loopy-ness and broadway-bound

Wow, look, another post! I'm coming back. Sorta.

Took the plunge last night and bought the tickets for Equus!! There was a change in casting - an addition. Kate Mulgrew! w00t! We're going to the Oct 10th show - that's Friday night at 8. I managed to get Right Orchestra, 9 rows from the stage. I'm excited! D has already seen this play (with Leonard Nimoy!) so she's excited for me. ;) Pricey tickets, tho. It's going to take me 4 weeks to have the tickets in hand due to high demand. Wonder why? heee

I stopped at Loopy on the way into work this morning - and now I understand the craziness over Wollmeise. OMG. *fans self* I want this one, and this one and this one. And maybe this one too. She had them THERE, but not for sale. *cries* Maybe someday I'll manage to grab some.

She also had Spirit Trail Fiberworks yarn - oh, yummy colors! Alas, these were also in the 'not for sale' group, but soon!

I did manage to behave and only got a little yarn:

• 1 4oz hank of Cherry Tree Hill "Summer Sock" (30% merino wool/35% cotton/35% acrylic) in colorway Granite (stone grey) to use with the blue of the same type that I bought from DBNY. The Silver Dollar that I got with the blue is just too dark, and I think this lighter grey will work better.
• 1 100g hank of The Alpaca Yarn Company "Paca-Peds" (20% alpaca, 65% superwash wool, 15% nylon) in colorway Grapevine (deep green, clay, deep burgundy-purple, black). Yum. One of my co-workers just came by and tried to take off with it so he could pet it all afternoon! The colors on the Loopy site aren't as saturated as they are in hand.

See? I was good. Only 2 pairs...

The End of Term Ball is rolling this weekend, so no other yarn shopping for me. I need to edit more of AtE anyway, and so I'll be doing that.

Spiralling Coriolis Sock #2 is coming along - I'm up to the beginning of the band, and will be working on that while editing, I think. Haven't worked on it except at lunch the past few days.

Speaking of lunch, I'm off. Cheers!

carlin, balls, and yarn

PK and I were talking the other day - I'd called her while I was channel surfing, and I'd come across an HBO special with George Carlin. I'd exclaimed that he looked old! She'd laughed and said that that happens when you get to be in your 70's.

George Carlin passed away last night of heart failure - and Jay Leno was among those who remembered him. He was 71. I think the one routine I'll remember is the one about "the earth...plus plastic!" Mind you, that link is not kid safe. Carlin was best known for his "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" (also not a kid safe link) which went to the US Supreme Court. RIP, George.

We've been busy on the PFW - the End of Term Ball is coming up, and the Prefects are running games, and auctions, and other stuff. Ought to be a fun time, so come check it out! Speaking of games, Dan and Kez started the Ravenclaws playing at bowling online - it's one of a ton of games you can play at the Wrigley Company's site, "The Candystand". You don't have to sign up to play. I beat my first opponent, and and arranging to play the next person on the bracket. I think Dave is chomping at the bit to play the winner of my next match! It's a fun time-waster.

I visited a new (to me) yarn store in St. Charles called Knit and Caboodle on Main Street. They just moved this last week, and the new place has a lot of room. They're now in the middle of the 'craft' area of Main - there are quilt shops and needle arts shops across the street, and it's about a half a block up from the visitor's center. Easy to find! I bought:

• 1 100g call of Berroco "Comfort Sox" (50% superfine nylon/50% superfine acrylic) in colorway Hari Hari (blues and greys to light charcoal). I swear I didn't know the name of the colorway when I bought it...
• 1 100g hank of Rio de la Plata Yarns "Lana del Artista" (100% superwash merino) in colorway SL38 (grey-green, grey-blue to sky blue, chocolate browns to light pinks, cream). This is a kettle-dyed yarn, and is a very unusual color. Here's the yarn I bought!
• 2 50g balls of Cascade Yarns "Fixation" (98.3% cotton, 1.7% elastic) in colorway #9980 Los Alamos (bright blue, yellow, orange, hot pink to red). I've heard lots of things about people making socks out of this yarn, and K&C had ot on sale, sooo...I bought some.

Mom bought a new digital camera, and she 'loaned' me her old one. It's a Olympus C-50 Zoom, which is about 4 or 5 years old. It's a 5 MPixel camera but the biggest card it can take (with a firmware update that you have to SEND THEM YOUR CAMERA to do) is a 512. I'll be ordering a 256 card online - you can't find them anywhere except online because everyone now has the 1GB and 2 GB cards. Oh well. A 256 is only $12 with free shipping, so I'll get one or two of those. I've been playing around with it, and it has a macro setting, which is exactly what I was looking for to take my sock pics. Yay! The color representation looks pretty good too - the pic I have of the Rio de la Plata yarn was taken from about 2 feet away with the flash - I adjusted the color temperature and the saturation, and it's very close.

I finished the Monkeys and cast right on another pair. Okay, so it took me a couple of days to get started on the new pair - the Spiraling Coriolis sock from Cat Bordhi's book New Pathways for Sock Knitters Vol 1. I'm using the multi-colored Sockotta I bought from DNBY a few weeks ago. It's a very WEIRD pattern. It actually reminds me of The Joy of Cooking, where if you want to make say, a lasagna, you have to jump all over the cookbook for the meat sauce recipe here, the cheese blend there, yadda yadda. The Spiraling Coriolis pattern is the same. The toe is in one chapter, the heel in another, and the leg in a third. Never mind the initial cast-on and the increases/decreases. It's mind-boggling! But fun. I'm thinking that I might make the next pair out of this book with the Opal 6-fach that I got from the Weaving Dept.

