Thursday, May 25, 2006
 Is it the weekend yet? So close we're so close! For Memorial Day Weekend we're going to Ogunquit ME, and my sweet Kitty and her boyfriend will be joining us from NYC.
Do you know how huge this is? Do you know how many vacations Kitty and I have planned together over the years that ultimately never happened? How many tears I've wept? And do you know how many times it was her fault? (All of them.) I should really start calling her Kitty McFlakesters.
I had put money down that she would back out of this trip (like she did with our most recently defunct plans for Napa Valley this past spring), but to my amazement she has done the complete opposite and already purchased train tickets to Boston. But that's not even the best part! The best part is she put together a Powerpoint presentation of things we'll do. Powerpoint! There were all sorts of matrices and grids and charts. Clearly the girl needs more free time on her hands like I need more sock yarn.
To kick things off, we're having dinner at Arrows the first night. The 2001 issue of Gourmet mag rates it #25 on its list of best restaurants in America. La! But after that we'll be cooking in - the place we're staying has a full kitchen - trying some things we've never cooked before...
Kitty: We will COOK like little MONKEYS.
Me: Maybe I'll bring a big big pot in case. To put live LOBSTERS in.
Kitty: I've never cooked a lobster Cat. I'm scared.
Me: Neither have I!! So we need to look up how before we go. Mm...I may not be able to do it. So cruel. My mom boiled live crabs while I was home and it was sad. Delicious, but sad.
Kitty: I was at the fish store last sunday and there was a girl who worked there who was laughing about a lobster that she poked in the back of the head the way you're supposed to to kill it and it kept MOVING for like HALF an HOUR. She was like, Ha ha ha what a crazy lobster.
Me: Maybe we'll just do clams.
Kitty: Mussels and shimp and clams.
Me: If we can't cook the lobsters though, I'm having trouble picturing the guys being able to. We're all wussies.
Kitty: I think Tomcat would do it. I'll ask him.
Me: I picture us dropping the lobsters and screaming.
Kitty: And them grabbing our faces with their claws (bring the OLD BAY). Latching onto our arms and lips.
Me: ooo la this is going to be GREAT.
Kitty: By the way I can't eat really big shrimp.
Me: Hahah what?
Kitty: Because they're too BUG like.
Me: Hahaha WTF.
Kitty: The BIG ONES.
Me: You're an idiot.
Kitty: You bite into their BIG BUGGY flesh.
Me: BUGGY FLESH you are so stupid.
Please don't rain.
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Ogunquit
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Folds in half lengthwise, then in thirds widthwise.
Four 4-inch wide pockets, and four 2-inch wide pockets.
100% cotton fabrics and ribbons on sale at Hancock.
Total price: $3, maybe? Awesome.
Behind the Scenes: Mom prototyping on a piece of newspaper. Everyone wants to help.
Filed Under: Completed Projects
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
A couple nights ago I was relaxing on my parents' bed, watching TV and knitting (another) Pomatomus sock, with Mouse the cat alongside keeping me company. Every now and then I'd stop to show her my sock progress and she seemed duly impressed.
"Cool huh, Mouse? Don't you wish you could knit?"
Then I left to go to the bathroom.
"I gave it a whirl while you were gone. Bored now."
I was gone for maybe two minutes.
So disrespectful.
Filed Under: Cats | Socks | Pomatomus
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Left: My grandmother with her children (my mother is the one in the back, head poking out)
Right: My mother as a very fetching 21 year-old
Mom at 27 with her first (and only!) baby.
Duck flew back home last week, and my dad left on business in Uganda the same day, so it's been an girls-only slumber party down here. It's been really nice spending time with my mother. She makes breakfast every morning - bowl of fruit, pastry, a cappuccino - then I work for a few hours, then we go out to a long lunch, or shopping, then we talk about what we're going to have for dinner, then knit while watching Pride & Prejudice (movie version) on DVD.
The past few nights we've been going through boxes and boxes of old photos, all musty and curled from age. My goal is to take a bunch home with me, scan and archive them for prosterity. Those photos don't deserve to waste away like that. While it's been fun to see pictures of me back in the day in various stages of my growing pains - the missing teeth, and the 70's fashion sense, the 80's big hair, the BAD high school graduation photos - it's been much more fun and interesting going through photos of my mother back when she wasn't one yet...photos with her own mother, with schoolmates, and group trips with college friends which included one very smitten and very skinny future husband (haha Dad you were so funny-looking!).
I got a weird little sniffle in my nose and a small burning sensation behind my eyes as I went through all these old photos of my mom. She was so. Beautiful. My mommy!
