PSA for law enforcement and the victims of Jeremy Clark-Erskine

For knitting related readers, sorry I haven't updated here in a long time. I'm sure you want to see progress on the Chick and knitting. Somehow being in my third trimester has just sucked away my desire to do anything but sleep and sort through layette items. Rest assured, I've been knitting and will post 2009 FO's soon enough.

For law enforcement, government agencies, victims, and friends concerned with the fate of the Scoundrel, Jeremy Clark-Erskine, I have just received a message originating with the city of Culver City, CA. It appears Erskine was arrested and is in custody there. If you know of any outstanding complaints against this guy or warrants for his arrest anywhere in the US, please call the police in Culver City at 310 837-1221. As for the Culver City officials taking care of him, I don't think anyone ever looked into how he obtained a drivers license in Kenosha, WI back in 2006. He was arrested with it in Jasper,AB. I expect that it was obtained with false documents. Perhaps this is considered a serious crime. I can provide more particulars if needed.

If someone knows anything about the arrest and can share details, I'm curious. Please contact me through the blog or email an interested citizen cuchulain1973@yahoo.com. That person forwards information to me.

Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival

This past weekend, The Amazing E and I took Rock Creek Yarn to the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival for the second year. Now I wish I'd had the presence of mind to post something here before the show, but I've been so busy getting ready for the show that I didn't think seriously about it. Between being 6 months pregnant and needing to dye 20 pounds of yarn in less than a week, life was completely taken over by wool and sleeping. The show was worth all the hard work. It was the most fun show yet, and close to home. E and I didn't get out of our booth much to see all the other vendors or the events, but I'm told there was sheep herding, local wine tasting (E did get to that), classes, and lots and lots of fiber to buy. The best part were all the customers. If you've ever been to a fiber festival, you know that it's full of super friendly people just looking for a good time. And we were inundated by friendly people.

Too bad we also didn't get any pictures. Hopefully the festival will post some good ones soon.

We had a really great location in the front of one of the barns. That of course meant a lot of foot traffic, but we were also sitting right across from Rivanna River Farm and Fiber Studio. They are a local alpaca producer, and really fantastic ladies. I'll tell you. I spent the entire show pining over their hand dyed 100% baby alpaca yarn. I touched and cuddled it. I stared at it. And finally I bought five skeins of a rose and taupe colorway. There is a total of 1100 yards here. Enough for a sweater for me if I can put down the baby knitting.

Talk like a pirate day

It's that time of year again. Tomorrow is the day each year when those dastardly pirates all show their colors by speaking their stoopid and secret language in public. It'll be on Yahoo, I'm sure. And Ravelry. Grr. I guess it's good for me. A a ninja, this day each year helps me identify pirates and know who in my immediate surroundings are my sworn enemies. Silly pirates. You'd figure they'd want to hide their identities from us ninjas. But NOOO. They podcast their silliness all over the place. I wonder who I'll discover is a pirate this year.

On another note, this weekend is Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year. The Rabbi's sermon might be very interesting....

Speculation

Pregnancy isn't always fun. I mean, the anticipation of a little one is very exciting, and the miracle of having another person growing inside me blows my mind. But the nausea, aches, sleep interruptions, and other discomforts you don't want to hear about tend to get me down.

But there is one part I find completely hilarious. It's the "what kind is it?" guessing. The Amazing E and I are waiting until our Chick is born to find out the sex of the baby. We figure there are very few genuine pleasant surprises in life, and this situation is one of them. So we're happy to wait. Some others, however, are not so patient. Indeed, many people are absolutely shocked that we're not taking advantage of the technology to find out. So in their curiosity they try to guess. And it's just hilarious to me.

So let's see? What do the Old Wives Tales tell us about "what kind it is?"

1. One story goes that if the fetal heart rate is above 140, it is a girl. According to the doctor this morning, The Chick's heart is beating 145 times a minute. So we're having a GIRL.

2. Some other people say that carrying the baby high, it's a girl. If it's low and around the hips, it's a boy. Well, my belly isn't big, but so far the baby feels like it's sitting pretty low. So we're having a BOY.

3. Then there's the acne test. Sorry to say, but I have acne. So it must be a GIRL.

4. One friend told me that since I have cravings for spicy meat, it must me a BOY.

5. But the same friend also said that if I still like my husband while I'm pregnant, we're having a GIRL.

6. 71% of the time the mommy guesses right. I think we're having a GIRL.

