My Needles Fell on Some Yarn...

...And this came out:
I have to say, I pleased as punch with this little hat. Len's sister had twins a couple of weeks ago (a girl and a boy), so this is for the girl (Madelyn Mae).

I made it out of the yarn left over from Waving Laces, Louet Gems Pearl (Aqua). 96 stitches on #2 needles, picot hem, and an eyelet pattern from Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. Seriously. I'm in love with this hat!

I'll be using some leftover yarn for the boy's (Max) hat as well. The Harley riding, tatooed father has requested a pom-pom. Obviously I have to make a pom-pom.

Girl Shoes

Danger! Those are 3.5" heels!

How about with Waving Laces?

Umm....Ouch.
Much more comfortable!

I know you had doubts about the severity of my dorkiness. Now you know.

Tomato Sludge

The cucumbers are finally fading away and the tomatoes are starting to ripen. So far just the little Sweet 100s and Yellow Pears are making a showing in significant numbers. Tomato Sludge (roasted tomatoes) is one of my favorite things to do with them:
Cut the tomatoes in half, throw in some unpeeled garlic cloves and herbs (rosemary and thyme in this case), sprinkle with salt, pepper and coat with olive oil. Throw it in a very low oven (200-250 degrees) for 5 or 6 hours, stirring every so often. It's done when the tomatoes have carmelized a bit.
Pop the garlic out of it's skin, pick out the twiggy parts of the herbs and you have the most divine essence of tomato. Spread the garlic on bread, pile on some tomatoes and eat. Fling it over pasta (trust me, your carnivore boyfriend won't complain). I plan to throw this in some risotto next time I make it (maybe tomorrow). Stand over the oven and eat it with a spoon. I swear, this is god's own food.

Media Consumption

It seems I haven't posted about books since June. Even though I've been so busy with the garden and falling into bed exhausted, I really have gotten some reading done!

I have long since finished Assassination Vacation. And Partly Cloudy Patriot. And Take the Cannoli. Hello. My name is Lee. I'm addicted to Sarah Vowell. Who could help it? She's funny, she's macabre, and she is a complete dork. A history dork at that, who should be writing history textbooks. Who else will tell you that Garfield (or was it McKinley?) was such a bookworm that it was hard to tear him away from his books for official events and in an commencement address, he told a graduating University class that he was very sorry that their years in school were because now they wouldn't have time to read?! Or that Chester Arthur (bet you don't remember him) pushed through legislation he thoroughly disagreed with as a tribute to Garfield (civil service reform)? I had to write a report about Chester when I was in 7th grade and have a soft spot for him ever since, even if he was a bit on the corrupt side.

Partly Cloudy and Cannoli are both essay collections. The Partly Cloudy essays were written after 9/11 and is sad, angry, defiant and funny. It's very much worth reading, especially if you are a proud liberal and sick of being told how unpatriotic you are. Cannoli is much lighter fare; the title essay refers to her obsession with the Godfather movies when she was in college.

Then I couldn't find Radio On, Vowell's first book, in town (well. ok, I could, but it was at Border's and I have very mixed feelings about Border's, and a month or so ago I decided I couldn't go there anymore and.. never mind, it's a long story of dashed childhood expectations). So I've been reading Molly Ivins' Who Let the Dogs In (I bought it at Nicola's, if you must know), a collection of columns dating back to the Reagan era. It is very sad to read her describe how much the income gap grew during the Reagan and Bush I years and know how much worse it will get under Bush II. She continues to be optimistic that this country can work it's way back from this disaster of an administration. I'm less sure every day.

Will you hate me if I stop listening to the news?

In music: Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped is a stunner of an album. It's gorgeous, edgy punk at it's beautiful best. Sonic Youth was always one of those bands who I just didn't really get, the way I don't get David Bowie or Steely Dan. They don't suck, I'm just not smart enough to understand what they're doing. Rather Ripped is an album of songs. That I get.

