Scarf Stuff

Yes, fiber related activities do still occur around here.
Actually, my chatter over our trip should drop off now that Hubby is back in school. As he will no longer be able to devote every waking moment to planning, he won't flood me with exciting information when I get home from work.
I thought I would have a new picture of the blue Eyelet and Feather scarf to show you so you would have a fighting chance to understand what I'm going to be babbling about.
But when I went to download it yesterday, there was no picture on the camera, and I remembered the batteries died when I was trying to take it.
So stick with me.
You'll remember I was working on US6 needles, which is what my pattern calls for, and Cynthia suggested I try US7.
I went to the other end of the ball, knit a little stockinnette stitch swatch, and then segued into two pattern repeats.
It looked quite nice.
On the theory that if big was good, bigger might be better, I repeated the process with a US8.
I pulled back the portion I had already worked on the US6 to just two repeats and worked up from there.
It didn't look good; the stitches were too open.
Just to be safe, I took it to the store Saturday for a second opinion.
They agreed the US7 swatch looked good and the principle behind it was sound (larger needle to get more length). Although people did like the US6 swatch too.
So I yanked it all out, used the ball winder to rewind the yarn so it was easier to work with, and I started over.

Frogging Either Way
Now you might think loosing all the work on the US6 progress is a shame, but either way I was thinking I'd yank it.
See, the varigation is very slight on this colorway, but I was still becoming concerned that it was starting to pool, causing the right hand side to be darker than the left hand side.
I had figured my choices were to ignore it and keep knitting; start cutting in the other tail at that point; or start over entirely, cutting in the second tail.
But then when I decided the US7 was better.
This time around I was smart enough to start cutting in the second tail right from the get go.
I'm working two rows with tail one, then two rows with tail two, etc.
This does make a little float up the right hand side of the scarf, but as it's only two rows tall, it's blending in rather well. I'll try to get a picture tonight.
Ok, I think that's it for now, gotta do some work.

Je mange le chien

I eat the dog.
Accomplished by biting their ears, which gets you a mouth full of fur and a dirty look for your troubles.
Yes, I really do bite their ears.
Or Samson's ears, at least.
He does this thing where he climbs into my lap, but instead of curling up, he sits bolt upright with his flank to me effectively blocking the TV so all I can see is dog shoulder.
Well, one day he did it and I got annoyed and bit his ear.
He was unimpressed.
So I bit it again, but tugged on it and growled like a puppy with a toy.
That got his attention. He jerked his ear out of my mouth and gave me a dirty look as if to say "You don't want to go there."
And I said, "Oh, I'll go there, puppy."
And I bit the side of his muzzle!
And Samson reared back and punched me in the face!
Really, pow, right in the kisser with his giant paw.
It hurt pretty bad, too, but I guess I was asking for it.
Hubby, of course, was laughing his head off.

Je marche sur le chiot!
I much prefer my normal battle cry: I step on the puppy!
Which is very useful when a 75 lbs dog is lying in the middle of the floor refusing to move. Stepping on the puppy is accomplished by shouting the battle cry, then softly placing your foot on the offending dog's shoulder.
This will earn you a dirty look, but at least your mouth is fur free.
And you don't usually get punched in the face afterward.
As you can see, Hubby is progressing in brushing up his French. (Although he hasn't learned the word for "step on" yet, so I had to run that through an online translator.)
I spent the weekend running around the house (attempting) to shout "Je mange le chien!"
Apparently my pronunciation was so bad during one attempt that I actually said something about a house eating a dog, or something.
Hubby and I decided it would be best for me not to attempt to speak any French while we are over there as they are more apt to be insulted by my extreme bungling than by thinking I don't speak French at all.
This does not surprise me, since I sometimes have trouble pronouncing English, and it's my only language.

Correction
I e-mailed Hubby: Je marche sur le chiot
He replied: You walk on the what?
I e-mailed: I step on the puppy!
He replied: No, marche is walk! You'd have to say Je fais un pas sur le chien, which is literally I take a step on the dog.....

So that online translator did me wrong.
No, I don't see much need for being able to say I eat or step on dogs while we are in France.
But my desire to know how to say that stuff should clear up any doubts you might have about my sick sense of humor.

