Oh, Deer

Every morning, I go make coffee and get a glass of orange juice and drink my juice while reading emails. This morning, I looked out the window and I saw a black-tailed deer. Sadly, I don't have a decent camera, so I couldn't get a picture. Which is really too bad, because they aren't from around here, they are from the other side of the country. Because of this, I emailed a guy from the Audobon Society, and he told me he has NEVER heard of one of these deer being in my state. This deer was definitely one of these deer, he had the long, black-striped tail, I noticed it because he was different from any deer I ever saw. The theory the Audobon Society guy had was this deer had escaped from a local zoo. I tried asking them, but it wasn't their deer. Now I am horribly curious.

I have actually been doing some knitting. Last weekend was the third samprjón. I guessed the correct answer, which is Saartjes Bootees, but when I emailed Sonja to guess, I stupidly managed to delete the actual text of the guess. (Not sure how that happened!) Anyway, I think Marit guessed first anyway. ;)


I knit them in Rowan Cotton Cashsoft, which is really lovely yarn and I want to make every baby gift ever out of it. It is cotton, angora, and cashmere. This pattern is a fun knit, I struggled with figuring out the long-tail cast-on, but finally Jenna showed me how. So now I have to make the second bootie (actually almost done) and then sew them together.

Regarding my sweater mishap from the last post, I have not ripped it yet. It occurred to me that it is cotton, and cotton sometimes has a way of growing in the wash. I have to go find my swatch or make a new one, and see what washing is going to do to this sweater before I decide how to handle it.

Hmm, still no idea

Well, there is one more day in the samprjón and I have absolutely no idea what this is:



A shield for a fashion-conscious Valkyrie? A colourful hat for the pope? An alternate shell for a large tortoise who has misplaced his?

I hope that last step doesn't need much yarn because this leftover stash yarn is almost gone. I had to rewind the purple yarn to finish this bit. I don't see how Sigga Sif figured this one out so fast, I feel kind of stupid for not having a clue what it is.

This was Christian Bale movie week at our house. We watched The Machinist, which was just brilliant, tragic and disturbing, but brilliant, and The Prestige, which was great fun, and stars David Bowie as Tesla, how cool is that? (Especially for us sciencey girls). It's kind of a fantasy period piece with a great cast and a fun (again, disturbing) plot.

Stitch and Bitch

No, I am not talking about gatherings with coffee and knitting.

Tonight I went to the town meeting after the town budget failed to pass. This is a peculiar New England thing (I guess anyway) where at least in this town everyone argues about the budget. We have two groups, the people who think the elected officials are making sensible decisions about the budget, and a group that just doesn't want to pay taxes, and doesn't care about our great schools and other town services. So there was a whole lot of bitching going on. My favourite speaker was the one who used the Oscar Wilde quote: "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

I used the time to knit the first part of the second mystery samprjón that we are doing.

So far, it bears a strange resemblence to a boat...

Knitters Intuition

It's funny, when I was knitting this I had this feeling it was a baby sweater, and that first thing was a sleeve. So I was really confused about this part in the pattern that said knit the 22 stitches from the other side... I was thinking it was the first 22 stitches that I had put on a stitchholder. (I feel better that someone else made the same mistake, it's not just me.) I should have just gone with my gut feeling, but without seeing the rest of the pattern, I figured I would just keep going blindly along.

Then I saw the instructions for yesterday morning, and I was pretty sure I was right with this baby sweater thing. I google around and found something very similar that was a baby sweater, and resolved to try doing the 2nd 22 stitches in from the other side as a sleeve. Then when I checked my email at lunchtime, sure enough, someone on the list had come up with the answer being a baby sweater, and here is the original pattern.

Looks much better now, doesn't it?


It used 82 g. of stash yarn which brings me up to 5 FO's, 226 g. stash yarn used this year.

Ingi's friends/ex-bandmates are having a baby this summer, so I may give it to them as a gift. I am really happy with how the sweater came out, and I think I will make this for a baby gift in the future when I need one. It was quick to knit and fun. I haven't decided if I will put buttons or a ribbon to close it.

I love my library. I went there to ask them to borrow No Sheep For You (for tips for knitting for my allergic-to-wool husband) from another library. They said with a new book like that, they would just buy it. So they bought it for me, and I can borrow it when it comes in. I'll be the very first person to borrow it, isn't that so cool?

HVAÐ er þetta????

OK, so I am on day 4 of Sonja's mystery knitalong, and I am starting to think I misread the directions...


What the heck IS this? I was originally thinking maybe a tea cosy, but that's not it. Maybe it's a sweater for a mutant baby with two arms on the same side?

Yarn is some kind of New England yarn that was left over from some project or other. It's really more purple than blue, but the evening outside light decided to make it look blue. I think it may be Bartlettyarns.

I was going to post in process pictures this weekend, but it ended up being very busy. Saturday there were supposed to be four of us doing flower arragements for Easter church, but it ended up just being two of us, so that took all morning. (At least I got tons of compliments on Sunday on how pretty the flowers looked). Then we went to Boston because I need to get my birthday boots

adjusted. Years of dancing, playing soccer, and walking have ensured that I have muscular calves that don't really fit boots (why I didn't think of this when I mail ordered boots is beyond me). Luckily Fluevog has the best customer service EVER. They do a great job of doing any shoe adjustments needed on their shoes. And did you know, you can stretch shoes (as long as they are not purple vegetable dyed boots) with a solution of rubbing alcohol and water, you just spray it on and wear them, and they will stretch!

And of course I had to go to Lush while we were on Newbury Street (sorry Jenna for not getting you anything!), where I got this shampoo bar, it smells like licorice. I think it may be my favourite. It's a tie between that and Seanick.

Now I am reading a library book, The Good Fairies of New York. Neil Gaiman did the intro, and it's really fun (in a cheesy light way) so far.