Ponderings and Puppies

Pondering
I recently bought another new serger for my business. The last one I bought does everything but windows. This one is simple, it just edges seams. These instructions made me scratch my head:

• Never leave unattended when plugged in. Always unplug from the electric outlet immediately after using and before cleaning the sewing machine. It has an on/off switch, why unplug?
• WARNING To reduce the risk of burns, fire, electric shock, or injury to persons:
  

1. Do not place anything on the foot controller. Not even your foot?
2. Do not allow to be used as a toy.
There are more warnings. It makes one wonder about the average sewer.

Knitting
I'm working on a sock pattern for Plymouth Yarns. They now have solid colors in their Happy Feet Line.

Puppies
Tonight we went to a hockey game. We have split season tickets with a friend. It was Pucks and Paws night. There were 7,254 humans and 256 dogs. The dogs were segregated to one end of the arena. They ahd to buy tickets which benefited the APL. Our dog didn't go. She doesn't do well in crowds.BTW, our team, the Lake Erie Monsters lost 3-2.

The Lull Before the Storm

The Shawl
The shawl is finished and the pattern written. It is washed and blocked. It's picture has been taken more than once. The hardest part of the pattern was showing how to connect the motifs, which are picked up from previous ones. I finally got the diagram done and scanned into the computer. It took hours to clean up the image and add colored lines to replace the black ones. Actually the clean-up process was what took forever.

Naming it took at least as long as the graphics and graphics planning. The shawl was completely finished and I still didn't have a name. Finally someone said twirling, swirling which led me to dance. That led me to waltz. I looked on Ravelry to see how many dance/waltz names there were. A melody was running through my head! La Valse! I thought it was by Debussy, but it's not. Google to the rescue! It's by Ravel. I even listened to some u-tube versions to confirm that I had the correct melody.

Delivery is Friday or Saturday.

More Knitting
I'm trying to finish the entrelac sock pair by the end of the month. The recipient has changed. I planned it for my sister, but her feet are too small to fit the sock. I enjoy entrelac, but I'm ready to have at least one sock finished. It keeps getting pushed aside for things like the shawl.

There will be an afterthought heel. The waste yarn for that doesn't show in the picture. I'm almost to the toe.

The real fun is just starting. In January, I agreed to sell a sock pattern to Plymouth Yarns. Of course, I have to knit it up in their yarn. The yarn arrived today. Can I get the socks to them by Mar. 25? No I can't! I'll e-mail a picture of the progress, so they can show it at their sales meeting. The pattern is written. The original pair went to DGD Luci. I'll need to reword the pattern a little, but the hard work is done.

I've agreed to design wrist warmers for Oasis yarns for delivery by Apr. 4. Have yarn. Need to research stitch patterns and start. Luckily it will go quickly in worsted weight yarn.

Saturday I got a call from a book publisher who received a baby sweater proposal from me. It fits right into a book they're doing. Can I knit it by May 7? The e-mail arrived last night with yarn information and I called this morning. Again, the pattern work is done, but I need to reknit the sweater.

I also committed to design another shawl for Oasis by early June.
Knit, Knit, knit!!

Things are also getting busy at work. Prom dresses loom. At least it's starting to look like Spring around here. Leaves are pushing out of the ground. I had a brilliant idea last Spring. I never get bulbs planted in the fall, so I bought pots of flowers to brighten my shop and when the blooms were done, I put the bulbs in the ground. They're coming up this year. I have a new pot of tulips in the shop. Tulips in this area need constant renewing, so I can do this every year, if I want to.

The Big Read

I've mostly been knitting on the shawl. It's 70% complete, with a delivery date before 3/26. I expect to finish it by 3/20, when It'll need a bath and blocking. I still need to write the pattern.

I found this book list interesting.

The Big Read (http://www.neabigread.org/) said that, on average, adults have only read six books on this list. So ... copy this list, remove my yeses and nos, and add your comments (favorable or otherwise) about the ones you have read. Don't forget to include a total.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - YES
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – YES
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - YES
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – YES
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
6 The Bible – I have read parts of it.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - YES
8 1984 - George Orwell - YES
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - YES
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - YES (and everything else she wrote-)
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy – I read part of it.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller –
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – Much of it
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - YES
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - YES
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - On my bucket list
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot-
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - YES
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - On my bucket list
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens- YES
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - YES
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - YES
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - YES
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - YES
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Not yet
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - YES
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - YES
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - YES
34 Emma - Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - YES
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres-
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – YES Many times
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -YES
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - YES
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
52 Dune - Frank Herbert- YES
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - YES
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - YES
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - YES
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck –
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold –
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - YES
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - YES
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - YES
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - YES
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt-
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - YES
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White -
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - YES
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton –
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupe –
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - YES
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare – YES

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - YES
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -YES

Total 39. I never said I was average.