December? It Can't Be!

I have been living real life big time in the last few months. My knitting has suffered and also benefited from it. By "real life" I mean suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, taking arms against a sea of troubles, going through the heartache and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Forgive me Mr. Shakespeare. It's been a rough few months in my life and that's enough said about that. On to knitting . . . and not knitting.

Lo and behold the vanilla vanilla socks got finished. That's one good use for ER waiting room, hospital and nursing home visits. The trouble is those visits do not lend themselves to the concentration needed for Kitchenering ("Kitchenering"?) the toes. Too many interruptions. So no pictures of the completed object yet. Further, the 2009 beach socks are moving right along. They should be completed before it's time for beach socks 2010, I should hope. The Butt Ugly Shrug is coming along as well. Lots of time in front of the TV hunkered down knitting. It has given me a good excuse to order the "blocking blocks" from KnitPicks. They should be here any day now and I can block the body and sleeves, sew them together and pick up stitches for the ribbed collar and band.

I rejoined Netflix, only one movie at a time this go round, and I bought a Roku box (since I have no X-Box, Play Station 3, Blu-ray or Ti-Vo) so I can stream movies to my television screen. I'm in movie heaven which makes for mucho knitting time.

The bathroom renovation is almost complete. The main part, the shower room I designed, is totally complete. I love my shower! My next water bill, not so much.

My studio is gradually being filled. I am not liking the wake-up call it is giving me on my yarn stash. I was better off not knowing. I have enough sock yarn to to keep all four of my sock machines humming and two Magic Loops at a time singing forever. I have just begun to move the sweater, jacket, shawl and afghan projects including ones bought as kits. OMG!!! All I have to say about the number of those is I'd better get to knittin'!

I'll leave you with a picture of the chair in which I plan to sit while knitting the winter away in my studio. I just ordered it. Draped in an afghan, a DVD or audio book playing and the knitting should be easy.
Bona Fide Knitter

Woes and UFOs

Can it be a whole month ago that I last wrote? The short month of September seems to have flashed by in a flurry of UFOs and a load of lackluster days. Suffice it to say I've had better months.

My knitting is looooong suffering. The Seaside Shrug, the one I refer to as "butt ugly," has not been touched in many weeks. It was supposed to be finished by now and would be but for the sprained thumb and wrist I mentioned a month ago. Finished, it would have been a warm comfort this brisk fall morning. The needlepoint I started when I couldn't knit remains unfinished as well. I was going at a good clip and then we returned home for what was to be a very brief period before returning for our last Cape Cod retreat for 2009, the month of October. I unpacked the needlepoint for a little show and tell with a friend at lunch a few days after we were home and returned it to the beach tote in preparation for the next trip. It appears the next trip will not be happening this year. Spouse is sick. We are in extreme woe mode.

All the news isn't bad. The vanilla vanilla socks have grown by leaps and bounds this past week. And even better than that, when I returned from Cape Cod my STUDIO was complete! Yes, the garage conversion was done, finished, ready for occupancy. A trip to Ikea for the beginning of shelves and such, a lot of planning and a little moving stuff in happened. However, the room is so nice, so clean and uncluttered, I hesitate to mess that up.

While spouse unloads the van I take pictures of the room.

A little BEFORE and AFTER:

What was once a garage door . . .

. . . is now a bay window.

See all the Before, During and After pictures in my Kodak album.

Bona Fide Kniter

The Days Dwindle Down

. . . to a precious few. September, November . . .

The lyrics to September Song seem appropriate today. I can't believe summer 2009 is, for all intents and purposes, over. Some children are already back in school, a great number started today and some lucky ones won't begin until after Labor Day, as it was way (way, way) back in my day.

The weather here in Brewster, on Cape Cod, is gorgeous today. Seventy degrees, sunny, not humid and a day to read on the beach, or knit beach socks. I will be doing neither. After a trip to the library and writing a few notes, there was not enough time between meals to get it all done. So I visited Town-Ho instead.

Okay, let me explain. Town-Ho Needleworks is a needlepoint shop up the road from here. That phrase has certainly taken on a different meaning in the years since the shop was named. Anyway, it is a wonderful needlepoint shop with rooms of eye candy for the needlework inclined. However, I was amazed at the prices. Years ago, when needlepoint was my obsession of choice, a fine needlepoint kit with painted canvas and Paternayan wool sold for $18. Now a similar canvas costs $45 or more and doesn't include the yarn!

After much restraint I bought a little kit I happened to find at a reasonable price. I had missed it on the first go-round. The second time, while fingering through a container of small kits, all of a sudden the flip flops caught my eye. Flip flops seem to be my theme this summer.