On DVD: Len and I have acquired an severe addiction to Trailer Park Boys. It's a Canadian mockumentary about the shenanigans of Ricky and Julian as they engage in semi-legitimate business between jail terms. Um. Yeah. That show is so wrong on so many levels. It makes me very happy to know that our neighbors to the north have red necks, too.

"Dope dope dopity dope dope" to you, too!

Pickles!

I know everyone was desperate to know what happened to my first garden harvest. Ok, maybe you weren't.
This picture shows many harvests of cucumbers. Along with the kosher-style dills (of varying, and increasing, garlic strengths) there are sweet and dill relishes and two small jars of roasted jalapenos (now that was a tedious job!)

I am sick to death of cucumbers.

My Yarn

Here is my contribution to the kool-aid dyeing party. The colors here aren't even close: the purple is less muddy and green is a bright lime. The color combination is gorgeous, but I can't take credit. When I signed up for the knitting listserv, KnitTalk, one of the first messages I read was from someone who had used purple and green kool-aid. As I recall, she dyed the yarn while it was in a ball, purple on one side and green on the other and she hoped where the colors met in the middle would be brownish. Cool idea. She said it worked out, except that trying to skein a wet ball of yarn was Not Fun. What I did with the yarn was even more idiotic. I had two balls of DK merino (what brand you ask? Um. Debbie Bliss? Jaeger? Rowan? Something like that). I wanted to dye them both at the same time. I wanted a long skein. Do you see how this train is headed to Crazy Town? I held two strands of the yarn together and made myself a skein on the warping board, which made a figure eight. Or an infinity sign. The warping board was the lesser of the two evils. What I should have asked myself when holding those two strands together was, "how, pray tell, will you get them apart, as, inevitably you must?" I did not ask that question until it was much too late. Then there were tears, sweat, recriminations. It was bad. Len was patience personified.

Other than that really dumb decision, the dyeing went off with only a couple of hitches. I used four or five packets of each color (grape and lime) in 1/2 cup of water and I used squirt bottles to get it directly onto the yarn. The yarn sucked it up really fast: when I squeezed the yarn to make sure the dye was getting all the way in, the liquid came out clear. Once I was done, I microwaved it for 4 minutes (2 minute increments). I ended up having to add more dye later because of white spots, but I think I'm close enough to full coverage now (there are some lighter spaces, but it seems to be mostly shading).

These will probably be socks. After I finish the Kool-Aid Socks, of course. Yes, really, "of course".

More with the Kool-Aid

You would think dyeing with kool-aid with an 11 year old and a 4 year old would elicit cries of "I want to drink it!", followed by red and orange children. But no, my sister apparently raised her children to believe that kool-aid is repulsive (good for her!) and, aside from black fingers and red and orange knees, they remained dye-free. I didn't really need to bother with smocks for them -- I'm smart enough to remember the smocks, but not gloves.

I got a big hank of that New Zealand Wool Pak (10 ply if you're counting) and divided into four roughly equal hanks. That turned out to be a really good decision, since we had too many colors to use in one shot (we were just grabbing them off the shelf at Meijer), and they had two canvasses to play with. They used pink lemonade, Magic Cherry (which is teal), tropical punch, something blue, grape, lemon lime, and Mandarina Tangerina. They did not use the Black Cherry after I said I thought it looked like blood (Cierra, the 4 year old responded that she does not drink blood. Thanks for clearing that up. 'Cos I wondered).
Here is a close(r) up of Cierra's yarn. Her first one is on the right and is half orange and half pink and blue. The second one, left, started out with a lot of colors, then she covered it in grape. Go figure. I actually really like how that one turned out.
Here are Imani's. Her first one is on the left. She was very glad to have another chance, since she doesn't like it that much (she tried to make it colorful, but the orange sort of took over and made everything muddy). The second one is much more to her liking, and I can't wait to see it knitted up. I think for the muddy one, we'll cook up a very strong batch of orange and try to brighten it up.

