Such a cheaky monkey.

Four weeks ago today, a dear friend and exceptionally talented knitter lost her fight with lung cancer. How talented? She was a professional knitter. She knit the sample projects at Loop. She knit a hat for a movie. She made this!



It's deeply sad to think that Amy will never come to another knitting, that she's really gone. Amy was the heart and soul of our group, the person who roped in strangers at concerts, parks and just walking down the street to come be part of our group. For every death, there is a sense that it is too soon, too unfair, but she was just so incredibly lively and wonderful and memorable that it seems particularly keen.

Amy had a giant yarn stash, a million books and magazines, and quite a few unfinished projects. Her family proposed that the projects be divvied up amongst her knitters for completion. Knitting was a great source of joy for her, and going through her yarn, taking on her projects, dreaming up new destinies for the yarn in her stash -- it just feels like a wonderful way to honor her life.

My mission, which I chose to accept:



Complete Amy's Monkey socks (ravelry). Note: I have never knit a sock before. I am counting entirely on Jenn to be my sock guru on this project. She suggested a knitalong. This might be possible, if only because I am already 50% ahead. :) These had been designated for Amy herself, so on completion, I am free to keep them myself (if they are mangled and horrible), or gift them to another knitter (if Amy's good example and Jenn's direction guide me to a pleasing outcome.)

Her stash was a mix between huge loads of yarn, and single skeins. (I laughed to see that Amy also did not dispose of her skein ends!) I took these two skeins:



I figured on making something for the nub with the yellow cotton. The purple (maybe it's more merlot, actually) Koigu was too pretty to just leave, but I don't have a project in mind yet. And then, for myself:



Three skeins of Blue Sky Suri Merino in lovely, lovely crimson. It's nearly 500 yards, for which a suitable project must be found. Perhaps a wrap? I also took her bird project bag, which is very nearly the official bag of the group, and something I considered picking up many times. I feel very lucky to be carrying Amy's now.

WIP Wednesday: Toast

It's been about eighteen billion years, but it's time for another WIP Wednesday. As I'm sure we all agree, the best time to knit a pair of wool/silk armwarmers is in the exact middle of summer when it is sweltering out. Wait. No, that's dumb. Yep, I'm doing it anyway.




It might be the hottest time I can ever remember in my life, but I'm knitting a pair of Toast in Koigu Mori. That's a fancy way of saying, "I'm knitting a tube I plan to put on my arms." Seriously? The fact that this is a pattern is almost sad, but there it is. Knit an eleven inch long tube. I switched out the weight of the yarn, so I could use my fancy sock weight blend of silk and wool. The yarn is beautiful to work with (soft, pretty, and shiny), but I'm not as thrilled with the flecks of colors like I thought I would be. I think I'm a solid or semi-solid kind of girl at heart.

I'd write more about my WIP and how absolutely dumb it is to knit a tube right after I finished knitting a tube scarf, but I'm literally melting in my seat right now. (Normally, I'd beat a person up for using literally in such a non-literal fashion, but I believe my skin has bonded with the leather chair I'm sitting in, so I might have really literally melted. Argh, stupid heat wave!)

As you can see from the East Coast weather reports, this is why I'm writing so much about gardening. What are you all doing? A lot of my favorite bloggers who are also friends seem to have disappeared off the face of the Earth!

Gardening Again

Do you like how Helen is totally delusional? She thinks I'm doing things like gardening or crafting, when all I really do is play Farmville and other Facebook games every night. Of course, now that Paul is not working nearby for a month or so, I'm considering graduating to a much bigger time suck such as World of Warcraft. (Back in the day, before my son was born, I would have been playing this obsessively while Paul was away. Luckily, my baby helps prevent me from being too much of a gigantic nerd.)

However, this does not mean that my blog is dead. While I might not be gardening, I certainly send my child and husband out there to garden. I might or might not shove them outside and tell them to produce me tasty snacks. They failed me on raspberries this year, simply by not telling me that we all need to experience a year where my raspberry plant does nothing besides grow. Apparently, next year the darned thing will produce berries. It had better, or it'll be sorry.

My strawberries are also not producing much this year, but flourishing. They are rapidly outgrowing their large pot and we've placed several smaller pots for the seedlings to land on.





Our watermelon plants are doing much better at producing edible fruit. We have two rather nice watermelons, both slightly less than the size of a cantaloupe but growing rapidly. We have seven or so others ranging from the size of a gumball to the size of a lemon.





And our bell pepper plants (all three) have managed to produce one nice pepper between them.





That's all on the gardening front for now, but I'll keep you guys updated. Also, keep an eye open on this blog. I might have been sneaking some knitting time recently, so there might be something some Wednesday soon! No promises, though. With Paul out of state and the heat wave murdering my energy levels, I can't promise to do anything more than garden virtually (Farmville) as mentioned above.

WIP Wednesday: Am I even still knitting?

