I LOVE LA!!!

It's beautiful!

There are flowers at the beach....

Flowers everywhere!

It's colorful.

View from our hotel window:
It has a sense of humor!

And take my word for it, the weather is perfect!!!

I could live here.

But I couldn't afford to live here.....sniff, sniff, sniff...

Dear Whoever is in charge of these things,

Dh and I are going to Los Angeles tomorrow to visit younger daughter. I would really appreciate it if there were NO EARTHQUAKES while we are there.

Thank you very much.

Very tremblingly,

Knittergran

Knittergran

An Hour Gone By

Many of you (no one) have asked, "Where do you do all of the creative things you do?"

Well, here it is, my office/adjunct kitchen/storage room.
Impressive, no?

I gave up on winding each ball of the Koigu sock bits as I needed it and took the thirteen remaining skeins to the basement to wind all at once. I learned this:
Put a knot in the end of the yarn that you put in the winder. That way if something hangs up while you are starting to wind, the yarn won't pull out. I didn't learn this myself; the Koigu people put a knot in one end of each skein and I eventually figured out that it could serve a purpose. It's probably what they intended.

This is also my scrapbooking area. How is my scrapbooking going? Well, it's going nowhere. I have been stalled on the four scrapbooks for my grandchildren since there were only three grandchildren. Knitting took over my life.

Winding the yarn was a lot more difficult than I had figured. Some of the skeins were an unholy mess. Some I had to wind from both directions in order to untangle them. It took an HOUR to wind eleven small skeins.

Do you see that red tangle there? Oh, yes. It looks all pretty and innocent, but it broke me. I could not untangle it no matter what I did. It exhausted my poor logic skills and almost exhausted my patience.

Did I give up? Did I quit like a certain half-term governor?

Why yes, I did. I'll sort it out by hand later. After I do some Zen-restoring knitting.

Or I'll take it to Los Angeles this weekend for younger daughter, who has unlimited patience for this sort of thing, to do.

Right, S?

It's Christmas!

Well, not really, but it IS snowing and I have this to play with:

It's a bag of sock bits from Koigu that I picked up from the LYS last Thursday night.

I'm using it to make another Simple-Yet-Effective Shawl, but a much, much larger one than I made last time. That one is so small that I'm not quite sure how to wear it.

It's fun to pick and choose from all the yummy yarns from this bag of yarn, but I did forget that they need to be wound into balls! I have a swift and ball winder, so don't feel too sorry for me. (Like you were going to...)

First of All

And now...

From this:

(Blue-faced Leicester Sheep-thanks, Sheep!)

To this:

To this:

And this!

Traveling Woman Shawl, designed by Liz Abinante, available on Ravelry, made from Pagewood Farm Hand Dyed Sock Yarn, St. Elias, Spring Brights.

Don't Believe I'da Told That

(title borrowed from Lewis Grizzard. More about that later.)

As I've mentioned before, I love the Post Office! Especially since they put in machines that let me address and print out postage on a label for packages when the PO isn't even open.

On Monday night I went to the Post Office to mail a package to younger daughter, who lives in LA. I put the package on the scale and entered her zip code into the computer. The computer said something along the lines of: that zip code does not exist.

Great. At home I had just entered the address into the address book feature of my iPhone and assumed I had the correct one. What to do? Oh, that's right. My address book is ALSO my phone!!!

I called yd, asked her for her correct zip code, entered it into the computer as we talked about other things, and then wrote the rest of the address on the label.

We were still talking when I finally gathered everything up to leave, but ......where was my phone???

OMG! How can I lose my phone when I have been standing in the same place for the past five minutes??? I rustled through my purse, checked the floor, and got more and more frustrated and puzzled. I kept saying to yd that I just couldn't understand how this had happened.

Yd: You can't find your phone?

Me: Yes, I can't find it and I just had it out in order to correct your zip code.

Yd: Uh, what are you talking to me on?

Oh, dear.

Now I understand what my brain was doing; the phone feature and the address book feature were two distinct and different features to me. My previous phone was just a .....phone. I made and received phone calls on it. No camera, no Internet, no address book, no e-mails, just phone calls.

My poor old brain has not adjusted to new technology.

At dinner last night, I told this story to dh. He stared at me for the longest time, and then said, I don't think I would have told you that story.

Well, I thought a significant other was the one person you could tell anything to (maybe not about the amount of stash you have, or the price of a pair of shoes). But really, anything.

Apparently not.

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So here's the Lewis Grizzard portion of the post. I met him ages ago at a book signing at a K-Mart of all places. I hadn't known that K-Mart sold books, and neither had anyone else apparently. Only I and two or three other people showed up. So we had a chance to chat, which was a treat, and I bought a book or two and a tape. Remember tapes?

The tape was titled Don't Believe I'da Told That. And here is one of the stories (the cleanest, I think) that was on the tape. Paraphrased, because it's been a long time:

Two men were sitting in the bleachers waiting for the start of a football game. They were drinking beer, chatting. One noticed a male dog, sitting down on the field, licking himself. The man watched for a moment and then said to his friend: I wish I could do that.