Cupcake Caper
I baked cupcakes last night. Out of a box chocolate, with pre-made butter cream icing.
Really they can't be beat, so why torture myself with the scratch thing?
When it was time for dessert, I put four cupcakes on a plate and put it on the coffee table with our tea.
This coincided with the start of a thunderstorm.
Baru was already hiding upstairs in the Puppy Fort. Samson was in the foot space on the floor between the love seat and the coffee table.
At the first clap of thunder Samson barked, jumped up, turned around and barked out the window, then turned around and made a play for the cupcakes.
I jumped off the love seat and said, "No! Bad puppy!"
Then I suggested he might be more comfortable up in the fort with Baru.
But he sat in front of me with his shoulders hunched and his ears dropped and said he was a big boy and could handle it.
Then another clap of thunder came and he jumped up on me and said he could handle it better if I was holding him.
So I brought him over to the big couch, figuring it would be easier for him to sit next to me, and it would move his big, fat, flailing tail away from the tea and cupcakes.
But instead of sitting with me, he proceeded to jump from one end of the couch to the other—over me. Really, I was in imminent peril of being trampled.
I said, "Alright, that's enough, get down!"
Samson jumped off the couch—and made another play for the cupcakes!
I stood up and said "No, bad puppy!"
And although he was laying flat on his belly, he had a mischievous look on his face that showed he would try again if I turned my back.
Just at that moment, Hubby came downstairs and asked what was going on.
So I told him.
He said, "So, Samson's argument is 'I'm traumatized by the storm, give me a cupcake'?"
And I said, "I guess so."
Samson settled down after that. I don't know if it was the comforting presence of the Alpha, or it coincided with the storm passing.
No, we did not give him a cupcake.
And, just to be safe, when I packed the cupcakes up, I put them in the oven to protect them.
I can learn.
The cinnamon bun incident is still fresh in my mind.

Socks ::twitch::

I finished Hubby's Sox Socks last night.
He would not hold still for a proper finished objects picture. He presented me with one foot, which happened to be the first sock, which I posted a picture of when I finished it.
He was quite surprised when I threw the complete pair at him last night, prompting him to ask, "You made me new socks?"
Technically, he knew I was making him socks, as I'd corned him to check the fit at least twice.
But considering I started them back on Feb. 9, I could understand why he either forgot about them or gave up hope after I finished the first one back on March 2.

Sock Toss
I suppose saying I threw them at him has violent connotations, doesn't it?
Our living room furniture is arranged in an L. He lays on the big couch and I lay on the love seat, positioning us head-to-head at right angles.
So when I wove in the last end, I tossed them over into his lap.
He put them on straight away.
It is very cute, the way he gets all excited when I make him something.
You would think this would prompt me to make him more things, but I don't operate that way. :-)
I was a bit surprised that the toes didn't match.
You'll have to take my word on this.
Although I thought I did a pretty good job of matching up the cast on points, as you can see in this old picture, the stripes slipped out of alignment somewhere around the heel flap and turn.
So where the first sock ends with a black and white toe, the second sock ends with a green toe.
Oh well, they'll be in his shoes.

Sock Withdrawal
Having completed that pair, I don't have a pair of socks on the needles at the moment.
Hence my twitching.
Unless, of course, you count the hibernating Peacock Socks. Which I don't.
Or the fact that I still need to re-work the foot of my one Cubes & Cables Socks which I designed for the sock club.
Really, I need to focus on the two deadline scarves.
I wonder how long this will last.

Early Birthday Present
My birthday is in April.
Since my mom reads my blog, she saw the post about those socks from Sweaterscapes I've been drooling over.
And she bought me all the patterns!
Since it's an online transaction, I've already got the PDFs in my hot little hands.
We debated the virtues of getting a kit, but decided it would be better to buy the yarn separately, since I could potentially have enough leftovers to make two patterns, rather than just one.
I also have partial skeins in my stash that might work, such as the Jawool from my TipToe Socks, which would reduce the amount I have to buy.
So I'm going to price it out and then she'll send me money for the yarn.
It's all very exciting.