Foul Morning

So, I woke up this morning to discover that not only did moderate(ish) Schwarz lose against that wingnut Walberg, he lost by a lot. According to MLive.com (the website under which many Michigan Newspapers live), "The former church pastor vowed to vote against pork-laden spending plans and tax increases while maintaining a firm line against the expansion of abortion and gay marriage." 'Cos you know, those abortionists and gays are running amok in Jackson County.

Feh.

This was before I got out of bed. At which point I discovered Judy had ripped apart another knitting bag (the one I failed to shove in a closet). Gwen, who has much higher standards of neatness than either Len or I, was crouching on the pile of the dirty clothes Len left in the living room last night. While Len deserved for those clothes to be peed on, my carpet did not, so I had to do something I avoid like the plague: touch Len's dirty laundry. You have no idea how disgusting his dirty clothes are.

Let me mention here: all before coffee. Just sayin'. Pre-caffinated, pre-allergy pill me is not pretty. Not at all.

Wah wah wah. Poor me. But seriously? I'm going to be represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by a fucking asshat. Right now I'd really rather worry about dirty laundry of the sweaty kind.

Experiments

I couldn't be more thrilled with how the Kool-Aid sock is turning out. It seems to be coming up with it's own, weird, psychedelic effect. A good amount of this was accomplished on Sunday while at the Yarn Harlot's reading and book signing. Many have sung the praises of the Harlot, and indeed, she is wonderful. But I have to give props to two unsung heros: my friend Stef's husband, who rolled up my car windows so I wouldn't have to drive home in a flooded car. And my darling Len. When I returned from my knitterly fun, I discovered that he had (in the heat and the humidity) weeded a bunch of my flower garden and made me a mix cd. This cd included a song by the John Spencer Blues Explosion (if you are at work, turn your computer's sound off) that doesn't make me want to put someone's eyes out, which took some serious thinking on Len's part.

By the way, the Ann Arbor District Public Library filmed the event and will be broadcasting it on Ann Arbor's Community TV. Keep an eye on the AADL-TV website for the air date. If you're in Ann Arbor. If not, go to Toronto.

On to other things, before I start digressing into my "going to Canda" stories. No one wants to read those.
And here we have another Faye sample* (you can see the first sample here, scroll down). This is really different from that first piece. The diamonds are much bigger in this one, which is really interesting to me because there are fewer purl stitches between the stockinette columns in this one; the major difference seems to be where the first crossing happens. In the first sample, it happens immediately (which involved some faking to get two stockinette stitches to cross). In this one, I started leaning the stockinette lines towards each other to get the architectural effect that I like so much in the original. I don't like, however, how big the diamonds are, so I will try decreasing the number of purls between the columns from 6 to 4 and see how that goes. I have a few more ideas to play with if that doesn't work.

I wouldn't mind trying to accomplish the gathered effect of the original. I think this may be a simple matter of increasing in the bottom half of each diamond and decreasing in the top half. Maybe?

*These aren't really swatches, in that I'm really only playing around with the smocking pattern. Unless I fall head over heels for the yarn and gauge. Then, I guess it is a swatch.

Weaving!

Despite being cute as the dickens, Judy has a couple of major flaws. One* of them is that she has been a terrible influence on Simon and Gwen. If I left yarn out on a table, they might have found it irresistible, but mostly they left my bags (and bags, etc.) of knitting alone. Not Judy. Judy gets into everything, and drags Simon and Gwen into the fun. Now that all yarn has been put away, they have started in on the sad, lonely warp which has been sitting on my loom for months, waiting to be threaded and wound on.

Messy and very tempting.

Worse than not being threaded at all, this warp has been sleyed and partially threaded for months. I couldn't even stick it in a closet to avoid the guilt.
I spent most of Saturday finishing the threading, and winding the warp onto the loom.

