theraineysisters knitting and so much more

Yesterday was the Minnesota Knitters Guild Yarnover event.  Wow.  That is all I can say.  It was a great day.  I am on the planning committee, and so it is always a nerve wracking wait to get to the big event.  This year was extremely well organized thanks to the committee and our wonderful volunteers, and a slate of teachers that rival any knitting event in the country. 

I got to meet Romi Hill in person (finally) — yay!  I dined with Romi, friend Kerry Palm, Sharon Winsauer (designer of the Heere be Dragone Shawl), Susanna Hannson, Sally Melville, Ginger Luters, with many other notables at other tables — including the wild and crazy Lily Chin!  It was a who’s who of knitting geniuses.  The Vendor Market was stocked with gorgeous yarns and fun knitting supplies to tempt the most jaded knitter.  My dogs were very tired when I got home, but less so than last year.  Thanks to all for a wonderful event that seemed to surpass everyone’s expectations. 

So, all of that inspiration and where does it leave me?  Waiting to be inspired.  My mojo took a bus to Cincinnati.  It is not from lack of trying.  I have had more false starts in the last month than anyone would dare to believe.  Pathetic little attempts at “stash busting.” 

Sally and I now have a running joke about my Cascade Dolce and my Sublime Aran — I’ll mention a project and Sally will say, “I wonder if Dolce would work,” and then she cackles with an evil glee at how clever she is .   Truth be known, I cackle right along with her because it has gotten to the point of being ridiculous.  I have swatched and reswatched.  Nothing is clicking.  Even going to the Vendor Market yesterday did not help.

Both Dolce and Sublime are gorgeous yarns, so I am not placing the blame there…I just can’t get a project to take root.  Even my Ode to Joy has encountered a terminal illness that has required amputation.  The problem was with the fit — it didn’t.  At all.  No hope.  So, I decided to convert my Ode to Joy jacket into a vest.  When I got home from Yarnover last night, I surgically removed the completely finished sleeve.  Let’s hope the patient can be saved!! 

So, I am going to try to salvage Ode to Joy, continue swatching (!), and hope that when I hit the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in (less than) two weeks with Surly, I am overcome with inspiration!

Surly did not think the cheesy peep diorama was created by moi, so I must clarify for our readers.  I did indeed put together the “line o’ peeps,” and I knit the little project that the pink peep is holding.  What a gripping life I do lead!

Knitting peeps are my favorite!!

Happy Easter to one and all!!

Sleeves are fun.  Going to the dentist is fun.  Tax time is fun.  You think I’m kidding, right?  Au contraire!!  My Ode to Joy sleeve is going fine: enough going on with the color changes and decreases to not be boring.  Last trip to the dentist, my youngest daughter got her braces off and looks grown up and gorgeous, and my taxes are organized and ready for the tax guy! 

I stopped by The Yarnery yesterday and picked up the latest Rowan Magazine (#45).  Quite beautiful!  It has a combination of Asian-inspired designs and hippy flashbacks.  The hippy stuff is not my taste.  Sally liked the cap-shawl inspired wrap with sleeves in Kidsilk Haze called Honeysuckle.

OMG!  The Bohus is absolutely gorgeous!  Congratulations, and Happy Bloggiversary!  No fanfare this year, but we are both happy to have been blogging with you for the past three years! 🙂

I already AM a wiener!  I won a book tonight at the Knitters Guild meeting — it’s a really lovely book with some great patterns. 

Knitting Classic Style by Veronik Avery

It has a little bit of everything: sweaters, vests, socks, gloves, wraps, styles for all ages, fair isle, lace, cables, beads.  There are several patterns that piqued my interest.  Woo Hoo!!

Veronik has done a lot of designing for Interweave Knits, and she has several designs that you would (might?) recognize:

So, it was a nice St. Patty’s Day!  Hope yours was great, too, and sober!

PS — the blog title refers to an old cartoon that was one of my favorites.  It shows a hot dog mailing an envelope that reads…yes, you guessed it, “You may already be a wiener!”