It's a good thing that Jenn actually does and writes about gardening, knitting, sewing, photography ... my one and only craft has fallen to the wayside as I have gotten busy crafting another project, with a nine month timeline.

But, there has been some action, and Anna asked for an update, so my WIP in all its glory....



It's been a work-in-progress forever. But, it's a reasonably simple pattern, once I decided I had gotten past "the hard part". Now it actually has sleeve holes, instead of just being draped over my shoulder to give the impression of a sleeve! It's just stockinette for inches and inches now. Bryan is very good about encouraging me to go to knitting, even when I'm tired. And I don't have wine to slow me down anymore, so I should just shoot through this like a rocket ship!

Which project will be completed first? Only time will tell!

Carrots!

I must confess, when it comes to things like gardening, I'm never quite sure whether to post in my 'life' blog or my craft blog. Whenever I consider folding the two together, however, I realize how much I tend to babble on about N. While I love my son and think the sun rises and sets on him, I'm not quite sure that you do too, you know? Do you really need to hear about his Easter egg hunts? I think I have decided, in the meantime, to define gardening as a 'craft' though really it's a hobby. I know that's a strange definition, but from what I can gather from the blogs I read, you crafters are in love with gardening.

So, while peas are still coming from our garden (though the plants are not doing well), a few of the carrots have started showing signs of being ready for eating! Paul and N pulled one from our garden and brought it to me to admire.



When I asked him to take about eight hundred photos of it, N got peeved and chucked the carrot at me.



I guess I kind of deserved that.

We still need to pull a few more carrots from our garden, but that should be soon. Sadly, it is so hot out that Paul is about 95% uninterested in cooking, so I'm thinking I won't get my roasted carrot-avocado salad soon.

In good (?) news, our watermelon plant appears to be overtaking our garden.

I'm Totally Screwing With My Site

Since Blogger decided to update their templates, I decided to update my blog. I'm still not in love with the design, but it's both closer and farther from what I wanted. I feel like I'm losing a lot of the simplicity of my blog, while adding features I want to see (such as the Tweet This bit). We'll see how much I change it over the next couple of weeks/months.

Now, I've only got one link today, so I'll make it count. I've taught numerous people how to knit, and I've converted a hefty portion of my female family and friends to knitterdom. However, I'm a lousy, lousy teacher. I've got no patience for people, no ability to explain clearly (or even speak clearly), and a lack of understanding about how people even make mistakes which I don't normally make. To be fair, I'm usually lousy at learning things from people too. It's why I learn most of my crafts from really clear books.

However, over the course of the last year, two of my 'pupils' have made mistakes in knitting that, if I were a better teacher, probably would never have occurred. The latest instance led my cousin to admit that she had been purling incorrectly for ages. I want her, and all other people who make mistakes at knitting, to feel better about this. One of the knitting blogs I follow, a blog with nearly a thousand followers, recently admitted that she's been doing yarnovers incorrectly forever. I admire this type of post because it's the type the knitting world needs. The one where you read it and go, "Shoot, I've been doing it incorrectly as well. At least I didn't have to discover that in front of a whole class of people."

Maybe if you're making mistakes in your knitting and you fixed those mistakes, you should blog about it. I will definitely try to think of some to add myself, but my first piece of advice is: "Don't hand your lacy baby blanket to your mother to let her count the stitches because she'll drop it all off the needles and then you won't know how to fix it, so you'll just pick it up as best possible and it'll have a giant knotty hole in the middle of all the lacework."

Remember Last Summer

You remember last summer when I posted about how during summers all knitting blogs shut down? At the time, I was doing sewing. This year, I feel like I'm totally overweight and I need to diet, so I don't want to sew garments. However, I am gardening! Sort of. My husband and son are the real gardeners.



The things in our garden that interest me the most are our raspberry plants, our watermelons, our pumpkins, and our peas. Of all of those, only the peas have come about. A few weeks ago, while out in the garden, I noticed that our peas were putting out shoots all over the place.



At that point, I bugged Paul to do what we should have done much much earlier -- put in stuff for them to climb and water them more often. This did some good, but we can clearly do much better next year. We only had two really great plants this year, and at least three plants just didn't make it beyond the early stages.

Today, for the first time, Paul and I (and my cousin and her children) reaped the benefits of Paul's hard work!



We picked pods off the plants and opened and snacked. Delicious and sweet and wonderful. I am thinking I might pick a few to open and saute in some butter and salt, but they barely need it! My cousin's youngest loved them and happily gobbled up all the contents of the pods I opened. When I asked her to smile for the picture, she could barely acknowledge me as she scrabbled for the peas in her mom's hands.

I'm going to mark the peas as a success this year. Check back later to see if I've got an update on our carrots which are looking promising! I've been itching to make Smitten Kitchen's Roasted Carrot and Avocado salad.

What are you guys up to this summer?

