Oh, do I have Things to show you. I finished lots of Things last week.

Unfortunately, I am also in the process of upgrading my operating system on my one-and-only computer, so I don't want to do too much regarding adding files (like pictures) a the moment, lest they not get backed up with everything else and then accidentally lost.

So, once the dust settles on the Shiny New OS, I will post pictures of at least two things, and maybe a post about what I don't usually post about. We'll see.

Currently, I am missing the following:

• 2 metal darning needles
  
• The pattern for my sweater
  
• A size G crochet hook
  
• The notes I took to replace the missing sweater pattern
  

Whoever keeps taking my knitting stuff? Cut. It. Out. This is getting old. And if my physical knitting journal goes missing after I write the remaining sweater pattern there, I may well do something drastic.

Seriously, Universe. Give my stuff back.

Last year I posted a picture of my entire stash in a pile on the kitchen table.


Remember? I thought I would repeat the experiment this year as well. This is more for my own records and benefit than yours, but anyway, here is the stash as of ten minutes ago (because I am used to getting up at 5 a.m. now, even though my job just ended, and what else am I going to do this early on a Saturday but take pictures of yarn?):


There has been some change-over, as you can see. All of the Harry Potter Scarf yarn has been used (thank goodness), as has all of the sock yarn that I had at the time. Actually, all the sock yarn has been used, period, except for the scraps that are going into the blanket. I did not realize that until just now. I am out of sock yarn. Huh.

As to what has been added, well. As you can see, I have a new bundle of fiber. That was acquired in September, and has not been touched yet. I am planning some sport-weight three-ply, but have not gotten around to it. You can also see two skeins of un-dyed, sport-weight alpaca there on top, and off to the right is a cake of angora/merino/silk left-over from a set of gloves I made for the Husband for Christmas. The other thing that makes the pile look a similar size to the one from last year is that I have added all the yarn left from the Lozengy Blanket back into the stash. The blanket itself has been turned into a cat bed.

I know it does not look like the stash is much smaller than it was, but I promise it is. Everything fits back in the Yarn Crate now, which is good. This year my goal is to clean out more left-overs, largely by knitting blanket squares for charity and wash cloths for myself. No need for promises to not buy yarn at all, because I really did not purchase very much last year. Maybe $120 over the course of the year. Maybe. Likely, much less. I can distinctly remember buying about $40 of sweater yarn, $20 of sock yarn, and $25 of that glove yarn. If there were other purchases, they were less than $10 each.

As for the sock yarn blanket, I know I have not talked about it much lately. I really did not do much knitting in the last half of the year, and most of it was on other projects. I am done with three entire rows (not much I know), and it is in that awkward stage where you want to take a picture, but it just looks ridiculous. So, instead, I give you a picture of me working on it!


Chai, the cat, has decided that she has to be on my lap whenever I am sitting in the bean bag. Usually, this is when I am knitting or reading. Reading is not much of a problem, as long as it isn't a large book, but she usually ends up under a pile of knitting. She doesn't seem to have much of a problem with that, usually, but she still does get evicted if she starts trying to chew on the yarn.

They're done! My Vinnland socks are finished!


The yarn is Oak Grove Studio Gems Pearl Sock, in Tumbleweed.

These have been on the needles since August, and I am quite pleased to have them done. The last sock was done this week at work, pretty much entirely, excepting three rows I knit at the hair salon waiting for my turn in the chair, and the toe, which I finished after work today. I am very happy with these socks. The yarn was lovely to work with. The sheen on it is just lovely, and the colors are gorgeous, too. The chart for the pattern was easy to read and easier to memorize, and the socks stay up very well.

I'll keep you posted on how well the yarn wears.

The other thing I finished today (yes, it's that kind of day, I guess) was a project bag for, of all things, socks. And whatever other projects are small enough to fit in there, I suppose, but socks are what I had in mind.