I just hope she's enjoyed being a mom, to me. I don't think it was always easy, or fun, due to that requisite period when I was a complete and utter snot. But thank god teenagers are not teenagers forever.
Although I wish I could have seen my mom as one. Look how cute she was!
Mom (second from left) in high school.
***
And now...knitting content!
My mom's been making this crochet shell from the Kidsilk Haze I bought her ages ago. She had tried to knit with it first and couldn't understand how I ever managed to produce Butterfly ("So many haaairs! Is so steecky!!"), and declared me the superior knitter. Hee hee! She tried crocheting instead, we picked out a stitch pattern together et voila!
We went to Hancock Fabrics yesterday for fabric and ribbons. She is also making me a needle case. Yay!
 
And I'm making her a summer sweater. The stitch pattern is from my book, and I'm using Hempathy (hemp/cotton/modal blend). It's going to be Orangina and Celia-like, with raglan shaping and small sleeves. I could have done this in one piece, top-down but don't have long enough needles and didn't feel like buying any. She's really excited to get something handknit from me, her little knitting protégée.
Filed Under: Life
Sunday, May 07, 2006
We're having a jolly time here in the South. After a weekend with the parents, Duck and I headed to Savannah for a couple of days, then to Jekyll Island, then to Okefenokee Swamp, and then we got tired of driving around and headed back to Atlanta a few days early. I meant to update here more regularly but am trying to make headway in my very neglected photo album. So far I've only pics up of our trip to Jekyll - take a peek.
This past Friday for Cinqo de Mayo we headed with my high school peeps to some bar in Buckhead for some Mexican food, but all they were serving were drinks. Margaritas all night + no food all night = Tim puking out the car window on the way home. Ha ha ha! This is funny really only to me because in all the years of partying, I have never ever once seen him lose equilibrium even slightly, while he has seen me more than I would like to admit. And always with a gleeful, self-satisfied glint in his eyes. So yes I was rather enjoying myself watching him sick out the front seat, even though the mess came back and splattered my side of the window. I have pictures of this too but you probably don't want to see it.
Happy Cinqo de Mayo!
The night ended with a late late dinner at Waffle House, a greasy sort of joint that you'd only voluntarily step foot in if you were 1) a truck driver, 2) really stoned, 3) really drunk. Hashbrowns smothered in cheese at 1 in the morning never tasted so good.
Ah yes, we are all in - or approaching - our 30's. The fun never ends.
There has been some knitting. Some. Mostly the only person getting any quality play time with yarn is the cat. Mouse loves to play with yarn. And rabbits too. She brought one home the other day, much to my mother's displeasure. She's really sprightly for a middle-aged cat.
"Did you know I crochet too? Claws make for great hooks. As do incisors."
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Atlanta
Monday, May 01, 2006
Our first two days in Atl has so far predominately featured marine life, both the living...
Scenes from the GA Aquarium: School of sting rays, a leafy sea dragon from outerspace, and a whale shark (a fellow Taiwanese!)
...and the not so much...
Cajun-boiled blue crab, salad with mango dressing, linguini with little neck clams and basil, and strawberry shortcake (my contribution, along with the mojitos)
I will eat anything and everything my mom cooks up and ask for thirds. She's probably an odd bird in the world of Asian mothers in that she does not cook very much Chinese cuisine. I have however commissioned her to make five-spice beef noodle soup. But then also her signature chocolate profiteroles for dessert ;)
Tomorrow we're off to Savannah!
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Atlanta
Friday, April 28, 2006
I've started another pair of socks using the other skein of Sundara Yarn I have, in colorway Troubador. Again the colors are super saturated and super shiny, like silk almost. How'd she do that?
And yes I'm on a sock-knitting rampage ;)
Well it appears that this skein of yarn is much less variegated than the one I used for the Spring Anklets (colorway Fern). In fact the color changes aren't quite so random and are more distinct, so much so that I was getting quasi-striping in the toes.
Striping on the sole
Then as I got to the foot, massive external bleeding of the color blue. Gah! I suppose this is what you sock experts out there call pooling?
My initial start of the sock had the blue pooling precisely on needle #1 and only one needle #1, every single round. Couldn't have done that if I had tried.
I ripped it out and tried again, this time casting on at a spot several inches further in, to maybe break up the pooling or at least to have the pooling be distributed on two needles like an instep and a sole. This time I got a diagonally traveling blob of blue, pictured above. Kind of cool.
The original stitch pattern I was going to use to with the variegation didn't work with Troubador, so I switched to the Pomatomus pattern. It looks funky no?