I Am A Witch and I'm Awesome

Sunday was a witching night. That's right -- I took my Slytherin self out on a witchy witchy evening and I went around being ambitious, sneaky, evil, and awesome. I'm not saying I communed with He Who Must Not Be Named or anything, but when you're in the Slytherin house, you can be just a little evil, you know!

I might have insulted a few muggles and some Hufflepuffs (boring jerks). I might have cursed a few people. I might have eaten all the berries I could find without sharing them with my family. Oh, let's not pretend any more, my cohorts. The first thing I did when I went out was that I found some lousy do-gooder Gryffindor to fight. They're also so 'courageous' and 'honorable'. Well, check out this jerk trying to cast some spell on me when I wasn't looking.



I was checking to make sure innocent ducklings weren't going to be caught in the crossfire, and he straight out attacked. I know that it isn't usually in the Slytherin image to be protective of baby ducklings, but I hate people, not ducklings! And he took ruthless advantage of the fact.

I'm happy to report I won the fight and I celebrated most joyously by being super witchy.

Babbling Around The Internet

So, OMG, I miss you! No, I totally do. I love to talk, talk, talk. If you ever meet me in person (and haven't already), you'll be like, "Liar." Because when I first meet a person, I normally just stare at them suspiciously and maybe give a few nervous laughs or sentences here or there. But, then, after a while, when we become friends, you'll be all, "Okay, shut up. I've heard that story fifty times before, Kitten."

Part of having a blog if fulfilling this need to chatter on about nothingness. When I don't blog, it all builds up until when I talk to friends, I start to just babble about anything and nothing. When Paul calls me at night, I jabber on about dreams I've had, thoughts I have about television shows I've seen, books I've read, pictures I've edited for Flickr, et cetera. By posting to the blog, I get a small part of that nervous chatter out of me and it leaves me calmer. Sometimes, when I don't post to this blog, and then suddenly I post elsewhere, I spill all my stories out there. Like, Helen went on her honeymoon, and she said I could post a recipe to her food blog. I did, and then I chattered on and on about my obsession with eating ice! (So obsessed with eating ice, guys!) Mind you, that post was edited down from my original twenty billion paragraphs about eating ice and my pregnancy. It really was that long. Okay, not literally, but...

Anyway, I thought I should post to get back into the hang of things. Since I'm crafting about zero hours a week due to another cold invading our house, I thought I'd blog some of the links I've been saving up!

Let's start with three links for babies!

I always dream of the day I have a little girl I can dress up with homemade knits and sewn items. I know it'll never happen. First, I want a little girl to dress up too much, which means that should I have more children, they will definitely all be male. Second, if I have a girl, I'll just spend my life savings on items from all the cutest stores because I can't even walk by Janie and Jack now without looking at their adorable dresses for little baby girls. However, I admire and envy mothers who do this very thing. For instance, Little Purl of the Orient makes her daughters the cutest sweaters ever. She probably makes beautiful sugar cookies too and throws awesome birthday parties!

One of the things I don't want to do for a baby, but wish I knew someone who would do, is make modern gorgeous baby quilts. Look at Sew Inspired's mermaid quilt. I love the colors, I love the theme, and I love Heather Ross fabrics. If I saw this baby in real life, I would totally steal its quilt. Sorry, baby.

Now, in case you don't have a girl, like me, you're probably wondering, don't moms on the internet ever make stuff for their boys? The answer is clearly no, but I'm going to lie to you and say yes. For instance, they can make them these awesome 90 minute shirts from made. Are you tired of dressing your boy in grey, navy blue, or brown? Feel free to liven up their wardrobe with colors of your own choosing! Of course, you could also make them a navy blue, grey, or brown shirt too, but those are a dime a dozen in boy clothing land.

Okay, I'll try to be back soon with more links, if nothing else. I really am missing the chattering!

I Heart Winning

Not so recently, Chappy's Mom hosted a contest in which she was trying to encourage people to watch Chuck. I already watch it, but, due to that, I was prepared to take her quiz and answer her questions! I did so and she politely wrote to me, right after Nathan's latest asthma flare, that I had won the contest.

That seemed the ideal time to check out what the prize was. No, really. I entered the contest solely for my love of Chuck and to spite people who disagreed with her Ravelry forum post. That's the way I roll -- entering contests to spite people who will never realize they've been spited.

It turns out I won twelve(!!!!11!) skeins of Sublime yarn, a knitting DVD, and season one of Chuck on Blu-Ray. I was pretty psyched, especially since I had expected the prize to be something like a skein of dishcloth cotton. Not that I don't love dishcloth cotton! But, beautiful cashmere, silk, merino yarn?

Mmmmm.



I shall say it again.

Mmmmm.



That was me gloating, by the way.

Thank you, Deb. I highly encourage you all to check out her blog(s). She's got nice photographs and she can write nicely. You all know that I don't have much higher praise than that for a blog.