AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

put in

I just got home from Put In (and I am really grateful for the ride home, or I will still be on my way).  It started early this morning as I trekked to MIT via my morning coffee.  It made me a little late, but improved my mood immensely.  We loaded the truck with the set and everything else that might be remotely useful.  There is nothing worse than realizing you need something on the other side of campus. 

Unloading the truck is kind of exciting.  While there is a freight elevator, it is only used for the truly too unwieldy to move objects (usually heavy dexion pieces and the like).  Most of the set and bits and bobs are carried along the outside of the student center (down and up a couple of really short sets of stairs) and then up a narrow set of stairs into the back of Sala.  Our set is raised, with the main back portion of the set being about hip height off the ground.  There are some interesting stairs on both sides and a bit of a ramp, all of which were assembled from pieces built in the set shop today in situ.

Put in isn't dangerous per se, but it isn't safe either.  There are power tools everywhere (a power saw, a bevy of cordless drills, etc.) and more stuff than you can shake a stick at.  After a few hours the excitement wears off and the little injuries build up.  I dropped at least one heavy bit of set on my fingers, had dexion fall on my hands, and nearly fell up a flight of stairs.  All in the name of being safe and getting stuff done.  When we left, the last big flat was up and screwed into place with more dexion.  People were gaff taping every seam or edge of the set to make sure that the light from backstage wouldn't show through.  People were painting over the tape and cleaning up sawdust and other things. 

More stuff will happen to the set tomorrow while we rehearse elsewhere, and we will rehearse on the set Tuesday.  Dress rehearsals are Wednesday and Thursday with Opening Day being Friday.  It is time dilation at the extreme.  Running too fast, when the bulk of the rehearsals felt like they would never end.

It's Show time.

Thanksgiving joys

Food.  Oh, golly food.  No mashed potatoes this year.  Instead, I made twice baked potatoes.  It was also a bit of a pumpkin extravaganza.  Pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie and pumpkin spice pudding pie.  And I have more pumpkin and pie crust to go.

This morning was surprisingly enough another trip to the grocery store.  We are eating salad tonight, because we definitely ate too much yesterday. 

Yesterday wasn't all cooking.  There was my favorite TV event, the dog show.  All of the dogs are so beautiful.  Of course, a lot of my favorite dogs came in second, a very respectable showing.  There was also football and naps on the couch.  Eventually I did something other than snooze in my blanket bundle, and I pulled out one of the projects from forever ago to work on. 

Today wasn't going to be restful, or at least i didn't think it was going to be.  I needed to make sashes for the Pirates of Penzance costumes.  Easy peasy even for someone who doesn't spend much time on their sewing machine.  I'm done with them all, and I have plenty of time to go for another walk, read a book, see if the library is open, and work on my knitting.  A good day to have before the show finishes swallowing me whole.

cuteness before cooking

This was the cuteness that I came home to last night after rehearsal, so for all of the people who don't look at cuteoverload (all 2 of you) please enjoy!

I'm off to buy the last round of groceries from the store and then it is pie, cheesecake, and all of the things I don't want to work on too much tomorrow!

What is your favorite Thanksgiving treat you are making (or just eating) this year?  I think mine will be the Pumpkin Half-Moon pockets from Baking and Books.  Yeah, I just started finding the foodie blogs in the last few months.  It would have been safer if I had never done so!

counting my knitting hours

I didn't get anything I wanted to finish done over the weekend.  Not too surprising.  I am in the slog part of the rehearsal schedule, and all I wanted to do this weekend was sleep. 

What I did was work on my hat.  It's waiting for me to get home and finish up the decreases with double points, as it is getting a wee too spread out on my circular.

What I didn't do was work on the socks or on my sweater.  Heck, I stuck my backpack (aka, roaming boredom survival kit) in the closet and really didn't pull it out all weekend.  With that, I ignored the deadline knitting.  I ignored the random crochet project I started, and I just sat down with a skein of yarn and some beads. 

Now, I am working on Le Slouch, which is a reasonably fast project.  About 200 yards worth of yarn-y goodness, made into a much slower project by the introduction of beads.  I favor Grumperina's method of stringing beads, but that does make for a much slower project as you slide beads down on a relatively frequent basis.  I would be done, except no dpns.  C'est la vie.  I will be able to wear it tomorrow or Thursday if I get lucky enough to have some extra knitting time.

