I Am With My People

My day started all virtuous-like. I went to the chiropractor (where I heard, again, that I'm running sideways, and to stretch ALL THE TIME), went to the gym, then stopped at various stores for those necessities I mentioned.

And then apparently I made a vow to devote my writing time equally between normal writing and parenthetical writing (I think it's working out pretty well so far).

So, I ate lunch, thought about what I was going to pack in my knitting bag, showered, and then had like 3 more hours until I wanted to leave for Oak Brook (I wanted to get there early, but 6 hours before the reading started sounded a little nuts, even to me).

What did I do with all that time?
I made the bed (a rare occurance Chez HookOn, unless I've just changed the sheets)...


... I washed most of the dishes and cleaned the counters and (though you can't see it from here) I even swept and sort-of-mopped the floor (I used a wet paper towel to get all the leftover crumbs)...


... and I cleaned the stove (it was truly horrific. The bowls and protective rims that sit under the burners? I'm not sure if I have ever cleaned them, and I've lived in this apartment for three years. They are soaking in the sink.)


At this point I was feeling quite virtuous, and very deserving of a trip to see my most favorite author. I selected projects to take along to the reading, two of which you've already seen...

the grey bag ends (heh) for the to-be-felted bag,


and the second pair of socks (STR Fred Flintstone, lightweight, 2.5mm needles).

(make note of how much shorter the top sock is than the bottom sock... this will come into play later on.*)
The third project is a headband (the same one that Femiknitter made a while back) that I just started yesterday as I waited to leave for Oak Brook. I'll talk more about it later, because right now it is just i-cord, and you know what that looks like.

I left my house about 4:00pm with my knitting, necessities, water, and camp chairs. Why camp chairs? Because I heard that Borders in Oak Brook was only putting out 75 chairs. Then I heard it was 100 chairs. Foolish muggles -- when will they learn?

Laugh at me if you will, but I get a little nervous driving into the suburbs when I'm going somewhere for the first time. I don't get nervous about the actual driving, but I worry that I'll miss my exit and accidentally drive to Indiana (almost happened once).

I arrived without mishap at 5:10pm. Here's the view I had (from the fourth row... yes!!!!)


I walked in and saw the tell-tale signs that I was not the only knitter there. Shawls on shoulders, knit-or-die t-shirts(no actual picture, I was walking out of the bathroom and, strangely, didn't have my camera ready), felted bags... it was great. I bought some books and while I was in line I saw a woman wearing this great pink cabled sweater (do I have a picture? No, of course not) and I asked her if she made it and if I could touch it AND SHE DIDN'T BACK AWAY! She was a knitter and she understood!



I don't know if this applies to anyone else, but I've gotten the feeling that people (muggles) think I'm working a few beers shy of a six-pack when I walk up to them and ask to examine their sweaters. This is off-putting (to me) and makes me feel like my knitting is this highly un-understandable weird anomaly, and therefore, you know, so am I.



But this! This room full of knitters! I felt completely at home and comfortable. If you know me personally, you might snicker at this, but generally I feel kind of shy and awkward with people I don't know. Especially groups. However, this appears to apply only to muggles. I was all over the place, talking... (turns out my one-seat-away neighbor Renae [Hi Renae!] used to live in DeKalb and demonstrated how to use 2 circular needles to make an in-the-round item [a new-to-me concept]) ...and ogling yarn across the aisle and getting up to talk to the knitter about where she got it and what was it, and having a grand old time. Everyone was saying things like "I love that, what is it?" and "What are you working on" and eventually a wise woman stepped up to the microphone and said "While we're waiting, who wants to have a show-and-tell?" So we all showed off what we were working on. It was amazing. It was like this huge stitch-n-bitch full of happy energy. During the show-and-tell (I think), Nick sent me a text message saying he hoped I was having fun. My return text message said "I am with my people!"

Anna (who has written about all this already) and Heather were there by this point, and we were just looking at each other grinning. Grinning like fools.

Then Stephanie appeared. She blogged us blogging her blogging us (one of those infinite cat things... infinite blogger?),

(the Bohus? freaking stunning in person)
and she spoke. And she was hilarious and encouraging and unifying and hilarious and smart and strong and ohmygod was she funny. I saw her two years ago (or thereabouts (I just said "thereabouts." I am my father.)) and I loved that experience, but I had just learned to knit and didn't feel comfortable doing any work while I was trying to listen to her. This time, I had no trouble knitting while she was talking (I knit on the socks only, by the way), and could even look up from my knitting when I got to the stockinette parts! I felt like a real, live, grown-up knitter!

After she was done speaking and taking questions (during which she introduced a seven-year-old knitter to the word "harlot" and some of its meaning, and almost fell over laughing while doing so), we all got in a line to get our books signed (knitters with children first!). Strangely, the three of us all had socks on the needles. A lovely fellow knitter took our picture:


and then I took hers -- blog, meet Rachel. Hi Rachel!

Her sock (that of her second pair ever) matched her knitting bag and her top and jacket ENTIRELY BY COINCIDENCE. She may be the most coincidentally well-put-together knitter I've ever met. (it was great to wait in line with you!)