The friend looked at the dog and then replied: That dog would B..i..t..e.

The End

Errata

One of these days, I need to learn to read first, knit or whatever, next. These two blocked squares have become a ring pillow for a friend's daughter's wedding, but it wasn't easy.

The directions were written for the back of the pillow, and no problem there. It worked up quite nicely.

Then I started to work on the front, using the chart for the heart design.

Uh, just a thought, but shouldn't the charted directions and the written directions have the same number of rows in them? I think so. I had to re-do the chart (below) by changing the numbers, and by adding eight more rows to the charted design.

The chart called for six rows of seed stitch above and below the center stockinette field. The written directions called for ten. It does sort of make sense to have fewer rows since knit stitches are taller than they are wide, but I had already made the back, so I followed the written directions and used ten rows top and bottom.

Then yesterday, Thursday morning (the shower is tomorrow - Saturday), I turned over the right hand page for the first time, and discovered that the two squares are crocheted together. Oooops. No crocheter I, although I did once take a class on crocheted edging at my LYS; I think it was a couple of years ago. Since I don't really remember how long ago it was, guess how much I remember of the actual class material. (not much)

I took the book to last night's knit-night, and one of the women who works there reviewed the instructions with me, and this morning I put it all together (only taking out the crocheted edging twice), added the ribbon, and it's ready to go to the shower tomorrow.

The pillow is made from a pattern in Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders, and from 2/5 Gemstone Silk from Halcyon Yarns. It's real silk, produced by some specific silkworms in Japan, turned into yarn in Switzerland, and dyed in Bath, Maine. I am very happy with the finished product, but next time I have a date that something is due, I won't wait so long to get it started. And I'll check for errors in the pattern first.

See, old dogs can learn new tricks.....

[Note: I just looked on Ravelry to see what other knitters have made from this lovely yarn. Only one other knitter has made the ring pillow. Another knitter made a thong. I don't know what to say.]

It Ain't Braggin'

If it's true.

And it's true. I cast off the Simple Yet Effective Shawl and had just this much yarn left from the two skeins. (I do keep George busy, don't I?)

However, I shouldn't be braggin' when what I did was pure, dumb luck. And that's what it was. I had finished the variegated yarn and then had a bit of the solid blue left, and decided to cast off.

La, la, la, and then, yikes! Do I have enough? And I did. Whew...

Two skeins of Koigu do not make even a large scarf, let alone a shawl, with this pattern, but I'm happy with it anyway.

WOW! and HOLY COW!!!

I received the following e-mail and wow! Am I excited??? I can help the bank director to get money into the US. He really needs the help because the people who rightfully owned the money DIED, folks, DIED, in a plane crash. OMG!

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FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION.

COULD YOU PLEASE CONSIDER HELPING ME TO RELOCATE THIS SUM OF FIVE MILLION DOLLARS (US$5m) TO YOUR COUNTRY FOR ESTABLISHING A MEDIUM SIZE INDUSTRY IN YOUR COUNTRY?

THE SAID 5 MILLION DOLLARS WAS DEPOSITED IN OUR BANK BY MR.ANDREAS SCHRANNER CITIZEN WHO DIED IN A PLANE CRASH IN 2000.WE HAVE TRIED TO CONTACT HIM IMMEDIATE FAMILY TO COME FORWARD FOR CLAIMS BUT COULD NOT SUCCEED.

WE DISCOVERED THAT THE LATE MUNCH GERMAN DIED ALONG SIDE WITH HIS HUSBAND AND CHILDREN WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HIS NEXT OF KIN.

I WILL GIVE YOU ALL VITAL INFORMATION CONCERNING THE GERMAN AND THE 5 MILLION DOLLARS IN OUR CUSTODY SO THAT YOU WILL CONTACT MY BANK FOR THEM TO RELEASE THE MONEY TO YOU.

YOU CAN COME HERE IN PERSON OR YOU CAN REQUEST THE BANK TO GIVE YOU THE CONTACT OF THE BANK LAWYER'S WHO CAN REPRESENT YOUR INTREST IN THE TRANSFER PROCESS.I AM ONE OF THE BANK DIRECTORS; I WILL PLAY A ROLE TO MAKE SURE THAT THE 5 MILLION DOLLARS IS RELEASED TO YOU.

AS SOON AS I RECIEVE YOUR REPLY, I WILL GIVE YOU AN INSTRUCTION ON WHAT YOU SHOULD DO.

REPLY AND LET ME KNOW YOUR FULL NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, OCCUPATION, AND YOUR TELEPHONE NUMBERS IF AVALIABLE.

MR. MARTIN KAMPALA

****************************************************

How can I not help???? (And maybe make a little money for helping? )

But my pleas to DH, with whom I share bank accounts, have fallen on deaf ears. He just doesn't want to help this desperate man!

And so I generously pass this information on to you, kind readers, and maybe one of you will be kind-hearted enough to help.

(Photo from Time Magazine online)