This should be a little more difficult for the cats to destroy, but I won't put it past them. If I don't go into some sort of cleaning frenzy this weekend (ha!), I should get this tied onto the front and discover where all of the threading errors are. At which time, I will be pounding my head and gnashing my teeth.
My little bundle of nerouses, Gwen, supervised. I need to vacuum the bed again.

* Judy's other big flaw is that she doesn't like us that much. There is nothing quite so disheartening as approaching a kitten you've had for 8 months and her shrinking from your touch. Seriously. You'd think we abuse her, but she won't let us that close. She loves Gwen and Simon, though. So that's something.

Five Questions

A cute little questionnaire from The Friday Five (or What to Post When You Have Nothing Really To Say):

The Friday Five for 28 July 2006 :: The Name Game!!!
This week's questions brought to you courtesy of kaos1385


1. Are you named after anyone? If so, explain. I was named after a woman who was either a friend or a student's of my Dad's. I've never been clear on their relationship, but I don't think it had anything to do with my name, my parents just liked it. My middle name, Jeannette, was my dad's aunt's name, and his sister's.

2. Do you have your children's names picked out already? If so, is there any significance? Yep. If we have a girl, her name will be Lucinda (after Lucinda Williams). Len thinks if we have a boy we'll name him H Ridley Schnegelsberg. H is his middle name, Ridley is my last name. Pray for a girl, ok?

3. If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name have been? Probably the same.

4. If you could re-name yourself what name would you pick and why? I don't think I would. I like my name.

5. Are there any mispronunciations/typos that people do w/ your name constantly? It's pretty hard to mispronounce my name. I get occasional misspellings (Leigh, mostly) and sometimes get called Lea. Sometimes I get asked if it stands for anything.

Why I'm Voting...

...In the August 8th Republican Primary

I live in Jackson County, Michigan. According to Michigan folklore, Jackson is the birthplace of the Republican party,which, at the time was a reaction against "slave power", which I suppose gives the place some good abolitionist history, but the county continues to be strongly Republican in it's conservative incarnation. No Democrat will be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from this county. So the Republican Primary is pretty much my chance to cast a vote for the person who will represent me.

This year, there is a choice. The incumbent, Joe Schwarz was elected to the U.S. House in 2004; he is being challenged by Tim Walberg. There are some big differences between the two, and while this district won't help change which party controls the House, I think it will help determine the tone.

Walberg accuses Schwarz of being a Liberal. While I happen to think that isn't an insult, I'm not delusional. Schwarz isn't liberal, he's a Republican because that is the party that best fits his political beliefs. He's pro-Iraq war, against the estate tax (at least he refers to it that way more often than "death tax"), for the Patriot Act. Eh. Read his page yourself.

But he is no wingnut. He is pro-choice, for embryonic stem cell research, against drilling in Alaska (and in the Great Lakes). He is against the ban on same sex marriage in Michigan.

I generally think Schwarz is a stand up guy and he genuinely wants what is best for Michigan and for this country. Unless the Democrats stand a candidate that doesn't try to out-conservative the Republican, I'll vote for him again in the general election in November. Do I agree with everything he does? No. But I believe he makes the U.S. House a better place. And, in these times, that's a start.

T-Shirt Woes

Despite not carpooling with Len, I have been working on the v-neck t-shirt. Make that, I have been trying to work on it, but instead I've been knitting and ripping the same 5 rows. I finally got to the point that I could divide for the v-neck and start adding stitches for the sleeve. The instructions for these maneuvers aren't exactly difficult, but my brain seems to have fallen out.

My first problem was deciding whether or not I was actually ready to start the neck and sleeves. This involved a tape measure, three different measurements, a lot of sweat, some tears, possibly swearing, and a very frightened boyfriend (he finally left the house). I finally decided that the pieces match closely enough.

