It’s Wednesday night, almost Thursday — it will be Thursday before I finish this — and I’m just getting to posting about the weekend. I’m really looking forward to my life slowing down a little. Wish I had a clue when that will be…

The weekend was cool. I worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Fabulous FiberFest as the knitting consultant. I taught one participant to knit from scratch, and a bunch of others to do things like cast on, purl, make bobbles, work with two colors fair-isle-style, weave in ends as you go, assemble sweater pieces with mattress stitch, and more. I had no chance to take pictures, so it ultimately didn’t matter that I forgot the card and battery recharger for my camera (duh). Thanks to Jillian Neary for the photos below!

Here’s me at my table, with a student:

In front of me, Joan Ruane conducted various spinning events, including a blindfolded spinning contest! Congratulations, Mindi, on winning that both Saturday and Sunday!

Lots of great shopping.

A favorite booth was Habu Textiles:

Another favorite was Carolina Homespun (from whom I bought my drum carder), but I don’t have a photo of their (huge!) booth. Also bought a wpi tool from them.

At the Chasing Rainbows booth, I bought three 2-oz. hanks of handpainted bombyx silk. And I helped the folks at Conjoined Creations break down their booth at the end of the show, and they “tipped” me with a hank of hand-painted soy silk. Pix of this stuff tomorrow, since it’s just too late tonight. Gotta crash soon.

Got to see all my fellow guild spinnies, too. Miss you guys!

So I travelled all day Monday, worked Tuesday until 7pm and then went out to dinner with my Mom, my brother and niece, and my cousin David, who’s been living here in NYC but is moving back to his native Alexandria, VA. Then I spent awhile on the phone with my sister Val, who’s having extended computer troubles and really needs the help.

Worked all day today. Then more with Val tonight — she caught me before I left the office, so I was there until pretty late. And just as I was about to leave, my brother sent me an email asking me to do something that I should have left until the morning, but I didn’t, like a dope, so I didn’t get out of there until about 10:20pm.

There. In case you were wondering why I haven’t kept up with this blog more regularly, that should give you a clue!

Oh, yeah: I did get a chance yesterday to order a pound of kid mohair. Now I need some dyes. I’m considering one of these kits from Pro Chem. Or maybe I’ll just get some Kook Aid, so I don’t have to stuff Mom’s place full of thrift store dyeing equipment (or spend the time shopping for it). Then a little sewing thread (maybe some silk? maybe something from Habu?), and I’m ready to try my hand at handspun mohair bouclé.

Dumb-ass here left the compact flash card in the card reader — in New York. Also left the battery recharger there. All I have is the phone camera which is next to useless. But maybe I’ll try it.

It’s official: I’m getting a Strauch Fricke Petite Drum Carder with all the fixin’s from Carolina Homespun, a vendor at the FiberFest. They’ll ship it to me when I’m getting ready to return to LA from NYC. I won’t have any use for it in NYC, and anyway I don’t want to have to try to get it home from there (they’re BIG). But I got lots o’ stuff to card when I get back!

Watched John Pitblado, a fellow member of my spinning guild, spin some incredible mohair bouclé at the FiberFest today. Very inspiring. So now I want to try that! Gotta find some mohair locks…Or I could try it with some Shetland locks I have. Hmm…

No pix today. There should be some over the weekend, though — “weekend” meaning the duration of the Fabulous Fiber Fest, which actually starts Friday. I’ll be teaching knitting there.

Tomorrow’s travel-and-go-to-DMV day. Need to renew my driver’s license in person, if you please. Jeesh. Also need to wash my white top and sweater so I can be in uniform for the Fiber Fest (staff will be in white tops, blue jeans and sneakers). Who knows what else I’ll have to do, not having been home for 5 weeks. Here’s hoping not much. My car will need washing, though! I shudder to think how much dust is on it.

I did start fiddling with the ribbon yarn (see posts from last month) so I can have a project for the plane. Still not sure what I’m doing yet, though. Mom thinks a knitted purse should be lined. I actually think she’s right, but it’s not really in keeping with the knitted bag aesthetic, if you know what I mean. We’ll see. It’ll probably all come together while I’m working on it on the plane to LA. And probably on the plane from LA back to NYC.

Think I’ll bring some sock yarn and small needles back with me so I’ll have a small project to carry around on the bus and such. After this trip, I plan to spend my evenings spinning. I never seem to have time to spin, always some rush knitting project to get out the door. Well, there aren’t any rushes now. So I’m gonna spin. Starting next week.

Come to the Fabulous Fiber Fest and say “Hi”!

I spent the weekend in Tarpon Springs, Florida (outside of Tampa) with my Aunt Esther, an old friend of my mother’s who’s not actually related to me but who was always around when I was growing up. Esther’s 80 years old and has lung cancer. She hasn’t started the most intensive part of her chemo treatment yet, so she still feels pretty good, up and about, driving here and there. It stays pretty hot in Florida all year round. But I remember my Dad always being cold when he was in chemo, so I made the blue shawl for Aunt Esther.

Here she is modeling it:

Her sister Fifi lives right nearby, and I of course visited with her too. Here they are together, in Fifi’s apartment:

My Mom hasn’t been in touch with Esther and Fifi in recent years, but she’s going to visit, I think this coming weekend. (That was the plan last I heard; Mom’s back here in NYC tomorrow after a month in Sacramento.) They’re all excited!

