Friday Nights are for Blogging (Apparently)

Another Friday night, another night knitting by the pool, and another blog post. I hope I don’t have the makings of a rut here! It’s winding down to the end of summer. It was a blissfully cool evening by the pool, which is a sure sign that fall is coming. It was the first week of school for my children, which also signaled major change for my daughter, who has started high school.

There will be only one more Friday night before the pool closes for the season. And yes, I do feel a bit cheated of summer still. But at the same time I am looking forward to chilly fall evenings with steaming stew pots and comfy sweaters. I have to remind myself that except for when it is senselessly, bitterly cold, there are good things about every sort of weather, so I shouldn’t really look upon this time as a sad thing. There are many good things yet to come.

So once again, my DH’s camera provided the photo for this entry, as it did last week. But I realize now that I didn’t say why. My camera broke. My beloved, new camera that I just got for my birthday last month. The LCD screen somehow got damaged from the inside, and of course, Canon decided that such damage is not covered under their warranty, so my brand new camera just had a $150 repair, despite being less than two months old. Sigh… I hope I continue to get lots of use out of it and love it as I had so far. It has turned out to be one very expensive camera.

And so I’m knitting. I’m making it a point to knit some on the mystery project every day. But now, I’m getting sorely tempted to take a break and knit at least one pair of funky, wonderful socks. Why? Because I feel like I’ve hit a knitting jackpot, that’s why. I saw an ad recently on Ravelry that Lucy Neatby, yes THE Lucy Neatby, is coming to a shop about an hour from my house for an entire weekend to teach a series of knitting workshops. I had to jump at the chance. So, ok, what did I do? I signed up for a 6-hour sock workshop, so I can learn from the master. “But, wait,” I hear you saying, “You don’t knit socks.” You’ve said it at least a thousand times, right here, on this very blog. What gives?”

Well, I have knit socks, but generally I find them intimidating. So, it’s confession time. I have never felt confident enough to knit socks. So, I am hoping that learning from Lucy Neatby will inspire my courage and inspire me to become a true sock knitter. I have a whole bin full of crazy sock yarns just waiting to be knit up. All I need is a little inspiration and a lot of courage. I can do it. And what better way to get started?

Of course, as luck would have it, this once-in-a-lifetime knitting-Nirvana experience would have to fall on my 18th wedding anniversary. But, I’ll deal with that little issue way later. Right now, I’ve got to keep knitting.

Friday Night Knitting Club of One

What a week this has been. I have been so busy and unable to post yet again. And here we are at the end of the summer, I spent this Friday night at the pool, doing what I usually do on Friday nights at the pool.

Knitting.

Except that I haven’t even done much of it this summer, knitting by the pool, and now the summer is drawing to a close. Too quickly. I am finding myself to be grouchy and said about this. It’s been mostly the weather, this hot, disgusting summer. I feel robbed of summer, and angry that this pleasant evening which was at last not too hot, is one of the few memories I will have of enjoying these last few months.

But, this evening was one of the finest. I got several rows done while listening to a Nora Roberts romance novel from her “Chesapeake Bay” series. It was great. And tomorrow is knit group, and then an evening at the pool again. It’s going to be a good knitting weekend.

The Smithsonian Community Reef

This week at work our workplace knit and crochet group was treated by a visit from a lady with the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project’s Community Reef at the Smithsonian. The Worldwide project is making a stop at the Museum of Natural History starting in October, and they are working toward having a community reef as part of the exhibit. I’m late in really understanding the project, and now I am fascinated. The project was started by two sisters in Australia who, when one of them crocheted a bunch of hyperbolic shapes and then they decided that as a collection they looked like a coral reef. Living near the Great Barrier Reef they thought that maybe they could call awareness to the health of our environments and the reefs through their love of fiber.

So the exhibit has now been all over the world and is coming to Washington. My co-worker Annette has gotten excited about the project and has begun making pieces for the reef. The Community Reef will showcase three types of reef: Healthy Reef, Bleached Reef (unhealthy) and Toxic Reef, which is reef that has grown up and around trash and other found objects that lurk in our oceans. Annette’s pieces, which I have photographed here, are examples of toxic reef. Water bottles, credit cards, used auto parts… these are all things which ocean animals must contend with and try to survive in spite of. I’m betting Annette’s piece made with the used auto air filter is going to find a prominent place in the exhibit. It’s a strange beauty.

So, if you’d like to participate in the project, and there’s still a little time, you can join the Ravelry Group or by e-mailing the project coordinator at sicommunityreef@yahoo.com for more information. I’m of course busy on my mystery project that I must remain loyal to until it’s done but I’m wondering how I can squeeze at least a couple of corals in. I think I want to be part of it. You should, too.