Otherwise, it probably won't be until Monday.  Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays (it's a cook's holiday), and there will be cooking Wednesday and Thursday (I started Monday morning with crack of dawn cookie fiesta).  I will be sewing sashes for Pirates on Friday, and probably helping with Light Hang on Saturday.  Put in is Sunday.  The hours at the end of a show get compressed, each one becoming correspondingly more valuable.  We are at that stage.  I will get to surface again in mid-December.

Falling down the rabbit hole

Last night I went to the yarn shop on my way to rehearsal.  I wanted to pick up a smaller circular for the sleeves of the February Lady Sweater (I'm so close to the end that I can taste it), and I wanted to pick up beads for a hat.

Did the one, didn't do the other.  So, I have the first sleeve almost half way done for FLS.  I'm doing something similar to what I've seen a fair number of others do with the sleeves and decreasing away the stitches picked up under the arm.  I did one set of decreases for each lace repeat and left the middle stitch purled like the Eunny Jang-styled fake seam.  It's looking pretty good and it is easy to work.  My first sleeve was almost to my elbow when I stopped at the end of lunch (I love getting to knit on my lunch break).

Anyway, I really want a winter hat and really want it to have beads.  Tretta is an option.  It's gorgeous, and would look pretty sophisticated in the yarn I have in mind.  But I really like Le Slouch (though I'm not sure how warm it is, being a beret and all), and would enjoy beading it up.  I decided not to buy beads last night, because I was almost positive I had beads at home.  And it turns out that I do, but not the beads I was looking for.  Whoopsie.  I'll have to go back or see if Spark has any left in the midst of their closing sale.  One way or another I will have two projects finished this weekend, because it shouldn't take that long for me to make a hat!

Gotta collect them all

One of my friends sent me a link for these today.  So wonderfully cute! 

Much like the Georgia O'Keefe paintings of hugely magnified flowers, Giant Microbes are hugely realized versions of their microscopic selves.  I already have the standard sized flesh-eating bacteria, so I probably need the full set!  Momma, teenager and babies.  In plush.  It's not fair that they are so darn cute!

And now I have the Baby Shark song stuck in my head.

supposedly 10 for Tuesday...

Now on Wednesday!

This week is 10 things I'm thankful for, and there are a large number of things on the list.  Probably way more than 10 if I give it a bit of a think.

One	Singing. I'm by no means the best singer on the block, so it is great to work with this great group of people. The chorus is fun place to be!
Two	Iolanthe is the spring show, and I'm going to be there with bells on for the auditions.  I will happily take my spot in the chorus again with pride.
Three	Crafting.  I haven't gotten quite as much done as I wanted to this year, but at the same time I am looking at my list of projects in Ravelry and realizing I've finished a lot more than I thought I had.  That is really cool!
Four	The oven.  We needed to have an element repaired in the oven a few weeks ago, and the service was quick, friendly and efficient.  The time without a working oven reminded me of how much I like to bake and how much even without baking I actually use the darn thing.
Five	My lovely husband.  He's letting me make a sweater for him (which will be started after the holiday knitting craze is over).  We've got a pattern, a yarn, etc..  Being able to make something for him is a great gift.
Six	Chocolate.  I am really enjoying the seasonal Ritter Sport with Peppermint.  Delicious dark chocolate, sharp peppermint flavor.  Just don't eat it all at once!
Seven	Thanksgiving.  My favorite holiday is Halloween, but Thanksgiving is right behind it.  It's a cooking holiday, where I get to make a ridiculous amount of food even if I am not expecting guests.  This year there will be pumpkin cheesecake and pumpkin pie most likely for dessert!  And enough mashed potatoes to make potato pancakes for breakfast that weekend.
Eight	Lolcats.  If I'm in a bad mood, there is always a lolcat to brighten my day.
Nine	Fantasy Football.  I'm not a big sports maven, but fantasy football allows the ambivalent to get into the game.  I always find it easier to root for (or against) individuals, so I'm a lot more interested in football since I joined the league (even if I am losing this year).
Ten	The gym.  I've seriously fallen down the well when it comes to my gym time, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon.  It's hard to miss so much time, knowing that I feel better for having it.  My hair is too freshly dyed to go for the next 48 hours (red needs the extra time to sink in), so I will go on Friday and enjoy it immensely!

piratical

Last week we did what are called stumble throughs of the first half of act 1, second half of act 1, etc.  Last night, we did our first full run of act 1.  Tonight we will do more of the same, only we will have the orchestra instead of a piano to practice against.  It is a bit of a different skill picking out your notes from the orchestra.  Sometimes it is hard to hear the one or two instruments that are playing your note.  Other times it is dead easy as the entire orchestra collaborates on one single chord.

