is a picture heavy post, so go ahead and get some coffee…

The first thing I need to show you is what I got for my anniversary/Christmas from the BF:

Um, hello you sexy thing, you. This is now known around here as the BGC (big girl camera). And the BF? Well now we have to call him BBE ( best boyfriend ever). He’s been the BBE for quite a long time to be honest, I mean come on he puts up with me, laughs at my jokes and (very) gently teases me when he finds me crying at certain times of the month over food network specials, extreme home makeover, or commercials with animals. Also? He likes my cooking, is kind to my family, and says that my (right now extremely fat) ass is perfect. Hi baby! I love you!

(for the record, as of yesterday, I might be the BGE [best girlfriend ever]. I gave him a Tivo series 3 HD DVR. And now that Time fisting the greater Los Angeles area for fun and profit Warner figured out how to make it work the BBE is a very happy boy…)

Anyway, here are some of the very first photos I took with my excellent new toy:

A pansy in my parents back yard. Hello detail!

Same pansy, but I used the “cross process” button in my photo editing software. All photos with the black edging were converted to cross processed.

Blueberries and home made waffles for Christmas breakfast. My dad was an engineer. He likes his blueberries orderly.

One of two Hello Kitty ornaments that my mom bought to honor my obsession addiction inexplicable draw to cats with no mouths.

Below are some of the ornaments that my mom has collected over the years. These in particular fill me with joy, as they are the ones that have been on the tree since I can remember. Sadly, these are the only two of the old ornaments that are left from the Great Remodeling the Garage Project of Aught Six.

What? You didn’t hear about that project? Oh yeah, that was accomplished by my dad when he was putting the car in the garage after he came back from the gym one day. He still had on his running shoes, and when he took his foot off the gas and went to put on the brake his shoe somehow got wedged in between the gas pedal and the brake. The car went into the garage, through the storage cabinets holding all the Christmas crap, and through the wall separating the laundry room and the garage. His attempt to make the house a drive-thru was thwarted by the washer, dryer, vacuum, and the concrete step in the garage that is not ironically called a “car stop”. Thankfully he was not injured, though at 79 he has decided to stop driving.

This photo (again with the cross process) was taken in my parents backyard.

Ok, enough of the artsy fartsy shit. Let’s move on to knitting content. If you’re feeling faint you might want to sit down.

Here’s a close-up photo of the scarf I knit for my brother:

And another, for those of you who think size is everything:

In the above photo the scarf is not washed, not blocked, and the ends are not woven in. And that photo was taken January 3rd when I cast it off the needles. In Los Angeles.

The pattern on the scarf is the one Stephanie put up on her blog a few months ago (pattern here. Scroll down a bit)

Knitted with Jade Sapphire cashmere 6 ply in the Everglades colorway. Paired with Blue Sky Alpacas limited edition Royal Alpaca, yarn doubled. The color in the photo is a bit off, it’s not that black. More of an antique black.

Oh? And the alpaca is so much softer than the cashmere it’s not even funny. I really liked this alpaca (which usually is not slowknitter allergy friendly) but this? Yum. And also? Not cheap. $42.00 for 288 yards. Worth it though.
Other things that were given, in pretty boxes, but still attached to the needles and yarn?

My SIL’s scarf:

Malabrigo. Colorway: Alpine Pearl. This is not the Ruffled scarf, though in retrospect I should have made it into that. It’s plain garter stitch scarf knitted lengthwise. I stopped counting after 200 something stitches. And when I finally got this off the needles it was 6.5 feet long. My SIL is 5′3″. heh.

Unfortunately there are no FO photos before I sent them off. It was 3am when they were finally dry and packaged up. You know who else didn’t get to see them? My brother and my SIL. Yeah, thanks to USPS Express mail they arrived the day after they left to go skiing. Ass-monkeys. (Kristen, your package was mailed the same day. Tracking says that it arrived in Canadian customs today. Hopefully it’ll get there in the next few days.)

One more thing that did not get finished:

My Mom’s Kimono shawl. I did not take this with me to Texas. Instead, I knit a swatch like a responsible knitter (even if it was after I cast on and knit 25 rows. What?) washed it, blocked it, and put that in the box. I told my mom it was a magic shawl that would grow if she put it in the cedar chest and waited until mothers day to open it. She totally did not buy it, thereby foiling my plans to finish it by mother’s day, send it to my dad and have him switch it out for me.

She did, however, ask me if it would be finished for her birthday in July. People, I’m getting the distinct impression that she’s on to me. Damn.

Dog and Pony show:

This is Rosie. She’s usually pretty camera shy, but she is the sweetest dog in the universe. If you are scritching her behind her ears and you stop she will very politely and daintily put her paw on your leg and look at you with the most soulful eyes. She hypnotizes you with those eyes. Resistance is futile, human.