The first instruction is to increase in the first stitch*, knit 80, turn. For some reason I think this means I should have 81 stitches on my right needle. I continue with this for a few rows. I finally realized something was wrong, counted the stitches which will make up the other side of the v-neck, and of course, there aren't enough. There aren't enough by 5 or 6 stitches. It took me a couple of times ripping these rows out for it to dawn on me what was going on.

I had made a working copy of the pattern; it is possible I had noted on that pattern which size I was making (or not) but I've lost the copy. I was assuming I was making the largest size. Looking at the pattern measurements, I certainly should have been making that size, but no, I am making one size smaller. Maybe I measured under my boobs when I started this folly? Perhaps delusions of smallness? In any case, someone is getting a v-neck t-shirt for Christmas and it probably isn't me.

Instead of a picture of knitting, I give you my first harvest of the year:
I had no idea that the pickling cucumbers would put out so early. It will be a frenzy of pickling at our house for the rest of the summer.

*An odd instruction for a Jaeger pattern. They usually give more thought to seaming.

Crummy Pictures of Pretty Garden

I want a decent camera for my birthday. But at least you can't see the weeds. Much.
The leeks, pickles and peppers are doing very well, in spite of my inattentive weeding.
The tomatoes have gone so wild, you can't see the grass growing up underneath the plants. You can, however, see our pathetic attempt to tie the plants up. We'll see if this works, the tomato cages I used last year so did not.
Despite our not-really-best efforts, something keeps eating our broccoli and sugar snap pea plants. So far we have tried fencing in the garden (with a lovely gate held closed by a bucket of rocks and beer cans), but whatever is getting in is small enough to get through. I've also tried black pepper. The creature seems to like it's vegetables spicy. The two or three bean plants that came up look nice though. So that's something.
Look! Jalapenos! (And yes, I do know there should be an accent over the 'n')
And a red bell pepper. How cool is it that you can stick a plant in the ground and a few months later get food?

Lay and worse

One more small bit on Ken Lay: The worst part of this whole scenario is that Texas law holds that if the convicted dies before sentencing, the conviction (and indictment) is vacated. Apparently the point of that law is he can no longer participate in his defense in the sentencing hearing and any subsequent appeals. Being dead and all. So, officially, he is no longer guilty. While he certainly is in all but the most deluded minds, there is a practical problem: the former Enron employees who are suing him can no longer use the trial and conviction as evidence, because they never happened. Officially. The government* won't be able to seize assets to make restitution because they are no longer the assets of a guilty man.

You know what my mother would call Ken Lay's death? A Fuck You Message.

*Let's just pretend the government would have managed to seize Lay's "meager" $10 million. No really. Stop laughing.

I was just working out something to say about the Middle East, when I hopped over to Franklin's The Panopticon. Whatever I had to say, he says far better. I do want to recommend, however, if you are interested in the What and Why of the Middle East, read Juan Cole's blog Informed Comment. He writes lengthy and frequent posts, which provide the context that the American media can't or won't.

Ken Lay

Is it just me, or do you feel kind of cheated now that he's dead?

Last night, NPR repeated his "I'm living the American nightmare" witness stand whine. You know that nightmare? The where you recklessly drive your business into a tree, taking your employees and their retirement funds with you? But you survive, only to die of a heart attack in your vacation home, near Aspen, instead of in prison where you belonged. That American nightmare.

Not the one where you are unemployed without a retirement fund because you believed the CEO's Go-Go rhetoric.

What an unsatisfying ending.

