what I did on my birthday vacation

I managed to remember to turn on my outlook assistant to send an auto "I'm not in the office" e-mail last Tuesday. It still had the text from the last time I used it...which was last November. No wonder I've been irritable and unfocused at work - too long between breaks.

I didn't have much of a lie-in-late on any day during my extra-long weekend since I naturally tend to wake up just before 5 am anyway, but it was nice to get up at that hour, take the morning supplements, feed the cats, make some tea and toast and get back in bed with a book and not have to worry about going to work later.

Speaking of books, my family and friends know me all too well. I have a nice big stack of to-be-read books now because this year's birthday theme was "Cate's bookshelves aren't groaning loud enough under the weight of the reading material on them." So now in queue is:

• The Little Stranger
• The Forgotten Garden
• the graphic novel version of Jane Eyre
• the graphic novel version of Coraline
• the new edition of Signal to Noise
• The Thin Man (I've seen the movie dozens of times - love Myrna Loy and William Powell - but I've never read the book)
• Sepulchre
• The Rossetti Letter

And I have some new cello music and the new Tori Amos CD to listen to while I read it all. See what I mean about people knowing me well?

Em gave me a manicure, and my nails have a nice seafoam green color on them now. And we went out for sushi. Nothing like raw protein to perk up the brain. Another dinner with Dad last night, too.

Felt like crap for a few days. No idea why. Headachey, panicky, sniffley. Then got hit with a new story idea. Honestly, it made my head hurt. A Big Story Idea. A science fictiony Story Idea (and I know nothing about writing science fiction). Possibly a controversial Story Idea. A Story Idea that needs to be grown into. A Story Idea that I really don't have the experience or skill to write right now, but I was told by those who know to have a go at it anyway.

I went for an acupuncture appointment Thursday afternoon, and Karen-the-acupuncturist noticed that the "bubble" that had shown up in my pulses since I started taking the Lexapro was gone. I assume this is because I've been weaning myself off of it. She also said there was a playful, creative "something" coming out of my heart area, which is also the same place I panic from apparently. Aside from fingers moving on a keyboard or with a pen, does writing have to be such a negative physical experience?

My uncle sent me a big box of yarn. It belonged to my grandmother, who died several years ago. It's the basic cheap acrylic stuff, but given that where she lived was pretty remote and given that she was likely on a limited income, I imagine it was all she could get, and I'm grateful to have it. I have ideas for it, too.

I also ordered some inexpensive recycled yarn from etsy.com. I have to figure out how to do this myself. What people do is go to thrift stores and yard sales and the like and buy the sweaters - the larger, the better (there's more yarn in them) - for a mere few dollars. These sweaters have good yarn in them, but the style of them leaves something to be desired. You unravel the sweater, wind the yarn into balls, and make something else or several something elses out of it. I've just got to figure out how you undo the seams without breaking the yarn.

I did a little furniture re-arranging, a little de-cluttering, a little knitting along with episodes of Lime & Violet (honestly, now I remember why I don't listen to them at work; their podcast is so hilarious, I'd bother people with all the laughing) and episodes of Castle (sounds like they're going to have a second season, yay!), a little crockpot using (too hot to use the oven). I also drank probably several gallons of iced green tea. Republic of Tea's Wild Berry Plum green tea is really great on ice. I highly recommend it.

The knitting at the lake was both amusing and irritating. A couple of people came up to me and asked "Are you knitting?" No, I'm just holding two knitting needles and some yarn because they go really well with my outfit.

Sigh. I have a dentist appointment and going back to work to look forward to tomorrow.

vacation, all I ever wanted...

I think my dad has some Go-Gos albums (the actual vinyl!). I should try to talk him into making CDs of those for me.

Anyway, I'm only working two days this week, and then I'm on holiday from Wednesday, which is my birthday, until next Tuesday, since Memorial Day is conveniently on Monday.

I will be getting some projects off the needles (more pictures!), and probably casting on new ones because spring does that to me, and I may even venture to the nearby lake to do some public knitting to prep for World Wide Knit-in-Public Day in June. I will be catching up on Lime & Violet's podcasts (hey, I could put a bunch of those on my ipod to listen to at the lake, couldn't I?). I will re-listen to the latest podcast from Sticks and String because the yarn tour at the Sydney Easter Show with Sally was hilarious. I will be hopefully getting a manicure from my sister, and I'm having an odd urge for red hair color too - possibly from reading too many entries on Vickie Howell's blog, whose hair I love; and her crafts too, of course. I will get a bunch of reading finished. I may bake something and make something else in the crockpot all in the same day, or maybe over multiple days. And I have an acupuncture appointment in the middle of the day on Thursday.

And the thing that makes me take a big gulp and shudder and wince, besides my birthday, is sending my novel/thesis off to some agents. I want to do yet another revision on it, but that's likely just procrastination.

Who needs to actually travel anywhere with all of the above going on?

