The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

THE GOOD: I finished T1's sweater last night. I think it's really, really cute. The front and back were lots of fun to knit. And the yarn is scrumptious: soft soft, lofty, and lightweight. I like the colors, too.

THE BAD: The pattern has lots of fussy finishing. You have to pick up stitches four different times (for a total of nearly 400 stitches). The sleeves have to be swen in and then two long seams need sewing as well. And I'm going to have to do some blocking to correct that curl at the hem.

THE UGLY: The pattern is one of the worst I've worked with. In the sleeve shaping, decreases leave you with 11 stitches, but then the pattern calls for a bind-off that requires 13. The collar part says to work back and forth in garter stitch for 20 "rounds." The worst part, though, is that the shaping is quite eccentric due to the unusual construction of the front and back. At one point, the pattern says to sew a shoulder seam before picking up the neck stitches, but the pattern doesn't give any hint as to where that seam might be. And if you look at the pics to try and figure it out, good luck, because it turns out that in one of the pics the model is wearing the thing frigging backwards. It took me a long time to figure this out. A diagram or a few words of explanation would have been really, really helpful.

T1 celebrated her 8th birthday last week. Doesn't she look happy and grown up?

My inlaws came for the weekend to join the celebration. My SIL came with Melinda, one of her foster daughters. Melinda loves animals. As you can see, Ruthie considered this pure torture.

One Sunday, T2 and Hubby visited the pumpkin patch. Is tayed home with T1, who'd over-celebrated a bit the day before and was extremely cranky.

Fortunately, the crankiness was gone by yesterday. Last night, T1 helped me make turkey meatloaf.

SP11 Package

I got back from Reno last night. It was beautiful. It'd snowed the day before, and they'd plowed the road, but there was a nice bit of snow on the ground. It's rained a good amount here today, which means snow at Donner Pass--I'm glad I got home yesterday. While I was in Reno, I did visit Jimmy Bean's Wool, and I might have managed to acquire a little yarn.

Today's mail brought me a wonderful package from my SP11 pal!!

I can tell she really spent a lot of time reading my blog and choosing my favorites. There's my favorite yarn in my favorite colors, really pretty sock yarn, a Saint memo pad, and See's caramels which I cannot share with the children. Plus, my pal included treats for the Things and spectacular cookies for Ruthie. Here's Ruthie badly wanting the ghost cookie, which was in my hand:

Ruthie was so funny when I gave the cookie to her. She spent a good 10 minutes wandering around the house with it "hidden" in her mouth, trying to find exactly the right spot to eat it. I think she coouldn't believe it was really all hers.

Thank you, Pal!!!

Hubby's family is visiting this weekend. Hubby decided to barbeque, weather be damned:

It's a good thing my MIL was willing to be Umbrella Holder. Note, too, Hubby's attire. He wears shorts year round.

Conference time

I'm in Reno for a couple of days for a conference. It's a great time of year to drive here--there's a little snow in the mountains, the leaves are turning color, and the nights are nice and crisp. There is a nice yarn store here, Jimmy Bean's, but I don't know whether I'll have time to make it there. Pesky conference, you know. I didn't even bring my knitting, because I won't have time for it and there wasn't much room in the car. Below id a crappy pic of the view from my window, taken with my camera phone. You can see me and the phone in the reflection. It is a nice view--there's just a dusting of snow on that mountain top.

And the winner is....

My Mom has noticed I haven't been blogging much lately. Instead, I've been spending my life in meetings and doing 1,001 work-related projects. It's a busy semester.

Thing 1 has been taking a digital photography class in school. Here's a self-portrait:

Her 8th birthday is this coming week, and we bought her a real, grown-up, digital camera. Shhh. Don't tell her. Tomorrow is her birthday party, so if any of you hear loud noises coming from this direction, you'll know why.

Yesterday a student presented what may be the new winner of the Best Excuse for Missing Class prize. The previous champion was "My brother's foot got run over by a car." That one replaced the two-time favorite, "I got arrested and I was in jail." (I teach Criminal Justice, by the way). This time, I actually saw the student sitting and reading the textbook shortly before class. Five minutes before class began, though, she came to me with the new contender: "I just realized that I have cat pee all over my shorts." Apparently, her cat had peed on the shorts after she took them out of the dryer, as they were in a pile on the floor waiting to be folded. So she started noticing the pee smell as she was reading, but couldn't place it. When she finally realized the source, she went to the bathroom and tried to get the shorts wet, which only made the smell worse. I could smell it as she stood in my office. The class is in a crowded, windowless room, so I sent her home with my blessings. What do you think? Do we have a winner?