7. Apparently the baby effects the growth of leg hair. They, whoever they are, say that if your leg hair grows faster it's a boy. It might be TMI, but mine is growing just the same. And I hope our GIRL doesn't get cursed with fast growing leg hair.

8. I dropped the mac 'n cheese right on the floor yesterday. Clumsiness is supposed to be a sign of a BOY.

9. I just put my wedding ring on an string and held it over my belly. It swung in a circle rather than back and forth. This would indicate a BOY.

10. Lastly, my favorite one. Craving chocolate is a sign of a GIRL. I must be destined to have only GIRLS forever.

DH's latest revelation from ON HIGH

He wrote his new insight into the nature of the universe this morning:

I have a new theory about cats
I have an entirely new theology.
In the beginning, god created the universe. It was, in fact, a revelation of this world from beyond the shadow that he installed to hide us from his presence
There is, however, a personage that evolved from this shadow - the Lord of Chaos
Indeed, this Chaos Lord is responsible for entropy and the nature of the universe ending in a heat death
For the Chaos lord has agents in this universe
In the form of kittens and cats. Cats are indeed sent from the Lord of Chaos to be adorable and irresistable to humans
Yet they are agents of entropy, forces of destruction
For in fact they are responsible for random placement of socks, hair ties, toy mice, and other objects around the house
That we put away previously
This morning's evil deed was hiding my wife's wallet
Right when she needed it
They knocked it down
Knocked it down behind the couch
Much as they were responsible for the downfall of many civilizations
Egypt
Babylon

I got got

Maven over at Fiber P*rn tagged me with a Meme. I don't think she understands what she's done, tagging me like that. I am happy to oblige her, because now I'll have the opportunity to exercise my stealthy and mad ninja skills on her at a time of my choosing. Yesss. Yesss indeed. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and I'll savor and plan the meal for a long time.

As the first step in initiating my newest vendetta, I'm posting here 7 things you probably didn't know about me.

1. I am a ninja, not a pirate. The pirate thing is just my cover. Don't tell anyone.

2. I can make fire without matches.

3. I am not left handed. Even if both my parents are.

4. I feel great shame when my floors are dirty, but I can't give a hoot about the state of the windows.

5. I have only been knitting for 4 1/2 years.

6. I am clueless about computers. For real. As far as I'm concerned they are powered by a tiny fairy. And I do not care to learn the truth.

7. I find sweet corn detestable. In all forms. Yes, some of you know that, but probably you don't actually believe it.

As I recall, Mrs. Strauss tagged me for a meme centuries ago. I am tagging her again.

First knit for baby

The other day I finished this project for the Chick. The Chick is too small to model it now, so the Bear bottom is filling it out for us.
The pattern is WHW Plain Wrap by Ruth Garcia. Tzurriz recommended the pattern. It's a size small. The yarn is Mission Falls 1824 Wool merino superwash. It only took a couple days of work, and I'm likely to make more and then re-lanolize them.

My latest project

I've been working on a really big project lately, but I didn't want to show it until making a good start. The Amazing E helped with getting it started, and has been supportive and helpful during the last 10 weeks of working on it.

Here is the result of our hard work up til now.
You can see here the little arms, the cute button nose, and the giant head. So it takes after both of us.

What's Jeremy Clark-Erskine up to now?

As some of you know, Jeremy Clark-Erskine is a convicted identity fraud artist who sneaked into my life about three years ago. I believe he stole my credit cards and car in an attempt to flee to Canada after escaping from jail in Indianapolis. Since then he's been accused of pulling off some serious fraud in Canada, and was eventually sent back to Indiana to serve out the rest of his sentence. Canada sent him back without prosecuting him for the thousands of dollars in theft and fraud I'm told he committed. Oh yeah, and my local police completely dropped the ball on prosecuting him.

Well, he served his sentence, but then was charged with escape. He served a few months for that, and was released last summer. Then early this year I was contacted by a very confused woman who had been dating him at the time of his last arrest. She was completely innocent in what he did, and she told me about his latest caper. I don't know that I should relate it all here, but it was an elaborate scam against a large corporation that she said got him new clothes and a long stay in a fancy hotel. He was arrested and convicted of some crime related to theft, even though I understand that he also commited a number of other crimes. The sentence passed was two years. He served three months and was just paroled. Really, this multiple felon was paroled after serving three months of a two year sentence.