Then we got to the signing table and I gave Stephanie some wee gifties (from the three of us DeKalb knitters) and I got to hold the sock (!!!)

and of course, we're blurry.

I had the best time.

*(And the socks that were wildly different lengths when I began my tale?...

... I can't tell them apart now!)

Some Observations

1. The weather has gone bat-shit crazy, as is usual here for March. Yesterday it rained all morning, got sunny and warm at lunchtime, then went grey and evil during the afternoon. Then it snowed all night with high winds (my apartment building? It sways in the wind. Yes.), and that seems to be the trend for today. Fantastic. But the weird-and-happy thing is, the wind that's blowing feels not as soul-crushingly cold as it has been. That long-awaited season (I'm not going to jinx it by saying its name) is coming!

2. I have purchased new yarn.

Cherry Tree Hill in Monet.


Fleece Artist in Moss.

I decree that this is not a falling off of the KFYS wagon. I have determined that casting on for a second pair of socks practically equals finishing a second pair of socks, the prerequisite for purchasing more sock yarn. Plus I wanted it. Plus the CTH has turned into a beautiful teal-green-based rainbow of a yarn cake. And the pretty pretty Moss is for a specific project (more on that later... it is marinating just now). So I am entirely justified. I mean it.

3. Our friends Mark and Amy are coming to town tonight! We haven't seen them since New Year's Eve: Hammerfist Style and I'm totally excited about it. Friends of ours are having their wedding reception tomorrow, and MarkAmy are staying with us and it's going to be awesome with the cooking together and the dressing up for the party and the hanging out. I've started the pre-preparation for the crockpot dinner I'm going to put together on my lunch hour, and dinner will be ready just after they get here, and all will be awesome. Awesome, I say!!

4. I have made progress on the to-be-felted tote.

I finished the base,


and cast on about thirty-seven times for the side. First it was too small. Then it was too big. Then it was way too big. Then it was too small. Now it is just right. Ugh. Garter stitch is a little sneaky stitch when it comes to how many stitches equal how many rows. This last time (the time that seems to be working, unless I have jinxed myself by saying that) I cast on 64 stitches, which is the number of ridges (2 rows of garter) I have in the base. I hope this is right.

5. My Mom's feet make sort of cracking/snapping sounds when she walks. It's not painful (I think) or problematic, her feet just do that. When I was little I could always tell when she was walking down the hall or up the stairs or wherever, just by hearing her feet snap. I never really thought about it until I moved out of the house and didn't hear it regularly anymore. This morning, as I got up early to chop vegetables, my feet made the snapping noise and I realized that my feet have been making that noise for a long time. I have my mother's feet. It made me all happy.

(I just don't have any good recent pictures of me and Mom, what with the camera being a twit, so I give you a picture from my wedding day)

Anyone else have any physical trait from your parents that makes you smiley and happy?

My camera is a vampire

Yesterday was a damn fine day.

I had a guest, we went shopping, watched a goofy movie, and stayed up really late.

And I discovered that my camera only takes decent pictures when there is absolutely no natural light. It's a damn vampire. Let it not be said that my camera defies artificial light. Oh no, it defies natural light. So helpful for color accuracy. Stupid flux-capacitor problem.

Anyway! I had so much fun hanging out with Femiknitter and I probably acted like a squirrely puppy all day because I was so excited to see her. Yes, I did just see her in October, but this time we got to spend all day together and she stayed over and we knit while watching Talledega Nights and that doesn't happen every day, you know. (I'm usually pretty good with words, but the only way to adequately describe my excitement is to grin all huge, jump up and down, and twirl a bit. See? Squirrely puppy.)

Oh yes, there was yarn purchased (on sale! 20% off! I'll justify it anyway I can!):



I bought 1 ball of Noro Kureyon #40, 1 ball Noro Kureyon #182, and 2 skanks of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the Flames (Flames! On the side of my face!). I've been coveting that colorway of Lorna's Laces for a while (and then there was a sale!), and since I announced my love for Lizard Ridge, I thought I'd get a couple balls of Kureyon to have around whenever I want to start that deliciously portable project.

And what's this?


Why, it's a centerpiece bowl full of sock yarn on my dining table of course!


(candlesticks = wedding present; bowl = Christmas present; sock yarn = sweet, sweet yarny goodness)

And hey, this is my last post for the year, so I want everyone to have a safe and fun-filled New Year's Eve! Woohoo!

Of seashores and high altitude matrimony

My trip to California, pictified.

I flew in to LAX, met by Christine (the bride-to-be), Sarah G. (her sister [we have another friend named Sarah, so we always call this one Sarah G.]), and Pam (Christine's supergood friend). Oh, and Pam's new baby, Joie (pronounced "Joey") -- she's a girl.

Our first stop (after being lost and turned around eight ways from Sunday) was the Santa Monica Pier. It was amazingly beautiful and sunny and fun. They said the day was remarkably clear, so I feel pretty lucky to have these great pictures.