This is Hank the Wonder Dog. Actually, his name is Hank the Cow Dog (or something like that) but I call him Hank the Wonder Dog, because he’s a pretty lucky little guy. Someone found him very badly injured on the road in Galveston and took him to the vet. My SIL went into the vet to get Rosie’s prescriptions and the vet people told her his sad tale of woe (broken hip, broken back leg, broken front leg). They needed people to pay for his surgeries etc. And my sister is the biggest softy in the history of the word soft. When my brother gets home maybe he’ll tell the story of Hank and of Rosie (also a rescue).

In the meantime, cuteness:

Hank loves the camera, and is a super big ham. And? He’s so freaking soft you just want to squish him. Here he is inspecting my SIL’s stash:

This stash is the present I gave her last Christmas. It took her quitting her job to finally get around to knitting the blanket she wanted to knit.

Hank guarding the stash:

Knitting makes Hank very tired…

I keep trying to get Hank to come home with me, but my SIL is well aware of my plan to steal Hank and keeps her eye on me.

That stash above finally got knit this year. My SIL was taught to knit by her Mom back in the dark ages before good yarn, and some of her sisters knit still. But like so many of us she put it down years ago. After a quick rehash, she’s on fire. By the time I left Houston she was nearly through all ten balls of that yarn for her lap blanket.

See that concentration?

When in doubt, hide behind the yarn:

And of course, no trip to my parents would be complete without a stash enhancement outing. So far my favorite yarn shop of all the yarn shops I’ve ever been to is Twisted Yarns in Old Town Spring.

This shop has the best yarn. Habu (so. much. Habu.), Mountain colors, Lorna’s, Jade Sapphire, awesome sock yarns, alpaca, wool, Schaefer etc. You name the best yarn and this shop has it. In fact the only yarn that wasn’t there was Fleece Artist. I predict that by the next time I go back there they will have some. Thank God they don’t have an online shop. Otherwise, I would be in debtors prison.

There was a very funny moment in the shop too…

Somehow this yarn procurement outing included…menfolk. You know, NON knitters. Muggles. Annoying Concerned entities intent on getting between us and the objects of our desire saving us from financial ruin. So we shooed them away to a bar down the street so we could get to second base with some wool.

After about 20 hot seconds in the shop, while I was indulging in some serious heavy petting with a hot little lace weight named Jade, my phone rings. Not wanting to spoil the mood I tried to ignore the phone, but I forgot that I had the ring set to “something Dad can hear without his hearing aid”. I answered. It was “the guy who might be sleeping on the couch tonight” (formerly known as BBE):

“Hi Honey.”

“huh? Me shop. Cashmere. Soft. Pretty.”

“whatcha doin?”

::stops smelling yarn:: “Who is this? How did you get this number?”

“Well, uh, we just wanted to know when you’d be done…” (damn AD’s!)

“We just got here! I don’t know!”

“Baby, you’ve been there 20 minutes…”

“No. That’s not possible. Oh I don’t know. Another 20? We’ll call you when we’re done” (substitute 5 for 20, and that’s the standard hairdresser answer to an AD query)

I put the phone away and continued to fondle. And answer a thousand questions from my sister in law, talk my mom down from buying a sweater kit that I would knit for her (no.), find non-wool yarn (sigh. don’t get me started) for the wee one (her father is allergic to wool. Really allergic, as in can’t have it in the house. I know. Tragic.) for her first project. After being pulled in so many directions I finally got a quiet moment alone with a sock yarn I really wanted to get to know better.

And then the phone rang. Again.

Not my phone. My SIL’s phone.

They were at it again.

I can hear my SIL mumbling into the phone. I know it’s my brother. So, from across the shop I loudly say:

“Tell those boys to quit bothering us when we’re in the yarn shop!”

And then there was a lot of laughter from all around the whole shop. I didn’t realize there were so many people in the shop when I blurted that little tidbit out. And from behind a tall bookshelf a voice. A male voice.

“Aw, tell ‘em to have another beer!”

More laughing. That there people, is a good man. A very good man. And exceptionally well trained.

Pony show:

From left to right: Slowknitter Mom, THE Slowknitter SIL, another Slowknitter SIL, and freaking adorable Slowknitter niece. Knitters all. Except Slowknitter Mom. She’s holding my bag.

What was in it?

J-Knits hand-dyed superwash sock in Pueblo, 4 skeins of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted in Charcoal, 2 skeins Mountain Colors Twizzle in Rosehip, and 2 skeins of Jade Sapphire lace weight in Lupine (for me. Me!).

I started something in the Mountain Colors:

For the Red Scarf Project. Pattern shamelessly nicked off Norma. I don’t think she’ll mind. I better get a move on, though. It needs to be mailed soon.

Oh, and I almost forgot- they have some weird ass shit in Texas:

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