Down to the wire…

But I made it across!! Last night I finished my niece’s blanket.

It was originally suppose to be a birthday present (**whispers** back in February). Oh, well. Its not as large as I had hoped but I think I was also being overambitious. She is only 6, anyway, so it doesn’t have to be huge. If I could wrestle it out from under Bonita I would measure it for you, but I would say it is about 3 1/2′ square. Good enough to throw over you while watching Hanna Montana, or whatever.

Also started and finished my nephew’s mittens.

I was going to do a hat, too, but the yarn shop where I bought this yarn is taking their time mailing me the rest of the yarn and I don’t have enough to do a hat, too. We’ll see what my SIL says and I will decide if I will make the hat then. I have not put the string on it yet.  BTW, I didn’t try to match up the striping on these…it just happened.  Cool, huh?

Sorry…

but this had me rolling with laughter!

ps Thank you to everyone for the comments on the boat and the cats.

pss Since when did this become a cat blog and where is the knitting? I am busting my a$$ to get “Christmas” done by Thanksgiving!!

Inspired 2…Sailboats and Sunsets

Instead of boring us all with the details of when and where, I think I will just share some of the photos from our trip.

Inspired

With the announcement yesterday about INDIGO going on the market, I was inspired to write about our 9 day cruise this summer.

We headed out on a Thursday night around 6pm to head toward Annapolis, Maryland. We were going to the United Stated Boat Show (the link, of course, now has info about next year’s show). This was the first time we had done this by boat. In years past we always went by car and usually with others. We were excited to be able to see all this from the water. Jay wanted to get as far down the Bay as we could before dropping the hook. 4 hours later we anchored and got a good night’s sleep.

Friday morning was leisurely. We knew we were not going into the show that day and we knew all the moorings would be taken so no hurry. We had a very nice sail down.

sailing downwind

about to sail under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge

And what was I doing during most of this?

I get some of my best sleep on the boat!

We were able to anchor off the Naval Academy. Some friends of ours were there on Saturday by car and they met us for Pain Killers at Pusser’s. If you have never had the pleasure of a Pain Killer…well, they are named appropriately. A new friend of mine, Cindy, was also there. I met her at my LYS and we started talking about sailing. Come to find out that she and her husband have a sailboat that they keep a couple of rivers down from us. When I told her we were going to the boat show by boat they started thinking about it, too. So they had arrived around the same time we had. I hope that next season we will do a little sailing with them. It will be fun to have someone to knit with over cocktails.

Saturday we woke to beautiful weather and a boat that had anchored WAY TOO CLOSE to us the night before. As we were pulling our anchor up to drop back and “get out of HIS way,” I spotted a couple of moorings right off the boat show that had been vacated. You’ve seen that photo here.

We went into the boat show that morning with a long list of things that needed to be bought for INDIGO (dinghy, cockpit table, autopilot, etc). We stopped by the area where Pacific Seacraft were showing off all there newest boats. Earlier we had gone by with the boat and someone took this picture of Bart (the broker that sold us the boat) and Steve (PS new owner).

Pretty cool, huh? We had a great time talking to them.

I’m going to stop here for tonight. Its getting late and I still have 7 more days to go. More tomorrow.

Weekend Wedding

I’m writing this while sitting in the RI airport. We attended a dear friend’s wedding in Cambridge, MA. It was the first Jewish wedding I have attended and it was so much fun! Some of that might have been due to the officiate being a friend of the groom. I swear he could be a stand-up comedian! The ceremony wasn’t, I was later told, totally traditional. They did do the 7 blessings, though. For those that don’t know, there are 7 traditional blessings that are read in Hebrew each by a friend or family member. Then they read a blessing in English. They offered to the ones reading the English blessing to make it completely new and made up. I wish I had had a tape recorder because the English “translations” were hilarious!!! Great food and great wine and great people!

The wireless battle continues. It was working fine at the hotel until I sat to make an entry on here. Typical. I was told that if you have a Starbucks card then you can get up to 2 hours of free internet a day. I get here to the airport and find that they don’t sell the cards here…only at regular Starbucks or sometimes at grocery stores. Really? Grocery stores but not an airport Starbucks. Hmmmm. Typical.

Not much knitting done over the weekend, I didn’t expect to. The blanket is too large to carry around so I brought my 2 Entrelac projects instead.

In other news, we have listed our boat for sale. That’s right! But don’t worry…we want to buy a new one!!! Yep! I was keeping it under wraps until we officially got a listing. It all hinges on the sale of INDIGO. If you or anyone you know might be interested go to Anchor Yachts. Spread the word. Momma needs a new boat!!

