The Handsome Triangle

Ah, the magic of blocking. It's now pretty much a triangle!

Blocking

Outside at dusk

Modeling shot

To reiterate, this is the Handsome Triangle shawl from Victorian Lace Today. It's knit from my handspun, which was made from Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms, in the color "Silver Fox." I started it exactly a month ago, on Jan. 21. Trent doesn't really like the color; he says it's "very Victorian", and I don't think he means that in a positive way. It's very muted for me, but I love it nonetheless. I thought I had more than the amount of yarn the pattern calls for (950 yards), but either I overestimated my yardage, or the pattern underestimates the yarn requirement. Happily, it's a design where you an stop pretty much any time and bind off. It's enormous anyway, so it's probably good that I stopped when I did.

I also finished Trent's green Fleece Artist socks.

So far, I've resisted starting anything new and have been working on UFOs.

Just barely

I finished my handsome triangle tonight. Right now it's not looking especially handsome, or even triangular. I'll be sure to post post-blocking pictures later.

For those of you (Peggy and Rebecca particularly) who watched me fret about the yarn amount at Ferals tonight, I had JUST enough. Here's the leftovers:

It won't even register on my digital scale. That's less than a gram, y'all.

A responsible knitter would now return her attention to her many UFOs. An irresponsible knitter would start another shawl. What do you think is going to happen, hmmm?

Playing catch up

I'm behind, both in life and on the blog. Here's the (reasonably) short version.

Feb. 3-4: Knitting friends visit town. I spend Saturday running around with Lori and Kristin, and attending Vickie's book signing at Pacific Fabrics. They had the complete line of her yarn, which was very cool to see. Sunday, I got up and frantically finished tidying my house, and then the knitters descended at 1:00. We had Lori (from New York), Kristin (lives here), and of course Vickie, blogging her heart out.

(They're all wearing a rendition of a scarf I've designed for SWTC out of Vickie's Love yarn.) Nancy and Stacy (also local) rounded out our brave troupe of knitters. Stacy brought the nicest gifts, ever - Kiehl's hand lotion for everyone, and a six-pack of Shiner Bock for Vickie, in case she was homesick for Austin.

Vickie didn't get to have a lot of fun, because it turns out that writing blog posts while trying to simultaneously answering 500 comments is hard work.

The days from Feb. 5-9: Oh my god. So, I'm chair of a committee whose primary task is to organize the faculty development day (3 times a year) at my workplace. My mom has a favorite expression: "God so loved the world that he didn't send a committee." If only... This committee is a particularly challenging case because members are appointed rather than volunteering. As you might imagine, that means that they're not all approaching the task at hand with joy in their hearts. Also, the event itself has often been treated as a dull, punishing, and pointless day that keeps faculty from more important things, like grading and sleep. I'm doing my best to inject some enthusiasm and value into the day, but I might have better luck selling sand in Arizona. My committee members ran the gamut from helpful but uncreative to actively hostile and negative. Anyway, as a result, I spent the week chasing down details and dealing with last minute bonfires. I'm happy to report that it came off without a hitch, and then I came home and slept a long time.

The most recent weekend: Grading. Because there was knitting fun, followed by committee event planning no-fun, I've gotten a little bit behind in my classes. Okay, a lot behind. So this weekend I graded. Tonight? Grading. The foreseeable future? Take a guess.

There has been a little knitting and a little walking amongst all this. I'm up to 46.5 miles (but fatter than ever, since I'm a stress eater). The knitting looks remarkably like it did last time I took a picture of it: a rumpled mess of gray that's going to be a shawl, and a green fleece artist sock in progress for Trent.

Poetry

Today is the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading. I participated last year (see the Feb 2006 archives) with one of my very favorite poems by Louis Simpson. This year's poem is by one of Trent's favorites, Charles Simic:

My Weariness of Epic Proportions

I like it when
Achilles
Gets killed
And even his buddy Patroclus --
And that hothead Hector --
And the whole Greek and Trojan
Jeunesse doree
Is more or less
Expertly slaughtered
So there's finally
Peace and quiet
(The gods having momentarily
Shut up)
One can hear
A bird sing
And a daughter ask her mother
Whether she can go to the well
And of course she can
By that lovely little path
That winds through
The olive orchard

Yarn winner, and an unhappy husband

Blogiversary random drawing

Rebecca (Supergirl) is the lucky winner! I'm sending an email as soon as I finish this blog post.

Complaints department

Dear Trent checked in on my blog sometime yesterday, after which I received the following email:

subject: snif, snif

Cuuutie pie,

It's lovely that you sung my praises on your
blog, but I'm a trifle disturbed that none of your commenters said anything
about my wholly unselfish and supportive work as a yarn enabler. I mean,
really, I would've thought there would have been at least one "Gee, Trent is
completely wonderful! You're so lucky!" Instead, silence. What
kinds of sociopaths do you have reading your blog? This is deeply
troubling.

I loooooove you,

me

Well, sociopaths, what do you have to say for yourselves?

Exciting weekend news

The fabulous Vickie Howell will be in Seattle this weekend. She's signing her latest book, Knitty Gritty Knits, at Pacific Fabric and Crafts (the Northgate store) on Saturday at 1:00. Sunday, DIY is airing a Knitty Gritty marathon from 2-8 (PST), and Vickie will be doing a live blog and chat...from my living room. Her hotel doesn't get DIY; I knew having the sattelite television so I can get it would come in handy.