Over Thanksgiving, my Mother-in-Law and her mother took me around to a few of the specialty quilting stores around the area of Pennsylvania that we were in. I came back with eight flat-quarters and a yard of vintage fabric, without much of a plan for any of it. One of the quarters got turned into a new wallet, and five more are going to become an apron. I was at a loss as to what to do with these other two, though, aside from that they went well together.

Then I had problems getting the small tote bag containing my sock project into my book bag to take to work, and a plan was born.

The pattern is something I drew up on my own, though it is definitely not anything new design-wise. Just a regular drawstring bag, with a ribbon handle in the back. It is entirely hand-sewn, mostly in the evenings, both because I wanted to get some practice hand-piecing for quilting (that's another whole story, that I won't get into today) and because getting to my sewing machine is a bit difficult right now. This was done pretty much this week, too, in the evenings after dinner and then finished up today so I could take my sock to work in it one time before the project was done.

I need to refine the pattern a bit, and then I might be putting it online. I have not decided if it will be free, or a couple of dollars to download or not. Again, I'll keep you posted.

...and that pretty much sums up my week, actually.

So, I have this grey, store-bought sweater with a shawl collar. When I went to put it on one day last winter, a stitch in the seam that was holding the collar to the sweater popped, so I quit wearing the sweater until I had time to repair it. Well, I would like to be able to wear the sweater again, and I have a day off work, so I thought I would pull it out of my mending basket and see what needed to be done to fix the collar.

It turns out that I have not one, not two, but three unfinished edges that were held together with one string, and they weren't sewn together, they were crocheted together. So now I have three raw edges that are trying to unravel, and no good way to keep the rest of the seam from pulling out. I have most of the live stitches on needles now, but every time I try to figure out how to put them all back together, more come loose.

Why, why, why do clothing manufacturers seem to go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible to repair this stuff? I understand the need to have people buy more clothes, but seriously. I could take two unfinished edges, but three is outside of enough. And sewn clothing isn't any better. Try altering a cheap prom dress sometime! The seams are put together in such a way that taking them in is impossible to do without opening things up along other seams that then have to be re-sewn by hand.

Grr. It would be much less frustrating to just finish the sweater I'm knitting than to keep working on this one. At least the construction there makes sense.

The grey sweater is going back into the mending basket until I decide whether it's even worth the trouble. Maybe I'll try fixing that fitted sheet with the broken elastic instead.

So, earlier this week, I was working on this:

Mr. Greenjeans, in Cascade 220

and these:

Vinnland socks, in Oak Grove Studios Pearl Sox Tumbleweed

...and then I did something remarkably dumb, that curtailed my knitting ability (and everything else) for a couple of days.

It was snowing outside. My husband's boss had dubbed the impending weather the "Snowpocalypse", even. After driving home from work, and having what should have been a fifteen-minute drive take the better part of an hour and a half, I had to agree with him.

To combat the cold, I was making cornbread to go with some chili. The only proper way to make cornbread, I assure you, is in a cast-iron skillet. It just does not taste the same otherwise. Those of you who know me might see where this is going already, but for those that haven't been following this long and haven't met me in person, I'll continue.

The oven timer went off, and I pulled the bread out to check on it. Miraculously, it was done, and so I popped it out of the pan (the trick to that is to heat bacon fat up in the skillet in the oven while you mix the batter. The batter basically fries itself as you pour it onto the hot oil, and never comes in direct contact with the pan), and rather than leaving the pan on the trivet, I decided to move it back to one of the stove burners. This makes more sense than it sounds, because I do not have much counter-space to work with and wanted to keep it as clear as possible.

Well, I picked the pan up - with the hand that wasn't wearing an oven mitt.

See? Dumb. Two summers ago, while I was working at the Bridal Store that Shall Not Be Named, I burned my arms countless times on the irons. Thankfully, most of those scars are just about gone.

Also, it was good practice for when I decided to do something so remarkably stupid as I did the other night. My immediate reaction, after dropping the pan, was to turn the faucet on and put my hand in cold tap water. This probably saved me a lot of skin. Never put ice directly on a burn like this. Ever. All it will do is damage the skin more. Similarly, butter is not a good plan. Cold water is the way to go for first-degree burns, people.