August Knitting

I can’t believe that summer is almost over. I’ve been busy, but doing what? I don’t know. I’ve been making time for knitting every day, though, and my mystery project is coming right along:

I hadn’t decided how to do the color changes until I actually got to them. But, rather than continuing right along with the cable and double moss stitch pattern, I put in a “transition band” of reverse stockinettte with the chocolate color, and then am continuing with the blue. Then before I go back to the cream again I will put in another band of chocolate. Then at the moment I am thinking of an applied garter stitch edge or maybe an i-cord edge. Something simple, not lacy, given that I want the attention to be focused on the stitching in the main bands. I feel like I’ve made lots of progress while at the same time I have miles to go!

I can’t believe it’s the middle of August already and that summer is almost over. By now usually I’d have been to the pool lots and have been caught up on listening to podcasts and done lots of knitting by the picnic tables. But not this year. We’ve had a ridiculous, relentless heatwave all summer that has made us not want to spend much time outside. Every week we were sure that it would be over the next week, but it just went on and on, and now here we are. I feel like I have lots of summer to make up for in just a week! The kids go back to school on the 23rd and 25th this year. I know we started going back to school before Labor Day even back when I was in school, but I never thought it was right and I still don’t. It’s still summer, dangit, and I’m not ready for it to be done.

Thankfully, today is a nice day and so we’re meeting family at the pool for the afternoon. I’ve got my knitting ready, and some trashy romance novels on my Kindle. It’s going to be a good day.

It’s OMG Hot!

This was the actual temperature, in the shade, on my front porch this afternoon. 102.9 degrees? Okay, I think I’m completely sick of summer. It was the kind of day when I think it was actually too hot to go to the pool and go swimming. In fact, even as I write this at midnight, it’s still 85 on the thermometer. You gotta love the swampy mid-Atlantic in July.

You know? I think I was the only person not complaining about the snow when it was falling back in February. Of course, I didn’t have to shovel it, and I was perfectly cozy in the house for two weeks with my knitting and hot chocolate. Now, it’s too hot to knit, too hot to cook, too hot to eat even if I did cook. It’s basically hot, pissy, sweaty, hot. This fat girl’s so over it… so wanting to declare that it’s Ice Cubes Under the Armpits Day, and not come out again til Fall.

Who’s with me?

I think our cat, Zöe, has the right idea.

So, I had an adventure this week. My faithful old computer, which admittedly had been on its last legs for some time.suddenly died. It went swiftly in the end, leaving me dumbfounded and without saying goodbye. Not even a too-highly-paid-for-not-much-real-help Geek could make anything happen. So, I had to get a new PC, in a hurry. I prefer to take my time, spec out what I want, and wait for the UPS truck. Usually consumer retail is giving up too much in performance for my taste, but this time I had to make do with something off the shelf. I chose an HP machine that wasn’t going to break the bank, and at the same time, had most of what I wanted.

Got it home, set it up, upgraded to Windows 7 Professional, and all was well as I went to bed Thursday night. Then Friday evening when I got home, my daughter turned on the PC and nothing happened. I called HP, who literally instructed me to take it all apart, take the chips out, and unplug all the components on the inside, one by one. After two hours and much cussing by my husband, HP could not identify the problem. They said I could send it in for service, but why would I want to do that, when I could just take it back to the aforementioned retail store?

So, Saturday morning early, DH and I went to the store to return the HP. Not wanting to jinx ourselves, this time, I came home with a Gateway. It’s got an Intel Core i7 processor, and a GB of video RAM, so I think it’s a pretty good machine. I guess time will tell. Gateway markets it as their PC for gamers, and it has all of these annoying red lights, and a blinky white strobe, And it’s shiny. Weirdly shiny. But hey, if it keeps me in business, then I’m good.

Luckily I kept my data files on external hard drives. Except for my Outlook data files, which means I’ve lost all my contacts. That’ll take forever to fix. Wish me luck.

Anyway, so that’s what’s happening here in Hades. I hope you’re cooler than I am, wherever you are.

Under Wraps

I’ve started a new project. Again.

That’s not news around this blog, I know, but this is a special project. And I will finish it. I have a deadline in mind, and it’s a gift. So, when I talk about this project from time to time, you’ll probably only see stealthy little glimpses, like this:

And this:

This project is so secret I can’t even tell you its name. For now, I’ll refer to it as “E.B.” I’m enjoying it because every row keeps me busy. I’m just hoping to get it done soon, like maybe sometime this fall. Before Thanksgiving would be a personal victory.

It’s large, too. I always go big.

Stay tuned!

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