I think that's all for me. Cheers!

as spotted on another blog

Everything copied shamelessly from the Dyeabolical Yarn blog. Go buy some yarn or roving from her. Pretty stuff.

The rules:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. [For questions 1-11 I went to the advanced search option and restricted results to only images with Creative Commons licenses.]
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into the mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

I forgot to copy the attributes and source pics....whoops.

still alive, I am

Hello, I have not gotten lost. As Teh Sue has pointed out to me once a month, I have not posted since the end of March. Been in a bit of a blue funk, and still am, to an extent.

I'm not really going to go into details, but I do want to say I know I've let several people down by not doing what I was supposed to be doing, and that I've rather been hiding from that and from just about everyone in the process. A dearly departed friend of mine would have told me that I'd barricaded myself in my nice little closet, and that it was time to come back out and deal with the real world. Please bear with me over the next little bit while I do so.

I've been visiting the dentist just about every week for the past month or so - I had to have a tooth pulled, and was informed that if I didn't get my gum issue under control, I'd have no teeth in very short order. I just completed the fourth (and final) scaling yesterday, and will be back in about 3 weeks for what is being called a 'periodontal' (no clue) and a polishing. If the gums look better - and right now, they look better than they have in over a year - I'll be taken off the antibiotic and the fillings will begin. Yay. Thank the good lord (and Charter) for great dental insurance.

I've also been buying comfort yarn:

• 1 100g ball of Berroco "Sox" (75% superwash wool/25% nylon) in colorway #1472 Leeds (rust, burgundy, orange, charcoal, white) self-striping sock yarn.
• 1 100g hank Sunshine Yarns "Twist" (100% superwash Merino) in colorway Accio Firebolt! (chocolate brown, ash grey, black, white, lemon yellow).
• 1 130g ball of Universal Yarns "fibranatura Yummy" (100% superwash wool) in colorway #41359 Seattle Skies (sky blue, ash grey, deep purple). I swear, I had no idea what the name of this color was until just now - and those who know me know I love Seattle!
• 1 100g ball of South West Trading Company (SWTC) "TOFUtsies" (50% superwash wool, 25% Soysilk, 22.5% cotton, 2.5% Chitin) in colorway #854 Four Leaf TOEver (leaf greens to white). These, I think, may be Nagini socks.
• 1 100g call of Berroco "Comfort Sox" (50% superfine nylon/50% superfine acrylic) in colorway Stewart Island (muted pine green, rust, orange, burgundy)
• 1 50g hank of Artyarns "Ultramerino4" (100% handpainted merino) in colorway #136 (very pale yellow, yellow, orange, rust, burgundy, brown, dark lilac). This was an orphan ball, so this will be a pair of anklets. I got it from Chris' Needle Craft in west St. Louis County.
• 2 100g balls of Plymouth Yarn Co. "Sockotta" (cotton/SW wool/nylon) in colorway #803 (red) for some Cardinals socks.
• 1 100g ball of Plymouth Yarn Co. "Sockotta" (cotton/SW wool/nylon) in colorway #30 Country Garden (blue, green, yellow, pink, orange).
• 1 4oz hank of Cherry Tree Hill "Summer Sock" (30% merino wool/35% cotton/35% acrylic) in colorway Silver Dollar (charcoal grey). Will be used with the next hank for striped socks in Ravenclaw colors.
• 1 4 oz hank of Cherry Tree Hill "Summer Sock" (see above) in colorway Little Boy Blue (royal blue).

Speaking of "Nagini" socks, the widower of the designer of these socks (Monkey Toes) has very graciously allowed upload of the patterns for her socks onto Ravelry.

I've been working on a pair of Monkeys (Cookie A's pattern) with the Gypsy Girls Creations yarn. I really like the yarn - very sturdy. I frogged it three times before I got a sock that I liked and that would fit! I first tried the Nagini pattern with the yarn - couldn't see the scale effect (needs to be a semi-solid or a solid yarn). Then I tried another one, but by the time I got to the end of the ribbing had decided to do Monkeys instead.

Cast on with US3s (pattern calls for US2s), knit down and turned the heel. Tried leg on for size. Sock = narrow leg. Me = fat leg. Rrrip. Cast on with US5s, and now they fit. I'm just to the heel flap on the second sock. I modified the heel to the eye of partridge stitch, which I rather like with this yarn. For some reason I can't seem to insert a pic, so I'll see if I can edit this from home and insert it there. There are shots of the yarn, Sock #1 before frogging, and Sock #1 Redux posted in my projects page on Ravelry.

I did go to the Stitch 'N Pitch here the end of May - sat next to Susan (eeeek! she took pics of me!) who apparently now thinks I know everything about the Cardinals. Useless Info! I'm tellin' ya, I'm full of it. We had a good time - great weather and Yes, we did win the game. I hope we get as lucky next year!

More of After the End has been posted on my site and is available there or by subscription via podcatcher - link on the right sidebar.

I'm working on organizing the trip to NY in October to see Dan Radcliffe in Equus on Broadway. It's looking like it'll be the second or third weekend of October, and we're aiming for the Friday matinee. That will give us all day Saturday to see some of NYC, since I've never been there before. Dan and Richard Griffiths presented the Tony for Best Play on Sunday, and it was amusing! You can see it here, and a short red carpet interview with Dan is here.

I think I'm done for now.

Cheers!