I’m getting excited. Next week, Monday through Friday, is Cat Bordhi’s “Visionary Retreat - Self-Publishing for Knit Designers” at Saint Andrew’s Monastery in Valyermo, CA, on “how to happily and successfully marry the mechanics of self-publishing with the magic of knit design and creativity.” Here is the link to her Calendar page (which I realize won’t show this Retreat after next week, but maybe she’ll put it in her 2007 Calendar then).

I was first on the waiting list, and have been on pins and needles since October over whether I’d get to go. My friend Janel, who got the last spot, canceled at the last minute, knowing that since I was first on the waiting list I’d be able to share with her what happens.

So tonight I have to get back to the alpaca basketweave cardigan that I thought I’d have done by Christmas (a-hem). I’m almost done with the back, but I need to do some figuring for the fronts and sleeves before I can cast on. In fact, I’ll be casting on first for the pocket linings, and since I want angled pockets, that’s going to take some thought. I want this ready to knit without further figuring while I’m at the Retreat. I’d also like to try Cat’s cast-on for a moebius before I go! Realistically, though, that may not happen.

I have spinning guild tomorrow, and on Sunday I have to do mondo laundry, and I have to clean out the car because I’ll have two carpoolers going with me, whom I will pick up from their hotel near Burbank Airport. One of them is a name well-known to knitters. Another widely-known name (besides Cat) will also be in attendance at the workshop. I’ll tell all after it’s all over and everyone’s home.

So of course this begs the question: Am I working on a knitting book? Yes, as mentioned in October. I have high hopes for it, naturally. Having written most of two chapters so far, I can see that a lot of the work — and a lot of the book — is going to be the photos. I need something like 50 photos just for those two chapters. I knew I was right to buy that camera! I also need knitting to photograph in all those photos! Some pieces will be used in several photos; still, that’s a whole lotta knitting I gotta do. I want to plan it carefully, so I’m holding off until after this Retreat, since it’s something I’m sure will be discussed.

Oh, the pink cable socks? I pushed and pushed to finish them because I’m sick of looking at them, and I got to about 6 rounds from the end of the toes — and ran out of yarn. They’re Patons Kroy 4-ply, which has a little less yardage than the Opal and Regia I usually use (usually with plenty left over), plus the cables take up more yarn than plain stockinette, and I didn’t figure for any of that like a dope. I don’t even have the labels anymore so I don’t even know what the exact color is, let alone the dye lot, so there’s not much hope of a perfect match.

I found a skein on ebay that sorta looks like the right color, but I can’t really tell. However, whether it is or not, that’s what I’m using. When I get it. Until then, the socks are still on the needles. Unless I get it tomorrow (unlikely), they won’t be finished until I come back from the Retreat.

The other thing that has to happen when I get back from the Retreat is I gotta get a job — fast. I’m dead broke. Seriously, I need a miracle here, folks. Send me some money mojo, willya? Thanks.

The good part was going to Diamond Bar with Garen to Ruth’s for a dye day. I had a lot of fun dyeing up some white beast top in three different reds, and some gorgeous UK Shetland in instant indigo. Also put some gray alpaca into an onion skins that was yielding a beautiful gold on other stuff; my alpaca looked green in the pot, and most of the color didn’t stay. It’ll need overdyeing. Pix later.

The sad part was that my Aunt Esther passed away this morning. She’d been diagnosed nearly a year ago with metastatic liver cancer; it’s a miracle she lasted this long. She’d have been 81 in February.

Esther wasn’t really my aunt. She was a close friend of my mother’s when I was growing up, although they’d grown apart the last twenty-five years or so. She lived in Flushing, Queens, a few minutes from our house in Jackson Heights, and she was over all the time. I remember her staying up with my parents until the wee hours the night JFK was so narrowly elected, in November 1960. Like them (and me), she was a lifelong Democrat. As long ago as that was, she was a very familiar figure in our household by then.

She was an extremely intelligent, cultivated woman, well-read and widely-traveled. She was a commercial artist, and worked for ad agencies, but was a painter in her spare time, and took me and my sister to museums when we were very young. She knew more than anyone else I ever knew about classical music and literature of all kinds. She knew both American and foreign movies inside out, she knew theatre, ballet, jazz. And she was self-taught at most of it.

She made very little money, but she always had a fairly new car, and she went on great vacations every few years. She went often to Mexico (I learned later that she had a ballerina girlfriend there). She loved the bullfights, of which she showed us slides once.

She went to college the same time I did, when she was in her late forties, and majored in art history. (She could have taught it, for cryin’ out loud.) It was only then that she came out as a lesbian, though not to my family. We (my sister and I and our friends) figured it out easily enough, when we were staying over her apartment while my parents were away, and her girlfriend stayed with her in her bedroom. But all I knew growing up was that Esther was always alone, and that was okay with her. She was independent, interesting, and enjoyed life, in stark contrast to the messages coming at me from every other direction to the effect that I simply must get married and have children, that I absolutely couldn’t survive if I didn’t.

About ten years ago, after not having been in contact with her for quite awhile, I looked her up in Florida, where I heard she’d retired, and found her living in the Tampa area. I gave her a call, and had a nice conversation with her. She was very happy to hear from me. When I moved out to L.A. from California, I went via Florida and visited her for a couple of days. She had decided that she would come out to me, and she was so worried about how I’d take it. She had no idea that I already knew! She was very relieved.

I stayed in touch with her via email on and off. It was by email that she announced to me, among others, that she had cancer last February.