In Praise of Customer Service
Doug at Sweaterscapes has been very nice and helpful over e-mail during this process.
At first mom didn't understand the online ordering, so he e-mailed her the patterns and said to send him a check.
Then she figured it out and ordered a fourth pattern, but didn't realize she had to download it. So I e-mailed him the receipt and explained what happened. He said he noticed it all seemed connected somehow and resent me all the PDFs.
Which means I have a back up copy on mom's computer if something bizarre happens to mine.

Hubby recently had a good customer service experience with Verizon Wireless as well.
He wanted to call a B&B in France to book our stay. After we nailed down the international calling codes, the call didn't go through.
I remembered he had to activate international dialing on our account, which I had to do when he was in Japan in 2005.
So he called Verizon and did that. Then he called the B&B and had his heart broken since they required a two night stay.
Then the rep from Verizon called Hubby back and said if he was planning to make a lot of international calls he should get a plan for $4 a month which reduces the rate to 10 cents a minute instead of $1.50 a minute. And we could cancel it at any time.
Hubby said ok, but what about the call I just made?
So the guy made the plan retroactive to that call.
Because if you are going to be disappointed, it's better to pay 10 cents for the privilege.
Anyway, I thought it was cool the rep was proactive in calling back to point out the plan.

Speaking of our trip
Hubby's itinerary for us was trashed yesterday when he discovered Versailles is closed on Mondays.
He said he read it draws 3 million visitors a year, so why aren't they open all week?
We were pretty ticked off.
Since we were feeling snarky, Hubby pointed out Yankees Stadium draws more than that during the baseball season.
Although acting like Ugly Americans made us feel a little better, it didn't help our travel plans.
But he's got it sorted out. Now on Monday we'll go up to Normandy and visit some chateaus in the area, looping back around so we can go to Versailles Tuesday morning, then back on track to Bordeaux.
This means we'll have to skip Alsace (sp?) and Verdun, but sacrifices must be made.
We're still rather surprised the program he is attending doesn't include a trip to Versailles, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

Midnight Musings

As tired as I've been all week, I'm really really ticked off to be awake at 3 a.m.
(Since Hubby is on Spring Break, it is nothing for him to stay up til almost midnight since he can sleep in. Which means I'm up as well. But the last two nights I've put my foot down and gone to bed early. Fat lot of good it does when I wake up in the wee hours. sigh.)
When I first woke up, I was actually having dreams about my freelance article, in the form of dreaming of my Gmail account and sifting through other possible sources. This is silly because I'm actually in pretty good shape on it. But stress manifests in strange ways.

What's Wrong With Flannel?
Then, as I was laying there, my mind seized on that commercial for the dating website where the woman goes "I promise never to wear flannel pajamas to bed" and the guy responds "Can we just make that no pajamas?" or something cute like that. It's all very titillating. And I thought to myself, "What's wrong with flannel pajamas?" I have flannel pajamas.
Hubby gave them to me.
Granted, I don't usually wear them to bed.
But at the same time, the couple in the commercial have obviously never been to my in-laws house during the winter.
At Christmas time it's so fraking cold up there I not only wear my flannel pajamas to bed, I do my best to sleep under Hubby, and invite the dogs up with me. (Usually I'm fighting the dogs for space on the bed. It's hard not ranking high in the pack.)
Anyway, I just think that woman needs to qualify her pledges regarding wearing pajamas or she might regret it later.

Have I mentioned I'm going to France?
Then, of course, my mind turned to our trip.
There are several months to get through before we leave, but it's still pretty all consuming.
It's a good thing Hubby is on break as he is devoting most of his days to planning.
He has the broad outline in place.
I land Sunday around noon. We spend that afternoon and evening in Paris. He's got that hotel booked.
Monday morning we pick up the rental car and head to Versailles. That afternoon we head toward Bordeaux where we spend the night.
Tuesday we wake up, hit the wineries north of Bordeaux and wander out of town, sleeping in the general vicinity of Montpellier.
He, of course, is rattling these areas off in terms of their wine appellations, but fell back on the big city names for my benefit.
Wednesday we make our way up to Lyon.
Thursday we head toward Dijion.
Friday night will be spent somewhere in the Champagne area, but I don't remember where.
Of course the goal in all these areas is to hit as many wineries as we can.
Don't worry, when we do these wine tasting trips, Hubby tastes and I drive.
I figure he's the one who knows what he's drinking, so he'll get more out of the experience and I stay sober.
He mentioned something about trying to swing out to Verdun to see the battle site (he is a history teacher after all. He's fairly disappointed we won't have time to swing up to Normandy).
Saturday we head back to Paris, arriving in time to return the car by 6 pm.
Sunday morning we fly home, and return to our boring lives.

