Tiny Socks!
These are for my friend, Peggy's, new granddaughter. Quick, easy, and so sweet! I knit them up the other day while midwifing the cat. I used the Basic Sock pattern from Edie Eckman's book, Knit a Dozen Baby Socks. The yarn is, I think, Carnation by LynnH . It was a gift from a friend (Thanks, Laura), and came without a label. That's a quarter there with them, so you can see how tiny they are!

Oh, mama cat and babies are doing well. The midwifing job consists of sitting in the bathroom, and making sure the cat stays in the basket in the closet until the first baby is born, and then just waiting and watching for the rest to come, as she's too busy after that to wander the house. Mama kitty, also known as Callie, the Escape Artist Slutty Cat, is very good at slipping out JUST before each litter of kittens is fully weaned and running off with our wild tomcat. ONE of these days we're going to get her to the vet before she makes her escape. She had four babies this time, two black and two white. She is a very good mommy, though, and always raises beautiful kittens. Anyone looking for a Christmas gift?

Dash and Hershey

Hershey is one of Callie's babies from a previous litter, and Dash (the white one) is Hershey's great-uncle (and the new babies' as well).

The first day at the new job went well, I think. The store is going to be very nice, and will open soon. The owners have a suite of shops, all connected, at the newly rebuilt Davis Mercantile in Shipshewana, Indiana. My shop is called "Back Home Again." Stop in and say hello when you're in town!

As promised...new stash!
These are my new goodies from the retreat. Oops! more Opals!
The Opal on the left is, I think, an old, nameless colorway, and is much more of a rich golden yellow than it appears here. The center Opal is the new Tiger, and the one on the right is from the Elemente collection.
The wound-up balls are Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock. On the left is Oceanside, on the right is Socknitter's Fall Sunset, one of the colors from a special dyeset done just for The Fifth Stitch.


These are Cherryl's new beauties. As you can see, she has considerably more self-control than I do! Her wound-up balls are LL, too, but I don't know what the color name is. The ball on the left was wound on Lorie's nostepinde.

Cherryl's Opal is Rainforest Fish.

I think I need to knit some socks just for me and just for the fun of it. This past year I've spent most of my knitting time developing my designs for a couple of online groups, testing patterns for other designers, or knitting socks and things as gifts for other people. I'm becoming frustrated, and need to use up some of the beautiful yarn I've acquired.
Rich's boring navy blue Opals are past the heel and maybe a third of the way down the foot. Liz and Frankie are stalled, as are the Spiderman socks. Ducky Dew will be making another kit appearance, this time as the December kit for a Yahoo! group.

The new job starts tomorrow. Wish me luck! These first weeks will be spent setting the store up and getting it ready to open. What an adventure!

Knitting Retreat 10/05
My sister and I went to the knitting retreat at The Fifth Stitch in Defiance, Ohio yesterday. Ellen Upp is the owner of the store. She carries an astonishing assortment of all sorts of yarn, patterns and knitting notions, but her sock yarn display is beyond belief. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the sock yarn! Guess I was too busy trying to buy it all...

Cherryl outside the store, waiting for Ellen to open up


There's no set schedule for Ellen's retreats, but there's always someone there who can teach various knitting techniques. While we were there, knitters were learning the magic loop technique, knitting two socks at one time on two circular needles, and using a nostepinde.

Cherryl learns to wind a center-pull ball with Lorie's nostepinde

This is the sockline. We bring one sock from every pair we've completed since our last visit to the store and hang them up here. These are mostly Cherryl's and mine.

This was Cherryl's first visit to the shop, but I attended my first retreat here in the spring of 2003, just after I'd learned to knit socks. Lorie taught me the 2 socks/2 circs technique during my first visit. It was also my first visit to a 'real' yarn shop, and I was completely overwhelmed. It was fun to see the same response on Cherryl's face yesterday! It was great, too, to see so many familiar faces there, and to meet a nice bunch of new folks, too. The owner of Catalina Alpaca yarns was there and told us all about his yarn. There were lots of yummy goodies baked by George. His wife, Doris, is one of the Fifth Stitch Sockers.

Tomorrow: new stash acquisitions!