So why bring him up again? Two reasons. One is that I got a flurry of hits to this blog today from private and government servers in Indianapolis. I would guess that he's been arrested again or some damn thing. I hope so. The other reason is that I contacted the Indiana Department of Correction in the last week to let them know that a bug in their system makes it hard for the public to find out the status of this guy's incarceration. After all, Jeremy has a lot of victims who would like to know when he's out of jail and if he's complying with parole. When I contacted them, I encountered a complete idiot who could not find his records, claimed he'd never been in an Indiana jail, and got nasty when I was finally able to pull them up and sent her the link to the record. Once again, the State of Indiana proves its incompetence when dealing with this guy.

So Erskine's out there. I know he's been paroled, but since the morons who are supposed to be keeping track of him can't seem to, I do not know if he's complying with parole or on the run again. If you know what's up with this guy, send me a comment. I don't have to publish it, if you ask me not to. My motives here are to see to it that people get him charged for the crimes he commits so he spends as much time as possible in jail.

If you are his latest victim and looking for information, first please go to the police and cooperate with the prosecution. Second, don't believe anything he's told you and don't blame yourself for whatever he did.

Jeremy Clark-Erskine is a convicted con artist. One arresting officer I've spoken to called him "a real predator." I personally have spoken to nearly a dozen people he's scammed in the last ten years. The aliases he uses that I know of are Jeremy Erskine, Jeremiah Clark, and Duncan McDonald. He is from Indiana, but has claimed to be from Canada, Boston, Ireland, and Scotland. For grins, here's his picture:

Silk Aeolian Shawl

In an amazing feat of knitting monogamy, I knitted this shawl in just over a month.
Pattern: Aeolian Shawl from the Spring 2009 Knitty
Yarn: Rock Creek Yarn Silk Lace
Needles: Knitpicks circular size 3.
Start Date: May 9, 2009
Finished: June 12, 2009

Notes: I added two repeats of the yucca chart and a repeat of the agave chart, so this is a hybrid of the two sizes. The size 8 glass seed beads where added using a crochet hook I made from the wire inside a twist tie.

It rains a lot in Maryland

First of all, thank you to Creative Crocheter. She once again identified one of the plants growing in my yard.

Like I was saying. It rains a lot in Maryland. At least compared to Chicago. It rains here at all times of the year, often for hours or days at a time. In fact, it's raining now, and will be for four more days. All the rain here has several effects for homeowners.

The nice thing the rain does for us is cause lots of things to grow outdoors. There's more stuff popping up now, like this weed in my yard. Right now the property is covered in strawberries. But they're the wild kind that don't taste like anything. Believe me, I ate them. At least they're pretty.

The peas are pea-ing.
And the roses are making an early show.
The other thing that all this rain does is back up into basements. We woke up to that this morning. The water probably came out of the sump pump pit, and if it did we're covered. But today we're working really hard to make sure things (like mold) don't start growing indoors, too.

Proving that I do things other than knitting

It being summer and all, we figured that we needed some sort of window treatments in the bedroom. You know, it cuts back on sleeping time to have daylight streaming into the room before 6am. So off to the fabric store E and I went.

I told E I could do it, even if I'd never made any type of curtain before. He picked the fabric, a striped blue silk dupioni; I picked the design. After working forever to get the hardware properly installed, there is a working Roman shade on one of the two bedroom windows.
Perhaps I'll even make the second one before the days start getting shorter.

More beauty this week

Nothing really new popped up for a little while, so I didn't stretch things here by taking pictures of wilting flowers. But today there are some nice things to show around the new house.

Last weekend, the Amazing E planted me a new garden. We decided on what will eventually be an informal perennial garden based on one my grandma had, plus some other things that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. This weekend the plants are staring to take root. This project will probably go on for a year or two more, but we have a start now. There is a pretty dark red flower that smells good; I don't remember the name. He also planted a butterfly bush, yarrow, a coneflower, and some flowering thyme and other low lying plants. Eventually, I would like some black eye susans, more coneflowers, and astilbe. Planting in the back yard turned out to be a challenge because a previous owner had an above ground pool back there. There's at least a foot of sand in the back yard, so we have to put soil wherever we plant.

There was also another azalea that bloomed. This one is a really nice pink.Then there is the mystery purple flower. I'm pretty sure these are from a bulb patch on the side of the house.
Lastly, an iris bloomed this week. Some others are making buds. I can't wait to see what they look like.
I also have an update on the mystery coral colored flowers. Those of you who guessed flowering quince must be right. This week it has little fruit on it.

