'Twas the night before Christmas...

...and all through the stash, not a needle was stirring... um... wait... no knitting? What? The words are English but they make no sense. And I'm not talking last-minute holiday knitting, either, even though... well, okay, you caught me, I'm doing some last-minute holiday knitting because I was suddenly inspired to make a warm woolly hat and neckwarmer for an aunt I haven't seen in a while, and I have until Sunday to finish. And I still haven't finished DH's socks, so they'll be "around Christmas" socks, and that's okay. He'll still get them.

I did finish this Spiraluscious cowl (Ravelry link) for my mother-in-law, done up in silky soft domestic cashmere from Breezy Meadows cashmere farm:

I've got enough in the skein to make one for myself. This is the softest, most luscious cashmere ever, what cashmere really ought to be, not the stuff coming out of China these days.

When we visited my mother-in-law last summer, I found out she likes angora, wears woolly socks in the winter, and likes blue. So I put all three together and knitted these woolly socks with angora cuffs, using the zig-zag sock pattern from Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn:

Got the woolly, got the angora, just need the blue, which I knew would be hard to match when using two different yarns, so I went with white angora and undyed KnitPicks sock yarn, then used plain ol' food coloring and lemon juice as an acid to dye them in the crock pot:

Which turned them a lovely, mottled blue:

My son is getting a new hat, the Jacques Cousteau hat in KnitPicks Swish, except I overlooked the fact that it's supposed to be a 3x2 rib and did a 2x2. Oh, well, it still looks good, and it's fully reversible this way:


My son's girlfriend is getting a Grace Lace Beret and Basic Fingerless Mitts (Ravelry link) in KnitPicks Gloss. She and my son just spent last weekend giving us one of the best Christmas presents ever: they cleaned out our garage for us. Yeah, that's one special girlfriend. And definitely knitworthy. In fact, she bought some good yarn so she could rel-learn how to knit over Christmas break. She's a keeper!



Once all my holiday knitting is done, it's back to knitting for MEEEE!

If anyone is having a blah day...

...watch this video. It'll cure your winter blues, guaranteed.

It's mine, it's mine, it's... Wollmeise!

It's that yarn that everyone talks about and that turns up on eBay for obscene amounts of cash.

It's Wollmeise!

I'm told by my DH, who speaks a little German, that the proper pronunciation is vol-meez-uh. Which means I've been anglicizing the name totally wrong all this time. ETA: DH told me wrong! It's vol-MY-zuh. And now I can't get the "I'm Mr. Heat Miser" out of my head.

BUT the point is that I didn't spend obscene amounts of money to get it. Our Stephania, our knitting group's indie dyer and yarn pusher ("What'cha got this time, Stephania? Ooh, shiny! WANT!") has a secret, which seems to involve a Firefox plug-in, one of the Wollmeise vendors, and a new baby keeping her up at all hours of the night, including the hours that Wollmeise is listed and gets snatched up almost instantly. By procuring odd lots and grab bags, she's able to bring skeins of the stuff to meet-ups, where it's snarfed up by the rest of us for a rational price instead of an eBay price.

Out of the last lot, I picked this skein, in a rich purply-burgundy:

Now, is Wollmeise really so special that some folks are willing to part with hundreds for a single skein? Ummm... it's very nice sock yarn, but so are Malabrigo and Cherry Tree Hill. It's the super-saturated colors that people are after, and of course other brands offer those, too.

And -- well -- it's getting the Wollmeise bragging rights. To say, yes, it's in my stash. Yes, I actually touched a real skein of the real thing. Yes, I'm in the club! Ooh. Shiny.

Now, what does one do with a skein of THAT wool that everyone wants? After petting and admiring it, I think this one is going to be a lace shawl rather than socks.

A Knitting Scholarship? For real?

Yes! Athletes can have scholarships for their skills, smart students get scholarships for mental prowess, and members of school clubs may have scholarships all their own. Now, for us fiber enthusiasts, there's a knitting scholarship! Read the article on Knitting News about the Beans for Brains scholarships, brought to you by Jimmy Beans Wool and Vogue Knitting.

