Knit-along Little Doggie!!

i feel like i was hit with a series of bricks...

i woke up sick as a dog on Monday, feeling like i'd had a really nasty allergy attack.  on Tuesday when i wasn't as sick i thought that was what had happened but on Wednesday when i coughed and things weren't "clear" like they should have been, i went up to see my doctor thinking i had a chest cold.  turns out that i have some sort of "crap virus" as i am now calling it, and everyone has it.  my doctor said that he's seeing 8+ people a day with this and there's nothing for it except rest, fluids, and tylenol for the aches.
so i woke up today feeling like i'd been target practice in a major league batting cage and asked Dante to bring me the phone and the phone book so i could call out sick, but i looked over at the way-to-awake baby and said "never mind".  i went to work.  it seemed easier than wrangling a toddler.

Peter Pan

My friend Natalie is having a baby boy any day now.  I decided that he needed something special so I designed a sock for him.  It's my first real attempt at making a pattern and it's harder than just knitting something.  I had to write down what I did, and try to have it make sense to another knitter.  I'm not sure how well that will go and if there is interest I may consider putting the pattern up, but for now I would like to introduce "Peter Pan" named by the baby-to-be's big sister who has been calling him Peter Pan.  I could have gone with "Banjo" as his big brother named him early in his exhistance but I thought Peter was more whimsical.  I hope you like this, Natalie!
I used the Lorna's Laces striped yarn that I picked up at Purl last week.  It seemed perfect for baby socks.  The sock features a straight stitch front and an enclosed cable on the back.  The cable continues into the short row heel until and the rest of the sock is continued in straight stitch.  I wanted the  pattern to be a secret and a surprise that you could only see if you knew what to look for.  Sort of like Neverland.

NY part 3

this was my first sight in NY.  Grand Central Station.  it's beautiful and awe inspiring.  i wished that we had gone back the same way we came in, because i was hoping to see more when we came back.  we were on a schedule to get to the show on time so we couldn't really take it all in like we wanted.

my honey photo shopped these so they were more visible.  the lighting was bad so he did what he could.

i loved the way the stairs went to a central point and then up like an old mansion.  it almost looks like a section from the Nagini pattern.  (maybe that's just me)

here is a shot of the side of the NY City Library.  it wasn't until i got home and showed these to my husband that i discovered that the front of the library was shot in Ghostbusters.

the other side of the library.  it was undergoing some type of work, but most of this part of the city was.

this was a beautiful looking park just after the library.  i don't remember the name, but the Empire State Building is visible from there.  i really thought it would be bigger, but to be fair, i was half way across town so it probably would have been much larger if i had been standing right next to it.  i also got to see the Chrysler building all lit up after the sun went down.  very pretty!  almost got run over trying to see it.
Time Square.  it looks better in photos and on TV.  really its more like a lot of stuff crammed into a small space with large bill boards and ads for everything, plastered on everything.  it was crazy.

this was the room that we sat in once we got in the Martha studio building.  her assistant Joe was so high energy that it makes me wonder how much coffee he drinks in a morning.

this was the first thing we saw as we were herded into the studio.  the kitchen where all the actual cooking is done.  when sitting in the audience, it's on the far left.

i was here. 
this was the prettiest china hutch i'd ever seen.  it was exactly to the left of me in the above photo.
martha's stage kitchen is right next door to her real kitchen.  you can see the cake and cupcakes with the "knitted marzipan".  i just love those little ceramic ducks!
this is where she does the craft segment of the show.  it was directly in front of us, to the right of the studio kitchen.  she had the sock and glove book with the babies hidden behind that pink screen.  i'm not sure why, when she had the little guys strewn all over the set.
this is the green house section, just to our right.  in the background you can see the false skyline.  it's a backdrop, but a very pretty one.
natalie and rebecca in the martha studio.
a very nice lady sitting to my right took this photo of the three of us.  behind me you can just see the Central Park Hoodie, and to her right is the woman in the drops cardigan.
it was a really great trip as you can probably tell by this my 3rd post on the city.  i've told Dante that if he does well the rest of this school year, i will take him to the city to go to the natural history museum.  it should be great!