I wondered would I remember how to needlepoint. It's like riding a bike. Once the tapestry needle was in hand and threaded it all came back to me. I am not even tempted to wield it like sewing toes on socks. Maybe that is because it has been so long since I finished a pair of socks I've forgotten how to Kitchener.


One important fact I haven't mentioned is that I sprained my left thumb and right wrist (Don't ask.) soon after I got here and find it painful to knit. Now I have a little project to do until those ouchies feel better and I can get back to Beach Socks 2009, the ongoing Vanilla Vanilla Socks and the Butt Ugly Shrug. (Remember that one?)

Bona Fide Knitter

Traveling By Train . . . sometimes the only way to fly

Morning rain today and the promise of thunder boomers during the day. Temperatures are forecast to rise to near records in the next few days with appropriate hair-wrecking humidity. Yuk! I need to be on Olde Cape Cod.

Yesterday I had a break in the humdrum and took a train Washington, DC, to meet my BFF from high school for our annual mini high school reunion which includes just the two of us. We went to the Kennedy Center to see The Color Purple (again). This time starring Fantasia (winner of American Idol a few seasons ago). She was fantastic. I've seen the show three times now and BFF has seen it four or five times. She's lost count. The music still gets to us.

I decided to take the train instead of driving which was a brilliant idea--except for the price of parking at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. Thirty-two dollars!!! Yes, $32 for short term parking over four hours. It cost as much as my train ticket to Washington, DC! I'm still glad I took the train instead of driving. I got special summer pricing on the roundtrip tickets ($66) by purchasing in advance online. But next time I might not even drive to the station. I'll take the commuter train to the station. It will allow me more knitting time. I knitted and listened to a book on my iPod and I was in DC in no time. The plain vanilla vanilla socks have really taken shape . . . at long last.

BFF picked me up at the station and off we went to the Kennedy Center. I was pleased to stick a little shopping in before curtain time. There was a vendor stand in the lobby selling marvelous wooden figures by Cheryl Olney trading as Louise's Daughter. I bought a pin to remind me of the day. It's me in my best color, dancing in "Miss Celie's Pants."

After the show we had a marvelous, leisurely dinner at McCormick and Schmicks. Green Apple Martinis and fried calamari with three dipping sauces to start.

Then it was back to Union Station for my train ride home. More knitting and more audio book. It was a great day. Lots of catching up and laughter, knitting and reading (listening?), and a tiny hint of shopping. Yes, a perfect day.

Bona Fide Knitter

Missing Sweetwater

I've been back from Cape Cod for a week now and I'm missing it already. I didn't do anything exciting up there. It's just that 'same stuff/different day' is more palatable in a forest.

Today is a good day to remind myself of how it looks coming up the road at the end of an afternoon walk.

When we get this close I let the LWDs lead the way untethered.

Snowball squeezes out one last pee-pee to mark his territory and Icecream heads for the steps.

I can feel the air and hear the pines sough in the slight breeze. I wanna go baaaaaaack!

Oh, wait a minute. I just remembered that we will be going back in another week or two. Aaaahhhh, I feel much better now.

Bona Fide Knitter

Knitting Short List

It's Saturday. Do you know where your knitting is? Ha! A better question is, do I know where my knitting is.

Okay, I'm forced to make a mental note. I needed a small tote bag the other day and dumped the contents of the one closest at hand. Out came the "perpetual shawl." You might remember it by some other names I've called it: "never ending" "shawl of shawls" "shawl of a lifetime" and even its official name,"Rings of Supersock." Ack! I had forgotten all about it. Yes, it's time for a mental inventory, just a short list of works in progress, current works in progress, not to be confused with unfinished objects.

Right now I am waaaaay into my summer sweater project which, if you remember, is the shrug from the summer issue of Knitter's Magazine, the Seaside Shrug. I got a lot accomplished (for me) while I was away. I even worked through the odd phenomenon of my KnitPicks nickle plated needles becoming tacky, loosing their shine and no longer knitting slick and fast. I think the weather was so damp they started to mold or something. Once the weather dried they returned to normal, but are still a little discolored. I wonder what's up with that. I need to pose the question to the KnitPicks Community. Anyway, I completed the whole body and one sleeve of the shrug. I was almost at the end of the ribbed cuff of the second sleeve before we came home.

I referred to the picture of the Seaside Shrug in the magazine as "butt ugly." Now karma has come around to bite me I need not tell you where. My rendition might be joining the Butt Ugly Club. I'm not too pleased with how the colors compliment each other. Buying yarn online without a color card does not always pan out. The golden mustard and hot coral/orange combination I loved in a knit suit I had many years ago did not meet expectations in the yarn color choices I made for my shrug. Ugly or not here it comes.

The plain vanilla socks knit in plain vanilla yarn are still languishing away in my GoKnit Pouch. I haven't had that much waiting room or nursing home visiting time recently. I think I might just go ahead and push through that heel flat here at home and hurry those socks off the needles.