The burns are mostly-healed, now, thankfully. All I have left is a little lingering tightness on my index finger and the middle of my hand, which took the brunt of the burn.

So, before I can do anything else quite that stupid, I am off to cast on my second sock!

Generally, after the holidays, there is a big post about all the things we couldn't talk about before the holidays.

This post won't be particularly large, because I honestly did not do that much from scratch this year. My husband was the only one who got anything hand-knit.


I knit him a pair of Knucks out of Classic Elite Fresco. Despite lengthening the fingers significantly, I only used one skein for the pair. Of course, I bought two, so now I have one that I don't have a particular use for.


He's excited about them.

I did sew a couple of tote bags for my mother-in-law and my sister, but that was it, and I did not manage to get any pictures of any of it.

As far gifts received, the only craft-related one was from my in-laws, who got me two skeins of sport-weight alpaca from Missouri Alpacas.


I'm excited. It totals 400 yards, which is enough, I think, to make a pair of lace cuffs and a cowl. The cuffs first, probably, because I have a pattern in mind for those, and then I can make the cowl from what is left-over.

That last photo, incidentally, is taken on top of the gift I was most excited about. My parents had a cedar chest commissioned for me from one of the Mennonites that lives down by them, and they brought it up just before Christmas. Very cool. It is the best piece of furniture we own. I would show you a full picture, but the Husband and I have both been sick for the last few days, so it's covered in books and coasters and mugs and other detritus that has collected due to its proximity to the couch.

So, that's how the holidays went for us this year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I know. It's winter. Believe me, I know. It snowed a bit last night, and it's expected that we will be getting another couple of inches over the next two days. I'm not doing much in the way of gardening right now.

There are new developments, though.

I did, in fact, create a small drying rack in the furnace closet. See?


It's just a quarter-inch, foot-long dowel with two cup hooks on the end for the hanging wire and some home-made S-hooks to hold the plant matter. The initial plan was to have cup-hooks screwed into the dowel at regular intervals for hanging stems, but I just could not figure out how I was going to do that without splitting the wood.

Then I remembered that S-hooks existed. Duh.

The only improvements I might make would be stronger wire for hanging (like some actual picture-hanging wire) and real S-hooks instead of some made from doubled-up florist wire. These changes are largely necessary if I want to dry big branches of basil, which is possible but a ways off. For now, this works.

Anyway, that's some of the monster-thyme you see hanging from the rack, and I think it's safe to put away. It has been hanging for a week, and for most of that week it has been cool enough to have the heater running at night (more lately, during the day as well). I probably could trim off that much again and it wouldn't hurt anything.

The other gardening development is that I have created a spreadsheet to track plants from year to year. It has basic information on the plant (pot and soil requirements, date planted, etc), a note section, and, importantly, whether I think it can share its pot well with other plants. Basil, by the way, does not share well. Mine did not, anyway. It nearly shaded out the parsley.

I already have next year's page set up. No sense wasting the planning time, right?

National Novel Writing Month ended on Monday, and I did, in fact, win.

I won without realizing it at first, in fact, because I had been rounding down my word-count at the end of my files (because just rounding is dangerous and can lead to an overestimation of one's word-count). We went to a writing meeting (of sorts) at Country Kitchen on the twenty-ninth, and I finished up with about 5,000 words for the day. I thought I still had about 1,500 left to do the next day. Then I moved all the writing into yWriter, and discovered that I had rounded off about 2,000 words and was, in fact, already done.

So much for the word count. As for the story, the major plot wrapped up at about forty-thousand words. The last ten were the beginning of the sequel, which will only probably be about twenty-thousand all-told. The main story will likely be padded out during the editing process to fifty-thousand, but that would have taken more time than starting on the new plot, which was already in the back of my head for the characters.