And since Joe-the-office-roomie already did a review of the new Star Trek movie, and he does those review thingys better than I do, I decided instead to point you to a flickr page of knit Shaun of the Dead dolls in honor of Simon Pegg who plays Scotty so well in ST.

fibery plunder

I mentioned I'd be plundering at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and I did. It was a planned plunder, though. I adopted the same strategy that I used at the Yarn Party - I only brought a certain amount of cash; the credit cards, debit card, and check book stayed at home with the cats. And since I'd saved up money for this trip, and only spent the cash I had with me, I don't feel one bit guilty about my buying spree.

Jane-the-gardener and gwenniepenny went with me. It's always good to attend these things with friends. It keeps one from overspending, and three heads scouting around for interesting things are better than one.

Sheep everywhere (for obvious reasons). Curly haired, shaggy haired, dredlock banged, shorn, browns, greys, creams, mottleds, young, old, friendly, irritable. I was amused that a sheep's baa-ing is far more gutteral and croaking than the cute sound we think it is. We managed to find some alpacas and rabbits too. I think the cutest animals we saw were the male baby lambs with their horns just poking through, kind of like a baby's first teeth.

We browsed stall after stall of yarn, roving for dying and spinning, fur fresh off the animals and ready for prepping, handmade clothing, gorgeous spinning wheels in all styles from portable flat-lying to large wheels-as-wide-as-your-arm-span types, looms, books, artwork, jewelry, and equipment for every kind of fiber endeavor. We came away with a serious case of sensory overload.

The food avenue had lamb prepared in every way you could think of - kebabs, sandwiches, fried, smoked, grilled, and on and on. Not something I'm too fond of eating, though.

We peeked inside a yurt. And not just any old yurt, but one that displayed some amazingly artistic felting on the outside and inside. Some of the pieces were literally paintings made out of yarn. Beautiful.

We also saw the funniest sheep paintings. I like this artist's humor and how it comes through in her paintings.

Gwenniepenny found some pretty yarn that "looks like the sea" to practice knitting with. Jane got a gorgeous knitted sweater from a somewhat shy Scotsman, as well as some orange blossom honey and a handmade broom from some other friendly people. Did you know that before there were toothpicks, people would break off a piece of one of the sticks on the business end of a broom and use it as a cake tester? And I don't think they were brooms reserved just for cake testing. I think they were the same ones that swept the kitchen floor and the front porch. Practical and all that, but gwenniepenny and I both agree - ewwww.

This is what came home with me in my I-knitted-it-myself messenger bag:



Oh, and I don't think I showed you what I got at the Yarn Party a few weeks ago:



I think it's time for a yarn diet. All of the above, in addition to what I already have in my stash, should easily last me the rest of the year.

spring knitting gallery

I've finished a bunch of projects in the last few weeks.

The first is a sweater for Joe-the-office-roomie's daughter, Julia, who had her first birthday yesterday. I made it 3-year-old size so that she'd be able to wear it for a month or two at least before growing out of it (kids today and their growth spurts, sheesh!). You can see pictures of the birthday girl modeling it here and here and here and here (this last with cat possibly being jealous of it).

I'm proud of it for a couple of reasons. First, my seaming skills have improved immensely. I used to do rather wobbly seams, but a slight change in technique has fixed that. I've said before that I don't mind doing seams, and I mind it even less now that I can make them look nice. Second, this is the first knitted piece I've done on which I've added embroidery thanks to Kristin Knits by Kristin Nicholas. It's an easy way to jazz up an otherwise plain piece. I used a technique called lazy daisy for the flower petals and french knots for the centers.

It's a clever pattern too. It starts at the bottom edge and is knit up in a big rectangle. Then the stitches are divided into three sets and put on stitch holders. You work one set for the back panel, and the other two sets for the front panels, which also have a little shaping. Then you seam the tops of the shoulders to join all the panels again and it magically gives you evenly sized sleeve openings. It also knits quicker because instead of knitting five pieces (back panel, two front panels, two sleeves), you're only knitting three pieces (back and front panels knit all at once and only separated for shaping, and two sleeves). Knitwear designers are so smart.

Next, we have some scarves for Survivors Offering Support, which distributes care packages to women undergoing surgery for breast cancer. They receive their care package on the day of their surgery. This pattern is called feather and fan:

It looks a little fancy, but it's an easy pattern to memorize. There are three rows of knit and purl and one row of yarnovers and k2tog to make the wave magically appear and to give it more of a lacey look.

Finally, we have the cabled messenger bag that I mentioned in an earlier post. This is a mash-up of several patterns pulled from all over the interwebs. The original cable I wanted to do in the middle of the front panel wasn't cooperating, so I mercilessly frogged it and started over with the braided cable across all three sections and made the middle one slightly bigger.

And look! It's lined!

I finished this just in time to use for the plunder I will acquire at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival tomorrow.