Knifty Red Got Me

I've been tagged by Knifty Red with some sort of meme. I'll go along this time, but she is certain to feel the icy hand of revenge later. I am tempted to send bad Juju to her yarn, but no innocent yarn deserves that.

The rules: Are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blog and leaves a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? In May, 1998 I was going to college in Israel and celebrating that nation's 50th anniversary.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today - not in any particular order? 1. Finish reskeining all zillion skeins of sock yarn I dyed this weekend. 2. Dye half a zillion skeins of yarn. 3. Watch at least one lecture for my class. 4. Mail away the nine skeins of yarn my wonderful customers ordered over the weekend. 5. Clean the living room before E gets home. There's yarn all over the place in there now.

3. Snacks I enjoy:Anything chocolate. Anything smoked fish related. Never both at the same time.

4. Places I've lived: This could be a very long list. Mokena, IL. Evergreen Park, IL. Hickory Hills, IL. Willow Springs, IL. Wheeling, IL. Be'er Sheva, Israel. Haifa, Israel. San Diego, CA. Ithaca, NY. Countryside, IL. Silver Spring, MD. Hmm. I'm probably missing one or two.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:I'd start a huge charitable foundation and be the chairman.

I will make my own rules here and only tag one person. She deserves it for tagging me before.

http://lapetitetricoteuse.blogspot.com/

Vampire coyotes

Last night at bedtime The Amazing E and I were discussing whether it is more healthy to sleep with the windows open or shut when the weather is nice. I believe it isn't good to have the bedroom air all stagnant and still. I like the fresh air and believe that indoor air is usually dirtier than outdoor air. E seemed to believe that sleeping with the outside air coming in causes allergies and therefore the windows should be shut. Now, this is not an argument that the air can have things in it that aggravate the allergies of people who are prone to them. He was telling me that it would cause people to develop allergies that they don't already have. Mind you, this issue is not resolved.

At some point I brought up that back in Illinois I slept with windows open at least part way almost every night of the year. To that he grumbled "I know." He told me that he hadn't liked sleeping at my condo with the windows open because he could hear all the outside noises. In particular, he didn't like the coyotes noises from the forest that surrounded the condos. My response was that the coyotes weren't dangerous to us because we were up four floors, and coyotes can't jump that high. So I wasn't afraid of the noises and got used to them.

Now, I thought at this point the conversation was lightening up. E asked what if there were vampire coyotes. Certainly they could fly. I said that we were safe on grounds that vampires need to be invited into a home and could not sneak in uninvited. And that my screens were immobile, preventing anyone from letting a vampire come in. E asked "really?" and I replied that the classical stories of vampires said so.

Then in a matter of fact voice he said that all that vampire needing to be invited in stuff was probably just folklore.

Huh?

One thing at a time

There's been a lot of exciting knitting and yarn business going on around here. So much that I've really got to exercise some discipline in posting here.

Today's exciting news is that the new silk yarn is available. At long last. The supplier is just a little small operation with a half dozen employees.

So far five colorways are dyed up in small batches with more on the way. Here are three of them. It's funny with this yarn. It soaks up certain colors really fast. Some colors have to be boiled and boiled, and yet others have to be boiled and then the color is absorbed while the solution is cooling.

I thought it was the end.

For four or five days until yesterday it rained cats and dogs here. We got something like six inches of rain. Schools closed, roads were impassible, and sink holes opened in the earth swallowing homes up. Quite the hellish picture. I was concerned about having to build a boat to save all the Cornish Rexes.

As I've heard in the media, Maryland was in a drought before this rain.

E and I were supposed to go camping this last weekend up in the Shenandoah National Park. We'd been looking forward to it for weeks. But all was not lost. You see, on Friday I got my big old shipment of silk yarn from the mill in India. I'd been waiting for it for weeks. And. Oh my.

I started dying it straight away. But it's still not dry, as it's been out on my porch. Today is sunny though. Perhaps we'll have something interesting tomorrow.

A frightening lesson

I was just nuking a Hebrew National frank in the microwave, and within 30 seconds it melted through the plastic wrap I put around it.

Just thought I'd share.

Contempating summer knitting (heavy yarn porn content)

Today was for resting. E was goofy off all day with reading and other man laying about activities, so I relaxed by sorting through my yarn. After all, Summer of Socks is around the corner, and I want to be prepared. I mean it would be a shame to cast stuff on and then waste time because I didn't have every pair of socks well planned.

So this afternoon I pulled out my sock yarn collection. I'm sorry to say that it's pretty meager. Only enough for 13 pairs, including a skein of my Cherry Blossom yarn. Some of this yarn I don't even live very much, and it will be a cold low stash day when I knit it. Like that plain old gray stuff in the middle and the crazy blue sparkly stuff in the top center. (I got those free anyway.) What's here are four skeins of STR in various iterations, one skein of Froebe Fibers, the strange blue stuff, a skein of Jitterbug, four skeins of Panda Cotton, two skeins of Regia Bamboo, some orange Fixation, boring gray yarn, My Precious, and a skein of my stuff.

So I laid all this stuff out and thought. I even tried to get advice from Elijah about what to do.

Here's what's up.

The first pair I'll knit will be a plain stockinette pair out of this. I think I should have a display pair to show off the fine dye job.

Aw, isn't that cute. His and her Panda Cottons. I think this calls for plain stockinette socks. One pair for me and one for E. Quite disgusting and newlywed-ish, isn't it? The black is for him. He can wear plain black socks with his uniform.

I have to say that I love the Jitterbug yarn. It's beautifully dyed and very tightly spun. The only problem with it that I can see is that the skein are very short. So it's footies for this yarn.
And lastly for the yarns I have is the Regia Bamboo that I bought on one of SnB's trips to The Fold. This is a nice summer sock yarn. It's been marinating for about a year, so it's ready to meet its destiny as some semi-fancy sock.So, you may be asking, what up with this? No STR or Koigu is present in the line up. I know, I know. It's sad and inexplicable. Perhaps I'm saving them to savor when I'm not knitting like a maniac.

Summer of Socks 2008

I've signed up to take part in Summer of Socks, 2008. My goals are modest, I guess. I would like to do five pairs of socks. I doubt I'll get five done, but this is my goal. Right now I barely have a week's worth of comfy handmade socks to wear, so I'll be making four for myself and one for E. After he got is birthday present socks, he's decided the big deal I make about knitting my own is worth the energy. I guess now I have to decide on the yarn. One of my other goals is to knit all the socks only from my sock yarn collection.

You too can sign up if you like. Follow this link. Sign up ends, I think, on May 15h.

In related and very exciting news, Rock Creek Yarn is one of the sponsors of the contest. I'll be donating a skein of sock yarn in Cherry Blossom for a prize.

And now for the important part. From now until the end of Summer of Socks, you can get 15% off your sock yarn purchase on the website. Enter sos2008 at checkout.