I Have A Job!
Beginning this coming Monday I will be gainfully employed once more! After three-and-a-half months of reading the classifieds, and mailing resumes, and fruitless interviews (although I DID see a vegetable or two...), and working as a substitute teacher's aide for minimum wage, and asking everyone I met if they knew anyone that was hiring, I had two, count 'em, TWO job offers to choose from.
I will be working at a store in Shipshewana, Indiana. My employers own several shops, and I'm not entirely sure which one I'll be in. They think they want me in their home decor shop in the Davis Mercantile. I'll be meeting with them later today to tour their stores and see which will be the best 'fit.' This feels 'right' to me. I haven't had a job feel right since I started at the elementary school library twelve years ago. Wish me luck!

Spiderman Socks
These are fun! I found the idea and the chart HERE at Stephanie Pearl McPhee's site (The Yarn Harlot). Steph knitted mittens for her nephew, but I'm adapting her chart for a pair of socks.

Another Test (these are silly, fun, and sometimes even a little accurate!)
I found it here: Knitting It All Together

Your Element is Earth

Your power color: yellow Your energy: balancing Your season: changing of seasons Dedicated and responsible, you are a rock to your friends. You are skilled at working out even the most difficult problems. Low key and calm, you are happiest when you are around loved ones. Ambitious and goal oriented, you have long term plans to be successful.

What Element Are You?

I am a rock! Friends: bear this in mind! Do Not Mock Me!
You may one day require my skill at working out your most difficult problems!
The yellow power-color part may not suprise anyone. Since we bought the BigYellowBike I find myself oddly drawn to anything yellow, and have even found myself with enough yellow clothing to make up an entire wash load. Perhaps the bike released something in me??? Sometimes I'm tempted to buy things for which I have no conceivable use, just because they're the 'right' color of yellow. A sickness? A compulsion? I prefer to think of it as exquisite taste.

I have six, count 'em, SIX different pair of socks on the needles: boring navy socks for Rich, Liz & Frankie for me, Cathy H's Reindeer socks, and Spiderman socks for the little boy I'm working with at the school. It's insane, INSANE, I tell you!
The Spidey socks are based on a mitten pattern I found at the Yarn Harlot's site. Right now they are just a bit of ribbing followed by a short span of red-and-black spiderweb and a massive tangle of black yarn tails. They're going to be cool, though!

Cherryl and I are going to a knitting retreat at The Fifth Stitch
this weekend. The retreat is all weekend, but we're just going for one day. This is the place where I REALLY learned to knit socks...and to hoard sock yarn. This will be my sister's first visit there...Bwah-hah-hah-hah...! We may have to rent a U-Haul to get all the yarn home.

Hands...
I went to my knitting guild meeting yesterday and I was thinking about something that touched me.

The little shop where the group meets just opened in August. There was a Grand Opening Day, and a crew from a local television station came with a camera to do a 'color' piece. A bunch of us from Stranded in Michiana, our knitting guild, showed up to congratulate the new owners and get them off to a good start. I was working on a pair of socks, either the duckies or Cathy's reindeer pattern test and not really paying much attention to the news crew.

A few days later, my daughter-in-law told me, she was at home and my son was in the living room watching TV. She said all of a sudden Nick was shouting, "Nici! Come here! My mom's on TV!"

She ran in to the room, but all she saw was a pair of hands, knitting. My son recognized me solely from seeing my hands. I was not working on anything he should have recognized, and was not wearing anything especially distinctive that he would have seen in the background. He just knew my hands when he saw them.

This touches me beyond words. My hands held him when he was a baby, soothed him when he cried, sewed his little shirts and then buttoned them when he couldn't do it for himself. They cooked his food and wiped his face (and the other end, too), tied his shoes and wrote notes to his teachers. They spanked him when he was naughty.

He and I have had some difficult days...ok, years! There were far too many times that my hands were clenched in anger and far too few when they patted him on the back. There were times when they wanted to reach out to him and pull him through, but I knew he had to do it on his own so I kept them in my pockets. My hands held him when his grandmothers died, and then our friend, Dan, too.

Over the years I've watched as my hands change into my mothers hands. The shape and the size are the same. The same fingers are beginning to twist in the early stages of arthritis. I looked at my sister a few months ago and was startled to see MY hands at the ends of HER arms! Our hands are the same shape as our brothers' hands, too.