A Place to Rest
Although it all sounds good, he's actually stuck in Bordeaux.
He is trying to book hotels ahead of time so we don't have to worry about it when we're in country.
Sadly, he found a nice sounding bed & breakfast located amidst the wineries he's aiming for. But when he called, they established in his broken French and her broken English that we'd have to stay for two nights, which doesn't fit in our schedule.
So he has embarked on an elaborate system of punching addresses into the French version of Google Maps trying to establish where other hotels/b&bs are in relation to where we want to be.
Then he found a nice sounding resturant for dinner, but it's not open on Monday. sigh.
It's not easy being the activities director.
In the mean time, I figure I'm going to start poking around in order to determine the best way to bring wine home with us.
Carry-on luggage is obviously out because of the no liquid rule. I'd be worried about checked luggage. Have the stuff shipped seems the most sensible, but I don't know how easy it would be to pull off. But there is time to nail down the details.

Yarn?
I, on the other hand, was able to give Ravelry a few pokes and shake loose a three page list(password required) of yarn stores in France.
I couldn't remember where the list was, hence the poking. If you are wondering, the dialog box to search for a Local Yarn Store is on the "Yarns" tab.
Closer to our departure I will have to figure out how to print this list with street addresses that we can punch into the GPS unit.
There are, as you might imagine, several stores in Paris, but others seem to be scattered through the areas it sounds like Hubby says we'll be transversing.
Still, I might have to content myself with one of the Paris shops.

Parlez vous Knitting?
Hubby was asking last night whether there was a universal language that I would be able to go into one of these stores and be understood.
I said it's all knitting, but they'll have French words for it that I don't know. I figure it will be a matter of pantomiming what I want.
On the other hand, the labels are universal, and I know enough that I would be able to help myself to enough yarn to, say, make a scarf.
Still, it might be a good idea to learn the French words for hat, scarf, and socks so I can move things along faster.
I also seem to remember seeing on a blog once a few years ago that someone made a knit chicken that looked like those rubber gag chickens from a Phildar pattern. Maybe I should try to find that...hmm.

Yo YOs

After work yesterday I went to a Lace 101 class at Knitting Central.
D was teaching it, she does a lot of nice lace knitting and has taught it in the past. (She's also a busy girl and hasn't updated her blog in a while.)
Did you know there are five different ways to work yarn overs, depending if you are going from knit to knit, knit to purl, purl to knit, etc.?
Yeah, you read that right five ways!
I had no clue, which is why I crashed the class. She was showing me some when we were working Saturday and I was dumbfounded.
I won't go into detail here, but would encourage you to take a class at your friendly local yarn store if you have a burning desire to know.
If you can't wait for a class, I believe there was an informative discussion of YOs on that blog let me explaiKnit.
(Which might indicate that I just accidentally lied about not knowing there were five different YOs. Well, let's say I knew there were different YOs, but maybe not exactly five. Do you forgive me?)
But it's so much easier to have someone show you these things.
During class, D discussed the uses of different increases and decreases and the various YOs.
She explained that there are different abbreviations that can be used to indicate just which YO should be worked, but most patterns (American ones, at least) just say "YO." This forces the knitter to decide for themselves, which doesn't offer much help to those knitter who don't know about the different YOs.
Poor YO-less knitters.
Then we made a squidgy little sample swatch, practicing the YOs, and getting a feel for the pattern for the scarf they'll make.
I say they because, as you know, I have way to many deadline projects going on to stop for another scarf at the moment (although it is quite lovely).
Of course, once I started working some of the new/different YOs I actually had trouble working the standard YO. sigh.

Crochet YOs
This knitting business is very complicated, with its five different ways to make a hole.
When you want to make a hole in crochet all you do is work a chain. The more chains you work, the bigger your hole.
Doesn't get much simpler.
Of course, in crochet they aren't called yarn overs, they are called spaces.

