Catching Up

Thanks everyone for the hugs and sympathy with regard to Riso. Even though I didn't have it in me at the time to respond to you each individually, it helped a lot to know you're all out there. He was a great boy and we miss him, and we'll be ok.

I have a bunch of catching up to do - some things big, some things little. So this is a bit random but here we go:

A few weeks ago some of you saw me at Purlescence trying to knit something out of cut-up mailing envelopes to wear to my company's 10,000,000th customer celebration. Well the knitted fabric (if you can call it that) ended up too stiff so I went another route, but here's what I ended up wearing:

We were asked to don company-inspired cocktail wear - so between a bunch of mailers and copious amount of black duct tape, I cobbled together a Netflix flapper dress. Not knitted (though my Isadora-Duncan-style scarf was crocheted), but I'm still pretty pleased with it. Yay for fringe.

I never elaborated on my father and stepmother's visit over Stitches Weekend. I took them to Stitches thinking they'd last about 90 minutes - they're super high energy people, but they're not exactly fond of crowds so I figured our time there would be short. I was wrong - they lasted over 4 hours and made few but very high-quality purchases. In the meantime I got to see some friends, missed running into a few others, but over all had a very good time.

My stepmother is a very creative person - she sews and quilts, and also knits beautifully. She brought me a few presents. First, no one has ever made so socks for me before! I love the color and they fit perfectly.

Miguel liked them too.

The other gift is really special. Growing up, my grandparents had a house on Martha's Vineyard. On the sofa in that house were two hand-needlepointed pillows, a gift sometime in the '50s made by a friend of my grandmother's. When they sold the house a few years ago, my stepmother saved the pillows, even though they were in pretty sad shape. She saved the needlepoint and made them into new pillowcovers for me.

Cool, huh? And they're even 'my' colors.

Oh yeah - so I went to Vermont last weekend. I even bought shiny (kind of) new shoes for the event:

The event being my son's wedding! Meet Jesse and Heather.


The event took place at Heather's grandparent's house. It was simple and lovely and perfect. I flew to Vermont on Friday, and home on Sunday. Fortunately the flights went perfectly so there was no travel stress. Just knitting time. I made a ton of progress on these:

These are plain vanilla socks for my oldest niece, who loves camoflage colors - this was the closest I could find to that. The yarn is Regia Galaxy Saturn which is a very nice basic sock yarn at a reasonable price.

I've also been working on my Lady Eleanor Stole:

It's a very easy knit - easily done while socializing - and I love watching the color changes. This is out of Noro Silk Garden in a discontinued colorway that I bought at Webs about 2 years ago. I will likely use it more as something to keep on the couch to throw over me when I'm cold than as a wrap, but we'll see. A girl can always change her mind.

I'd be slacking a little in the spinning department but have picked it up again. I'm currently making a 3-ply sock yarn out of Superwash Merino in the Aqualung colorway from Crown Mountain Farms.

I have 8 ounces of the stuff which is easily enough for 2 pairs of socks. If I don't trade away half with someone else, I may ply 4 ounces of it together in the standard method and Navajo-ply the other half just to see the different effects. As usual, the CMF fiber is just fab - I recommend it highly.

And last, I've been having computer issues for a few months. My laptop (IBM Thinkpad) is over 5 years old and the left mouse button under the touchpad actually has a huge dent in it from my thumbnail hitting it thousands and thousands of times. Certain keys were non-functional (not being able to cursor left is a real bitch, letmetellyou), the wireless card was fading fast (losing the internet every 30 seconds isn't fun either) and in general, it was just dying. It did a fine job while it lasted, but it was time to move on.

Enter my new buddy, Mac:


Purty, huh? I opted for this over another PC because I was tired of Microsoft commandeering my computer while I slept and making changes in the name of 'security' that ultimately screwed up plenty of other things.

I'm still learning about Mac and a new way of doing things, but I think we're going to be good friends.