There is an old song that was sung by Bill Withers back in the seventies, called
"Grandma's Hands."
Grandma's hands
Clapped in church on Sunday morning
Grandma's hands
Played a tambourine so well
Grandma's hands
Used to issue out a warning
She'd say, "Billy don't you run so fast
Might fall on a piece of glass
"Might be snakes there in that grass"
Grandma's hands
Grandma's hands
Soothed a local unwed mother
Grandma's hands
Used to ache sometimes and swell
Grandma's hands
Used to lift her face and tell her,
"Baby, Grandma understands
That you really love that man
Put yourself in Jesus hands"
Grandma's hands
Grandma's hands
Used to hand me piece of candy
Grandma's hands
Picked me up each time I fell
Grandma's hands
Boy, they really came in handy
She'd say, "Matty don' you whip that boy
What you want to spank him for?
He didn' drop no apple core"
But I don't have Grandma anymore
If I get to Heaven I'll look for Grandma's hands

My daughter-in-law has beautiful and expressive hands, but I hope one day I'll look at one of her children and see my mother's hands again.

Last Camping Pictures

Rich is closing up the camper, and Cherryl and I have torn down her tent.








Bill, Ross, and Dan with Ross's bike and trailer.

Sure wish the whole weekend could have been as nice as it was on Sunday!

Broken Arrow Campout October, '05
Ross, also known as 5Ross, is a very nice man we know from a Goldwing board where I spend a lot of time, GoldWing Riders. We met him in person at the WOTS rally in North Carolina. He posted a note to the board inviting anyone who was interested to come camping at Broken Arrow Campground in Winamac, Indiana, this past weekend. Ross, Rich and I, and Ross's son and daughter-in-law were the only ones from the board to show up, but several of Ross's GWTA friends came.
We invited my sister, Cherryl to come along, and she followed the BYB and camper in her Jeep with camping gear we provided and our dog, Claudia. It was cold! I rode the bike as far as I could stand it, then abandoned Rich to the elements and rode in the car the rest of the way (wuss). It was Cherryl's first time camping, and she got her trial by ice. It got down to the thirties on Saturday night, but with the help of a little electric heater and a warm dog to sleep with, she had a great time, and is now talking about buying her own gear and starting to camp out more in the future!

the intrepid (I think that's a fancy word for 'really cold') campers around the campfire. From left: Bill, Rich, Mikey, Jeff, Ross and Dan.

We had four tents and three pop-up campers (see ours in previous posts). Saturday morning we went into town for breakfast, then most of the campers bundled up and went for a ride on the bikes. Cherryl rode with Rich, while I stayed behind to start supper and have a lovely conversation about books and history with Bill, who is retired from the National Parks system.

Cleaning up after Saturday night's supper: Becky, Ross, Tami...well, Ross said he was helping with the dishes, but it looks like coffee-time to me! Ross's wife, daugher, son-in-law and grandson came out to join us for supper, but did not stay the night.

All packed up and ready to go home: Ross, Dan, Bill, Jeff, Tami, and Cherryl

We came to the consensus that keeping a petting zoo at a campground is not the best idea, especially if you throw in a few free-range chickens (hi, Michelle, lol). The roosters were, ummm, 'insistent' that 4:00 a.m. is truly the most optimal time to get up. As I left our camper at daybreak on Sunday morning, I heard several loud shots in the not-so-distant distance, and thought, "Yeah! No more roosters!", but, alas, it was not to be.

Note to folks who plan to share a campground with others: if your taste in music runs to compositions featuring lots of drums, base, and, apparently, tribal chants, and played very, very loudly, it's polite to turn the music off some time before 2:30 a.m.

(that's 3:30 a.m., Michigan time!)

I'm just saying...

Sorry there aren't more pictures: we were just having too much fun to take any!

Knitting: Cherryl and I both took our socks-in-progress along, but she got a lot more knitting done than I did. I did get three-quarters of the way through my new Yarn Harlot book

(see note above regarding very loud music which made sleeping difficult).

Here's a test:
You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting
and do it all the time. While finishing a piece
is the plan, you still love the process, and
can't imagine a day going by without giving
some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation
involves leaving ample space for the stash and
supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn
ends and you begin.
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What Kind of Knitter Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is funny:

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies
Or, as I often say while watching a movie, "NOOOO, young soldier, please DON'T show us a picture of your sweetheart back home!"
It comes from this library newsletter:

NeatNew and Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other
Information Junkies
Sign up for the newsletter to have informative stuff delivered to your mailbox each week. There's something interesting in every issue.

There's a Contest at Quiddity. It's called, "Show Me Your Socks." Here they are, at least the ones I haven't given away.