“free wifi”

Anyone out there have an iPod touch? I get so confused by the ability to use wifi with this thing. It picks up a signal and I go to see which one and it says “free public wifi” but it won’t actually connect.

BTW, this email was mostly ready to go before midnight but due to the silly wifi thingy, it wasn’t sent until today. I’m just saying.

That wasn’t what I meant…

I woke this morning and was looking back at what I wrote last night and saw how it could have been misread.  I meant that it was harder to blog everyday, not that Entrelac was hard.  Or maybe you realized that.  Maybe I am the only one that read it that way.  It would not be the first time I over thought something.

Actually, Entrelac is so much easier than it looks.  Its kind of like cables.  People, especially non-knitters, are so very impressed with your skills and you just sit back and think, “yep, that’s right!”, while dusting your face with flour…oh, wait, wrong hobby.

And, thanks to all of you who complimented the sailboat sweater.  I got a few responses about not knitting Christmas gifts.  I think that is great that you don’t add all that stress to your life around an already stressful time.  I’m trying to keep it simple and low stress by starting so early.  Of you that are still choosing to knit gifts, who will be your recipients be and what are they getting (you can even link to your blog post about it).

Well, housecleaning is #1 on my list today.  Yuck!  But I’m listening to that audiobook so maybe that will make it more enjoyable.

Harder than it looks…

I got nothin. I want to have more…I really do…but I got nothin.

I continue to make progress on the blanket but I have not touched the cardigan again since I started it a couple of days ago. I hope to get more work done on it this weekend.

Oh! Oh! I thought of something! Entrelac seems to be a new theme in my life these days. I’ve never really been interested in it, having only tried it once before. However, I was intrigued by this pattern and decided to give it a go.

The pattern is A Step Above from Knitter’s.

And then a lady came into the shop asking for help on a entrelac scarf. And then another lady came into the shop asking me to show her how to do Lady Eleanor from Scarf Style.  Course, I got sucked into that one, too.  I really love it so far.  Pictures will follow soon.  Anyone else do Entrelac?

while knitting

What do you like to do while knitting? Chat with friends? Listen to music? Catch up on Tivo?

I find that I can get completely lost in a audiobook while knitting and, as long as the pattern isn’t too involved, I am amazed at how much I can get done. I just finished Mistress of the Art of Death:A Novel by Ariana Franklin and really enjoyed it. I’m currently listening to The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. That’s 40hrs of good knitting time!

I like to watch tv, too, but I am not one of those knitters that can look away from the knitting while watching. I sometimes get too distracted and end up not getting much done or not getting much out of the show. I like SciFi , “cop shows” and medical drama stuff the most which might explain why I get distracted. Oh, and I’ve really gotten into Lost now that SciFi Channel started showing it from the beginning. I don’t know why I didn’t get into it before.

I do enjoy a good Knit Night or just knitting with a friend and a cup of tea. We have a local Knit Night at my LYS once a week. My LYS, though, is one of those places that you can stop in anytime and sit and knit for hours. While my friend, Bethany, was over in England we would Skype and knit. That was nice, too, cause I didn’t have to get out of my pjs!

I am making progress…

I have been completing at least 3 squares a night on my niece’s blanket. I have completed 4 rows of the squares with, I think, only 5 more rows to go. Its turning out even better than I thought AND I’ve learned a new technique! I have found that turning the blanket to knit back on the wrong side is getting more difficult as I complete more rows, so I have taught myself to “purl back backwards.”

I also cast on for the Eyelet Yoke Cardigan from Lionbrand.com. Its a free pattern but you have to sign up to see it. I first saw it on twiceknit‘s blog and knew it would be perfect for my 2 nieces that are siblings.

One down!

Pattern: Incredible Custom-Fit Raglan
Yarn: Plymouth Jeanne #001
needles: US8 and US7 (on cuffs, etc)
mods: really, nothing you do on this is a mod because it is pretty much up to you. However, I will tell you that I must have knitted and frogged the collar 3 or 4 times cause I couldn’t get it to be stretchy enough. What I ended up doing is on every other bind-off I knitted into the front and back of the stitch and then bound them off…does that make sense? And the “ribbing” is a 2×1 with the 2 done in a faux cable (knit into second st on left needle, do not pull off, then knit into first stitch on left needle and pull them both off at the same time).

2 more sweaters to go, along with one blanket and a pair of mittens. But I feel good with one under the belt.