When I was in New York over the summer, I went down to Tampa to visit with her for a day or so. She told me about how her mother, who was a ballerina from Austria (and who had been touring in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake), had been a countess by her first marriage, but the count was broke so she had to go back to dancing to support them, and he would sit in her dressing room drinking champagne while she was busting her butt onstage; so she dumped him, and married a waiter/aspiring actor from Amsterdam whose name was originally Mordecai but had become Maurice when he was working in Paris, and who, in his early twenties, and been a roommate of Rudolph Valentino’s in New York! She told me her father took her to Valentino’s funeral. She was very young, not yet two, but she faintly remembered it.

I feel awful now that I didn’t get my crap together to call her the last few days. My Mom said she sounded good; I thought she had a little longer. But at least I visited her in August; I’m so glad I did.

I don’t think I can really convey how important she was to me. I will miss her terribly. Bye, Aunt Es. Love you.

Okay, the east coast folks have done their Christmas Eve and opened their presents and most of it was a hit. The hat for James was deemed “too girly” (!) by both him and my sister-in-law, so she traded him for a baseball cap. What, the boys don’t wear those ribbed caps in San Francisco, where James lives? Or is it that it’s red? Beats me. Anyway, everybody’s happy. My aunt and sisters got theirs too, and they’re happy too. I’ve been promised a picture of Geordie-Sheryl-Melissa wearing their scarves; I’ll post it when I get it.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

If anyone in my family is viewing this post before opening your Christmas presents (highly unlikely), please CLOSE YOUR BROWSER NOW. After you’ve opened them, you can come back.

…

[spoilers below]

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[I mean it, don’t look yet]

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[Okay, it’s not that big a deal, it’s not like you’re getting Shetland lace shawls or Dale sweaters or anything, but you can just see them in person first, okay?]

…

Well, if that didn’t do it, tough tooties. Below the results of some marathon knitting and spinning, upon which I embarked last week when the realization suddenly hit me that I had zero presents ready.

Actually, I did have two things ready, but I didn’t realize they were going to be Christmas presents. I did make them for the final recipients, not for me, I just wasn’t thinking of Christmas when I made them. Two pairs of socks, both in quickie worsted weight. The first, for Mom, similar to some red ones I gave her, my very first ever pair that were too small for me but fit her just right. Both that first pair and this pair were made from Brown Sheep Superwash worsted weight.

This pair for my youngest sister Liz, who asked for really thick boot socks. These are from some old Knitaly I had in my stash:

That still left Val (next sister down), Aunt Barb, Geordie & his wife Sheryl, niece Melissa (Geordie & Sheryl’s daughter, 4, 5 in February) and nephew James (Liz’s son, 16, 17 in March).

Aunt Barb is easy: A Gone With The Wind calendar. And in a conversation with Val, I learned that she wanted a Sunbeam Hotshot, which Aunt Barb, tea aficionado, turned us all onto. So those two presents were ordered online (I got the Hotshot at Office Max, though, cheaper than the above link but not as good a picture) and sent directly to Aunt Barb and Val.

So then I started a scarf for Geordie. Here’s some handspun that I thought I’d posted a photo of before, but I can’t find it in previous entries now:

Well, most of that is now this:

That’s a simple 1×1 rib (so it’s reversible) on size US8 needles. The yarn is 4 singles plied together to make a kind of bulky-weight. In stockinette stitch I’d have used size 10s.

Now. Sheryl. Well she likes bright colors, and I had this lying around from my spinning guild’s Dyefest last June:

It’s “Snow Beast,” a blended, natural off-white wool top that I can’t find a link for. I had just dumped handfuls of it into various dyepots with no plan whatsoever. So I divied up the colors and spun it up, and about 5 or 6 hours later I had this:

Taking a cue from Crazy Aunt Purl, but going about it slightly differently (I did my multiple-wrap-around-the-needle as part of each stitch, not after each stitch, and didn’t do loops), I made a scarf for Sheryl. All the while I was wondering what I was going to do for the baby, and when I was finished with Sheryl’s scarf (about 4 hours altogether, with breaks), it hit me: a smaller version of this very thing. Alors, voilà, “Mommy & Me” scarves:

That left just James. It was now about 10am Wednesday morning. This stuff had to get shipped to Port Washington, NY. If I’d realized the nice folks at my local post office were going to tell me that Priority Mail wasn’t going to get to NY by Saturday and that I’d have to use Express Mail, I’d have relaxed a little and sent it out yesterday, but at this point I thought I still might be able to save a few bucks going with Priority Mail, which had to go out that day. With some stash KnitUSA, which is like Knitaly only bulky, I knitted at breakneck speed, on no sleep, and finished this 2×2 rib cap at 1:30pm:

Whew! So now, being somewhat knitted out, I’m spinning frog hair from the soy silk I got at the FiberFest in August. I’m sure I’ll get sick of that soon. In fact, I’m eyeing the little bit of undyed Snow Beast I have and thinking about dyeing that up and spinning some more of the fun stuff I got out of my Dyefest wares. I also have a bunch of undyed superwash…and about 5lbs. of a cornflower blue superwash that could be overdyed with purples and greens…I need to order some citric acid crystals. Otherwise, I’ll be going through gallons and gallons of vinegar.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa and whatever else you celebrate.

Okay, I figured out what keeps me from blogging regularly. It’s processing the photos. I don’t know, I just seem to spend a lot of time deciding which ones to use and fixing the color and resizing and adding comments and all that. So when I think about posting, it seems like a long, drawn-out affair and I have something else more pressing to do that wouldn’t get done if I spend 6 hours on the blog.

So I have to find a way to do my pix more quickly.

I have gobs of them, really, but you wont’ be seeing most of them.

I think I’ll make a rule: Keep it to 3 pix a day maximum. That might work, right? Except maybe for the next few posts, where I’ll be playing catchup. Maybe.

So I’m going to get my little SD card out of my camera now and see what to post. Later.

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.