My Ode to Joy is coming along nicely.  The back is done, and I started the second front.  That is all.

Okay, so we have hit a boring patch.  That always allows us to fill in with other crap explore new and exciting alternatives!  Here are some pun-tastic jokes to keep you laughing (or retching as the case may be) as you read the latest stock market reports:

1.  The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2.  I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

3.  She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4.  A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5.  The butcher backed into the meat grinderand got a little behind in his work.

6.  No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

7.  A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8.  A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

9.  Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10.  Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11.  A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

12.  Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13.  Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, ‘You stay here, I’ll go on a head.’

14.  I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15.  A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’

16.  A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, ‘No change yet.’

17.  A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

18.  It’s not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn’t have the balls to do it.

19.  The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

20.  The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

21.  A backward poet writes inverse.

22.  In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.

23.  When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

24.  Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

Groan!    

…is nowhere to be found in Minnesota!

We got quite a bit of snow yesterday (during evening rush hour, thank you) and the wind chill today is -14 degrees.  Spring may be coming up on the calendar but it sure looks a long way off from my window!

To seek spring, I’ve turned to my knitting.  Sally’s Ode to Joy is so joyful and bursting with beautiful spring-like colors, that somewhere along the line I decided to exchange my autumnal colorway to Sally’s Cape Cod.   Candace was very accommodating.  I started this a couple of weeks ago. 

It is a slow knit.  Sally described this in detail, but to recap — you are always knitting with three tiny strands of yarn.  The color change is created by changing out one strand at a time to the next color in sequence: 1-1-1 changes to 1-1-2, then 1-2-2, and so on.  It is difficult to knit without looking because you must be certain that you don’t miss any strands as you are knitting.  It is knit on 3.25 mm needles.  The novelty of changing the colors wears off quickly, long before you are done.  BUT, after seeing Sally’s lovely sweater and the desire to wear it this spring, I will plod on.

Heaven save me from Ravelry!  Again, I have been sucked in, but gladly.  I just received a package from Needle Arts Book Store.  If you order the Peacock Feathers Stole pattern (the triangular shawl converted to a rectangular stole) and two balls of Exquisite, you receive an additional ball of yarn.  I wanted four balls, so by buying the pattern, I actually saved money, kind of (shopping logic is great I tell you!). 

Exquisite completely lives up to its name.  It is gorgeous: 50% mulberry silk and 50% merino wool, laceweight, 500 m to 50 gms ($8.50/skein). 

Exquisite Yarn in Slate Blue

It has the luster of silk and is incredibly soft.  The color is amazing.  I think it is much higher quality than Zephyr Merino and Silk, which I have used and loved for lace shawls.  This is nicer.

I’m off today and no one is home — yay!  — but I am doing laundry and cleaning bathrooms — boo!  

Off I go to the salt mines, but may get a little fun stuff done, too!

AND, go read Yarn Harlot!  Been there, done that…over and over again!

Check this out from Moosie:
Exquisite is 50/50 merino wool/mulberry silk. Zephyr is 50/50 merino wool/tussah silk. Two different types of silk with different characteristics. Tussah is from the Antheraea pernyi moth’s cocoon while mulberry is from the bombyx mori moth’s cocoon. Tussah worms feed on oak leaves while bombyx worms dine on mulberry tree, wormspit.com gives a lot more info about silk in all it’s different forms.

In response to Wendy who asked, “As always, you gals are an inspiration!  I’ll be interested to hear if there was much yarn left over.  Dare I ask what size you’re knitting?”

The Ode to Joy Kit comes in 2 sizes: small and medium/large.  Sally made the small size and had some yarn left over.  I am making the medium and will need to lengthen the sleeves.  Usually I make the jumbo size in everything.  In this case, however, I decided to make it to fit a bit smaller and cropped like it was designed — it would have taken way more yarn and a lot of refiguring of the pattern to remake it into a larger sweater.  I will make a dress or two to go with it and wear it to work.  When I make a sweater to wear with pants, I make it huge to get to where it needs to go…but this will be a very short jacket on me.