NY part 2

i totally got my photo's all "photo shopped" by my husband so i could put them up and have them look their very best!
starting with our reason for being in New York:  Martha Stewart show.  (i totally spelled it wrong on my earlier post and am too lazy to fix it.)  we got there at about 12:15 after a very early start and were standing near the back of the line.  we were a little bit worried that we wouldn't get in even though we had an invitation and were "on the list".  the producers were so cute!  young girls all either bundled up like "A Christmas Story" or hardly wearing enough clothes for a spring day but looking quite fashionable.  they commented on how orderly we were while in line and how well we were following directions.  that's when i turned to the friend next to me and said "if knitters do nothing else, we know how to follow directions".
from right to left, Natalie and Rebecca, my partners in crime for the day.  Natalie was kind enough not to go into labor while we were out, but we knew where the hospitals were just in case.  Natalie brought a cute pair of baby booties for her FO and Rebecca brought the scarf she's wearing as hers.  we all had our projects to work on while there.  i knit my Nagni sock on the show, which is turning out beautifully but i lost my row counter when it was time to leave so i couldn't work on it anymore.

Rebecca is a huge Martha fan!  she wrote an essay that got us chosen for the studio audience where she referred to me as a "knitting genious" which is far from true but nice to hear.
this photo was funny! it was me holding the camera and saying over again "i don't think it's working..."  this was the best of the few i had on the camera.
so we finally get herded in like sheep to the room where we check in, put our bags on the counter for inspection and walk through the metal detector.  i did not set it off.  many others did.  then we go to coat check and off to sit in a room with cookies and bottles of evan water, (which i really don't like) and watched taped segments of the show until producers came in to take a look at our projects and see what looked good enough to highlight on the show.  and who did i find sitting two seats over from me, but Ann!
she was really sweet and was nice enough to let me take her photo for the blog, but i think she was afraid that i might have been stalking her, just based on how excited i was to have met her.  her mom was with her and sitting on my immediate right with a copy of a magazine article that featured her as having "the world's largest stash".  it was so great.  i won't tell you who was and who was not chosen to be showcased on the show, because i don't want to ruin it, but i will say that i spotted several Knitty.com patterns in the audience, and some that aren't but are hugely popular like the Central Park Hoodie and the Drops cardigan in a beautiful tweedy yellow-green on the woman right behind me.  there was also several Clapoits'.  and of course later in the day when we went to Purl Soho, they were all there too.  So Fun.
Martha's set was beautiful!  i'll have to post photos of it another time but here's one of the prize pony.

(the yarn in her hand is spun from her dog's fur.  just let that soak in a minute.  yeah.)
so after the show we went over to Purl where i bought the Koigu and Lorna's Laces yarn and stood in front of the wall-o-Koigu as proof that i was there.  they were great and wound my skeins into balls for me.  so. awesome.
and now, i'm gonna wrap up this photo essay and save the rest for tomorrow.

NY City and Martha Stuart

I went to NY yesterday for the taping of Martha Stuart and it was great!  the show was fun, the trip was great, food was amazing, and purl was small but cute and they have the nicest staff.  we came in through grand central station which was beautiful, and walked from there down to times square past the NY city library and a few other great buildings. 

we got on the show right in the front rows of the stadium seating and were on camera several times.  the show airs on Monday 2/25 and even though it was a knitting and crocheting theme, there was almost no knitting involved.  it was still a lot of fun, and the set was so pretty!  i took lots of photos and will post them a bit later.

after we left the Martha studio, we went into Soho and walked around.  we ate at a little place called "once upon a tart" which is right next door to Purl Soho and i had the best tomato and chick-pea soup ever.  the hot apple cider was from actual apples, and the tart was really great too.  from there, it was off to Purl where i proceeded to stare at the wall of Kuigu until my eyes hurt from the saturated colors.  it was unbelievable how vibrant the colors are and you really have to see them in person to understand.  i picked up 2 skeins of Kuigu KPM in a lavender/silver color and 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces in a stripped yellow and white.  the stripped colorway is exclusive to Purl.  i also got two balls of Kid Silk Haze in a navy blue out of the sale bin to make myself a river stole.  and to top off my indulgence i bought a large bottle of Soak in citrus sent.