I splashed around in the ocean despite the cold, so that I could say I have been in TWO oceans.

I had forgotten my sunglasses at home (naturally, as I was traveling to the Sunshine State) so I bought some on the pier, and they are crazy and green (!) and have rhinestones. Heehee!

We stayed in Bakersfield (where Christine & Matt live) the first night, and as I was running on Chicago time I crashed pretty much right after dinner.

The next day we headed up the mountain, where Christine & Matt were going to be married (in Sequoia National Forest, where they have all the nature). Bakersfield is about 200 feet above sea level. The wedding location is between 5500 and 6000 feet above sea level. The distance between the two points is given as 40 miles. There was much eye-closing on this drive.












We drove through the Kern River valley, where part of the road was missing due to rain washing it out and/or an avalanche. (This is weird to me on many levels -- (a) because in the Midwest we don't have to worry about the weather moving large parts of our land around, just the houses; (b) we were still driving on the road.) Click on the picture of the sign and see how many people have died in the river in the last 30-odd years. Fun!

On Saturday, we saw Christine get married. She looked beautiful, she smiled a lot (an anomaly for this week -- she was pretty tense), and she didn't know about the tablecloths that arrived in Orange when they were supposed to be silver, until after the reception (with appropriate linens) was underway.

It was amazing to see my oldest friend get married. I was one of two matrons of honor (matron!?), a fact I didn't find out until after I got to California. Sneaky.


On Sunday, SarahG and I headed back down the mountain on the early side (8:30am) and got some amazing pictures of the mountains dressed in fog. The glittery thing in the middle is Lake Isabella. It was beautiful, and pretty darn awesome for my first ever mountain experience.



And then I came home. Not much knitting to report, except a wee bit of the waiting-in-airport variety, on the Mistake Rib scarf so I didn't have to pay attention.

It's nice to be home.

Perfectest Day

Today has been just the peak of lovely.

The weather has been beautiful--mid to upper 70s, sunny, breezy...

Just now I was listening to Cast On while knitting on Tempting, while Nick experiments in the kitchen with a dolmades recipe (I love when he tries new recipes), and with the sunset and the pretty light and a tasty glass of red wine...

And today a dear friend who has moved to the East Coast, and with whom I had lost touch, dropped in to see me at work. Completely took me by surprise, as we haven't seen each other in ... two years? Three years? I don't remember (plus the wine!). Anyway. She is in the area visiting her family over the long weekend and dropped in to see me.

I can't even express how happy I am to reconnect with her. We met on a school-sponsored summer trip to Oxford in 2001 ... actually met while sitting up all night at Heathrow (my plane got in much later than expected). Those six hours of non-stop talking (because we're both good at the talking) made it pretty clear that we were of like mind ("You voted for Al Gore in the last election? So did I!!" "You like the Indigo Girls? So do I!!").

We talked at the library for a while, and then we had lunch together at the Thai place in town and it was just like old times, but better. It turns out she's a knitter ("You're a knitter? So am I!!") and has been surreptitiously reading my blog for a while now and knows what I've been knitting (and oh my god, she knows what kind of sentence structure I have [she was an English major] and I'll have to fling myself from a bridge into the raging waters of the mighty Kishwaukee river as a sacrifice to the grammar gods). It was great to catch up on old stuff, new stuff, and knitterly stuff ("You made wrist warmers? So did I!!" "You made Clapotis? ... That's great!") (She's been knitting longer than I have. My excuse.).

I am so happy she stopped in, and so happy to have her in my life again. What a delight. This is way better than yarn shopping stories (but I'll tell you all about that later, I promise).

And because I know she'll get a big kick out of this...


This is the 3rd Quad of Oriel College. We spent an entire weekend inside this quad once. We made it our goal to not leave 3rd Quad for any reason. I think we sent kind gentlemen out for pizza in order to keep up our strength. (I lived up a staircase just out of frame on the right)


This is the Radcliffe Camera. It smells of old books, and is quite possibly the earthly representation of paradise. We walked past it a lot. I never got inside, and I don't remember if she did.


The gate into Oriel College.

And that is my perfectest day that makes me smile. Hooray!

Happy Birthday, Heather!

It's a beautiful day, for a beautiful lady.



Heather has a birthday today, people! Head over there and give her some birthday comment love. Hooray!

And tomorrow, yarn shopping! Because we don't have enough going on in our yarn lives!

It Was Margaret's Birthday this Weekend

... and I missed it. Such a bad friend.

Margaret is a hoot. I wish you could all meet her, because she is so very awesome. So awesome in fact, that she and I were in a band called Awesome.

Margaret totally rocks the world in the arenas of best-friendishness, hilarious poem-writing, silly fun-having, good listening, strong personality-having, maid-of-honor-being, whiskey drinking, and goofy picture-taking.



I love her tons and tons, and I missed her birthday. I am a troll-brain. I am sorry.

She is also finishing her Master's Thesis in the next, oh, minute-and-a-half here and could use any happy thesis-finishing thoughts you might send her way.

Happy Birthday, Miss Margaret-pants. I can't wait to see you in June. June! Hooray!