In spite of the snow and the canceled flight, the holiday was still a good one. We tested the limits of sitting around the house in our jammies watching bad TV. We cooked (a LOT). We curled up on the couch and read good books and watched the snow fall beyond the twinkly lights on the tree. We accomplished very little. It was good.

Critter Boy got me a new camera for my birthday, and the three of us had much fun taking random pictures last week. (being that I’m too tired to really explain all of it – the cats are Hugo and Darwin, in that order, the hat is the Kauni flower hat I knit while snowed in, and the hot chocolate and cupcakes were from the trip downtown on Saturday with the Booger. Sugar Rush wee bitty cupcakes with peppermint hot chocolate at the Chocolate Box. Go there. It’s chaotic but yummy. Photo credits there are Boy, Boy, Booger x4, me, Booger)

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Yay! Free stuff!

In the process of moving some of my books and magazines to a new bookshelf, I discovered that I have a pile of duplicate back issues of IK. They’re up for grabs. The kicker is that I will not ship them (no, seriously. don’t ask, I will say no), since mailing stuff out involves having to deal with the post office on a Saturday, and that’s a multi-hour proposition. I will, however, happily bring them to Madrona to hand off, so if you’re not local to the Seattle area, but are coming to Madrona in February, you, too, can still have one/some/all.

Here’s what I’ve got:
Winter 2006
Spring 2006
Fall 2005
Summer 2005 (beat up, cover falling off)
Spring 2005 (2 copies – 1 has a shreddy bit at the edge of the back cover and a few pages in)
Fall 2004
Spring 2004
Summer 2003 spoken for!
Spring 2003 spoken for!
Winter 2002 spoken for!
Fall 2002 spoken for!
Summer 2002 (cover is detached, but it’s mostly in ok shape) spoken for!

If you want one/some/all, leave me a comment and let me know which one(s) you want.

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She took a photography class at Lopez High this fall, and the results of that (plus a few others) can all be seen in her gallery. There are some absolutely amazing pics up there.

Plus! She’s on Ravelry. Knitting hats like a fiend.

It’s hard to believe we’re staring down the barrel of 16. Very hard to believe.

Also? She’s taller than I am now. Sigh.

But really. Go check our her photos and her stuff on Ravelry. I know they’re supposed to stop being adorable and become awful at some point, but she seems to have skipped that phase entirely. Whew!

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Xmas evening finds me sitting around the house, in my jammies, drinking hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps (with a massive cap o’ marshmallows, natch – the boy is drinking his straight, sans cocoa), watching the snow melt (as opposed to xmas eve, which found me sitting around the house in my jammies not drinking anything fun).

Not in Denver. Not with loads of family and more cookies than you can shake a stick at. And yet? It’s still all good. Also? There’s no crowded airport to deal with on Saturday. Bonus!

Super ultra crazy mellow day with absolutely no obligation, filled with “classic” tv from the good old days. You know, back in the day when the men wore terrifyingly tight pants and you can smell the aqua-net through the screen.

So! Here’s hoping you’ve had a damn fine chrismakuh filled with exactly what you wanted it filled with.

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It’s been all knitting all the time here at Chez Gravy. So not only do I have finished knitting, I actually have pictures of some of it. I know. Shocking.

Let’s dig right in, shall we?

Habitat in Berroco Cuzco. Damned if I remember what size needles I actually knit it on. 9’s? 10’s? Something. Super quick and well written. Really want to do this one again in a different color for myself. Cuzco is YUMMEH. This one is for one of my coworkers for xmas.

Forest Canopy Cowl in Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend in a VERY intense magenta. I loooooove this yarn. A lot. In almost every color it comes in. This was supposed to be for the Booger, but she wants it in the bright acid green instead, which means this one goes to Someone Else (someone who maybe reads this sometimes), and I only have to knit it once in this color and I can do something different with the second skein. Huzzah.

Jean Wong’s wonderful diagonal hat. The picture on the pattern itself is… maybe not so good. The pattern itself, however, is GREAT. I’ve knit this one a bunch of times now, and this particular one is going to the Booger to replace the one that she wears almost every day, year round, which is starting to look a bit nappy.

