Planning gone awry

Sweaters are best knit in the winter. Hopefully, you can finish them in a timely fashion to be worn while the weather is still cold. And as they near completion that large knitted object acts like a blanket in your lap!

Sweaters should not be knit in the summer.

Plans can go awry. This is why I still have the button band to finish on cloudberry cardigan when the temperature is starting to rise above 80 degrees. Best laid plans.

But isn't it starting to look done? The deadline for completion is August 5th. That is the date by which I must drop the sweater off at the state fair for judging.

Notes on how I shall finish: a hemmed button band with scalloped edge and button holes is not something I've made before. It's intimidating, and I'm not sure I can explain how to do it well enough to put it in a pattern. Oh well. The gist is: knit a few rows and place the button hole stitches on waste yarn. Finish the row, as I go the other direction (probably the WS) I shall provisional cast on for the stitches on the waste yarn. Once I finish the RS of the hem I shall do the picot and turn. On the wrong side I will pick up the provisional cast on to bind off those stitches. Picking up the stitches on waste yarn I will use those as live stitches on the following row.

I fully intend to embroider around the button holes to reinforce them. I'm also crossing my fingers that this method works.

 

Be excellent to each other!

 

Ball pit assemblage & maintenance

Quick notes and then the meat of this post:

-Cloudberry cardigan continues to go slowly. It shouldn't surprise me (but of course it did) that making those Estonian flowers is time consuming (3into9 lace stitches are hard).

Are there too many cookies?

-This weekend was much better than last to turn the oven on. There was definitely the first world problem of too many cookies.

 

Now, to the ball pit!

Rules of the ball pit

1. No jumping (we have downstairs neighbors)

2. No throwing the cat into the ball pit (for obvious reasons, but of course he decided he was totally cool with the ball pit all on his own.)

See the cat that went into the ball pit of his own accord.

3. No food or drink. (Again, obvious)

4. No hanky-panky. (Um... This could just say no bodily fluids. Ew. I've told a few people that asked, if they really wanted to ... They may so long as they wash every single ball by hand.)

After the rules are all the warnings. And they are serious. (My roommate did the math for how tall.)

The rules and warnings of the ball pit were easy to divise. Maintenance?

Apparently, once the balls are in the room ... They go everywhere!

When we first planned the ball pit the idea was to use the furniture as the barriers to the ball pit. This works great. People can sit on the chairs or in the ball pit! You can lay down and use the chair as a head rest.

But what about balls escaping underneath that lovely chaise lounge? Last weekend I did this ...

It was so much fun, and so tedious at the same time. Perfect morning chore. First I pushed most of the balls to one side of the room. Then I placed the window screen in the middle carefully wedging it down past the balls until it rest on the floor. Then all balls on the wrong side of the fence got moved. As I put more balls on the right side (in the picture) tons and tons of balls started rolling out from under the chaise lounge. I would guess 100-150 had gotten lodged up underneath the lounge. There is now a large rectangular rubber maid bin beneath the lounge ... I'd wager that the ball pit is a good 4" higher with no balls hiding.

In a few weeks we'll take the ball pit down (or bag it up). It really isn't as much fun as the weather gets hot. The practice of shoveling balls from under the chaise has shown us the best way to clean up ... Just shovel the balls into bags. Plus, as Minnesotans we've had plenty of practice this winter. We're expert shovelers.

Finally, what everyone wants to know. What does this kind of adventure cost.

There are multiple places on eBay and amazon that sell ball pit balls. Luckily I live in a large metropolitan area close to a large chain of toy stores that all carried the 250 count balls for around $30 a bag. I bought out two stores (4-5 bags each) and picked up a few more from a third store. I have 3,250 balls in the room. Depending on your location and what's available at the time ... You could spend anywhere form $200-$800 on balls.

But this experience has been priceless.

 

Be excellent to each other!

 

 

Perspective

Happy dancing elephants!

See that beautiful unblocked sweater?! The only steps left are blocking, buttons and seaming the armpits. HURRAH!

The last row was done right before the ball pit BBQ: and sadly the blocking room is the library, whose floor is still covered in brightly colored balls. I promise myself, it will be finished soon.

Cloudberry is also nearing completion. The sleeves were finally long enough to attach and yesterday I began the lace charts for the yoke. It's felt like an extremely long haul with this sweater, and I have to remind myself that I have been working on this sweater for a long time! I finished the first version of this sweater in January, took it apart and started over. That means this current version has been on the needles since February. Perspective, it's a good thing.

Two purl rows setting up for the lace.

Ah, perspective.

At 18 I chose to travel across country for college. It was a small school in Bar Harbor, ME called College of the Atlantic. I chose this school for no reason other than, I wanted to go to Maine and it sounded like a great place. (Most of my big life decisions are made this way ... And somehow life seems to work out.)

The location was idyllic. The student body was eclectic, dedicated and all around marvelous human beings. The friends I made were for life.

I remember being so happy.

This is the view from the lawn outside the house in which I lived.

Even when I was in a knee brace for 6 weeks in January.

Especially when we swam in bioluminescence in February. In the frigid cold ocean. Awesome.

Definitely when I would read and nap on the lawn right by the ocean.

 

Recently, I've felt like I did when I was 18.

Last week a friend asked if I was happy. This winter was incredibly hard. My marriage had ended and I was trying to reorient my life.

