Kiss My Knits!

D’oh! I knew it would be tight on the yarn, but not this tight. I’m not gonna have enough to finish that second sleeve, I can tell. Crud! And I got this yarn from a store in Fort Mill, a ways away from here. It was on sale because they were going to stop carrying yarn. It’s not looking good for picking up more. Darn it.

Well, to offset the negative, let’s accentuate the positive. (Now I’ll be humming that song all day.) This graphic is awesome. It makes me giggle every time I see it. And I’m not a giggler.

I have a few nifty craft ideas that I can’t mention because I’m in a swap now, and depending on who my swappee is, these crafts might fit the bill for gifts.

No school tomorrow, so Em and I will be stopping by Mom’s in the early afternoon. I may also be able to sleep just a little bit late. Let’s hope!

I’m participating in a swap called Fiber Godmother. Here’s the required questionnaire.

Fiber Godmother Questionnaire

I worked a DragonRealms party tonight (actually, still am, there are always people who will stay to close the joint) but my GM character got caught in the same time warp issue that got some player characters. I’ve only now written for restoral, since I can function this way and a lot of players can’t, and I don’t want to butt in front of anyone. However, until my character is restored, she’s kind of… bland. I manually set my gender to female and put on some clothing, but because I kept getting comments about my male/female inconsistencies, I finally had to make myself a pin. So until I can have the flotsam and jetsam of 10 year of GMing returned to me, this is Tvini:

>look tvini
You are GameMaster Tvini Mielsadottir, a Human Commoner.
You have clear colored eyes. You are bald, with pale skin.
Tvini has transcended time.
You are clean shaven.
You are in good shape.

You are wearing a long burlap sack cinched at the waist with a rope and a metal pin reading, “Kiss me, I’m corrupted!”.

Great party, by the way. We have some really inventive players. This is the first time I’ve run arm wrestling, and it was a really lively contest. The party was really a blast!

Done!

This is that blue single I showed earlier this week, plied. I first plied it on Sunday, but I was in a hurry and did a lousy job. It was incredibly loosely plied. No amount of setting the twist was going to fix it. So I wound up re-plying it. In other words, I wound it onto a ball and ran it through the wheel again to twist it more. Much better! This is the second time I’ve had to do this, so clearly plying is an area I need to work on. Plying, for those who aren’t fiber geeks, is when you take two or more strands of fiber and twist them together. It makes a stronger yarn, and one that in theory doesn’t pill as much.

I had some of one bobbin left over, and rather than Navajo ply it onto the end of the skein, I decided to leave it as a single. This is part of what I spun at Simucon, which explains why the thickness and twist is all over the map. I actually think I like this yarn better as a single, though, colorwise. I worry that the plied is too random in its color shifts and may be a bit busy. Well, this was supposed to be a learning experience, so I call this a success, since I learned!

The final skein turned out to be 152 yards. Plenty to make a nice scarf or something with. , this yarn came from the wool that you gave me when we met up in Raleigh. You want I should make you something? It seems only fair.

A word of warning, though. In addition to gift projects for the other loved ones in my life, you’d be behind the Jayne line, which exploded last night as forward-thinking Browncoats geared up for Christmas. It now stands at 30 hats in line, including orders from this morning. (Brown Sheep, send me my #$*# yarn!) So you’d get your gift in, maybe… 2010. You can wait, right?

Because I’m just too proud, here’s the progression:

Big time fun. I look forward to doing this again!

I’m continuing to walk more, and carried mail up to the post office a couple of miles away yesterday. I don’t know that I’ll do that today, as kits and finished hats are going out, and I don’t have a good system for toting packages. I need a Santa sack. Or a shopping cart. Although probably our neighbors wouldn’t be thrilled to see a raggedy-lookin’ woman pushing a shopping cart up the street. Eh, maybe I’ll just drive today and work it out later.

Today I got a nice note, complete with photo, from a serviceman in South Korea who just got his Jayne hat. It really brightened my day, and it reminded me that I never shared the following bit of awesomeness!

Sometimes people send me art or goodies along with the nice letters and photos of themselves in their hats (note to self: stop back-burnering gallery already!). You should click on the pic to see a larger version, because it’s just too good to miss. I don’t want to use the customer’s name without her permission. I did get permission to post the pics. This is nice work, and I hope she will find a way to incorporate her art and creativity into her professional career.

