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.

Guess who's 6 years old

Swirl shawl is about 40% finished. It's turning into an equilateral triangle. That will make it too long in back. It also means that I will not be knitting as many motifs. How many less is still to be determined.

Swirl scarf is 40% finished. It only has 37 motifs. 18 are finished.

The baby sweater got sewn together. Photos were taken. I submitted a proposal to Bernat Yarns to publish the pattern. We'll see what happens.

Sock knitting goes slowly. The shawl has a deadline. The yarn is striping nicely though. Priorities!

Here's snaggle tooth.

Just when I think I'm making progress on stash reduction I get a box or two in the mail from a yarn company. Yesterday I got a large box from Spinrite, who sell Patons and Bernat yarns. I got 12 balls of new yarn or new colors. There are a lot of natural materials in the box; Alpaca, wool, bamboo. This appears to be where the yarn world is going.

Knit, Knit, Knit - Rinse and Repeat

The baby sweater is knit. I almost ran out of yarn. Why this is, I don't know. I've knit it 3 times. The first time I had enough to make a hat. The second time, I had a good amount left over. This time I don't have enough to seam the sleeves with. I know that skein yardage is not accurate, but really! Luckily I do have enough of a solid yarn for seaming.

The stealth shawl is moving along. The deadline got moved up last week. The Yarn Co. owner wants it for a show that starts March 26. It needs a bath and blocking before delivery. I was on pace to finish knitting March 28 for a show April 4. I have upped my pace. I'm feeling the pressure and I don't like it. My real problem is to write the pattern. I need hexagon pictures. I may have to draw them on paper and scan them into the pattern. So far I have knit 56 of 153 motifs needed.

I finished the socks for DGD and mailed them off. Pictures were taken. The pattern was poorly written, but I liked the look, so stuck with it. Grumbles are documented on Ravelry, so others can benefit.

Another pair of socks is started, intended for my sister. I'm doing entrelac, which I enjoy. The entrelac really shows off this yarn.

I've joined facebook at the urging of quilter daughter. It looks like fun, but I don't know how much time I will sink into it. It looks like it could be dangerous.

Yesterday was family day. We started by haveing breakfast with DD#4 and her family. We were invited to their house and had waffles and sausage. It's a real chance to spend time with them. Later that day we had a mass gathering/farewell meal to send off one of the older grandsons to National Guard Boot Camp. I hope he finds himself there. He's been floating for almost 2 years since high school. He tried college, but dropped out. He's had a few jobs, but needs some skills. We wish him luck!

Yes, it's been a while

It's been a long time. I didn't realize how long. I've almost finished another pair of socks. I'm actually past the heel on the second sock, but no pictures. I'll have to fix that soon.

I've been working on a couple of stealth projects. One is a shawl from Aussi
Sock.

The other is a baby sweater. I've knit this twice before, but I'm working on getting the bugs out of the pattern. This sweater will either go in my future gifts pile, or be sent off with the pattern when I sell it.

I'm also making a Jojoland Swiirl Scarf. Again, this has progressed farther than the photo. I have one strip done out of three. The grandkids sweaters have been swatched and the working pattern is on paper. Knitting has not started yet, after the baby sweater.

Winter is back here in NE Ohio, but there was enough warm weather to melt the snow. Dog walking has started again. We're both happy with that. I don't mind snow, but ice and depth of snow don't work.

Valentine's Day was quiet. I work on Saturdays. We went to a Cleveland Orchestra concert in the evening. t was a great program: Samuel Barber's Overture to The School for Scandal, Brahms Violin Concerto, and Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4. The violin concerto was palyed by a young man I hadn't heard of before, Nikolaj Znaider from Denmark. He was awesome. I was also impressed by his suit. It was colarless and lined in bright red. The red reflected on his sleeve cuffs and could be seen at the hem and pocket flaps. Usually lining ends a little farther from the hem edge.

Today I spent time cooking, as I often do on my day off. I made a big pot of bean soup from an old Woman's Day cookbook. That will be eaten later in the week and some of it frozen. Dinner was a beef and corn shepherd pie that is a family favorite. It's nice to eat casseroles, but they take long enough to cook, that they're not a good choice on a work night. Reheating works well, and the flavors have blended with time.

Finishing problems

Today it warmed up a little, about 30 degrees. It'll go back to normal tomorrow.

I'm facing a bit of a project crisis. I finished a pair of socks and almost finished a baby sweater. What should I knit next??? I have a pair of socks in the pipeline, the baby sweater will be replaced by a stealth project, but I'll finish up my Noro cardigan on Thursday. What goes in that slot? I'm thinking that I'll do sweaters for my smaller grand kids. If I do them now, I'll be ready for Christmas. I was originally thinking birthdays, but we're celebrating 2 of them this week. The 3rd birthday is in July. Knit for Christmas sounds good, and a larger needle project is a good thing. I have yarn, I have ideas, I have patterns, it's hard to make choices.The shawl project pattern is written. Photos were taken. Where do you take shawl photos with 12-14" of snow on the ground and piled up everywhere that has been dug out. Ann Hanson of Knitspot showed a shawl on a dress form. I have a number of those. I hung up some black fabric for a backdrop and good pictures were taken. Today we went to Cleveland's city greenhouse for live photos. I should have brought a stylist to make sure that the shawl wasn't folded funny. I couldn't see behind myself. DH took the photos.

I finished some birthday socks. The pattern is from KnitNet, Onion Domes. The yarn is Bernat Hot Socks. It was cheap, but I wouldn't buy it again.

I'm knitting a baby sweater for a great grand child. I have the pattern first draft written finally. I first knit this pattern almost 2 years ago. I need to work on the schematic and add sizes to the pattern. I'd like to sell the pattern, so the picture from last post will have to do. I still have 1/2 sleeve to knit. I might finish tonight. I'm going to knit it one more time in case I need a garment to go with the pattern. It's good to have baby things on the shelf when needed.