There ought to be more soon; E and I are looking forward to it.

My Masterpiece

I'm jumping ahead of myself a little, but I can't resist. Rock Creek Yarn's silk spinner only gets about 300 grams of this yarn to me per week, but I've been saving it up and dying it for the Sedalia Fiber Festival this weekend. It's the previously mentions Silk Lace yarn. Now I've got 8 one hundred gram skeins for the show. There would have been more, but the Cherry Blossom Festival Sale was wildly successful for this yarn. Thanks for that.

I have to say something. I love this yarn. Really. For lace yarn, it's very strong. And soft. And shiny. Pretty soon a picture of an in progress project will show up here. But I've been working lately at dyeing up this super special yarn, and I'm in love. Take a peek at an "unofficial" picture taken just now with my iphone.

FO: +3 Red Socks of Doom

I'm actually quite pleased with these socks. They fit great, they're pretty, and the yarn feels really nice. If you recall, I started these socks back on November 30, 2007 in a fit of nerves over my wedding. It was the next day, so what did I do? Cast on socks of course. Since then, they've moved with me three times, gotten lost several times, and have had their needles repurposed more than once. Why +3 Red Socks of Doom? The beautiful lace killed my hands.

These socks were made according to Cookie A's Hedera pattern, which is available free on Knitty. They were knitted on size 1.5 DPN's out of Mountian Colors Bearfoot Yarn in a varigated red. I will be knitting socks from this yarn again someday.

Very pretty. Very dangerous.

Um.

They're Pantaloonies. They're made of sock yarn. Um. I don't think I have anything else to say.

Name that yarn!

So I've been dying this yarn mostly in Cherry Blossom for a while now. Until this time, it's only been available from my silk spinner in very small quantities. But now he's sending me several pounds. It's super pretty and the customers love it. Right now, it's just named Silk Lace. This is a lace weight yarn. It's 100% mulberry silk with great sheen and drape. The yarn is 2/20 count, that's two very thin plies spun together. I put it up in skeins of at least 100 grams, over 1000 yards. The best thing about it is that it's really strong, so you don't have to worry about breaking it when pulling out points on a fancy shawl.

But I don't know what to call it, and it's so fancy it needs a fancy name. Any ideas?

What's poppin up in the yard this week? May 1 edition

We bought a house that had previously been owned by a gardener. Signs around the property, like built in flower boxes, raised beds, an insulated shed, and hanging basket hooks everywhere, pointed to this. Talking to the neighbors confirmed it. There's stuff growing everywhere. In fact, we feel like we really have to spend this year watching what comes up before we think about what we might like to do with the yard. It's really full of stuff, and new things are coming up all the time.

I didn't have the foresight to start doing this a month ago, so we've missed the mountains of jonquils that came up about the time we moved in. Then we had a dwarf crabapple tree and an ornamental cherry tree bloom. For a while we had a bush in the front yard with little yellow flowers. E was smart enough to name it; I was not smart enough to remember. Last week the tulips made a brief showing. It's too bad tulips bloom for about three minutes before the petals fall off.

It seems that people in the DC area have an obsession with blooming trees and shrubs. There are magnolias, dogwoods, azaleas, and of course cherry trees blooming everywhere. I can't remember anything on this level going on in Chicago.

This week we have more flowering shrubs and trees.

The weird looking bushes in random places turned out to be azeleas. It's a good thing I didn't dig them up.
Then there's this little tree next to the house. Turns out to be a cute dogwood.
Lastly, this is a crazy flowering tree in the back of the back yard. Don't know what it is, but it has flowers.

Bat Shawl!

Okay. I'm not sure there is such a pattern. But I did knit the Icarus Shawl. It was a jump-on-the-bandwagon thing. Some of the other kids were doing it, so I did too.

This project was started on January 22 and finished on April, 16. I really wanted to do it all in one go and wear it to my friend's wedding in Chicago. It was finished on time, but it wasn't done in one go. I got bitten by the quilting bug and put the knitting down for an entire month.

The yarn is an awesome fawn colored laceweight made from silk and yak from Skaska Designs.

Fiber Alert!

Goodness!

Maryland Sheep and Wool is this weekend. I'm totally not prepared to shop for yarn. I mean, you need a list, a plan, and a team to do this festival.