Okay, that's my short list: (1) Seaside Shrug (2) plain vanilla socks (3) Beach Socks 2009. I will have all three finished before summer is over. You heard it here first, folks.

Bona Fide Knitter

PS--I'll get back to the shawl of shawls come fall.

A Beach Day!

I went to the beach yesterday. Can you believe it? I even started the beach socks. Now let me tell you the bad news. Going to the beach killed me!

I started the day with my usual routine: up by 5:30 a.m., let the dogs out for quick pee-pees, while I have a quick . . . TMI . . . They get a treat and a vitamin and I brush my teeth. Then we settle on the sofa to watch an inspirational TV program from 6:00 until 6:30. Back in the bathroom for me for morning ablutions after which I put the coffee on and the LWDs and I head off into the Forest for a morning walk. We are out for 45 minuets to an hour. After that I eat a light breakfast.

Yesterday after breakfast I headed out to the drugstore and supermarket in Orleans. On the way, since I was passing it anyway, I stopped at the Brewster Town Office to buy a beach parking permit for the season. After picking up prescriptions and shopping for fresh fish and a few grocery items, it was lunch time and the beautiful, warm day gave me the marvelous idea to make a sandwich and have lunch on the beach. After all I had my parking permit now, didn’t I?

So, when I got home, I changed from tank top and Capris to bathing suit and “beach" pajamas with matching flip flops and hat. I made a sandwich and filled a few sandwich bags with snacks–potato chips, pretzels, cookies. You can never have too many snacks at the beach. I quick-chilled a couple of bottles of water and packed it all in insulated keeper bags and put those into my beach tote. As you might have gathered by now I am very big on bags and totes of various responsibilities. Then I gathered sun lotion, bug spray, lip balm, PDA, iPod, earbuds, cell phone, ID, money, sunglasses and towels and added those to the tote. From the shed, my husband got a beach chair, umbrella and screw-into-the-sand base and loaded those into the minivan for me. Just in case I felt particularly ambitious when I got there, I also had him load the beach lounge chair, bigger umbrella and the heavy duty screw-in base. Then off I went with new parking sticker affixed to bumper, loaded for bear.

In the five minutes it took to drive to Breakwater Beach I felt my energy start to flag. Going to the beach for the first time in a season is a lot of work! Luckily I got a parking spot a few steps from the sand. The tide was out so there was no thought of even getting my feet wet. When the tide goes out in Brewster it goes way out.

I unloaded in two trips. I had no energy for he heavy duty beach stuff. I unloaded the smaller umbrella and set that up. Screw, screw, screw the base into the sand. Insert the pole. Unfurl the umbrella and put it in the pole. Aaah, a little spot of shade. I went back for the chair and my tote, set them up, stripped down to swimsuit, plopped down in the chair. Whew, I was worn out! I sat for awhile just relishing the mostly sky view, heavily breathing the salt air and wondering if I would ever be able to get up out of the low, butt-almost-in-the-sand chair.


I sprayed myself with Off because the flying beach bugs were already gathering for a chocolate feast. Mosquitoes and sand flies find me very appetizing. I realized it was HOT Even in the shade of my umbrella . . . umbrella . . . umbrella. Off with the hat, tie back the hair. Better. Maybe some food . . . I ate the sandwich and drank a bottle of water. Yes, much better. I was cooler and stronger. After a few potato chips, a couple of pretzels and a cookie, I cleaned my hands and broke out my too cute flip flop print bag containing the sock yarn and US 1 needles. Onto my KnitPicks Harmony 32 circular I cast on 60 sts and knit two rows of k2, p2 of ribbing during my time on the beach.

I will be making one sock at a time. Two socks on one circular does not float my boat. (A beach appropriate analogy, no?) I prefer my socks knit one at a time no matter how many times I try to like the two at once on one circular needle method. I do not suffer from second sock syndrome. In fact I actually enjoy casting on for the second sock and watching the miracle happen all over again and become an identical twin.

However, my strength and energy ebbed as the tide came in. I drank more water, ate more pretzels and another cookie and spent close to three rather pleasant hours on the beach, having to change chair to umbrella orientation only once before deciding it was time to make the effort to close it all down and schlep it back to the minivan.

The after-beach therapeutic shower that is normally so reviving didn’t work its wonders. After I was all clean and in fresh PJs I collapsed on the sofa and took a nap. I was wiped out for the rest of the evening and night. I roused once for pie and ice cream and again to go to bed at midnight. I am so totally out of shape! I need a healthier diet and a personal trainer!! Horror of horrors, I might need to join a gym!!!

However, I will remind you, I did make a paltry start on Beach Socks 2009.



Bona Fide Knitter