while i was at Purl getting my skeins wound into balls, my companions went next door to Purl Patchwork and told me where they would be so i left the store alone and walked to 2 whole store fronts alone in new york city to where they were.  it was a little scary but totally cool once i found them and realized that i'd actually navigated alone in new york!  i know...two store fronts really doesn't count but one step at a time.

from there we headed back up towards grand central to meet up with Natalie's sister for a lite dinner, and on the way we stopped at the best store ever!  Sabon.  it's all natural soaps and scrubs.  all skin care items that have all natural products that they encourage you to open and try out.  they have a huge stone fountain in the middle of the store where they have you come in and try out their "signature scrub" on your hands and my hands felt and smelled so good that i bought tons of stuff for the bath, and the scrub!  i spent more in that store than i spent in purl!  i wanted to go right home and get in the tub, but i didn't get home until 2am and my husband was mad at me for making him worry.  he said he was about 3 hours away from filing a missing person's report and he had been worried about me since 9pm.  i usually don't leave the state and when i do, i'm not usually out as late as i was yesterday.  he forgave me when i have him a tart that i had brought home from the tart store.

after the stop in Sabon, we took a cab up to meet Natalie's sister to eat at Sarabeth's and it was the scariest cab ride i've ever had!  it was very much like being in a roller coaster car, and it was great.  i've heard about the hazards of taking a cab in new york so it was really fun to experience it, but i don't think i'd want to do it all the time.  i even had a total stranger be rude on the sidewalk and it was great, again because of the whole "new york experience" thing, but i wouldn't want to have that every day.

after eating, we got in another cab (i know, but we were running short on time so we had to) and it was a very different experience.  we went up to 125th street in Harlem and got on the train back to New Haven where we had parked the car and then drove home the rest of the way.  i was so tired that i kept nodding off in the car and on the last leg of the trip when i was almost home, i fell asleep talking to Rebecca!  when she responded to me, i woke up and didn't know what i had been talking about.  so funny!

i have no idea how i'm awake today and plan to hit up some caffeine at some point in the day.  hope i don't fall asleep in my cube or on the phone!  photos to come later.

3rd time is a charm?

boy i sure hope so, because i've done enough false starting to be disqualified from an Olympic race, or to have almost finished my first sock.  i just didn't like the yarn that i used for my second attempt at Nagini.  the gray was flat with no shine to it and the "tweed" was little bits of red, yellow, blue, and green fibers just randomly woven into the yarn.  i really didn't like them together at all.  so i ripped it back again, and with the help of my husband, settled on my Bearfoot in Juniper.  so far it conveys the snake skin appearance that i was hoping for and i hope that when i start the pattern it will not get lost in the colorway.  if it does, then i'll just have to shelve this pattern for another day and press on with my Millicent, which i really should be working on.  but don't worry for poor Milli.  I'll be working on her and her alone on Wednesday during the taping of the Marthe Stuart show in NY.  and when we're done there, we're going to Purl!!

question

i checked my email today and found one from a company expressing interest in advertising on my site.  part of the agreement would be to let them have one day of free access to the site to determine what type of traffic i get and if it would be worth it for us both.  i don't know how i feel about that and i never considered my page to be noticeable enough for anyone to want to advertise with me.  i don't have a large traffic flow that i know of.  and on the other hand, how do i know that this is for real and not a scam since they sought me out instead of the other way around?  and how do i feel about having advertising on the blog?  what exactly would they be advertising? 
also, today i gave in and picked up the 25 anniversary of Thriller.  it came with a dvd of Michael Jackson's greatest hits videos, and the cd with an additional dvd.  Dante watched thriller for the first time with me tonight and i was worried that he would be scared, but then i realized that he's seen worse on Angel and Buffy.  what was really funny was that he noticed (as did i) that they walked home right through a cemetery.  he also caught the irony of the girl running into the abandoned house instead of running away.  classic horror movie mistakes!

