For your first knitting lesson.
Rachael, meet Malabrigo.
(the photo is dark because I didn’t want to bother her with the flash)
Somehow she’s a little less troll-like than a lot of newborns I’ve seen. Probably the eyes shut and being skin-colored instead of weird red is part of it. I dunno. She doesn’t look like either of her parents yet… but then, this is as close as I got. Apparently she already has her dad’s appetite, though!
And that it did, amazingly.
I don’t like it when squirrels eat my strawberries. So, my gut instinct told me soap, chili oil and pepper would do it, and I bought some garlic oil too (that was apparently specifically made to keep small mammals away from plants). I had all intentions of coming home, putting my plants back out (I had to bring them indoors for two days so they could spray our decks), re-potting the peas, and getting garlicky all over the deck.
But I had visitors.
LOTS of them:
The crew that was spraying must have disturbed a whole nest of hornets, who decided to re-build on the tree right off my back porch. When I got home, I heard them before I saw them. They were all over the porch. It was really pretty scary. They were swarming and hurriedly building the nest – it was a spectacle. A very pointy, venomous spectacle. So, I opted to wait for dusk to put the plants out. Luckily, since my back door was shut in anticipation of spraying, the hornets did not get into my place. But they wanted to. They were all over my back door.
So while I was waiting for that to all simmer down, I hit the gym, then came back to inspect the green kids before putting them out. And since hornets aren’t bad enough, my Roma has white mold, my bell pepper has bacterial spot, and my peppers and strawberries have aphids. Joy of joys. I sprayed all my plants down with pesticides yet again, and whatever aphids that doesn’t kill, hopefully the hornets will. I remove the infected plant bits; now I need tomato powder.
Will the list ever end? Sheesh.
I need some bedtime now!
Well. So that lightbulb that blew up during the writing of my last post? Well, I went to go change it later in the evening. It’s a ceiling sconce, standard issue apartment fixture, that’s a two-bulb design. A month or two ago one of the two 100w incandescent bulbs was flickering and blew up so I replaced it with a 75w CF bulb. Usually the two bulbs go out pretty concurrently, so I figured the other 100w had finally gone. Well, this is what I found:
The heat from the remaining 100w bulb had totally fried the CF bulb. Not to mention that between that and whatever boom had happened in there, it actually damaged the socket. To see just how burnt that casing is, here’s a new CF next to the busted one:
So, word to the wise: If you have a multiple-bulb fixture and want to change from incandescent to compact fluorescent, change them all at the same time.
//end public service message.
I swatched for the Lisa shrug last night:
The instructions clearly state to machine wash the swatch before measuring, so that I will. Right now it’s spot-on for stitch gauge, but the row gauge – not so much. I think it’s in the nature of linen, heavy as it is, to stretch out like crazy. So the gauge is nearly square for this garment – 6sts/7r=1″. Naturally, that’s a bit of a difficult gauge to achieve while knitting, but once it’s gotten wet and beaten up and then dried, I think it’ll behave a bit more how it should. I haven’t worked much with linen, so this will be fun. 
I also decided that, since I have so much handspun hanging around now, I might as well knit some of it into something. So, the blue-green merino I have (that I dubbed ‘Algae’) was already in a center-pull ball, I grabbed my lovely size 5 Harmony needle, and cast on:
And lo and behold, this terribly poorly spun mess is turning out to be the softest thing I have ever knit with. Move over Malabrigo, here’s gin-u-wine woolly clouds of handspun loveliness! It feels like petting the belly of a four-week old kitten. Soft and squishy and just awesome. I had thought it would work well as a hat, but I don’t want to waste that softness over the ball of death that is my hair – oh no. I believe this will be mittens. Convertible if possible. I do have 318 yards of it, and a little bit left of the singles if I get close to the end. So, what I’m thinking of doing is separating it into two balls, and magic looping some gloves. I would usually do one from each end, but I know there’s a lot of kinking in this yarn that needs to be untwisted as I go – easier to accomplish with two.
LUSCIOUS! As if I don’t have enough going on, right? 
SPEAKING of enough going on… I just got called back for a second interview next week! EEEEEE!! I’m so excited. Just have to send some info to them, and I’m off! 
Sadly, not the good Noro – I’m talking norovirus. There’s nothing worse than not being able to move all day – and yet not being able to knit. It’s taking all I’ve got to sit up and type! V-man is off to the store to get some bananas… the best ‘sick food’: tastes the same in both directions.
blecch.
I swatched a lot last night. I didn’t do a terrible lot of knitting, though, because it was a really nice day (clear and about 34ยบ), and they were calling to me:
In a split second decision, I threw on my hiking boots and decided to hang out in Washington Park with Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier. So I did. I plopped my butt on the ground and knit a bit on some socks, then went and had some tea. The socks are pretty boring, I can promise you that. Then, dinner, life, blah; I finally got back to knitting around 10pm.
I think I got a good gauge for the fair isle gloves I’m designing – 12 sts/in. That would give me plenty of palm stitches to work with. I like the fabric, too. I’m working the laceweight on 00 needles.
I did a rough sketch of what I want to do with the cabled gloves. I think it’s doable, as long as I get that gauge right too.
I have probably three or so more swatches to do before I can actually get to the business of knitting an item. I have a simplified swatch to knit for the Shibui pattern I’m writing, and then I can bang those suckers out. It’s on size 2 needles, which feel like tree trunks to me now. Hehe
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I need to get working on my Etsy store! I really want to get some other outlets for my stuff other than the Saturday Market. I keep forgetting to go visit the place downtown that offers rental space to sell your stuff. Apparently there’s a similar place going in on Alberta; I got an email from the business owner about ‘what I think’ about that sort of business venture. I need to respond to him. It’s taken me a few days to mull over my thoughts in my head. My biggest concerns are theft and insurance. We’ll see.
I think I’m going to take it easy on the Market until I get some other venues settled too. Maybe just two weekends in March… not to mention I really don’t want to hurt myself like I did in December, and there will be so little traffic and it’s so expensive to be there. Oy.
well, that’s my musing for now. I need to go get my day started.
I installed a Flickr menu thing. I’m gonna try it out now. Weird stuff. I want a cookie.
Obligatory first post nonsense, blah blah. I’m posting from my old G4, since the MacBook is in the shop, and now I think I finally know why I was never a quick typist in college – my keyboard sucks!
That aside, I’m going to try, in this post, to imbed an image and a video, and generally get the hang of things. I think I’ll save a real post, and editing the theme and links, until i have my lappy back.
God this keyboard… ugh! doesn’t help that half the letters are worn off, and it’s black on a black desk. I can’t turn on my desk lamp because at the angle of my monitor, there is always a reflection. So this pooter is kinda hard on me. Guess I need a new monitor too…
Well. On to it, I suppose.
..and might I add that while I was typing this, the USB port in the back of my monitor, into which the keyboard was plugged, died suddenly? I had to plug it into the hub. Ridiculous!