2007 recap in pictures and short phrases...

...because why not, really?

I'm a little stunned at all that's gone on this year, now that I'm looking back. It certainly explains the current state of my house.


No Sheep for You was published [and I got my preview copy + chocolate early in the year.]


I got to hang, briefly, with the Purlesence girls while at the big knitting trade show, TNNA.


I bought my first Habu kit, which is still in this exact state [though Henry has grown] because my brain can't process the pattern.


Cupcakes came to the beach. I have visited Life is Sweet many times since then.


I finished a sweater and started a new one.



Jillian and I had the final photoshoot for More Big Girl Knits...at the cupcake shop, of course!


The year of speaking engagements/travel began at the DKC!


I got to do Breakfast Television again with the sexiest models ever!


I finally got to visit The Fold and my head exploded.


I re-visited the KW Knitters' Guild and managed not to faint in front of Sally Melville and Debbie New this time. Progress!


Loopy Yarn love in Chicago!


Jillian and I made a pilgrimage to the homeland of her heart...Hill Country Weavers in Austin, TX. I fell in love with the place, despite the shvitz factor.


I knit with steel.


I crocheted. And liked it. Haven't done it since, though.


I discovered Zulugrass and met the kickass Scout on her home turf [Albuquerque] where she dyed me some matching yarn.


I bent sterling silver.


Hub put the dead cedar hedge out of its misery.


Massimo the Vespa joined our family, a gift from Grandma.

The next three sort of blur together in a delicious happy memory:

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Portland, Oregon

The Purlescence girls of Sunnyvale, CA, show me San Francisco and, most importantly...


No picture here. My gallbladder and I broke up, permanently.


While I was healing, Hub had a fence put in our backyard to replace the hedge.


I healed quickly enough to visit Loop in Philadelphia!


I went to SOAR and so did Denny! I can now spin yarn that I'm proud to show off!


Hub and I went to Oslo, Norway, and finally met Theresa!


Hub and I went to London, England!

And then it got nice and quiet. It's been, as you can see, an incredible year. Actually, rather more mind-blowing in retrospect. I have Flickr albums full of memories, many more blogs to follow of new friends met all over the world, and now, one last thing.

One of my favorite things about Norway was...the bedding. Really. Everyone gets their own duvet, even in a shared bed. And in the morning, you get up and fold it in half [the long way] and it looks so very Scandinavian and insanely tidy with zero effort. I loved it. No trying to fluff a huge king-sized duvet. No fighting for covers. Then Theresa made new duvet covers and that was it. I was lost:


I ordered us a pair of basic twin duvets [no, not the Icelandic Eiderdown at $2900/ea -- try the Anniversary]. We didn't get each other presents for whatever holiday it is we're celebrating this time of year, so dang it, we could have them. I have enough Amy Butler fabric and vintage linen put aside to make two perfect covers. And sewing two twin covers well seems much more achievable than sewing one huge king-sized cover, though I could probably have done it...badly.

Guess what I'll be doing this week?

Happy new year, everyone!

FINALLY! progress!

remember this? i just now, at the end of December, got to the separation of the back from the two fronts. i started it in March. clearly i lost steam somewhere around albuquerque.

every row is so damned long [this sweater is knit in one piece to the armholes] and though it's an easy stitch pattern to remember, it's not as mindless or quick as the stuff i usually choose. still, i do love the fabric and picturing actually wearing the thing is keeping me going.

so yes. i'm at the point where i just knit a front or the back and leave the others on holders. while i was shopping at Husfliden in Oslo, i found a freakinghuge stitch holder which was [Theresa and i guessed] for weaving. it was just a few dollars so i bought it. it handily, as i hoped it would, holds an entire back's worth of stitches on it with no scrunching.

pictures tomorrow, perhaps. right now, i'm spent with the excitement of it all.

whew

ripped.
reknit.
fixed. all better now.

i'm going to have to talk Tina into carrying this colorway [again? did she ever or was it ust an experiment?]. it's amazing.

---

off to the MIL's house to eat the traditional xmas party feast. they're Guyanese-Canadian, so it's a bit of a mishmosh of black-eyed peas [yum], meat-based stuffing, [i don't touch the stuff. the idea of it scares me], black pudding [see previous, times a thousand], probably something macaroni-ish with cheese [yum] and the staple of the meal: KFC. i eat KFC about once a year now, and this is the time. gimme somadat crispy stuff with extra transfat, baby!

meanwhile, i got my jewish holiday fix when i was home with my fam for dad's party/chanukah. i even had a side order of latkes with my breakfast when we went to Max's deli in Highland Park.

so all is right with the world.