in which i have more issues with Nagini

so i knit happily along on my Nagini socks, only to discover that the pattern was completely lost in the silkie socks that rock and after asking my husband what he saw (some lines and some color) i decided to make an executive decision and frog it.  then i went into my stash and pulled out my knit picks.com essential tweed in "flint" and start over.  no, since i had to start over again anyway i decided to change the toe while i was at it.  i cast on 36 stitches and dove head first into a short row toe.  my best fitting pair incorporates the short row toe and i figured "what the heck" and went for it.  other than being concerned that i'm not getting a gauge small enough to have them fit as snuggly as i like, it's moving along just fine.  i decided that i would knit the toe and then try it on and if it's too big, i'll try with a smaller needle.  but i think this color would be better suited to the look of snake scales and it answers the question that i had about what in the heck i was ever going to do with yarn this color.

cable needles and stuff

today after work i went straight to Bella Yarns and picked up a pack of cable needles to continue with my Nagini socks.  while i was there, i also picked up the spring 2008 interweave knits.  bravo!  the really did a great job with this one.  i was excited to see the beautiful, timeless and classic patterns in this issue as well as some very helpful articles on finishing (by Veronik Avery), a great review of linen yarns which is featured in several of the patterns, as well as a really cool article on ravelry!  i really enjoy the direction that the magazine is headed in now that Eunny Jang has become the editor.
i also bought the Knitters Book of Yarn after hearing how helpful it is for knitters who would like to understand their craft better.  i have been thinking about taking my skills to the next level and trying my hand at design, but i know that i need to do some serious research to learn i would use a certain yarn in a certain design before i can start to break any of the rules.  this book is going to be a huge help, and it just happens to have the cutest pair of mittens i've ever seen (snail mittens).
and now i'm off to soak in a bubble bath and read "pride and prejudice".

of socks and mitts

so i cast on yesterday for a pair of Nagini socks, and learned quickly that i wasn't going to get very far with out a cable needle on this one.  i never use them, but the stitches are so small and tight that i can't get away without one, and so after fighting my way through a repeat, i have put this sock on hold.  however, i am in love with the silkie socks that rock.  it feels great in my hands after knitting with heilo for a week (which did soften up, but only a little and has no memory so my ribbing stretched right out after a few hours and i spent all day pulling up my socks...whew!)  i just with the silk part of the yarn took the dye the way the wool did, because even though the colorway is very pretty, it knits up to look alot like my couch (the bachelor couch that we're still living with).
what do you do when you can't knit your newest pair of socks?  did you say, "you knit on one of the two old pairs you have molding in the knitting basket?" cause you'd be wrong.  nope.  i cast on for the second, larger endpaper mitt and so far, so good.  i finished a repeat while watching a program on african-american history where they were tracing the ancestors of some celebrities and telling them about their stories.  they also did dna testing and were able to tell many of them that they did not in fact have much, if any, native american blood in their veins.  most of them had 20% or higher european blood.  they even had a few caucasians who had their dna tested and found out that they had up to 30% african blood in their veins.  they were also able to trace the exact tribes for some of the people and found out that don cheedle is from the tribe of cameron.  morgan freeman in nigerian in his ancestry.  tina turner is 33% european.  and as i watched this unfold on pbs-boston, and listened to the stories in awe i realized the work that Heavenly Father has set in motion.  it answered questions about who they are and where they came from, and made me even more want to trace my line and find out who i am.  i know that on my mother's side i am related to and descended from 5 former presidents and 6 first ladies as well as several actors and entertainers.  it gives me a stronger self image and helped me to realize that if i came from the stock of presidents, american royalty in a sense, that i too, can accomplish great things and so can my children.  we need to push this work forward. 
and in relation to pushing forward, i am going to log out of ravelry and actually go knit something instead of reading about knitting, and lurking at my friends ques.