It's Fall, otherwise known as "The season we're given so that we can be numbed by its beauty, thus lulling us into complacency about The Season That Comes Next." Here's a sign. When we left for North Carolina this was the view from the sidewalk in front of our house :

When we came home, this was what we saw :


It's hard to tell the difference without enlarging the shots, but in the first photo there's corn in the field. In the second, there's none. They picked it while we were away. Next the leaves will be changing, then falling, then there will be snow. Sigh. We are one day closer to spring.

An Ode to Opal Yarn
The Opal Chatters Yahoo! group has "Topic Tuesday" each week. The moderators pick a topic for everyone to discuss during the coming week. This week's topic was to write a poem about Opal. Here's mine.



Feet Dream of Opal

My feet tread, blessed in socks of Opal,
past the stash in dreams of hope: al-
though steel needles all are filled
with socks for Jen and Nick and Bill,
my lovesick arches long to feel
sweet stitches warm of Crocodil
or Lollipop, Handpaint, Brasil.

So, ever yearning, near they pause, it
seems, to tarry near dark closet
where, in deep, deep slumber rest
the plump, soft skeins, the very best
of Soxie's gleanings. Line my nest
with Opal: there I'll end my quest.

writ by me this 4th day of October, 2005

Disclaimer: I'm not actually knitting socks for anyone named Bill (or Jen or Nick either, sorry guys!), but it rhymes... Oh, I found 2 more skeins of Opal after taking this picture, and I know there's another one around here somewhere. SABLE.

More North Carolina pictures

This is what we saw Sunday on the Blue Ridge Parkway...;~D Pea-soup fog for miles, and miles, and miles...When we finally got out of the fog we met a nice couple on a BMW and chatted for a while with them, then rode on through the back roads of western North Carolina. We stopped for lunch in Loafer's Glory, North Carolina, and I had a wonderful barbecue sandwich the southern way -- with slaw on it. No pictures of the rest of our ride, though. The camera battery died. It was beautiful, and I'm sorry you missed it!

We spent this past weekend in Hubbard, Ohio, with our friends. Wonderful time, as always! Pictures in the next post.

BBQ at HDL
Here's the group from GL1800Riders.com at the barbecue Hal threw for us in Hendersonville. It was great to meet some of the folks I've been talking to online and put names and faces together.

The BYB takes a break along the BRP.

This is at Looking Glass Falls, along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Just a little while before this, a young man though he could climb the rocks and jump into the waterfall pool without a thought for the depth of the water, I guess. He broke his leg badly. We decided not to try it this trip. Maybe next time!

It just doesn't get any prettier than this...more pictures tomorrow.

We're back!
We got home from North Carolina yesterday after a beautiful trip. The knitting had a good time, too. Wednesday we spent eight hours on the bike getting to Portsmouth, Ohio, where we were to meet friends for the rest of our trip to the Wings Over the Smokies Goldwing motorcycle rally.


Portsmouth Ohio, the Seawall Murals

Portsmouth is a town on the Ohio River. There are 2000 feet of hand-painted murals on the inside of the seawall, depicting Portsmouth, its history, industry, and residents. Here I'm knitting in front of one of the panels. Yeah, I know it's shoelaces, but it was the closest thing they had to anything textile-related! I love this picture beyond all reason -- look how thin I appear to be! Who could ever have suspected that my tiny knitting bag could possibly hide my huge, rounded, umm, posterior! I look fifty pounds thinner, which is probably about what the aforementioned posterior weighs! This is how I look in my mind's eye -- and then my physical eye catches a glimpse of the truth in a mirror. sigh.

Rich and the BYB in front of a mural of the Portsmouth Motorcycle Club. The photo at the top of today's entry is a detail of this panel. You can see it in the picture to the left, just behind Rich and the bike.



This panel honors our armed forces.






Here is the knitting, touring the Great Smoky Mountains. This is a hat for the kids at the South Bend domestic assault shelter. Rich gets poked a lot with the needles, but he doesn't complain...much! I use circular needles and they're not as poky as regular ones would be.

That's David (Bash) and Julie ahead of us on their bike. We met them through the bike forum I read, and they set up the ride from southern Ohio to North Carolina. Great people, and terrific travelling companions!

More pictures tomorrow, if there's time.