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it's quiet here in bloggy land, but i'm not going anywhere and am thrilled. some of the local knitfolk are having parties to take advantage of their weekday freedom, and the Purple Purl is having a pajama party/knit in on New Year's day that you'd have to chain me to my bed to miss.

oh, and it's pouring rain and 8c outside. and i just don't care. i'm off to eat the Colonel.

complete, utter disaster.

thankfully, almost nothing in knitting is irreparable.

this is the 2nd djevellue i've been trying to knit for a week now. i knit a perfectly lovely one on the first try last month, but for some reason, i'm repeatedly making a mess of this one. over and over. again.

here's the first one [same yarn]:


see? lovely. as intended. definitely recognizable as the same hat in the pattern.

here are the messes i've created:




i knit on this for 3 hours at knit night wednesday, in complete denial.
i now know what i did wrong and why it just didn't seem right. [right? how about sane?]

i will rip. again.

why we're not leaving the house today

out our front window
Originally uploaded by amysinger

damn, i love days like this, especially when we can just plunk ourselves in place and not leave the house.

it's really dangerous driving, but it's safer than safe to just sit at home in pajamas and do stuff.

here are some of the things I want to do:

- finally play with my new Inkle Loom. the unbelievably sweet Denny gave this to me after we returned from SOAR earlier this fall

along with beautiful handmade shuttles

gifted to me by my sweet friends.

[i got really into the inkle weaving class at SOAR, so much so that i took it two days in a row. here is what i made on the last day:

a little woven band. nothing extraordinary, but damn, it was fun to do.]

i was stunned by the gift of this loom from Denny [it came from out of the blue, and i can't thank her enough!], and have been thinking about what i'll do with it since the moment it arrived. i've got a book on inkle weaving and stocked up on perle cotton at JoAnn's, so i think a little warping is in the cards for today. maybe something a little wider? woooooot!

- now that emergency chanukah knitting is complete, i am leisurely finishing up a few little things that need doing. one took a day and is for someone who reads this blog, so shhh. the other will take a bit longer, but it's so enjoyable [a 2nd djevellue cap, this time for hub's friend's new grandbaby] and looks so deeply cool when finished. [this is the first one i did that's been gifted to my new 2nd cousin Noah]


- i might have mentioned the new wheel that now lives with me. i want to get to know it much, much better. :-)

- i want to start doing things with my handspun, but that may take more percolation time. i don't feel quite ready yet.

oh, there are other things, and most of them involve garbage bags and big recycling bins and trips to the goodwill drop-off depot, and despite how i feel before i start actually doing what needs doing, i know that after it's all done, i'll feel so much lighter.

i'm also making lists [i can hear Jillian cheering in the distance] and working to actually cross things off them, too. it's all good.

right now, i'm going to get warped. see you later.

catchup

So we're back. Hub and I returned last night from a week at my folks' place. We celebrated dad's 70th [THAT was a party, let me tell you...no one can organize a shindig better than my mama], ate a lot of really good food and I rediscovered Mr Pibb.

Did you know? They're making it again, except it's now Pibb, and the diet version is Pibb Zero. Whatever.

My sister and I loved this stuff when it was just Mr back when we were kids. This new Pibb incarnation seems to be only available in a portion of the US. It's like Dr Pepper, but more subtle. I love it.

---

So for this trip to Chicago, we drove. We've got a little Subaru [it's a 4wd car], so travel on possibly slippery roads is less scary to us than it might have been. However, we managed to drive on the two driest December days ever, and that was nice.

Because we drove [we usually fly because you just can't count on December weather to behave], we were also able to stay an extra day and avoid the ice storms threatening our travel route home. And hang with the fam and sample my sister's delicious cooking -- a mexican feast this time.

Oh, and we ordered this with our Amazon gift certificates from my sister and her hub. I do not like reading maps and am, therefore, bad at it. Hub hates getting lost. I hate backtracking. This device is a marriage saver. We call it the lady in the box, and the lady in the box got us home stress free. [sidenote: I'd used this exact model when I visited Scout in an Avis rental car in ABQ last June and marvelled at how easy it was to use, had super-quick recalculation when I decided to take an alternate route and never steered me wrong. The Amazon price was significantly lower now than when I last checked in June. Love this thing.]

---

The buns [both of them] are in great shape. They were fawned over at the bunny spa and came home totally relaxed and happy. We're lucky to have such a great vet's office so close to our home.

We'll be keeping an eye on Boeing, of course. But if she doesn't show further symptoms of the bladder stone, there's no reason to remove it. [If she were a boy bunny, that wouldn't be the case.] We also brought home timothy-based pellets, but confusingly, they have the same calcium content [0.8%] as the alfalfa-based ones we'd been using. I'm going to have to look into this.

---

So that's all for now. I've got new tea to sample, lots of catchup work to do on Knitty, and a serious machete needs to be taken to the clutter in our house. But before I go, this:

via Neil Gaiman's Journal, this delicious set of reviews at Amazon.co.uk. Savor them.

ah.

that's better.

- new Knitty is up [clear your cache, folks].

- Boeing is acting more like herself...enough so that we feel comfortable going on a family trip that really couldn't be cancelled [dad's big birthday party]. she'll be staying, with little Squeezle, at the bunny spa, so they'll be able to watch her in case she gets wiggly again. but she won't. because i told her not to.

- and now I can get back to my last-minute knitting. :-)

happy sigh.

you guys must be sick of looking at my face

Sorry about that.

I've been getting winter Knitty ready [really, really soon!], plus Boeing is continuing to not be herself so there's no spare time for blogging.

Soon, I hope.