Knitting Updates

On occasion, I knit. It never really feels like I get enough time, what with the planting and the weeding, and the weeding (ad infinitum), but apparently I am knitting in my sleep because there is progress:
The left side of the Obnoxious Flower Sweater is done. I have started the right side which includes no intarsia, so that will either get done very quickly, or not at all (due to boredom). There are a heck of a lot of ends on the back side, I am trying to weave in a few every couple of nights. The green is not nearly so subtle, by the way: it is lime green in a 1980's sort of way.
Here is the finished Waving Laces sock and proof that I don't suffer from Second Sock Phobia (in this case, anyway). It isn't nearly as pretty off the foot as on (putting this sock gives me more pleasure than is really necessary).
I love the Louet Gems Pearl so much I decided to subject some to kool-aid (because what better way to show the love?) The colors are really much brighter than the picture shows. I used 4 packets each of orange, strawberry and lemonade in about 1/2 cup water for each skein. I had considered making these self-striping (for instructions, see Eunny), but I really like how the colors play together and thought making the color changes completely random would enhance the pretty effect. We'll see once I start knitting.
Here is my first attempt at Faye (a swatch, anyway). The yarn is Dale of Norway's Stork and the stitch pattern is based on a Jaeger baby sweater pattern (Debbie Bliss' Smock Jacket). I'll give the pattern a couple of repeats, but so far I'm not in love with the yarn (at least not for this purpose, it is otherwise lovely). I want something a little less crisp and shiny than this is turning out.

These are two EZ Baby Surprises, one finished, one in the works. These are for Len's sister Amy, who is have twins. The first is made with Mexican Wave. Apparently, if you buy yarn, hoping that one of your friends will have a girl so you can knit a pretty pink sweater, they will all have boys. Including the one with triplets (sorry about that C! My fault for buying the yarn!). When Len's sister got pregnant, I bugged him more often than was reasonable to find out what variety she would be having. Turned out to be one of each.
And finally. Daffodil. Looking sad and deflated.

Waving Laces - Under Construction

This is my favorite part of knitting a sock, when the foot is far enough along that you can try it on. With all the needles sticking out, the sock looks like it's under construction. This picture was taken sometime last week and the sock is done now; Len tells me it's "sexy". I don't think I'd go that far. Pretty, yes, but not sexy.

Big Dumb Guy

But very, very pretty!

Bad Parenting

I don't have children and I try very hard not to judge people's parenting styles (and certainly not publicly). I'm pretty sure, though, the following falls squarely in the category of Bad Parenting:

If a non-custodial parent, who lives in another state, promises his 11 year-old daughter (who happens to be my darling niece) a plane ticket so she can come visit him on a particular weekend, he damn well better follow through. If for some reason he can't follow through, it is up to him to CALL her and tell her and NOT ignore her messages. He then must do everything in his power to find another weekend for her visit and send the damn ticket. If this child has pretty low self esteem as it is, he needs to be especially sensitive in his dealings with her.

For all of his other faults, I've always thought he was a good father. Now I'm not so sure.

We Kill Mice

Simon, Gwen and Judy want it to be known that they do kill mice. The details are much to gruesome to share and are even worse if you have not had any caffeine (worse than mouse jerkey). And how is it, by the way, that it is always me who finds the corpses? I don't believe for a second that they respect me enough to leave tributes.

Vegetable Garden

I like that the dew on the long grass shows up in this picture (and that the big ugly house in the background is obliterated by the sun). Since my crummy camera doesn't do detail, the garden looks a lot nicer here than it does in reality.
Left to right: corn, green beans (didn't get many of those plants), sugar snap peas, Early Girl tomatoes, Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, miscellaneous heirloom tomatoes (started from seed, didn't label), 1/2 row leeks, 1/2 row pickling cucumbers, and a variety of peppers (habeneros, jalapenos, anchos and red bell). I've also planted marigolds and sunflowers in hopes of controlling pests. We'll see.

The grass is trying to take this plot back. This problem wasn't quite so bad last year because I had taken the sod off; this year, when Len doubled the size, he roto tilled the space. It was a lot easier, but we'll be battling the grass for a long time. We plan to cover the plot in newspaper and horse manure in the fall, but I expect it will take a few years to kill off the roots.