Relevance to my life
I'm not sure how this new information will influence my current projects.
The YOs on the Eyelet and Feather scarf are all between two knit stitches.
And the Harf, thankfully, doesn't have YOs at all!
It might all come into play, however, for the scarf I want to make with my Mohair Splash yarn. I would have to look at the stitch pattern I selected to see where the YOs fall.
But that is a task for another day.

Speaking of Scarves
Cynthia was at the store, so I showed her my progress on the Eyelet and Feather Scarf in the Cashmere Sock Yarn in relation to submitting it to the book.
She thought I should go up a needle size. She suggested it would get me more length on the finished piece.
Fortunately there is time to swatch and fiddle around some more. I do have a little over a month before the deadline. I'll probably work on that tonight.
Actually, I have two interviews tonight for my next Yarn Market News article, so I'm not sure how much knitting I'll accomplish.
Last night I didn't get home until 9 pm. As I was pretty fried at that point, I actually wimped out and worked on the Harf.
With the potential needle change for the blue scarf the Harf actually required less brain power!

We Have Lift Off

No yarn related content ahead.
My bulbs have started coming up.
Here are some lame little crocuses that have bloomed in the corner flower bed under the rhododendron.
Bulbs in the other flower beds have broken the surface, but haven't made this kind of progress. Although I think some daffodils will bloom any day now.
I'm even starting to see leaves breaking the surface on the hill in the driveway.

400 Strong
I say these five little crocus are lame because I'm sure I've planted around 400 bulbs in the four years we've been in the house, so I feel I should have much more color by now.
Also, I really should have gotten closer when I took the picture, but I was in my pajamas and only has on slipper socks, so I didn't want to walk in the dirt.
The bulb situation is really out of control, but I'm still not satisfied.
The first year in the house, Costco had reasonably priced bags of 100 daffodil bulbs. My mom and I decided to split a bag, giving us 50 bulbs each. Well, when we went to the store there weren't any more of those bags, so we ended up buying a variety of smaller bags.
After we'd divided them up, we each had upwards of 100 bulbs. We looked at each other and said, "How the frak did that happen?"
Now, I know 100 bulbs sounds like a lot. And it was a lot when I was planting the damn things. But when they bloomed, it seemed sparce.
So the next year I did it again.

Seasonal
The problem is, it turns out all the flowers I really like, and therefore keep buying/planting, are early spring bloomers—daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, paperwhites, crocus. So they all bloom at once and then I've got nothing for the rest of the summer.
Resulting in an effort these last two years to find late spring and summer blooms, but they are more money for fewer bulbs. So my beds are still pretty sparce.
And I've only got the three small beds and the hill out front, so I'm really planting bulbs on top of bulbs.
It's getting ugly.
What I really need is some hardy, fast growing ground cover.
Hubby commented once that usually when people have an interest in something (like say, gardening) they also usually have some skill at it.
He wasn't trying to be insulting. He was just commenting on my plant killing skills in general. It's not my fault our soil sucks.

Furry Little Flower Killer
Not that any of my efforts matter.
Once those poor daffodils do bloom, they won't have long to live.
Let's see, it was the second year in the house, which would have been Baru's first spring, because we got him the summer we moved into the house.
Which would also have been the first time any of the bulbs I had planted would have bloomed, since they would have gone into the ground autumn 2005.
One day I was on the back porch and noticed some recently bloomed daffodils were gone.
Not withered like they had died, just gone.
Which was odd, since we don't get deer in our yard (there are only two recorded sightings and it will be five years in the house in April), and I didn't think deer ate daffodils anyway.
As I was contemplating what could have happened to my flowers, Baru was running laps in the yard.
The next time he passed the flower bed, and without breaking stride, he turned his head and decapitated a daffodil.
After a few strides, he spit it out.
His lack of hesitation proves this was something he was accustomed to doing.
I've also seen him going out of his way to munch on tulips, which he also spits out.
And there is no way I can stop him.
This is, of course, so wrong on so many levels.
In addition to concerns for Baru's health, there is the annoyance of loosing my blooms, and then also having to let the plain leaves finish their growing cycle so the bulbs have enough energy to come back the following year.
So Baru can entertain himself.