Act 1 gives the pirates a bit of down time in between blocks, so I can get about one repeat of the Hedera lace done before I have to come on again.  It is good to be able to sit and pay attention to the action and what I need to do next without the danger of becoming an annoyance or a distraction.

The show goes up in the first week of December, and hopefully by then I will have finished one of these socks and have something a little more mindless to work on between numbers.  There is always a fair amount of downtime in a show, and there are only so many times you can look over your blocking.

Wanna come to the show?  Sure you do!

february lady sweater zooms!

I started the February Lady Sweater a little over a week ago, when I decided I couldn't do two pairs of socks completely back to back.  This morning I was finally ready to bind off the body, except I didn't have a large enough needle with me to do it. 

Given that I have just over a skein of yarn left for the project, I plan to spit splice the two balls together and then to divide the yarn evenly between the two.  There are a lot versions of this project on Ravelry, and based both on the comments there and what it looked like when I tried it on, I'm going to pick up the stitches under the arm so I won't have to sew it shut at the end, and then decrease them away.  I am planning on doing one set of decreases either every patterned row or on Row 1 of the lace pattern.  I'm not sure which will look better, but I'm pretty sure that the shoulder area and arm hole are a bit generous for my body.  Time to cinch it in.

I have rehearsal tonight, so I won't get to do the bind off until tomorrow morning.  After that it is just a matter of days to finish the sleeves and to then find time (probably on Saturday) to acquire and sew on buttons.  Not bad to have a cardigan done in just over 2 weeks.

fiber farm == cute overload

At last night's Common Cod Fiber Guild meeting, Susan Gibbs from Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm was speaking about community supported agriculture, how she got started, and the value of knitting and other hand crafts in this day and age.

The meeting was punctuated with a PowerPoint containing the pictures from her farm of all of the animals, a truly gorgeous collection of photography.  Given how much suck there is in the corporate world, it was a wonderful thing on its own seeing PowerPoint used in a way that didn't make me want to rip my hair out.

Susan was an engaging speaker, especially when she was telling the tale of how she fell in with community supported agriculture as a business model, how she got started, and what her work is like.  Near the end she veered off in a discussion of why Knitting Matters Now, which was a bit more disjointed. 

Knitting and other hand crafts often get a lot of flack, because they are expensive.  A luxury hobby when anyone can go to KMart and buy a pair of socks for less money than it costs to buy yarn, much less the time to make them.  However, knitting and other hand crafts are a lot more thrifty and useful than naysayers would have you believe.  Most products made with quality yarns cost a fair amount, which is true, but the average knitter counts that cost as part of their entertainment budget.  With dinner and a movie costing a couple easily $40 or more, all of a sudden buying 2 high quality (or upwards of 4 lower quality) skeins of sock yarn sounds a lot more reasonable.  After all, it takes me about 3 weeks to make a pair of socks, which can be worn over and over versus about 3-4 hours for a good dinner and movie date.

More importantly than knitting math is the feeling of accomplishment that one gets from a hand craft.  When you are finished spinning your wool, knitting a sweater, or crocheting a bag, you have an end product that you can identify and use.  You have a skill which can be applied in times when the economy is poor to help you, your family and your friends keep warm.  And you have finished something.  Never underestimate the value of finishing something.

In today's working world a lot of jobs, even good ones, are repetitive.  You are never done, because the task you just finished is a task that needs to be started and finished every day.  If you are a salesperson, you call 100 people today to sell your company's wares but you will have to do the same thing tomorrow.  If you work in a library, you open boxes, process books, and shelve items every day.  While some things may change, the nature of the work normally does not.  It is hard to end a day knowing you will be doing the same things tomorrow and feel like you have finished anything, and that is what a hand craft does for you.  You know that you have finished a pair of socks or a sweater, and while you might start another one you have the time and luxury to revel in a sense of completeness, of having accomplished something.  And you get to enjoy that feeling every time you use the item or see it being used. 

That is why craft is important today.