Potting

Last night in ceramics class I finally got to use the potters wheel for the first time. I:

• made a small, funny-looking bowlish thing
• tried to make another one, but chunks of it kept flying off and I eventually gave up
• managed not to step on the revolving platform thing, and therefore managed not to fling myself across the floor

For a first attempt, I consider it a success, especially with regard to point three above. I am a major klutz, so not hurting myself is a major milestone for me. Anyway, it was fun, and the more advanced students were very supportive. And it was really goopy and messy, which can be a good thing once in a while.

Gotaway

We took the Things for a weekend near Monterey. We stayed at Asilomar; I've been there a couple times before, but Hubby and the Things never had. Alas, we never made it to the yarn store in Pacific Grove, but we did do a lot of other things. We stopped at Casa de Fruta, which has a pumpkin patch.

Of course we spent a lot of time at beautiful Asilomar Beach.

We hung out on our balcony. If you look very closely at the picture below, you can see two of our neighbors (you'll have to look very closely to see the second):

A whole bunch of deer spend most of their day right around the building we stayed in. There was a buck with pretty big antlers, but our favorite was a doe with two half-grown fauns. Mama Deer spends a lot of time grooming her babies, but doesn't seem to mind to0 much when there are somewhat noisy human children quite close.

We spent most of Saturday at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They have 3 species of otters, plus, of course, the beautiful jellies. And currently, a great white shark, too.

We topped off Saturday with ice cream at Ghirardelli.

What could be better than to sit and eat a cone while you watch the kayakers and seagulls and otters and sea lions in the Bay?

I want salmiakkilakvitsikuvio!

I recently participated in a candy swap via Swap-Bot. I sent candies to someone in San Diego; I think she enjoyed them, but that couldn't have been very exotic for her, since I live only 400 miles away. Lucky me, though--I received my candies from someone in Finland, and they arrived today. Now, I haven't actually eaten any of them yet, but I'm already pleased as can be because of the packaging. Here are some samples:

Wikipedia tells me that Snork is a character from the Moomin cartoons. I don't know if this as as funny in Finnish as it is to an English speaker, but you try saying "snork froken" with a straight face.

Next, we have two samples from a genre of candy that doesn't exist in the US:

Another couple of Wikepedia searches reveal the fact that Horna and Lordi are both Finnish heavy metal bands of the sort that wear lots of makeup. Heavy metal candy! Which makes the name of this next candy especially funny:

But it is not named after a makeup-wearing metal group. The Horna and Lordi candies are salty licorice, by the way. Mmmm. I like salty licorice--and nobody else in the house does, so I don't have to share. The next candy is licorice, too, but it relates to automotive metal rather than musical:

And than there's the Krapu candy, which has a picture on it of a lobster/crab creature:

I hope it's not crab-flavored! Finally, there's nothing really odd about this last candy, except that my brain insists on reading it as latka. Latka candy is a taste sensation I could live without.

There were lots more candies as well, and some teas. I haven't received such a fun thing in the mail in a long time!

Blogiversary

I just noticed that September is the 3rd anniversary of this blog. I just read that half of all blogs don't make it past 2 years, so I guess 3 years is worth celebrating. I haven't borken the internets yet.

I'm so hapy with our solar electric system. Even though we had a week of 100 degree weather in late August, our electric bill for the end of August and beginning of September was $11.50. It's actually fun getting a bill like that!

Please forgive the crappy camera phone picture, but I wanted to show you this cat. He's one of the semi-feral cats that roam campus. They actually have a pretty good life--there's a group of people who feed them and look out for them, and of course students give them food too. And they get to spend their days wandering happily around or staking out gopher holes (which is what this guy is doing) or watching the ducks. Unfortunately, they are probably responsible for predating some of the baby waterfowl, but to be honest, I wouldn't regret a few less Canada geese around here. The geese claim a couple of key sidewalks, poop on them, and hiss at and chase people who try to walk by. Anyway, this cat is my favorite. He usually hangs out very close to my building, and he's unmistakable because he has one bad eye (he had an infection when he was a kitten, several years ago). He especially likes to nap right next to the outdoor stairway I take to my office in the morning. He always has an air of peace and contentment about him.

Genius mom

Thing 1 and I have busy schedules this fall. I'm spending more time in meetings than in the classroom. And, depending on the day of the week and my meeting schedule, T1 might take the bus home after school, or might have art class, or might go to the afterschool recreation program at school. It's a schedule that's hard for me to keep track of, let alone a sometimes-forgetful 3rd grader. I was afraid someday she'd accidentally take the bus home while I was at work, and then, unless a neighbor happened to be home, she'd be stranded.