We're flying South tonight. I'll be in Atlanta for nearly three weeks. It's been nearly a decade since I've been home that long. (Oh god really is that true? I'm so old.) But I'm going home with a new attitude, my friends. I'm going to treat my hometown as a tourist attraction. Me the tourist, Atlanta and environs the destination. In reality I don't know anyone who would ever voluntarily pick Atlanta as a vacation spot - it's so corporate and new and flat despite all the Coca-Cola carbonation - but I'm going to overlook that sad fact for this trip. The goal is to see/learn/do/eat/appreciate things I never did before.
I will have to find some yarn stores too.
My mom is a knitter and a fantastic seamstress. Perhaps I'm ready for her to teach me how to sew as well...I want to make a needle case, especially with all the DPN's I've aquired lately. Hm.
Nah, on second thought, I just now searched deep within my soul and am not yet truly ready to learn how to sew. I'll just commission one from her, heh.
Filed Under: Life | Socks
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Spring Anklets
Yarn: Sundara Yarn in Fern, one hank at 185yds with several yards left over.
Size/Needles: 30 stitches instep, 26 stitches sole = 56 stitches on US2
Here before you are my own Spring Anklets, using Sherman Heel and a leaf pattern from my Japanese pattern book. Leaf pattern is obscured by the variegated color which I knew would happen but decided to do it anyway. I had started off using a mini-cable pattern that looks like the stitch from My So-Called Scarf I've seen floating around the internet. It was really flattering with the variegated yarn. The way one stitch stretches and crosses over another made the individual colors pop, but it was a total pain to execute. I think I'm going to try it again though on my next pair, because I'm still rather 'eh' about the way variegated yarns knit up straight.
The yarn was scrumptious though. Colors were shiny and intense and the wool so soft.
I will also take care to really decrease for the ankle area. It's a bit roomy, even though I went down a needles size and did a 2x2 rib. If I decreased the number of stitches as much as 20% it would be nice and tight.
Check out the pretty Sherman toe and heel. No holes!
There was more than enough yarn in the one skein to make a pair of anklets. The colors of the greens in the yarn are the same shade of those of the spring blooms popping up, hence the name. Fresh, vibrant and new.
Today is my and Duck's happy 4th anniversary! As usual we have nothing planned. So romantic!
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Aw yeah I finally have a finished matching pair of socks.
Jaywalker socks. The stripes don't match.
Yarn: Regia Crazy Color 6ply
Needles: US3
I knit these toe-up using short row toes and heels, 13 stitches each on 4 needles. The first sock I did the usual wrapped stitches method; the second sock I used the Sherman Heel method, which was so much easier to execute and looked much neater. On the first sock I bound off normally but loosely, however it was still a little tight. So on the second sock I tried the knit two, purl two bind-off as described in Vogue Knitting. Is this a tubular bind-off? It was definitely much stretchier but I'm not sure I like how it looks.
These socks have been perfect for the chilly weather we've been having lately. But from now on, any socks I make will be ankle socks. Completing 6 inches of the leg even on big fat size 3 needles still felt like an eternity, I tell you.
***
Last year, my knitting raison d'etre was all about finished sweaters. As many sweaters as humanly possible in the least amount of time. I was going at a rate of one completed sweater per month, and accessories like scarves, hats, socks were deemed an inefficient use of knitting time.
And now, this year, after finishing Cabled Toad, not only have I not even wanted to complete another sweater, I have knit five whole socks (only one matching pair, see above), two half socks, and am about to dive headfirst into the geriatric world DOILIES, TABLE RUNNERS and TEA CLOTHS!
For chrissakes what's going on?!
Enter Thistle, Daffodil, and Rose.
 
Modern Lace Knitting is what's going on. While at a fellow knitter's house for dinner this weekend, our hostess brought out these knitting books for me to leaf through. Wow. WOooooOOoooow. The lace is so unbelievable that it doesn't even look like knitting anymore. It looks like...a station wagon. A grizzly bear. A sunset! Might as well, it's so ridiculous.
She let me take the Second Book home and I have been carrying it from room to room like a teddy bear, never far from my side, leafing through it more than occasionally while I try to decide which I would like to try.
And I don't even like table runners or doilies! But that's not the point anymore. It's about making works of art, which these lace pieces definitely definitely are. I accept the challenge!
What kind of yarn should I use (and which pattern?)? I don't want to turn any of these into shawls. I'll never wear them, and draped decoratively on a table is better than being hidden away in a closet. But I don't want to use cotton thread. I know I won't enjoy working with it, even if it is more appropriate as a table cloth, etc. Would a silk/wool lace blend work? All silk? Hmmmmmmm.
Filed Under: Lace | Socks
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