The other issue we are having is something is killing our tomato plants. Most of them seem to be doing well, but several have been eaten down to nothing, and others have wilted and died. No evidence of that horrible Tomato Horn Worm, and according to some research I've done, it's early for their appearance. Baby rabbits are a possibility (Len put up a fence, but babies are small enough to slip through).

In another spot we put in asparagus, which seems to be doing well and strawberries, which all got eaten. Several times.

Destruction Continues

Aside from the waste (and the dust) involved, I think building demolition could be a really fun job. Cathartic.
The Business School has had several additions over the years. It appears they are tearing down the original building and two of the older additions. The addition behind the view in my original post about this is gone now. I'm pretty nervous about what will be going up in it's place. I wonder if someone with $100 million dollars and the desire to dictate building has the taste to fit in with the neighborhood (which includes the Oxford-inspired Law School). Or will it be something like the new Biomedical Science building?

Simon the Lush

Reading

I finished reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith a while ago (long enough ago that I have finished another book and started a new one). It's a wonderful debut by a major new voice in literature. Getting into the book wasn't easy -- it is very dense -- but Smith is so funny and fresh, I really wanted to keep going. Eventually I was hooked. Two of the most important factors in novels for me are dialogue and endings; the book can have a compelling story and great characters, but if the author screws up the dialogue or the ending, it's all over for me. Smith's story took some time getting started, the characters took awhile to get to know and like, but the language was usually spot on (one family introduced mid-novel rings a bit tinny) and the ending was as close to perfect as there is.

I also finished Anne Lamott's Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. This is a collection of essays on using her (very progressive) Christian faith to survive parenting a teenager, aging, grief and the Bush administration. Read Traveling Mercies first, so you have an idea of how she got to where she is.

And I've started Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Most excellent.

Now I Get It!

Yesterday I started a post on how mortifying it is that with a never-ending war in Iraq, genocide in Darfur (and various other places around the world), New Orleans, and a new study showing that none of our states are prepared for a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11, much less a natural disaster, two wings of our government have decided what's really important is gay marriage.

Today I discover that it isn't just pandering to mid-term elections. They have a sense of irony: June is Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender (LGBT) Pride month.

De Colores.

Summer Knitting

I tend not to knit wool in the Summer -- I just hate how it feels in my sweaty hands. We have central air in our house, but it doesn't work very well and, let's face it, Len and I are both much too cheap to run it all that often. I suppose one could ascribe somewhat more saintly motivations -- i.e., we don't like to waste the earth's resources on our comfort, which is true, but really just happens to fit in with our being cheap. At least as far as electricity goes.

When the temperature rises above 70 degrees, I turn to cotton. And I happen to have a few summer projects desperate to see the light of needles:

1. Daffodil. I actually only started this last summer, but I have high hopes of finishing this summer. Hah! Just wait until I get to the knit one into front and back, knit 2 together section. That section probably has 1000 stitches per row. I don't want to think about it.

2.
This is the front of a v-neck t-shirt I started a couple of years ago. The back is done, and better yet, the sleeves are included in the shaping, so once I finish this piece, I have a little seaming to do and it will be done. This is knitted in Jaeger 4-ply at something like 25 stitches to 4 inches and will be car pool knitting.

3.
This one is called "Phoebe". I don't know why. It's lime green with a big purple flower that wraps around one side. This is the left front, once I finish this side I'll be done with the intarsia. Unless I go crazy and put a smaller flower on a sleeve. Except I hate knitting instarsia, so I probably won't.
This is why I hate intarsia. It's very, very messy. No matter how often I untangle the mess, by the next row, it looks like this again. Feh.

4.
Until it gets to 90 degrees, I can usually stand to knit lace or sock weight wool. Since I knit on this when Phoebe makes me want to scream, I have made significant progress on one Waving Lace sock. This is 10 rounds away from the heel.

Will I finish any of these? Personally, I wouldn't bet on me.

Oh yeah, let's not forget about Faye! I will certainly be making some progress towards Faye.