So I had an idea--and a brand new Xryon machine that laminates. And I made these:



Now all I have to do is attach the appropriate tag to her backpack each morning (or, better yet, the night before), and she's all set.

Hmm. Maybe I should make some as reminders for Hubby, too....

Wednesday

Fall has arrived in the San Joaquin Valley. It's only in the low 70s this afternoon, and we may get some rain tonight or tomorrow. People around here always panic the first couple of times it rains each fall, as if they've forgotten what that wet stuff falling from the sky is. When Thing 1 heads out to the schoolbus in the morning, it's quite chilly--low 50s this morning--so, just in time, I've begun a sweater for her. It's this one, in the "midnight oasis" colorway, which T1 chose herself. It's fun to knit--round and round and then some short rows. And the yarn is really nice and soft. So far, I'm almost done with the front, but it'll be a while before I'm done because this sweater has lots of different little components. And a bunch of stitches that need picking up--bleh.

I like almost all of my students a lot. Most of them have to juggle work, family, and school, and a lot of them haven't been prepared very well for college, but they're overall quite enthusiastic. My Intro students this semester have the opportunity to serve as decoys in a local police department's underage alcohol sting, and the students were very excited about this. I have other students mentoring at-risk school kids or helping make an educational video about car theft. Still, there are a few I really have to wonder about. We're now in the 3rd week of classes, and yesterday a student came to my office because he had just realized that, while he was signed up for my Intro class, he had been sitting in a totally different course, taught by a different professor, for 3 weeks. And also yesterday I spied a very pregnant student standing under a tree and smoking a cigarette. She wasn't one of my students and I don't know her; if she were one of mine, I would have chewed her out.

I missed ceramics last week due to my cold. I wonder what I'll get to make tonight?

Fifteen

Nine more to go!

Ready to send

I finished the last of my items for Afghanistan tonight--another colorful hat to brighten someone's winter. I'll be shipping a package off this week. :-)

Singapore Socks

Alvina in Singapore and I have swapped several times--I think we just completed our fourth. Look at the cute socks she knitted for me this time. They're very soft, too. Perfect for wearing around the house when the weather turns cold. Thanks Alvina!

I am happy to read in my last post's comments that some of my Republican friends have Seen the Light regarding El Presidente. Now, did you ladies see this article today? ;-)

Ginny, I got the vest pattern right off the afghans for Afghans site. It went quickly (other than the crochet, anyway) and used up bits of stash yarn. And I'd be thrilled to send you crochet edgings in the future. It's not that I have anything against crochet per se. It definitely has its uses, especially as an edging. One of my grandmothers crocheted, and well into her 80s she could whip out a blanket it nothing flat. But to me, it's like endless picking up of stitches. And I hate picking up stitches. I like all my stitches to be worked to be lined uyp, all orlderly on my left needle.

Vested

Today I finished the vest for afghans for Afghans. I used a variety of yarns from my stash--some green and black New Zealand wool, some pink and orange Lorna's Laces Bullfrogs and Butterflies, some black cherry Kool-Aid dyed, and some Peruvian hand-dyed purple. I like the sort of stained glass effect of the front. Here's Thing 1 modeling the front and Thing 2 modeling the back.

I should note that this vest was completed amid some personal suffering. The entire vest and armholes have 2 rounds of crochet edging, and I'm not a crochet fan. And, what I was telling myself was simply allergies or the effects of the smoke in the air (there's another fire to the west, adding more blech to the valley air), is now, undeniably, a cold.

Quick update

I've been neglecting blogging in favor of far less important things--like the beginning of the semester. Tomorrow I teach an Intro class to 100 or so 18-year-olds. I can't complain to my department Chair, either, because she is me.

So here's a quick round-up of what's up:

• I'm close to finishing a sweater for afghans for Afghans. I like how it's turning out--very colorful--but I'm not honestly looking forward to the crochet edging.
• Tonight I start another 8 weeks of ceramics class. Maybe this time I'll learn wheel throwing. And manage to produce something slightly less caveman-like. Or maybe not.
• We went to Ikea last weekend--oh, how I love going to Ikea!--and bought an area rug for the family room. Of course, we also came home with a car full of other Ikea stuff. The rug is an Oriental rug with geometric patterns. I'm happy with it.
• I walked out of my office this afternoon, having been locked up inside since 8:30, and just about choked. It seems that a fire in Plumas County, something like 170 miles from here, is sending smoke our way. You may be able to see a nifty satellite image here. It's quite hazy out and smells strongly of fire, which I know can't be good for anyone's lungs.
• Zappos rocks. I suddenly decided rather late Sunday night that I needed new shoes. So I went to Zappos, which has a great selection and nice search feature. I placed my order, and, despite the holiday on Monday and Zappos's claim that they can't ship on holidays, those shoes were on my feet by 7pm Tuesday. And shipping was free.
• Watch this cute video on Neatorama.