This was part of a hat request that I just LOVED. When she got her finished hat, she was nice enough to write, “Ahhh! The box! The letter! Everything! It’s so beautiful! I love it! My friends will all be jealous. Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” I feel good that I brightened her day as much as she brightened mine. There are a lot of nice Browncoats in the world!

Today I’m putting together kits, but also driving up to Davidson. In spite of promises from the mill that they’d have their stuff out last week, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of my yarn. I almost never run low on earflap-red, because less of it goes into every hat, but I’m touching bottom in my Jayne inventory. No worries, it’ll all work out. Davidson always has my red. At least I can have confidence that if I buy more red, the red I already ordered will surely come in. It’s like losing something and buying a replacement. The old item turns up once you’ve already spent money. Or maybe that’s just me.

At the Needlecraft Center in Davidson, they have Koigu and Lorna’s Laces, but I’m feeling I can resist their siren call. After all, I’ve only had time to knit a few more rows on the Regia Bamboo socks pictured. However, I’ve finished sleeve one of Emily’s sweater, so that’s fine. It won’t kill me to wait longer to work on my own stuff – that’s what moms through the ages have done, isn’t it?

I managed to get a blister on my right hand while digging up volunteer trees in the side yard, but I don’t think it’ll affect my ability to knit. I’m going to do a some DragonRealms work, then test that theory. I’m still ahead of the line, and I’d like to keep it that way!

Hats up for: CA, PA, TX.

We didn’t want to belabor this point until it came up in conversation again, but our curiosity got the better of us. We asked Emily what this girl says to her when she’s making fun of her.

Emily says that the girl kisses her a lot. But she also says that when she tells her to stop, she does stop. I asked if her other friend kisses her a lot too, and she said yes, but she liked that.

Um. Okay.

Now I’ve gone from pissed to confused. It’s so hard getting good answers out of this child sometimes.

So that girl that they put in my daughter’s class because they’d played together on the playground, so my daughter would have a friend in class? Emily says that she makes fun of her. And that it makes her feel sad. We ended on an up note, as I asked if she had people she plays with who don’t make fun of her (I knew she did) and we talked about that, too.

Still, though.

So very angry.

So, so very angry.

But on Friday! Er… good things come to those who wait?

Anyway, here’s this week’s almost all-Emily awesomeness report.

I am consantly losing my keys. Today I was going to pick up Emily from school a few minutes early, but instead, I made it just in the nick of time, right before they stuck her in the lost and found box.

My keys are currently on a nondescript metal ring. I used to have this cool little pewter ball of yarn on them, courtesy of , but it finally got lost after breaking off one too many times in my pocket. (I did love it, though, Mel!)

What I need is something that will stand out. Something colorful. Maybe even gaudy.

Can you find me a key fob that fits that bill? Non-pornographic, please, but noticeable. I’m tired of losing my keys. I await your comments!

My dad rocks! Do you know why?

Yatta!
Yep, we got this little baby. This is the second TV in a row that Dad has gotten for us after our old one gave up the ghost. He gave us a wad o ‘cash and sent us on our merry way. I looked everywhere for the TV we wanted, and couldn’t find it anywhere except Circuit City.

Circuit City is always the last resort because of the ill-considered and callous firings of long-time sales staff they did earlier this year. The only place in town I was able to find any Panasonic flat-screen TVs at all was a local hh gregg, and it was 4 inches smaller than the 30 inch we wanted, and it was turned off in the store, and nobody seemed to know anything about it. Three strikes! So I was forced to go to Circuit City. They happened to be having a Labor Day sale and had $200 off the price of the 32″ model, so that decided it. I felt a little better about my purchase after reading that their firings were coming back to bite them in the butt. How the heck they didn’t see that coming, I don’t know.

I got the assistant manager to help me, had it loaded into the car, and it was set up very quickly by my geek husband. Emily proclaimed it to be a very pretty TV, and “soooo nice!” She commented on its niceness a couple of times through the evening, probably because we put it to immediate use for her, as pictured to the right. Is it normal for an eight-year-old to say they want to see Connie Stevens?

We’re thrilled, and have been going through our DVD collection to enjoy the wide screen beauty. And do you know what looks better on this TV?

EVERYTHING.
THANKS, DAD!!

(Jayne hats up for: S. Korea, UK, CA)