Now, yes, I'm happy. I've probably been telling people this too often. But in perspective, I'm so much happier that I have a hard time believing my life. I have to reaffirm with myself often that it is so good. There are wonderful people in my life. A group of friends that I really should call family.

Everything is in perspective. No injury has yet been as painful as appendicitis. Nothing has hurt so bad as a marriage ending. And no year was as bad as when I was 10-11.

I hope that you also find happiness.

Be excellent to each other.

 

We're grown-ups now

I began reading XKCD in college. At the bottom of the page are five links to some of the most popular comics. One is about a ball pit.

This comic resonated within, hitting on some basic need. The need for pure and simple pleasure. To smile for hours.

This weekend, we built a ball pit.

There are 3,250 balls in a space about 4.5 x 6' and only 1.5' deep.

Luckily we had a third bedroom that was fairly small and being used as a library. To create the space we blocked off a small section with a large black chair. We left the other furniture in place, a chaise lounge and desk.

In front of the doorway I put a folding rectangular table. Whenever I set up the ball pit again I will get a baby gate.

Once the room was ready we dumped 13 bags of balls (250 balls per bag) in the room.

A bunch of balls rolled under the chaise lounge, but otherwise they have stayed in place.

They definitely rise higher when people sit in the ball pit.

Sadly, the cat has lost his favorite afternoon nap location. I made sure to put him on the chaise lounge the first night we'd built the ball pit.

He may look fine, but a few seconds after the photo was taken he was trying to walk across the balls and freaking out because the ground (aka ball pit) was moving beneath his feet. He hasn't been tempted to enter again since.

Over the weekend my roommate and I hosted a BBQ for friends and got pictures of them falling backers into the balls.

Everyone smiled.

I love being a grown up.

Thank you Randal Munroe for the idea.

Be excellent to each other.

 

Love is in the air

The sheddening has begun. This is the family phrase for that special time of year when the cat loses his body weight in hair. Look at the photo below, look how much he loves this time of year!

What you can't see is the hair that was flying off his rear end while I was brushing him 5-minutes before.

The sheddening coincides with one of my favorite times of year... Getting the bicycle out of storage! A few weeks ago I made the trip down to my local bike shop and had it checked out. Since then I've ridden a few times (when the rain has ceased long enough) and as always I come home with bicycle slobber all over.

These palms have been washed once already. See how much my bike loves me! Often the grease is confined to a smudge on my calf or a little bit on my hand as I hang by bike in the front hallway. The picture above is from a ride to the grocery store: the gear shifter got nudged on my way out the door, the chain fell off as I tried to ride (hadn't realized the shifter had moved) and then I had to touch the chain to put it back on. My bike just wanted the attention.

The knitting also wants attention. I've been trying to give the projects a little love everyday. Earlier this week the shawl got the most love. Now it is finished!

The elephant sweater is also sitting in my affections this week. I made the button holes last night and intend to finish the button band by the end of the week. The whole band is only 16 - 18 rows, and I'm on row 10 now. If i do 2 rows a day I'll have it finished by Saturday!

Plus, this Friday night is drunken knit night at Merlins Rest. I will definitely be feeling the love for another project as I sip a beer and finish those gosh darn white sleeves that are taking forever! Feeling the live, feeling the love. Besides, don't we want to feel the love forever?

I'm with the Yarn Harlot on this one, I'm ready to move onto another field of love.

 

Be excellent to each other!

 

New & repeat lessons

Yarnover was a blast, and then somewhere around lunch my mind was done. It had been an epic week: game night, friend dinner, Yarnover dinner, Yarnover, and then a concert the night of Yarnover. Uffda!

At Yarnover I took Andrea Wong's Introduction to Portugeuse Knitting. The idea was to add another technique of knitting to my arsenal to help stave off tendonitis flare ups. The class was fabulous! The women asked fabulous questions (like how to do more lace techniques and different cast on) and Andrea herself was fun and a joy to learn from. The most complicated bit was tensioning without using the index finger. You tension by slipping the yarn on a hook on a pin attached to your shoulder.

That gets easier with practice, which I have been doing almost everyday for a few rows. I'm not sure if I've released stress on my tendons using this style, but time will tell.

Portuguese knitting was the new thing I learned.

The lesson I've repeated is the yearly sunburn. The family ancestry is entirely Northern European, with very light skin that burns very easily. Knowing this I tend to carry sunscreen in my purse.

Last Sunday was the annual May Day festival thrown by the local puppet theater, On the Heart of the Beast. If you've never been and never seen photos check out their website. It is quite experience. They shut down a street for the pade which consists of: people on modified bikes, people in costume, people playing music on a wagon drawn by people on bicycles, children with puppets, and people of all ages dressed up and on stilts. It's a blast!

Plus, this year my friend brought along her giant bubble wands and special solution to make 3' bubbles. Yay bubbles!

Be excellent to each other!

Inspiration

A few weeks ago was the local yarn shop hop in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. It's always good to begin shopping with some goal in mind. That weekend the goal was to purchase fingering weight yarn that would be inspirational for new designs. The pile in the above picture shows how success I was in completing my goal. 110% successful!

In addition to yarn I've recently picked up two knitting accessories that will be instrumental in the design of new pieces: buttons!

I'm hoping for some fun sweater ideas to crop up while ogling the buttons. It worked last time.

 

Be excellent to each other!