Ruthie Goes to 3rd Grade

Well, today was a red-letter day for Ruthie: she got to be a show-and-tell subject in Thing 1's class. There are few places in the world she would rather be than in a room full of kids. Of course, the kids enjoyed it, too. Notice the girl in the red pants in the second picture, petting Ruth with her foot. T1's teacher is very animal-friendly. Also present today was a mini schnauzer puppy, 2 beta fish, a praying mantis--and one girl's grandfather. :-) It was a bit of a zoo, but the teacher said a room full of 3rd graders frequently is. Poor Ruthie is now off recovering--it's 100 degrees out today, so she got quite hot in the car.

Very quick FO

Even though I'm a slow knitter, it only took me one evening to make this hat. I used a double strand of leftover Kool-Aid dyed worsted, so it should keep some kid in Afghanistan nice and warm. I like how the colors turned out--I hope they make the kid happy.

Monday

Thanks to Postcrossing, I have recently learned a little about Finland. It appears to be a beautiful country with friendly people who like to swap postcards. So I won't hold this against them.

And Knatolee, you have to watch this.

(Both of the links via Neatorama).

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Gonzalez has resigned. I'm sure the President will continue his fine record of appointing qualified, capable, respected individuals.

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I love Ben & Jerry's. How could I not love people who invented flavors like Cherry Garcia, Phish Food, Black & Tan (which none of my local stores carry--alas!), and Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream? And their company is environmentally and socially conscious. And they have a fun website from which you can download a virtual cow. But why is it that neither they, nor any other ice cream company that I can find, sells lemon custard ice cream? Surely I can't be the only person on the planet to like that flavor??

Socks and hat

Here is some of what I plan to send to afghans for Afghans. I'd made the hat some time ago, and the socks I finished last night. They're worsted weight, so they went quickly--the second one took me only 2 evenings. I'd never made socks with short-row heels before. I like it--no having to pick up stitches on the heel flap. I hate picking up stitches. The yarn is some green Australian wool from my stash, plus bits of Knit-Picks yarn I'd Kool-Aid dyed (grape and black cherry). They exactly fit my size 5 1/2 feet, so they should be good for an older kid. Which is perfect, because they're especially needing things for 7-14 year olds. I hope to have time for another hat and a vest before the October deadline.

Stuff and nonsense

I have several things for today's post.

First off, in case you didn't know this already, Knatolee ROCKS! Not only did she address my tragic yarn shortage by sending me some beautiful yarn, but it's exactly the colorway I would've picked, had I been lucky enough to be wandering around sheep farms in Nova Scotia. And the yarn smells like warm sheep (it's 100 degrees out and it's been locked in my mailbox all day) and vinegar, in a totally, totally good way. Thank you Knatolee!!


Second, Thing 1 began 3rd grade on Monday. Much rejoicing was made. Her school is brand new, which is pretty cool. And today she announced to me that Wednesdays are sharing days, and that today someone brought goldfish and someone else brought a dog, so can she bring Ruthie next week? I can think of few things in this world Ruthie would rather do than be shared with a classroom full of kids, so we'll see if we can manage it next week.

Third, I've been working really, really hard to try to meet a writing deadline of next Friday. So today I was typing away at work, when an airplane started buzzing around. It was trailing a sign advertising this guy, who's going to be doing some sort of thing on campus this weekend. Like it's not enough that they've torn up the ampitheater erecting bleachers, or that there are signs on every streetcorner, or that they've put bumper stickers on every frigging minivan in town. Nope, they've got to distract me with low-flying aircraft now.

Fourth, I saw a link to this video on Neatorama. I've never heard of Anita Renfroe before, but this clip is great!

Finally, you probably know about these folks already, but if not, check out afghans for Afghans. The deadline to get them stuff for the current campaign is October 12 (Oct. 1 for Canadians). I've got a hat already finished, and I'm currently working on a pair of socks. I'm going to try to get at least 1 more hat and maybe a vest done.