A trio of xmas socks. There should be 5 pairs in this pile, but, alas, the two for the menfolk aren’t done yet. I blame the door frame that took out my wrist for 2 months.
From the top down, we have:

Um… some green socks. Pattern was… um… er… Oh. Right. Mostly this. I remember having issues with the pattern itself, so I used the main stitch pattern and made the rest of it up to suit myself. I also increased the back leg as I went up, incorporating that into the stitch pattern back there (which, of course, doesn’t show in the picture). The yarn is the nice, squooshy “Smooshy” sock yarn from Dream in Color, in a color that I don’t think is available anymore.

Monkey! Yeah, yeah, I know everyone else has already knit these and I’m just slow on the uptake, but they were fun. And easy to drag around, since the pattern is easy to memorize. Yarn is a 1-off from Blue Moon (a “rare gem”, as they’re called).

Also Socks That Rock (I’m pretty sure, it’s what I have the most of in The Craft Pit), and probably another rare gem. Pattern is the original Pod Baby, by Lower Canadia’s most talented designer (who won’t admit that, silly girl).

And, lastly, some handspun, since I have a new wheel and I’ve actually used it. Go me. (And no, Kerry, I am still not BFF with it yet. Getting closer, but not yet)

I *think* this is merino from Blue Moon. I could be completely off my nut on that, though.

This I know is merino. Superfine. From Butternut Woolens, whom I’m sad to see is no longer a dyer, and has apparently had one hell of a shite year. She’s a lovely woman, and her stuff was always some of my favorites at OFFF and Black Sheep.

This is… uh… Some wool. And stuff. I know I got it at OFFF in 2007 and that it came from a booth in the very back corner by the sheep barn next to the booth with the pygora. DAMN that’s helpful now, huh? Right. It’s crazy soft and sproingy, but sadly there isn’t very much of it. All three skeins are destined for the xmas basket o’ goodies for a friend of mine.

I think that mostly covers it. There’s more homework, but I don’t have pictures of that yet and the battery in the camera has fizzled out. So there.

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Bifocals.

Need I say more?

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Sometimes.

The more drafting I do for class, the more charts I end up doing, whether for working out how a stitch pattern will work out in a given shape, or weird neckline decrease issues, or whatever. The current class project (well, one of three that have to be done by next class on January 11) is a dolman sleeve sweater. Go ahead. Go throw up. I know. I’ll wait.

There are many things that I don’t want in a sweater, and giant dolman armflaps and seams down the top of the sleeve are two of the big ones. Which made this particular class project that much more of a challenge.

So. I started by making the dolman curve as shallow and angular as Jean would let me get away with (ok, maybe slightly more than she really wanted to let me get away with, but so far so good. She might make me rip it all out in class again, but hopefully not). Then I asked (begged) to do a wide patterned panel up the top of the sleeve, which would not only eliminate the seam that would normally be there, but would add a bit of visual interest, drawing attention away from the under-arm area. Bonus. Jean ok’d it, with that little smile. I knew that meant I was probably biting off more than I could chew, but this is all about the learning, right?

I picked one of my favorite patterns out of the Japanese 250 pattern book (if you don’t have one, you should. Kinokuniya in Seattle stocks it, along with a ton of other great Japanese pattern books) and swatched and swatched and swatched. Then traced the neckline onto tracing paper, and gridded it, and realized I was SCREWED. Bigtime. I ripped back several inches of sweater back, and then redid the graph for everything from shoulder point to neck.

And that’s where Excel comes in. Recreate the grid in Excel, and add the pattern with the (great) knitting font from Aire River Design. So. Easy. Extrapolate down to figure out where in the pattern to cast on once the neck is figured out, and this is what I end up with (enclicken to embiggen, as usual):

That turns into these:

The rest is super boring stockinette stitch and still needs the hems knit and grafted on (yes, Lara, still doing it all the hard way…), so there won’t be pictures of that bit until it’s all done, but hey. At least there’s been *some* progress, no?

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Thanks to Rebecca, I finally have a picture that kind of shows off the sparkle-osity of the Betty Roberts wheel. Woo!

I also have one thoroughly unimpressive skein of yarn spun on it thus far. I need to spend more time with it, and maybe more time with Peggy and Rebecca and it to really get the hang of spinning on this one.

But hey! Sparkles!

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Months and months ago we had to go through some absurd sexual harassment prevention course. It was more painful to sit through than any workplace sexual harassment I’ve ever experienced, and became the source of many, MANY office jokes in the months to follow.

In the days that followed, something appeared on my desk. A gift from someone who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons. I’ve had it on my desk ever since, and have been meaning to take a picture of it and post it. I’m a slacker, I know.

So. Enclicken to embiggen, as usual. The picture speaks for itself.