We're off...
Well, some would say I'm a bit off all the time, but you know what I mean. Rich & I will be out on the BigYellowBike for a few days.
So I sat down to pack up my knitting for the trip. I'm trying very hard not to Pack More Than I Can Possibly Knit. Very hard, especially as luggage space on a motorcycle is, umm, "limited" so I have to decide what to leave behind.
What do you think -- do we really need an atlas?
I think one change of underwear might last me a week, right?
Hmmm. Maybe if I wear all of my clothes instead of packing some?....
Hey Cherryl, thanks for spending the weekend with the cats. Would you mind terribly doing the nasty litter-box thing some time Sunday? Oh, and Friday, too, if the kids have forgotten to do it. I'll make it up to you, I promise. You are a pearl beyond price. If I get any small packages while I'm gone, you're welcome to open them. Feel free to be envious! ;~D

Here are the BYB and Mini-Me, my little Honda Rebel. Mini-Me is not accompanying us on this trip. This picture makes me laugh -- I always forget how HUGE the BigYellowBike is!

I just learned at the Yarn Harlot's blog that it's "Talk Like a Pirate Day." In honor of this festive event, here be a little storrrry...arrrgh!

A pirate with a steering wheel protruding from his fly walked into a bar and ordered a tot of rum. The bartender tried to ignore the steering wheel and served the pirate's drink...but curiosity got the better of him.
"Excuse me," said the bartender, "but I can't help but notice that there's a steering wheel in your fly...?"
"Ayyyyy," said the pirate, "it drives me nuts!"

Well, I didn't say it was funny, now did I? Arrrgh! At least I didn't say 'arse'. oops.

Donations for The Restash Network (click for more information)
My knitting guild, Stranded in Michiana buried me with donations for the Restash Network yesterday! My car was so full it took Rich and me five trips to bring it all into the house. Here are a few pictures of the loot they sent home with me:
I hope you can get some idea of how much yarn there is here. I have a large kitchen table, and it was completely covered with every imaginable color of acrylic worsted-weight yarn.
A lot of this will go to Paulette in Texas, who is teaching kids in shelters how to knit.

Here are books, needles, hooks, and notions. and one of the members went to Target and bought everything to make up several kits. Most of the needles will go to Paulette for her kids, too.

There is wonderful stuff in this pile -- sorry about the crazy angle!
There's Misti Alpaca laceweight, two big hanks of rayon chenille, a HUGE hank of fine cotton in charcoal gray, some vintage Bear Brand wool, two full cones and several balls of kitchen cotton, a ziploc bag full of tiny balls of mohair.
The pale green yarn in the background is some kind of wool from France that looks like there might be some mohair in it. There must be a dozen balls of that.

One of the guild members gave me a check for $25.00 to help cover postage -- thanks, Elizabeth, and thank you everyone for your generosity! I still have two boxes and three large shopping bags full of yarn to be sorted and shipped.

Try, try again... The closed-camper picture tells me it is very sorry for causing trouble, so it's getting another chance.
This side would be the back of the camper when it's set up. The racky-thingy on the top rests on the ground when the camper is opened, and allows for storage of our chairs and other stuff when closed. You undo some latchy-thingies on the left and the top just flips over, pulling the canvas tent and support poles with it. If we were unlucky enough to be setting up in the rain, we could, literally, be inside and dry in seconds...SECONDS, I tell you! Well, ok, maybe minutes. Slick.

Another shot of the loverly Aussie yarn, here tamed and wound into balls. Mmmmmmm...yarrrrrnnnn. TWO pairs of socks-worth, or maybe one lovely shawl...socks or shawl...socks or shawl...socks or shawl....

A Gift from Down Under!

So, I got this wonderful yarn from Kathryn in Australia today. It took only 6 days to go all that way...it often takes 8 days for a letter to go 11 miles from our bank to our house!
230 grams of fingering-weight 100% merino wool. Hand-dyed. Did you notice it came from Australia? Kathryn dyed it herself, using powdered food color, apparently the counterpart of the Wilton paste food colors we use here.
It's beautiful. It makes me wish I were more poetic. It looks like a bowl of fresh summer berries. It was in a horrible tangle when it arrived, and took 6 1/2 hours to unsnarl and wind into two wonderful, plump, center-pull balls. Worth. Every. Minute.
Now...socks or shawl? socks or shawl? socks or shawl?

The Camper
Tom is intrigued by our camper and wants to see more pictures. Here it is, with the awning and screen room removed.

End view of the dressing area.

From the front, sleeping area on right, dressing area on left.

There was a picture of the camper closed, too, but it was being obstinate so I've sent it to the corner to think about what it did. That'll teach it. Maybe I'll let it come out and play later.