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.

After a week or so of trying to connect to other people’s wireless networks and fiddling with dialup (heaven save us!) while here at Mom’s, I got Mom signed up for cable internet service, and set up a wireless router.

WHEW! What a difference. And I’m very pleased with the speed, and how strong the signal is. Some time ago I tried to set up an 802.11b network in my apartment, but I couldn’t get it to work at a usable speed. 802.11g is a whole other story.

So when I get home, I think I’m gonna get an access point (don’t need a router, my main computer acts as a router; or I could just get a router and reconfigure my network) and a wireless card for my bedroom computer, and get rid of the ethernet cables snaking all around the apartment!

Mom doesn’t have a computer of her own, but she’ll be getting one soon. Or more precisely, my brother will be getting it and I’ll be setting it up. She has a fax which is actually a multi-function, so we’ll get a wireless print server for that, too, because she wants to put the computer in a room that doesn’t have a phone line, so the fax/printer can’t be directly connected to the computer. That’s not issue for me, with my laptop; I can just bring the laptop into the room with the fax/printer and plug in the USB cable.

Only knitted a couple of rows today, not worth photographing. More soon. Gotta get this shawl done soon and get started on the whatever-it-is with the pretty ribbon yarn.

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.

Okay, started work at my brother’s office. Yep, he needs organization help alright. I can’t believe I didn’t think to bring knitting on the bus! Last time that’ll happen. Made a little progress on the blue shawl:

Yeah, that’s a second ball you see there on the right: had to frog a couple of inches. Made a mess of it on the plane, tried to fix it and it only looked worse, so I ripped and am reknitting.

I brought my Joy spinning wheel along, and some superwash merino I want to make some headway with, once this shawl is done. But I brought it out this evening to show my Mom, who got a kick out of it.

Although my Mom has never spun and hardly ever knitted, she used to sew a lot and crochet a little, and I definitely get my fiber affinity from her. She had me ironing at 5, sewing buttons on at 6 or 7, making clothes in my teens. Until a couple of years ago when I met the spinnies in my guild, she was the only one I could talk to about what I was making, what problems I was running into, what I was thinking about doing to solve them, and so on. Other people liked the things I made, but their eyes would glaze over if I started discussing the process. She’s always enjoyed hearing about whatever project my mind was buzzing with.

K.