(Mostly) work-safe porn!

I love (a select few of) my coworkers!

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Taken last night, at the ferry terminal, immediately after chopping off roughly 13″ of hair (which will, of course, be donated to Locks of Love). My head is tipped down a bit in the picture, so it looks longer than it really is. Ipe! It hasn’t been this short since… um…. the 80’s, i think. My neck is naked, people. NAKED!

And yes, it would appear that there is at least one un-tamable cowlick on the back of my head, to match the two on the front. Damn cows.

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Taken from my office building, with my phone, mere minutes ago.

But really? Other than this, it’s all rain. All the time. Don’t move here.

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Just one more reason to love Trophy.

(The s’mores cupcakes, with the tower of toasted marshmallow frosting, are also painfully divine. Also? They remind me of my grandmother, who was totally down with the 7-minute cooked frosting. It is the best frosting in the whole world. Mmmmm. Frosting.)

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There’s this funky place in Seattle called Queen Anne Dispatch. They have mail boxes and shipping services, but they also sell great shoes and baby stuff and random gifty stuff and bags and all kinds of stuff. I’d link to them but I’m REALLY irritated with them now, so I’m not going to. Nor, do I think, I will ever go back there and buy another pair of shoes, or another cool piece of clothing, or more socks, or another cool baby present, or any of the other things I’ve gotten there in the past.

See, it all boils down to incredibly shitty customer service.

I shipped another thing with them yesterday. Everything else I’ve ever shipped there has been handled with care and the people I’ve dealt with have been REALLY nice and professional, but the wheel that I dropped off yesterday was a completely different story.

It ended up being twice as much as I’d anticipated to have it shipped, which I understand – that’s UPS and not QAD. However, the total they gave me on the phone yesterday, and the amount that hit my account today were not the same number. And when I called to inquire as to why, the woman I ended up dealing with was REALLY, incredibly bitchy and nasty to me about it. With lots of dripping sarcasm and angst. I’m not sure what it was that I did to ruin her day, but holy shit.

Apparently the extra $20 they charged me was for the packing. I fully understand that packing a spinning wheel is not the easiest thing in the world, and that it had to be done well to prevent damage. And I’m FINE with paying for that. What I’m not fine with is being told that a grand total including packing is one number, and then being charged a different number, and then having someone get incredibly bitchy with me on the phone and telling me that it was essentially my fault that the person who gave me the total yesterday gave me the shipping only amount as the total.

She did insist on refunding the money. I did NOT ask her to do that, and she did it in such a way that it was very clear that she wanted it to make me run away and never, ever set foot in their store again, which is exactly what it did.

So. Their customer service absolutely blew today, and with any luck at least one person will read this and and take their business elsewhere. Nobody deserves the kind of treatment I received from them today.

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And then I cried like a sap. Go me! Not only that, but there’s photographic evidence, which I’m sure will be showing up on Peggy and Rebecca’s blog at some point in the upcoming days.

After waiting…. I don’t even remember how long now, my very own made-for-me Betty Roberts wheel is HERE! In my house! With yarn on it! That I spun! I’m still kind of a-twitter about it all and keep going downstairs to look at it and touch it. (If I didn’t have homework to do, I’d be downstairs spinning on it right now).

I got to meet Betty, who was a hoot and a lot of fun to hang out with, and met three other new Betty Roberts wheel owners – Paula, Susan, and Melinda (none of whom I have blog addresses for, unfortunately), and hang out in a room entirely full of Betty wheels (and a very friendly standard poodle named Shelby). SUCH a great day.

The pictures suck, but are all I have at the moment. There will be more on Peggy and Rebecca’s blog soon, though. And more here, once I find the camera.

Enclicken to embiggen:

And – the whole room full of Betty wheels (mind you, this is only what I could see from where I was standing. There were others that are off-frame.)

Yep, mine is the odd man out. Every other wheel in the place was dark wood. Mine is spalted aspen, and the inlay color is closest to the middle picture. It’s also sparkly. SPARKLY!

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Finally! In Seattle!
(And no, this wasn’t my entire lunch. I’m pretty sure I would have thrown up if I’d eaten the whole box. Probably.) (Also? I know there’s been one at Safeco Field for a while, but for those of us who don’t go to baseball games it doesn’t really exist.)

They’re in the food court at Uwajimaya now. Conveniently, right next to the book store with all the wonderful knitting books. What more could you possibly want?

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