I have NOTHING on the needles at the moment. At least nothing with me. (Left some WIPs behind in LA.) Maybe tomorrow evening I can start the bag with the ribbon yarn. Hmm…

Okay, rush post: Finished shawl, gotta get packed and into the shower asap for a 7am flight, and it’s a quarter to 5 now.

Here’s the shawl with two border sections done, and a closeup of one of the corners before it’s connected to its (as yet unknitted) neighbor:

Here’s the book where the border pattern came from, and the page with the pattern (but not close enough for anyone to follow…):

And finally, the completed shawl:

It’s for my Aunt Esther, to wear when she’s getting her chemo treatments. Yeah, she’s in Florida, but it’s always super-air-conditioned in hospitals.

I have about 40 minutes to get showered, packed and outta here.

…a shawl update. It’s targeted for completion TONIGHT. That’s because I’ll be seeing its intended recipient tomorrow. I’ve taken some more pictures along the way, but I haven’t taken the time to post them because I needed the time to knit. A little later tonight.

I’ve been flitting about the blogosphere a little today and seeing a lot of posts about being busy and not posting lately, so I don’t feel so lame about being a tardy blogger. It should let up a little once this shawl is done, and I come back from the weekend visit to the giftee.

(Decided not to elaborate on the last post. I’d rather not give any more energy to the situation. Suffice it to say that I miss LA!)

…why I’m here in NYC. I had kinda guessed it, but it has now been officially confirmed: I’m here to be the one to take the shit. Details…not sure if I’ll bother posting details. If I do, it’ll be later.

Here are some shawl updates. An overall shot showing as much as I could get into the frame, although the perspective is kinda weird:

Here’s one that shows most of the completed center square, but it doesn’t show the beginning of the border along one edge:

Here’s one end of the first border section. It’s being done one edge at a time, but there’ll be no sewing; the 2nd, 3rd and 4th edges are attached to previous edges as they’re worked.

The original “Stonington Shawl” pattern, upon which this is based, calls for a traditional edging knitted on around the entire edge of the shawl after all four border sections are completed. I don’t have time for that. This needs to be ready in about a week and a half. I’ll be knitting in a little bit of a lacy pattern of some sort in the last dozen or so rows of each border section, so it can have an “edging” without the extra (time-consuming) step.

Another thing different I’m doing is putting yarn-overs along the edges for easy pickup. Notice how stitches picked up in yarn-over edges look almost exactly like a regular row of eyelets:

Since the center square was knitted corner-to-corner, for the first half of the square the yarn-overs were my increases, one at the beginning of each row. Obviously, once I got to the mid-point, I had to start decreasing. Normally, I’d have done a K2tog or SSK at the beginning of each row; but since I also wanted to add a yarn-over at the beginning of each row — while still decreasing — my decrease was K3tog, right after the beginning yarn-over, every row, until I had 1 yo and 1 stitch left. At that point I began picking up up along one edge for a border section. This first border, I’m doing yo, k2tog, yo at the beginning of each row. The k2tog compensates for the first yo, and the second yo is my increase, so the border widens as I go, to form mitred corners.

Gotta hustle on this thing now!

Holy cow, July 19th??! That was my last post?! I really have been busy.

Trying to get my cousin’s website up, going to Sacramento for another cousin’s 25th wedding anniversary party over the weekend (and seeing more of DFW than I cared to, thank you), working until 7:30 or 8 every night…I’ve been busy. And tired.

I have made progress on the shawl, but nowhere near as much as I ought. And it’s too late to take pictures now. Tomorrow.

My brother kept me hoppin’ this past week. It’s going to get busier still. I worked until 7 or 7:30 all last week. Granted, I didn’t come in until about 10:30, but that’s going to change. I’m staying at my Mom’s, and until Friday, so was my sister. She left Friday, and my Mom’s leaving Tuesday, for a month. Without all the morning chitchat, I’ll get out of the house a lot earlier. But I doubt I’ll be leaving the office much earlier!

Did get some knitting done, though. After “duh”-ing out on Tuesday, I thought to bring it with me to knit on the bus the rest of the week. It’s a short ride, but hey, a row here, a row there, it adds up. Then I did a lot this weekend. Here’s two shots of the blue shawl in progress, first about noon today:

And about 8:30 this evening:

It will definitely need borders, but probably not more than about 8 or 9 inches deep.
Yesterday I went to a nearby yarn store to get fixins for whatever it is I’m going to make to donate for the auction at The Fabulous Fiber Fest in August. I assume I need to donate something; I did last year, as did all the participants. I’ll be there this year as the knitting consultant. Anyway, here’s the yarn, with the bag it came in:

Here’s the beginning of a swatch:

The ribbon yarn is called “India” by Lana Grossa, color 12, and the nubby, glitzy stuff is Trendsetter Swing, color 1843, “fruit salad.” They coordinate perfectly. I hope you can see the colors. I think I’ll concoct some sort of purse with this. Not sure yet. Need to play with it some more. It better be fabulous, for what I spent on this stuff! (Well, I needed needles, too. Killed me to buy a size 9 circular when I have half a dozen of them at home, but whaddaya gonna do.)

Mom’s arthritis is acting up, because there’s been this mondo rain storm threatening but never quite coming. My own hands even felt a little achy; I’d forgotten that I used to get that when I lived here! This humidity is for the birds. It’s great for the singing voice, nice for the skin, but it’s hard to breathe, fer cryin’ out loud! I was never nuts about it, but now I’m really unused to it. (Sigh) Guess I better get used to it again.