So, I present the excerpt from my novel, The Kitchen Witch vs. the Lemon Pound Cake of Doom (and yes, this is supposed to be silly):

"Nooooo!" The dark-haired woman screeched and hurled the scrying crystal across the room. Fortunately it landed on one of the many cushions scattered around the room. If it had broken, she would have been even angrier, and not even the satisfying crash and crack that would have accompanied it would have helped. The Brownies and pixies and the sad bits of leftover ectoplasm scattered to the far edges of the dark room, sending the candle-flames flickering and hiding behind pillows and curtains as though they were some protection from her rage.

"How dare she! She's my link to The Boy!" Without a magic signature for her to follow, she would not be able to track down this girl. Without the girl, the boy whose scent she had gotten that night at the club may well be lost to her forever.

For a week now, she had been closing in on the girl, narrowing her location down to somewhere around downtown. But now, oh! How would she find her? How would she find him? She needed him, now that she knew he existed.

She started pacing in the candle-lit room. One of the sprites pinched another and a small fight started. The woman glared at them. "Ahem. I'm raging, here! Stop it!" They subsided again, but as she turned to start pacing again, she had a brilliant idea!

"You, all of you! Gather around!" She half-knelt to put herself closer to their eye-level. "Come along, I am not angry anymore. I have a job for you, and I think you will enjoy it." She could not have the spirits show her where the girl lived; physical existence meant little to them. They would lead her in circles quite nicely, but could not actually take her to the girl. No, something more subtle was needed.

Slowly the scared creatures crept out of hiding. They had almost forgotten what had sent them running in the first place. She would have to do something about that. She began to hum, spinning out a thread of power to pull them in and bind them. They would listen to her. They would remember what she told them.

"I need you to find the girl who has long blonde hair. She follows the old ways. She is in this area," she said, impressing the bounds of where she knew the girl to be living on the creatures. "She looks like this," she said, pressing a mental image of her onto them as well. "You will find her. She will know you are there, but she won't do anything about it. Torment her. Pressure her. Make her break her vow to do nothing. Once she is again working with the power, I will find her in the flesh and make her show me where he is." Several of the spirits grinned and snickered. They would do as she asked with little qualm.

She snapped her fingers, and the spirits disappeared. They would be off on their task and soon, soon, she would be able to find the boy of her dreams. She reclined on a deep red velvet upholstered chaise lounge and waited.

This will probably never be published. I thought about serializing it online, but I do not want to deal with some of the drama that would ensue.

The sequel, though, if I can find a way to make it make sense without the first part, may well be making an appearance. It isn't finished yet, but I intend to get it done this month. Watch this space for more information.

Is it terribly sad that I didn't put the deck and garden things away until today? I think so, because the only impetus that worked was the expected, combined arrival of both the first snow of the year and my family that will be occurring this evening.

(And yes, I did spend the last month writing verbose prose, why do you ask?)

So, now the mostly-dead basil has been trimmed off. I did collect some seeds from it to start next year. Now all I need to do is work out when I need to start them. The dead mum and the remaining dead strawberry plant are in the garbage, and the deck chairs are put away.

The thyme and rosemary were moved inside about two weeks ago, and seem to be doing fine. They want some fertilizer, I think, and I need to trim off some of the thyme. It is getting out of hand.

Really, I need to play around with putting a drying rack in my furnace closet. It has a louvered door, so it would get plenty of air circulation. If I can get something hung up in there, I can dry some of the thyme and maybe some basil next year, too. Unless I use all the basil for pesto, which is unlikely.

Yesterday was spent entirely on getting the apartment ready for the holidays. Well, about an hour total was spent putting up the tree, decorating it, and wrapping presents. We have a really, really small tree. The rest of the day was spent putting away the fall decorations, which consisted largely of pumpkins. So, from one large sugar pumpkin and one small carving pumpkin (that sadly never got carved), I have about one and three-quarters cups of roasted pumpkin seeds and about seven cups of pumpkin puree for use in baking.

The oven was on from 10:30 in the morning until about 5:30 in the evening, getting everything roasted. But it's done now, and I don't have to do that again until next year. Hurray!

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