Why I'm not getting anything done this morning:

'Nuff said.

Guuuuhhhh...

I've been on the couch most of the day. There is a pile of soggy tissues and an empty juice cup on the end table.

Yeah, I've got the creeping crud. Bleagh. All my hand-washing and hand-sanitizing to ward off the things my students bring to school with them, and I was brought down when my DH came home with a cold himself. One stray kiss -- "Oops, sorry, forgot" -- and then another sometime later, and yet another... do they make lip sanitizer? 'Cause I could use some.

It's not the flu, just a rotten cold, rotten enough to make my nose run like a faucet and give me a low-grade fever Wednesday night that made me sleep poorly (I must have slept on and off because stuff happened that I know couldn't have really happened). Thursday I went in to school long enough to return graded exams and deliver a lecture, then went home and curled up with the vaporizer for the afternoon. Thursday night I slept well enough that I thought I'd do okay Friday, reinforced by a 24-hour antihistamine and some aspirin.

Mistake! Bad mistake! I barely staggered through the day, making sure I slathered on the hand sanitizer before grading and handing back papers. Oh, the stupid decisions we make when the brain is distracted by a cold!

Today I've been perched on the couch all day, working on my NaNoWriMo novel (over 7000 words in one day and passed up the 50,000 word mark, hooah!), and knitting. The one consolation to sitting on the couch all day is having some luscious cashmere (beautiful domestic cashmere from Breezy Meadow Cashmere Farm) to work on:

The pattern is Spiraluscious, a lovely little cowl that was designed for fingering-weight yarn, but this laceweight on size 4 needles seems to be getting near gauge.

The bad part? Is when you feel so rotten with a cold that you don't even feel like knitting with cashmere. Cashmere! Yeah, that's a rotten cold.

The kitties have been consoling me all day. I've had at least one cat with me, sometimes two or three, most of the day. Odin is all soft and poofy and orange and has the most luxuriant purr. Belle decided she needed a nap, too -- in my big knitting bag, the little darlin'.

Where in the world...?

Nothing knitting-related, but this little "map where you've been" thingie is kind of fun. Here's where I've been in the U.S. We hit lots of states on our Oregon-Indiana road trips with the kids, and others I've gone to for conferences. I'm not counting Colorado even though I've gone through the Denver airport many times because airports aren't really "there." I'm not sure they even count as reality.


visited 24 states (48%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

And in the world -- hmm, not much of a globetrotter... yet:


visited 2 states (0.88%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Found the destination for my next vacation!

How many knitting blogs are going to post this LOLcat this morning, I wonder?


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Sheepy in NYC

It's not often that The Sartorialist and I agree on what's great in fashion -- once in a while, but sometimes what he calls "fabulous!" I call, "Um, really? And your mother lets you leave the house like that?" (Or once in a while, "Oh, look, the circus is in town!")

But today -- check out this great sheepy sweater with jeans and pearls (little hint on the right -- follow the link to see it all). Yeah, that's fashion I can get on board with.

It's not that easy, Ebenezer Scrooge...

A frank plug:

So, in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge was visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, he reformed his life and his soul was saved forever and always.

Right?

Oh, it's not that easy. Not according to the novel my dear hubby wrote, and is now published by a wee tiny press and out on Amazon.com:The Charity of Ebenezer Scrooge: A Christmas Carol II

Do you really think that Lucifer will let the old miser go to the side of goodness and mercy without a fight? The three ghosts were given one night to reform Scrooge. Now three demons have an entire year to bring him back -- and take his new-found friends and his entire charity down with him.

This is a rip-snorter that will have you up all night to find out what happens next. You can read the first few pages on Amazon. Demons! Ghosts! Romance! Danger! Great writing! What more could you ask for?

Makes a great gift! ::she says, grinning widely::