I had a nice Thanksgiving. My cousin Jay cooked. His sibs, with spouses and kids, and me, were in attendance. We all got stuffed silly and had a nice time. I have photos, but I haven’t been able to work on them because:

1) Somehow I’ve gotten on this up-til-wee-hours-sleep-til-2pm schedule, and can’t seem to shake it. So that messes me up. Even though I’m up late, I’m too tired to do anything, and then I miss most of the day.

2) My aunt’s house (where I’m staying) has only two-prong electrical outlets, and I didn’t have an adapter. So I went out yesterday — late afternoon, actually it was getting dark already — to get a few: one to leave there, and a couple for my bag. Y’know, those grey things with the little ring loop sticking up for ground.

3) Then I felt lousy yesterday, don’t know why, so I didn’t feel like doing anything once I got back to my aunt’s.

4) Last night, while not sleeping, around 4am, I heard a commotion outside, but I just figured some animal was prowling around. Wrong. But I didn’t find out how wrong until around 3:30pm when I finally got my butt out of the house to go eat, and was about ready to get into my car, which was parked in my aunt’s driveway on a cul-de-sac street, when I saw that my trunk was open, and my front passenger window was smashed!

Someone took a very old pair of Rollerblades and, weirdly, a briefcase full of sheet music (all of which is in .pdf form and I can reprint it), and left behind a small empty black purse. Nothing of any serious value was in the car. They poked at the stereo (the plastic frame around it was pulled off), but it’s still there; the faceplate’s in my purse.

But I had to deal with the window! Too late in the day for any auto glass places to be willing to handle it, and nobody’s open tomorrow. So I went with my cousin Kelly to an Ace Hardware and got some clear vinyl and some duct tape. She and her son Nick helped me tape up the window (thanks, guys!). It’ll have to wait until I get back to L.A. to get repaired.

Then we went and got something to eat, and now I’m back at Kelly’s, borrowing her broadband connection. (None at my aunt’s; my only other alternative is Starbucks — I do have a T-Mobile account.)

I’ll be driving down I-5 on Monday morning. I’m teaching a 6pm knitting lesson in Toluca Lake, and I’d like to be able to call around for auto glass places during the afternoon, so I can bring it in Tuesday. I hope it’s something that can be done while I wait, but I’m afraid it won’t be…Quelle drag, huh.

However, this being Thanksgiving weekend, I have to be thankful that nothing was taken that I really needed and would have had trouble replacing, and that the house wasn’t broken into and that I’m personally safe and sound. I’m a little skeeved, but I gotta figure odds are that it’s not gonna happen again in the next couple of nights, right? Right. (Just nod.)

Oy, long time no post. Again. As usual, I have mondo photos that I haven’t had time to look at, touch up, resize, etc. I’ll try to get to that this weekend. I don’t know what’s happened to this month. I mean once Thanksgiving comes, that basically blows the rest of November. So I can’t believe how fast November’s over. So much I wanted to get done and didn’t!

More later this weekend. Have a happy, healthy, grateful, loving, wonderful Thanksgiving, everybody.

Mom said the slippers fit fine, and she loves ‘em. Whew.

I cast on for the back of the alpaca sweater at fellow spinnie Garen’s yesterday, but it wasn’t right. I ripped. Haven’t cast on again. But I will as soon as I go get something to eat.

Hey, all you L.A. knitters! Sign up for one of my classes, will ya? Need the money. Thanks.

As of today (well, yesterday, now; Monday afternoon), I am officially a professional knitting teacher.

I had two beginning knitting students this afternoon, one of whom became a beginning crochet student about 3/4 through the lesson. And I gave my Finishing class this evening, to Mindi, who’s a member of my spinning guild.

I’m so glad it was Mindi first! Because it turns out there were some mistakes in my pattern; I did one thing, wrote another (smacks forehead)! Result: seriously questionable buttonholes. The pattern is now corrected: preemie_baby_sweater.pdf, 187K (up from 183K; yes, it got a little wordier).

The other cool thing is that I found out I remember enough about crochet to teach it, at least at the beginner level. I haven’t worked enough crochet patterns to be all that hip to how things are shaped, and I might do a little head-scratching over a pattern, but I can chain and do single and double crochet.

Now about that alpaca sweater…The arithmetic is bogged down because I’m getting inconsistent measurements from one swatch to another. I’m leaning toward using the later ones, which are looser, probably more like what I’ll get when actually working the sweater. The problem has to do with the difference in gauge between garter stitch and my main/welt patterns; I’ll need to increase/decrease when switching from one to the other, and I need to know how much to increase or decrease. Need to steam and re-measure one more swatch and then I should be ready.

I sent the slippers off to Mom, and my brother says she got them, but she rushed me off the phone so I don’t know if they fit.

Oh, yeah, here’s the slippers with the clear dimensional fabric paint (okay, it’s mostly clear) dotted on the bottom to make them non-slip (ahem, taken with new camera):

Here’s a closeup. It looks kinda gross, actually, but it seems to work:

I’ll try to talk to Mom again tomorrow and see if she likes them.

I thought my old Canon PowerShot A50 camera had bitten the dust, but it’s the rechargeable batteries that seem to be near-toast. They won’t hold a charge for more than around a half-hour at most. I did, however, get some pictures of last week’s WeHo S’n'B Halloween party (click for larger images).

The gang:

The prize winners, Ellen B. as, um, I think the Crochet Queen (gotta love the Red Heart sceptor!), and Darcy as Crazy Aunt Purl:
 

Today’s knitting class at the Library was kind of sparse. Abby dropped by.
Gloria (left) and Abby; Joy.
 

So here’s the pre-felted pseudo-Fuzzy Feet, with a normal sock for scale:

Here they are after two washes:

Hmm. Still not small enough. Except the top opening; that was too small. (Hey, I was guessing; the pattern is for worsted weight, I was using bulky.) So I snipped it:

One more wash did the trick:

And here’s the stuff I’ll be dotting on the bottom tomorrow when they’re dry (I hope):

I’ve decided the most amazing thing about felting is that it gets me to do three washes.

These are for Mom, in North Shore Medical Center, and going into a rehab for physical therapy in a few days. Hope to get them to her pretty quick. Hope she can use them. I wonder what would happen if I dot on the non-skid stuff now, before they’re dry. So both the wool and the paint can dry at the same time. Hmmm…That sounded very reasonable in my head, but it looks ridiculous in print, huh. It looks like the opening scene of a woefully predictable sitcom, in fact. Okay, I guess I’ll wait.

Still haven’t cast on for the alpaca sweater. Don’t seem to be able to get the time to work out the arithmetic. Maybe this weekend… I’ve been busy preparing for classes, even though no one’s signed up for anything yet. I still have to be prepared in case they do. Charts tomorrow at 2pm. Need to spend the morning tweaking the charts handout I did for my spinning guild in April. That concentrated on lace, per members’ request; I want to show a much wider variety of charts in this class.

So the only thing on the needles at the moment is the pink cable socks, which I’ve actually been carrying around the last couple of days, though I haven’t knitted a stitch on them. And, of course, the long-languishing brown lace shawl. I need the socks before I need the shawl. But I have so many other things in mind: My Level I TKGA cert, and a couple of reclamation projects for the retrograde Mercury. Not to mention pitching to more yarn stores. (Sigh) I gotta get better organized.